We made it!

We are actually in Columbus, in our house and we even went grocery shopping yesterday! We are extremely grateful for all the moving help - could not have done it without you guys!! Thank you to the moving crew, which made moving two apartments in one day possible and, of course, the driving crew, who went waaaay out of their way on their vacation to get us safely to Columbus. Bob and Diz keep walking around and meowing ('where are we? what's all this stuff? can we eat it?). They look a little bit like walking dust mops at the moment because they've been traipsing around the basement. We can't get the box spring upstairs but we are happy to say that the house is pretty nice. We're a 5 min walk to the grocery store and another few to campus. Had a classic diner breakfast at Jack and Benny's today- was a little startled to see the OSU bobble-head display (the entire team watched us eat). OSU stuff is everywhere, I even came across some OSU buckeye salsa while food shopping. Will be finishing up with the Uhaul and exploring Cbus by rent-a-car today. Hopefully I'll remember to take some pictures. For now I'll just leave you with this one. Bob's been leaning against me while I write this on our newly assembled couch. Cheers!

Reflection on the Boston Harbor Islands--7 Days until THE MOVE

So Cat started this blog last night, which I think is a rather swell idea, if for no other reason, it keeps us distracted from the bursting poison ivy sores that we both contracted last weekend camping on the Boston Harbor Islands.

Camping on the Harbor Islands has become a sort of tradition for us the past two years in Boston, ever since my friends Sean and Stacy came down for a visit with a list of cheap fun things we could do in the city. Since I know Sean and Stacy from our days of sharing residency on a lobstering island off the coast of Maine, island-hopping in the Harbor seemed like a natural excursion. I invited my school-friend Cat to come along on this first camping trip because, being a city girl, I knew she had never experienced the juices of a hot dog sweating from the stick on which its roasting over the campfire. So we packed our gallons of water (one gallon per person per day), food (instant mashed potatoes, oatmeal, instant coffee, fresh veggies, s'more fixings), tents, sleeping bags, and water bottle full of rum. The first night on the island, Cat was like a jabbering 8-year-old, too scared to sleep in the island's rustle (note: there had only ever been one deer spotted on the island, and no animal any bigger). I kissed her then in the tent, partly to shut her up, but mostly because I felt this need that was verified by my sweaty palms and stomach butterflies. From that point on, I was hooked on the Harbor Islands.

Until last weekend. Our third camping trip, our first being just the two of us. We decided to try a different island and do just one night--a short trip and escape from the growing mountain of boxes that has become our shoe-box-sized bedroom. The whole trip was kind of miserable, so we should have suspected disaster from the beginning. We barely slept because our bodies ached from the ground. Neither of us could focus on enjoying our bisquick dough boys over our bech campfire because the list of things to do before the big cross-country move (continuing job search for Cat, class sign up for myself, internet installation? do we need a modem and a router or do those things come together?) We came home a little grumpy, a little restless, a little itchy.

Two days later, I realized that the two bug bites on my arm that I had been itching nonchalantly why chatting over a glass of wine with our friend Candace had grown into a monstrous blistering rash. My left eye was swollen near shut. The ER doctor even called my poison ivy "impressive" and that's without even seeing the purple blisters on my stomach and in my bikini line.

So now I'm on steroids. And benedryl. Cat's got some blisters on her arms and stomach. We are going to Ikea for bookshelves today, bearing the 94 degree heat so that we can unpack our 1,000 plus book collection as soon as we arrive in CBus. And I'm wondering, in my misery, looking on at Cat's misery, if this poison ivy is just one way of Boston to say, "Get the hell out already!" And I wonder, too, how much I'll miss our ritual island-hopping once we are landlocked?

Why blog? and why call it Hi Cbus?

Q: Why blog?
Good question, thanks for asking. We would like to keep in touch with all the friends and family we are leaving back on the East Coast. We also like doing stuff together. We have no idea what we are getting into in moving to Cbus and perhaps people will find our encounter entertaining.

Q:Why call it Hi Cbus?
Well, first of all, why not? Second of all, any name involving Buckaroo seemed to be taken and in my disappointment with this fact, my creative will was sapped. Why Buckaroo? Because according to Wikipedia, Buckaroo is a "sport" that involves "stacking as many things as you can on top of an unconscious friend before they wake up" as well as another name for a cowboy. I was also thinking of coining Buckaroo (assuming this hasn't happened yet) as the term for a buckeye in training. Oh, for the non-Ohioan readers, the Buckeye is the Ohio State University's mascot, the state tree, and a peanut buttery, chocolate covered regional delicacy. So you see Buckaroo as a blog name would have combined our desire to keep our friends' conscious of our existence (by stacking up posts until they finally just had to read one) with our status as newly minted residents of Columbus, OH. So instead, I decided to just be generally congenial.