I feel the earth move under my feet…

Yesterday (that would be Saturday morning) we were puttering around the apartment getting ready to go to the Cash and Carry mall to grocery shop when I felt the building shimmy.  I asked Steve, “Did you feel that?” and right as he said “What?” it happened again.   By the time we got back from the grocery store, this site had information about a 6.1 magnitude earthquake centered a hundred or so miles south of Manila, followed by a weaker one about five minutes later.  Looking at the site today, it looks like there were some aftershocks later on, but all we felt was the one double shake.   My first earthquake!

Working at the embassy has been intense; the section is very busy and several of the other officers are rotating out soon, so I need to get up to speed quickly.  I’m not as lost as I was at the beginning of the week, but I still have a long way to go.

Coming back to the housing compound and our apartment at the end of the day is starting to feel like coming home, though!  Getting our unaccompanied air baggage will help a lot, I hope.  I’m getting tired of the minimal clothes and toiletries I brought in my suitcases.  All my earrings ended up in the UAB, as well as all my perfume and most of my shampoo, so I feel like I’m roughing it without those things.  Plus, Steve has a cold, and all our Sudafed and other over the counter remedies are in the UAB.

Gracie and Ginger arrived two days after we did, none the worse for wear.  We try to wash their feet every day, especially the cat’s so she doesn’t ingest the fine black dust that gets on her paws from the pollution that gets in and settles on the floor and every other horizontal surface.   We also packed an air purifier with HEPA filter in the UAB, so that should help.

The weather is hot and humid, but hot and humid no worse than Miami, with some days more like Orlando.    It’s the end of the rainy season, headed towards the cool season, so I’m sure we’ll experience the fierce heat and humidity next year during the hot season.

So far, we’re all doing well, all things considered!  Once we’re in our permanent housing hopefully in a month or two, we’ll have two guest rooms, so start making your plans to come visit!

SOLVED!

Well, the mystery of the missing mattresses was solved the day after I wrote the previous post although I was too slack to update; there’s apparently a “no-number list” on the inventory they did at the warehouse of all the things that either never had a number in the first place or whose number fell off in transit.  And it’s perfectly OK to request items number 1, 5, 202 and 316, plus no-number king size mattress, no-number king size box spring, etc.  Some of the numberless items are a little random, though, like the rake and the lamp.  Which lamp?  Which rake?  Should we have it shipped just to find out?  As a U.S. taxpayer, how do you feel about me spending your money in this fashion?

Mystery of the Missing Mattresses

Today I thought I’d start figuring out what out of storage we’d have shipped to Manila.  All but what we had in our cars plus 450 pounds of stuff shipped by air to our apartment here has been in a warehouse in Maryland all summer.  When the movers packed it all in Atlanta, the lead guy put a numbered sticker on each box or piece of furniture, then kept a list that crossreferenced each sticker with what was in the box, so theoretically I go down the list of furniture and boxes and pick out what we want to get sent to the Philippines.  Winter coats stay in storage, scuba gear goes to Manila, easy peasy!

Except I can’t find any of the mattresses or box springs on the list.  The front page that says how many boxes the movers provided includes 4 mattress cartons, but none of the sticker numbers say “mattress” or “box spring” next to them.  The bed rails are all listed separately, as are the head and foot boards.   There are three lines on the page with the king size bed rails that aren’t labeled, but all three are listed as having damage like chips and scratches, which doesn’t sound very mattressy.   And there’s nothing that might be the queen size ones.  I’ll call the warehouse tomorrow and see if we can come visit our stuff, or maybe the folks there can run put stickers on the mattress boxes themselves.

This is great!

Drinking coffee, thinking my thoughts, taking my time; so far, I’m really liking not having a job!

Make no mistake, I’ve been busy. Part of getting the house ready for tenants has been sprucing up the master bathroom a little, so two weeks ago Steve and I started peeling the old floral-pattern wallpaper. There was a different, smaller, more stylized floral pattern in the little WC room, and we figured we’d leave that and match paint colors to it, seeing as how peeling wallpaper is so incredibly tedious. The floral pattern included the colors Rose Sachet and Rhubarb, and the magic color mixer at Home Depot suggested a color called Bleached Shell as a main color that could go with both. We decided to paint an accent wall Rhubarb, since I thought Rose Sachet would look like Pepto-Bismol on the walls. I also thought the Bleached Shell on the rest of the walls would appear practically white, and would be a nice neutral. For the next week we sanded and primed and painted and cursed, etc.

Well, Bleached Shell is a very pale pink against the white ceramic tile of the shower, kind of ballet-slipper colored. Don’t get me wrong, I like the bathroom, but it’s not what I expected. I was trying to heed the white-bathroom-for-maximum-appeal conventional wisdom, and instead it looks like I followed the pink-light-minimizes-the-appearance-of-wrinkles conventional wisdom. I’ll post some before and after pictures soon.

Progress of a sort

Well, I’ve turned in my resignation letter to my current employer, effective 3/31. That’s one big progressy-thing, right there. No one was surprised; they’ve been expecting this since the diplomatic security officer came to interview my boss last February for my security clearance.

Also, I think we’ve found a property manager; he visited the house for the first time yesterday and made a few suggestions with more to come once we sign a contract, which is likely to happen Monday. I’ve already rented a storage space down the road so we can empty out the house a little. Apparently Ten Pounds of Shit in a Five Pound Bag is not a good look when you’re trying to entice tenants. The yard looks like utter hell with some bare spots, especially where the dog pees, but I’m not sure what can be done about that with the watering restrictions the way they are.

I think I have enough clothes for A-100 (the training period in Washington, which may last anywhere from four months to a year depending on whether or not I get language training) now. My mother went shopping with me for suits in December, and I made a trip to the mall this week to get shoes and a couple of mix-and-match separate type outfits. The pants still all need to be hemmed, though. Working in IT and wearing jeans and t-shirts for 12 years has me completely out of any sort of fashion loop, but I hope it doesn’t look like it once I start wearing the nice stuff every day. Oprah magazine (shut up! I was reading it waiting at the dentist’s office) says that matchy-match suits are a thing of the past and wearing them makes you look old, but I think I need the strong guidance of the matchy-match while I’m still learning how to dress like a grownup.