Refugee Update

Cory and Zoe and I are still "squatting" in a neighboring apartment. The carpets have been extracted, dried, and cleaned (they look better than they did when we moved in). The last we heard, they were going to replace our dining room ceiling, perform any other needed drywalling, then repaint the entire downstairs. If they started on Tuesday, then we'd be able to move back into our apartment by Thursday or Friday.

Only one problem: They didn't start on Tuesday. Or Today. The ceiling and walls are still brown and droopy, and the downstairs still stinks to high heaven. (I needed to use the computer today to print out a couple of resumes, so I'm sitting in the stinky brown apartment right now as I write this.) It may be a while before we can move back. Hopefully, before Cory's birthday next week.

In the meantime, we're camping out in what we've begun calling our "vacation cottage." It's a semi-furnished corporate apartment, so it has a dining room set, a couch, coffee table, two beds, an alarm clock, and two bedroom dressers. It also has all the basic appliances ( a TV in the family room and a microwave in addition to the stove, dishwasher and fridge), running water, electricity, and cable tv. We've brought over a few items of our own.

Zoe (plus food/water bowl, litter box, and tin of catnip)
Two pillows
Two comforters
teddy bear
four towels
Assorted toiletries (I knew that eventually all those little hotel-size bottles of shampoo would come in handy).
Hair dryer and curling iron
electric razor and beard trimmer
two small laundry baskets with clothing (one clean, one dirty)
small (12") tv for bedroom (Something else coming in handy... this TV hasn't been used for the last 8 years)
TiVo.

The TiVo was actually the first thing that Cory moved over there... aside from Zoe. I guess if we ever need to evacuate for an actual emergency, I now know which items we can't live without.