Saturday, March 11, 2006

Contentment and Loving in Glendale

As you all know, my wife and I moved from Crenshaw to Glendale at the first of this month. What you may not know is that we had somewhere in the realm of 100 boxes of books accompany us. Needless to say this made our move slightly backbreaking, and given my aging knees we had to have a large amount of assistance bringing our stuff up to our second story apartment. In all honesty, my wife an I had to stop and hire some movers to finish the job. We did 70%, but that last 30% was too much. Being a bibliophile-boardgame lover who owns 400+ DVDs and who was a catcher/soccer player when they were young is not a combination that is nice to the knees, especially when both your apartments are upstairs.

So we are in our new, 2-bedroom, apartment and have begun unpacking our boxes of stuff, and boy is it a lot of stuff. I can't believe that we still have this much, especially considering how much we gave away to libraries/used bookstores/local kids/(insert recipient here). My wife has kindly purchased three more bookcases for the second bedroom, now termed "the office." Though I have to admit "den of distractions" would be a better name. The room is filled with board games, comic books, fantasy/SciFi novels, role-playing games, and RPG related magazines. As an aside, I now hate myself for keeping 6 years worth of Dragon and Dungeon magazines. That high quality stock paper they use makes for quite a load, but I do like to go back and review the articles from time to time.

At least now I can segregate our books so that the living room contains all the books we want people to know we read. So all our Political Science, Philosophy, English Literature, and Film related books are in the living room and all the guilty pleasure stuff is in "the office."

It's nice to live a place that can fit all our stuff and still feel roomy, and that describes our new place accurately. It's very comfortable. In fact, my experience in Glendale has been somewhat "dreamy" to be honest. Most of my childhood was spent in poorer neighborhoods, and as a college student I lived in places that struggling students can afford. From houses shared with 5 roommates to Crenshaw with my wife (had to be close to USC and still have affordable housing) my adult residences have left something to be desired.

So far Glendale has been a land of chocolate rivers and marshmallow trees. I am certain I have seen little orange men running around singing. I know, I know, Glendale is just another suburb/town, but so far I love it. My wife and I even saw a squirrel eating nuts outside our front door this morning, a far cry from the crows who welcomed me home in other places.

I am still waiting for my new place to feel like home. I still feel like I am visiting someone else's apartment.

Who knows...maybe when we are finished unpacking I will invite you all over for a game of Killer Bunnies, Britannia (review to be posted on Monday), Kingmaker, or Scene It?

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