2003-10-14

Well, I made it. I have passed inspection on my last house and have moved in to the wonderful warehouse in Wickham. The move went pretty smoothly, after all Dame and I are now well practised on moving our stuff using available resources, and the process goes like this: move everything in Stripey, the van; on the last day go borrow Nodsa’s trailer for moving whitegoods. In an added coup this time, we had use of a really good trolley for moving heavy shit, like the ones real removalists have – except it wasn’t one of those amazing stair climbing numbers. Thanks to Danny for the muscle when moving whitegoods and helping to get the big kitchen bench thing from the Octapod. At one point, Dame had the thought “I’ve seen all this stuff so many times” in reference to helping me move 7 times in the less-than-four years we have been together. Poor, poor boy.

There is stuff scattered absolutely everywhere in our space, more so than when one moves into a house. Houses have walls and rooms, so you know to stash the box full of kitchen stuff in the kitchen and the loungeroom stuff in the loungeroom. But we have no rooms to help us divide all the boxes, milkcrates and free floating items. Stuff is everywhere. There is a bedroom, and that means the bedroom stuff is pretty much set up. We need to get over the funk of not knowing where to start in setting up this expansive area we have.

In the main section of the warehouse, we have a lovely, old, green, enamel sink that Dame found. The landlord dutifully had it installed and taps put over it – he even built a nice frame for it to sit on. That is the kitchen so far. We await the gas man to put the gas on, so we know where to put the Early Kooka stove that we have scammed from next door. Currently, I cook on my little camping gas cooker or eat out, or use other people’s stuff.

I’m gonna try out the new shower cubicle tonight, it has an environmentally unsound olde shower head, nabbed from the house next door. I must explain about the house next door. It is a nice little cottage, probably a hundred years old, but it is termite ridden and is to be demolished - for some flats I think I hjeard them say. Fuckin’ hooray. Until then, it is open slather, and we have key access to the house. So far we have scammed the shower head, a nice set of shelves and access to the TV arial, as well as the Early Kooka gas stove. To get the arial Dame went in and pulled it out from the inside, strung it the 2m to our place and connected it to our TV – sweeeeet! Eventually we will get the whole arial from the house and put it on our place.

Heh, our landlord just popped in to borrow an egg and I don’t care! I just said hi and kept typing away! Mostly you do all you can to keep your landlord away from your house, cuz they tend to pick on how you live, or want to check on you. Not this guy! He’s really nice and just told Dame that the boys should have a beer tomorrow for Jameh’s birthday. For some reason, he thinks me and Dame are tops and does not question how we live. Hallelujah!!

Deanna is not totally stoked about the move just yet, as she now shares her home with Barbie (Dame’s doggie) and Little (Dame’s cat). Barbie she is cool with as they have known eachother for 3.5 years. But Little (short for Little One, Little Mate, Little Shit, whatever you want) who is, incidentally, quite little, is a bit aggressive and the ladies do not yet get on. Little is hissing like a snake even if Deanna is not in the same room.

Today I returned to work after a week and a half off, and I was again thrown into the pit of ideas and chaos. Things I am currently thinking about at work: accessibility and media rich tools; visual language; collaborative workspaces online; women online/returning to work; how to manage my project blogger better (its for my project on learners designing their own curriculum/learning pathway); what the fuck I am going to say as keynote speaker at a seminar attended by vocational trainers from all over the Hunter, in regards to flexible delivery of training. Or as Dame put it ‘talking about funky learning”. Yes indeed….