Week Notes 20#51

A week of buying a house, spending more money, and building up reserves of exhaustion and depression - but also, having a huge house that is massively improving our quality of life!

The week I became a full-blown adult and bought a house! Monday was moving day, and Tuesday and Wednesday gave us time to settle in a little more.

The move was actually pretty chill - we spent most of the day in the car waiting for the movers to pack, and then unpack, but got some time to read, write a few blog posts and have some Lidl goodies.

Morph's so far been settling in quite well, and has been using his litter tray which has simplified things! He's still quite vocal, and wants to explore more of the house than we're currently letting him but is generally happy with the huge space he has.

It felt pretty odd coming back to work on Thursday, as most of the team were about to head off - Friday was the last day for everyone else in the team (who were in) so it had a really odd feel, especially as there's still a fair few things in progress and I'll be picking them up as I'm one of the few left over the break. Was also fun coming back to an incident!

Pretty disappointed to hear that I wouldn't be getting another friend to join the team, but hopefully we'll be able to work together again soon.

Been pretty chaotic with quite a few things needing to be bought / replaced and hasn't really made the move as nice as we'd wanted.

• Got welcomed to the neighbourhood by little chocolate Labrador Charlie who was in their first week of walkies!
• Been really enjoying the variety of facilities in the house, although the soap that was left isn't the best!
• Had a brief catch up with Emma and Andrew when they came to drop a couple of bits off, albeit they had to run off after the news broke about Tier 4, and several fire engines came for someone down the road
• Also had a brief catch up with Carol and Thom at the door when they came to drop off some Secret Santa bits
• It's amazing how much a difference being in a house that's not yet Hue'd up is having, and just how frustrating it is! It's also quite annoying checking all my 500 doors to check they're locked
• Having an office each made such a difference, even on the first day - having the freedom to be on an open mic, or having music playing through speakers has been really nice, as well as not needing to be on headphones all the time
• Sending a few @heres at 1630 on the Friday before Christmas week didn't feel super helpful, but I'm glad I caught a few things so at least folks are aware!
• Been a pretty frustrating week for food - we'd been hoping to have an oven delivered on Monday, then Tuesday, then each day this week - the not knowing, and the need for a gas-safe engineer to install it has led to it being really difficult to plan anything. Having not much choice for dinners, trying to avoid going out for lunches (so as to try and be ready for Christmas with the family in London) has really been exhausting, not to mention expensive. We've fortunately been able to freeze some of the food we had in, but others have unfortunately had to be chucked, which is really wasteful. Didn't get the microwave until late in the week - and then realised the shielding is starting to peel away, so had to get a new one
• As we didn't order curtains last week when we said we should do, we've ended up improvising with boxes and sheets - which have worked pretty nicely tbh
• The combination of my PC not wanting to boot into Windows / worrying me that it may be dead again, the inability to get a new oven delivered before Christmas, having curtain delivery delayed, everything seeming to go wrong on Friday, and just the overwhelming nature of it all led to me teetering on the edge of a panic attack
• The Christmas plans were scuppered due to the shambles of the government - it's a little bittersweet because it's been very devastating for the family and our plan to have some sense of normalcy over Christmas, and to enjoy some time together for the first time this year. But at the same time, it's the right thing to do for safety's sake, and it'll mean we get the opportunity to spend Christmas in the house, which will be so lovely - I'm really glad we've moved already, and we're mostly set up for the time off - as we've got quite a few days booked off over the Christmas period, it'll mean we've got some nice time to chill, unpack and get more settled
• Had a Wandering Dragon to celebrate my appendixaversary
• The Expanse season 5 begun, and it's been a really good start!
• Been between both houses a fair bit this week, sorting out various things and making sure the old house is ready for work, which has led to a lot more manual labour than we're used to
• Had a nice catch up with Rich and Sophie, enjoying a more social setting in my new office
• Had a nice catch up with Aash and James before the end of the year
• Got some awesome gifts from Secret Santa
• Had a pretty bad week for sleep - poor eating and stress hasn't helped
• Got Moving On by Phaeleh on repeat a fair bit this weekend
• Fit the washing machine myself, which I was pretty happy with (even if it is a small thing overall)
• A week of very dry hands
• Attempted to take the oven from the old house, and got as far as almost getting it into the car before realising it wouldn't quite fit - in any of the combinations we put - for safety reasons. So close, but at least we didn't need to then take it out of the car, and bring it back to the old house
• Been using the living room as a "cat lock" (airlock) for Morph to allow us to safely move in and out of downstairs without him being able to escape