Home Sweet Home

For all of you asking about the apartment Stephen and I live in now (or those who haven't asked, but are curious) here you go! A video walkthrough by yours truly, showing you the apartment from our front door to our bedroom.

Enjoy!

Sickness, Sushi, and Self

It seems that all of us are adjusting well to life here in Mountain View. I've been taking care of the apartment - cleaning and organizing things, trying to figure out how best to organize the furniture (and even what furniture we want - thanks Ikea!). It's been fun.

In less fortunate news, Absinthe has gotten sick. On Monday I went to check on the cage, only to find dark red urine on the second full level. It took me much of the day to figure out which of the girls it had come from. The next day I took Absinthe in to a nearby vet (which I'll talk about later). Fortunately it doesn't appear that she has a tumor (which would have surprised me, but was a possibility), and instead she has a UTI - a basic urinary tract infection. Now she's on a medication regime, which she (and I) hates. I'll be done next Monday. Hopefully after that it will be cleared up.

Last night, Tene, Bancus, and I went to a newly opened sushi bar - Sushi 85 - and I ate real sushi for the first time. I didn't like it. Well, there was one type that I enjoyed - but overall I've decided that sushi isn't for me. Which is fine - there are plenty of other delicious Asians food that I do like - and I'm glad I finally found out.

As for myself: I'm still doing alright. My depression and motivation isn't quite as great as I would like, but now Tene and I have registered for our benefits, so I should be able to go talk to a psychiatrist sometime soon.

Changes to Be Made

As I mentioned before, I'm now in California with Tene. It's been an exciting two weeks.

We now have an apartment, and on Saturday we finally got everything moved into said apartment. Now I'm just trying to go through boxes and unpack all of the things we own.

I've been having bad dreams lately - they seem to be caused by the combination of stress from the Major Lifestyle Change of moving from Utah to California and the anxiety of the same. I seem to be clenching my teeth as a result, though, which is less than ideal and makes me unhappy. I've been waking up with headaches.

On a different side of things, I've been a little disappointed in my own reaction to the move. I had apparently been thinking - more strongly than just idle daydreams - that simply moving out of Utah would be enough to bump me out of the rut I've been living in for the last .... five? six years? It wasn't. I'm still the same girl I was in Utah, I'm just not wearing winter-clothes anymore. I don't like who I am, and I don't know how to change who that person is into someone I would like.

I have a severe case of akrasia - failure of will - when it comes to motivation. It's hard for me to get the energy to do anything that might be mildly unpleasant (pretty much anything I don't want to do ... and even some things I do want to do). So instead of actually doing anything I just watch stuff on hulu.com and youtube. I just don't care. I feel fine watching things, and when I do feel guilty ... it's not a very strong feeling.

I'm considering doing a complete overhaul of myself, of my personality. First I'm thinking of doing something similar to what Alicorn talked about over at Less Wrong - basically actively rewriting my emotional states, rather than just passively feeling and acting as though my emotional states are something that are out of  my control that I cannot control. Hopefully this will help with my depression as well as with my motivation. I'm also looking into some mindhacks to help me with my motivational issues (the link is another post at Less Wrong, this one about Pain Motivation vs Gain Motivation - I am very much "pain motivated"). I know the person I want to be, and I have some ideas of how to become that person ... I just need to actually enact them.

Another thing I'm considering is possibly taking on a new name - or doing something that is tangible or obvious to say, to show that I'm a different person than I was. That I'm going to become a different person.

I'm not certain if that makes sense, but it's just something I'm thinking about now.

A New Nest

We're in our new nest!

Tene and I moved the last of our belongings from storage into our new apartment yesterday with the help of Bancus and his girl. Can I just say I am so happy that we're no longer sleeping on a couch, a holey air mattress, or the floor? We've got our bed back, and oh - how I missed it.


The new apartment is rather nice - I have a large area outside (a private patio) that I plan to use part of as a garden area. I have no idea what I'm going to plant, yet, but I'm sure I'll think of something. Two bedrooms (one is going to be a work room/office), a decent-sized living room, a full-sized kitchen (yay! I have a real stove now!), a dining area, and two bathrooms. I'm quite pleased with it.

The next things on our list of making our apartment our home are getting some more furniture and sheets and the like, and getting internet access set up.

Possible Changes

I'm considering integrating the majority of this blog to my newest (yep, another one) blog, A Nest For Two. I may not, but right now I'm thinking about changing this blog to being completely about the rats, while I talk about Tene and I on A Nest For Two.

I'm not certain what to do.

Switching

I'm moving/integrating this blog with my new blog: A Nest For Two. It seems that it will fit better there.

Journey

Tene and I got to Mountain View, California last night around 6:00 PM. I know the exact time because the storage center where we're keeping our stuff until we find an apartment closed at 6:00, and we barely made it in time to get our unit.

We decided to leave on Friday, and our plan was to travel through the night until we got to Mountain View at Ungodly Early O'Clock, whenever that ended up being. So, around noon on Friday we hopped into our rented U-Haul and started driving.

The first part of the drive was rather uneventful - no surprise, western Utah is little more than desert. Tene was at the wheel, and I was spending my time listening to my iPod (we have a radio transmitter) and singing. Somewhere around the Great Salt Lake we entered the first of many high wind areas. That was a little scary - U-Haul's are basically giant metal kites - and I was glad that I wasn't the one driving. It also started storming a little - rain was falling pretty constantly throughout the trip.

Utah's west desert area is desolate. There's nothing out there. I mean, there's sage brush, and a lot of dirt, and some tumbleweeds, but it's overall pretty empty. That's probably why it's called the west desert. But while we were driving we saw this weird thing in the distance. I took some pictures of it, remarked that it looked like a tree, and puzzled over what it was. Turns out it's something called "Metaphor: The Tree of Utah." So .. yeah. Utah has some random abstract art piece just sitting out in the middle of the desert. No real reason for it.

Shortly after the random artsy tree (which is what I searched for in order to find out what the heck it was) we got to the Bonneville Salt Flats. This is where the high-speed-mile tests are conducted (or, so said the placard erected at the rest stop). Tene and I got out and stretched our legs, and walked a ways out onto the salt flats. I don't believe I've ever seen them in real life before (and if I had, I don't remember it at all), and I was surprised at how un-Earth-like they look. It was also interested to be shown so clearly that salt - in all its deliciousness - is nothing more than a type of rock. I took a hard chunk of the salt flats (Tene pulled it up for me), and filled a water bottle with some loose salt/sand from the edge of the rest stop. Then it was my turn to drive.

I didn't drive long - I think I was behind the wheel for maybe an hour. I drove from the salt flats to Wells, Nevada, where I realized I was far too tired to keep driving. Tene took over again, and we had more uneventful driving between Wells and Winnemucca, Nevada - a 3 hour drive. At Winnemucca I took over and drove to Reno Nevada. Another 3 hour drive. Nevada is big ...

At Lovelock, Nevada I had my first hit of culture shock. It was pretty mild, all things considered, but it was still a little surprising. We stopped at a gas station - I needed some caffeine (thank you Starbucks Mocha Frappachinos - I realized after I started drinking it that I had wanted a Vanilla Frappachino, but ... oh well), and the truck needed to be refueled - and when I entered it I was hit by the very distinct smell of cigarette smoke and the distinct sound of gambling machines. This would never happen in Utah ... so it surprised me.

Lovelock had an interesting (and cute) romantic culture. At the gas station there were a bunch of locks available to buy in order to connect them to a chain somewhere - which is apparently stolen from a Chinese custom. I thought it was cute, and started thinking ways to implement it in a fantasy story. If anything comes of that, I'll put it on Truth in Lies.

So, I drive to Reno, Nevada. As we approached Tene and I discussed whether to push on through the night or if we should stop. We ended up deciding to stop for the night, and stayed at the Sands Regency hotel.

The girls had a bit of an adventure here. We weren't certain we could take them into the hotel with us, so we decided to keep them out in the truck. Had it actually been warm, I would have felt a lot better about this. We ended up putting them in their smaller temporary/training cage, and wrapping it up nicely with a blanket and some pillows, as insulation. I guess it worked out, because the girls were just find in the morning (if a little chilly to the touch) and two of the pillows, and the blanket, had been chewed a bit (and there was cotton in the nesting box that wasn't there the night before).

The next morning, Tene and I set off again at around noon. And the last leg of our adventure began. We soon crossed the Nevada-California border without trouble, and had to stop shortly thereafter so that our truck could be checked by the Agricultural department. The woman who was checking our truck seemed a little concerned when she saw my large cage in the back, but she made cute noises at the girls and we were sent on our way.

The drive through California was pretty uneventful. I was glad we had waited the night out - the mountains as we came down were beautiful, and I would have missed them had we gone through the night.

Then, as I said earlier, we got to Mountain View at around 6:00. It took about an hour to unload the truck with the help of our friend, Bancus, and then we dropped off the U-Haul and trailer.

I'm glad we're here, safe and sound, and I don't think I want to make another trip like that again. Unless I'm in my own car, then it might be okay.