moving in

October 6, 2009, Tuesday. Finally clear and sunny … and cold! On this day we accomplished the “move in” portion of our move to Utah. We got a P.O. box, signed up for utilities at the new apartment and signed the lease (all 22 pages of it – jeesh, corporate landlords). The apartment is great: 9-foot ceilings, ceiling fans, two bedrooms, two baths, large open living/dining area, decent sized kitchen, small balcony, lots of closets, washer/dryer in the unit, one covered parking space (for me) and plenty of first‑come‑first‑served parking spaces for H.

It’s a third floor walk-up, of course, so we after we signed the lease we then lugged all the stuff we’d carried out here in the truck and the Subaru into the apartment. Let me tell you, we’re situated at about 4,600 feet and although I don’t get altitude headaches here, that’s just enough to get me completely winded while toting boxes up 37 steps. To be fair, H was puffing pretty hard too. Makes me nervous: if I can’t breathe now, how am I going to be able to ski another 4,000 feet higher?

After moving in what little stuff we had brought with us (sleeping bags, duffel bags, financial records, aerobed, computer, B’s kennel, toys and blankets), we deemed ourselves done and went for another late lunch/early dinner at Fiddler’s Elbow, a roadhouse in the Sugarhouse neighborhood (1063 East 2100 South, SLC). It’s in a great space, a former warehouse or garage or something, one huge room with a high raftered ceiling, a couple of pool tables, a short bar and lots of tables and booths. They’ve got a sampling of all the Utah microbrews on tap – H and I decided to be cost-effective and split a pitcher of Uinta Cutthroat Pale Ale – and hearty food to accompany it. H had the chicken-fried steak special, not a huge piece of meat but yummy, with real “smashed” potatoes; I had the “San Franciscan” sandwich which was thinly sliced sirloin (darn close to Steakums, if you ask me) with peppers, cheese and horseradish mayonnaise on great crusty bread.

After all that, we went back HOME. To celebrate the first night in the new apartment we had some champagne. But because all we had with us was what we’d brought with us, we sat on the floor in front of the gas fireplace and swigged the bubbly straight from the bottle. Champagne has never tasted so good!

H has already declared that he likes this apartment better than he ever liked our Maine house. B says she would like to reserve judgment: since it’s in an apartment complex, there’s lots of car doors slamming, and people going into and out of their apartments … way more noise than this poor little dog is used to. So she woofs when she hears something, and we scold her, and she pouts. But she’s already relaxing and is thrilled to have her crate again.