Well, now that we've been in Eugene for a month (and our stuff has been here with us for some fractional portion of that, thanks to the very crappy service of Atlas Van Lines), I figured I should finally upload these pictures to give those poor East Coast suckers a taste of the good life we've got out here. (Look, you can't prove me wrong from out there, can you?)

We did get to have a small get-together before we left. I'm confident that while the intention was to say goodbye to our friends, they were all too busy celebrating that we were finally leaving. As rebuttal, I offer you embarassing pictures of them all. That ought to teach them.

And of course, the one that explains it all:

Kilgore enjoyed a good lounge-around on what would turn out to be part of his prison just a few days later:

Ok, that said, the trip out here was very fast and mostly uneventful. We had 3 cats and a lot of valuable vinyl records with us, so the quicker we made it cross country, the better for everyone. We made it in about 3.5 days (and it only took the movers about 14!). We didn't get to stop and see lots of tacky sideroad attactions along the way as we would have liked to, but we did get to see the most horrifying storm ever, from the inside. These images barely do it justice:

When we were actually INSIDE the storm, we couldn't see anything. All traffic basically came to a stop. It was madness. What made it crazier was the fact that behind the storm was calm blue sky. I think the midwest is just a crazy place to be at all. The weather and plains are so turbulent, it's almost as if the Earth hasn't finished settling there. It's as if somehow, that part of the planet is still a few million years behind the rest of us (in so many ways). But most obviously just that nature itself there is so alien and turbulent. Anyway, I'm rambling. You want more pictures.

Beyond the storm, the next most eventful thing that happened to us was Joshua's flat tire. Calling it a flat tire is actually misleading. Do they make a word for a tire that once was there and suddenly isn't anymore? Because that's about how it happened. We got to stop in some crazy town in Nebraska (I think) to get a new one. In order to get to his donut (mmm, donuts) we had to unload all of my precious precious vinyl onto the sidewalk in the 95 degree heat and bright sun. Such abuse they took. Nevermind that Joshua was out changing a tire in that heat. We're talking about RECORDS here, people!

My car was looking mighty yummy at this point:

So, we stopped for gas and lunch at someplace that the AAA guidebook called the "Sodom of the Plains". This was their welcome sign:

Everytime we hit high elevation, Duncan Idaho and Kilgore Trout would freak out and try to claw anything they could get their hands on. Unfortunately, this was usually vinyl. Fortunately, all they managed to hurt were the plastic dust sleeves.

Ok, let's finally move on to the pictures you all came to see. (And having typed "you all" without laughing, as if there were really more people reading than just one, I might as well say, "Hi mom!") Anyway, the front of our apartment (which is constantly covered in spiders, taunting me, daring me to leave the apartment).

Here's the view from the livingroom. You can see the ultraswank spiral staircase, the suave little window that opens up from Joshua's office, a little bit of the kitchen, and the front door. How cool are we? Oh yeah, you can also see the spot on the second floor where Joshua's cat was lounging by the railing, and fell right off the ledge. Now they all fight over that spot. They aren't bright animals.

And here's the view of my coolness from the bedroom.

Here's a view of the dining room from the stairs, as seen before the arrival of the movers! The records all came with us in the cars. It's not like I would entrust those idiots with my vinyl!

Duncan loves the stairs.

Actually, all the cats love the stairs:

Our bedroom, which Thurston thoroughly scoped out before us:

Here's the kitchen, with the cool greenhouse window that I've since filled with plants (only a few of which have ended up in a certain cat belly):

Various views of the livingroom, which looks a lot smaller with stuff in it:

Joshua's office, which has the cool window that looks down and out into the diningroom/livingroom area:

He claimed the cool-window room, so I got the fireplace room. I think he chose poorly!!

Joshua's office has a view of the mountains, but apparently I wasn't excited enough about that to take any pictures. However, you can see the view I have from MY office instead!! I took these from the sliding door:

The cats were quite glad to be out of their 3000-mile prisons, which Joshua and I MADE for them, after a few visits to Home Depot. I'm changing my name to Mrs. Bob Vila.

While we were waiting for our stuff, I got to go explore the incredibly cool bike trail that runs through our backyard, called the East Bank Trail. The whole trail is scenic and incredible:

More views of the Willamette River, which runs from my backyard right into Portland. Maybe I should buy a canoe.

Here are views from the path back to my apartment complex. If you look, you can see the cool swing that I'm too scared to sit on. (There's a bit of a spider problem in this town...)

The cats kept fighting over the cool cubbies in the various rooms (I think there's one in every room except the livingroom):

Lynn sent me a care package to keep me busy while I sat on the floor waiting for the movers to arrive (did I mention 14 days?). It included little army men with parachutes. We want to suspend them from the ceiling, but it's 40 feet up so we don't really know how to go about such a thing!

We went to Ikea in Seattle to buy a new holder for my (sorry, our records), because they were all we had for so long, we figured they deserved a nice place to sit:

Then, one day, stuff arrived:

And if you look closely, you can see these are bookcases in the background. This is a view from above, just to give you some perspective on how much stuff there was!

Kilgore likes to sleep in really bad places. This is sort of like "Where's Waldo".

Apparently, I have too many CDs:

Which becomes all the more obvious here, when they're coupled with Joshua's CDs:

And just so the records don't feel neglected:

I showed this picture to Joshua, and he said, "We really are nerds. No, really." ... I take that as a good sign.

And a cautionary tale for those cats who may find themselves allergic to everything and living in Oregon: If you bite your fur off and leave your skin raw, we will make you a shirt so you can't lick off your medicine. You won't like it, but Joshua will.