The more I think about it, and the more I bike, drive and walk around Eugene the more it makes me think of Cambridge. The changeable weather (including trademark sudden squalls), the overall coolth (that's like warmth, but in reverse), the surfeit of green all around, the weirdoes (heh) and the high commerce + college + small town atmosphere all add up to that same feeling of constant low-grade euphoria and a feeling of unreality. I still can't really believe we're here, and the odd or wonderful (or wonderfully odd) things that happen daily only serve to reinforce that.
Or it could be post-moving glee. But I don't think so.
So we got in fairly late at night completely zombied out, and so had a total of about 5 hours the next morning to try and think about how our furniture was going to be laid out. When the movers (well, unloaders - technically we were the movers) came, we were still pondering this tricky proposition ... a few hours later things slotted in place. The problem was, they kept slotting - all of our boxes o' crap™ ended up on the porch, the patio, and the center of the living room. The plants at least survived the ride and are now thriving on the porch, reveling in the moisture.
The counter to this dismaying realization was the fact that we now did have a patio and a porch. After years of apartment living with zero external surfaces it shouldn't be surprising that this was a nice bonus - but it surprises us every day how pleasant it is to just sit on the porch and read a book while enjoying a glass of wine au naturel. Another week and we may have some music, even! The luxuries just keep adding up.
Our cottage is stupendously cute. It's a 1,000 sq.ft. hardwooded nook and crannied two-storied forested structure of almost proverbially quaint rusticness - it's almost as if we're camping, which only adds to the feeling of transitory anticipation we're enjoying (?). It's as if we're going to pack up and go "home" very soon - I guess as you get older the feeling of displacement takes longer and longer to dissipate ...
Unpacking has been going on the entire week, and will probably stretch into the next one. We've donated 6 bags of clothing, 5 items of furniture and a car before even packing the Penske truck, and it looks like we're going to give away (or toss some redundant fluff) even more stuff just to fit in the house. It's not that it's small, but after 5 years of stuffing stuff (HAHA) in random places, getting it all out in the open becomes a little tricky. Books are especially suffering, but with double-stacking we've managed to put them all up - I try to prevent myself from realizing that means we need twice as many bookshelves as we have ...
Anyway. Next entry, Eugene bits and work bits. This is such a different environment I'm not even sure where to start - but it is all improvements.