IMR: 1998: March: 05

IMR: 1998: March: 05 -- Thursday, 11:17 p.m.
Our Apartment, Makiki, Hawai`i

Gods I'm exhausted. I don't even know where to begin.
We moved to our new place over the weekend, somehow without the use of a moving truck. Fate, in all its wisdom, saw to it that we just happened to hear from Heidi -- an old friend from Hilo -- a couple of days before our move, and she just happened to live in Waikiki with her husband Jared, who in turn just happened to own a pickup truck.
So, with barely ten words exchanged between myself and this lovely couple, they were foolish enough to offer to help and we were shameless enough to accept.
On Friday and Saturday, poor Jared -- who frankly didn't know Jen or I from holes in the ground -- hauled dressers, bookshelves, tables, a desk, a bed, and a couch out of Waikiki and into the hills of Makiki.
William, the poor soul, was also coerced into helping us relocate. Heaven forbid I ever ask him a favor that doesn't involve heavy lifting.
Moving physically was only part of the whilrwind adventure. With only two days between first seeing the Makiki apartment and getting the keys, I had to jam to get several utilities transferred. Electricity, phone, cable -- I've never spent that much time on hold in my life.
Then there was working out the new lease, sending change of address cards to the post office and to assorted magazines and junk mail houses (so sue me, I love my junk mail)... I better not get started.
If one move wasn't enough, in a sense we moved twice this past weekend. In addition to changing apartments, we had to transport everything we'd stored and accumulated at mom's during our temporary stay in Mililani.
It took two trips, one involving two cars, to carry almost everything we needed to care for one eight-pound infant. The big crib will have to wait until another long lost truck-owning friend pops up.
It'll probably be months before everything gets settled -- cardboard boxes still make up a fair proportion of our furniture -- but in the three nights we've spent here we're confident it was the right decision. It's cool, quiet, and frankly, it feels like a home.
It's a shorter and less stressful drive to campus, and the trip home from UH Press through Manoa is particularly pleasant. Having a waiting parking stall is the best part of all.
We've yet to find the best place to go grocery shopping. Our first attempt found us at the Safeway on Young Street, which didn't impress me much and cost us $88 to boot. Worse yet, customers there seem unusually eager to put their bacteria-ridden fingers on Katie, a practice that peeves Jen to no end.
We should take Heidi's advice and drive the few extra miles to Grocery Outlet on Dillingham. The prices there, I've heard, are sometimes scandalously low.
(And with special "newborn" size diapers priced at $8 for 20, we can use any break we can get.)
Sleep, not surprisingly, has been scarce, as has been time to do anything outside of school, work, and fatherhood. And I'm struggling at all three.
Today, for example, was my Journalism 360 midterm, for which I studied exactly 90 minutes just prior to class. Hell, I missed three of my 7:30 a.m. Hawaiian classes in a row since last Friday.
Meanwhile, I'm a week behind deadline on the AIB newsletter, for which I'm going to be skipping work at UH Press tomorrow to finish. This as I'm in the middle of being moved to another office at the press where I'll apparently Novell network administration and tech support will be added to my webmaster duties.
And while I actually love this daddy business, it can really wipe me out sometimes. Katie, though an angel for mom during the day, seems to have a two-hour period of fitfulness (if not unbridled screaming) every night at about 8 p.m., for which there seems to be no consistent remedy.
Hmm. Katie is finally asleep and a grumpy Jen (she's being screwed over again at her job -- more on that later) just turned in. Despite all the tales I've yet to tell, I think I'm going to stop here and take this precious opportunity to get some shut eye.

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