Still Moving In!

So we got back into town and have been running ever since.  I feel like we still are not yet moved in and there is always something to take care of around the house.  Oh, the joys of home ownership!  I spent a portion of this weekend setting up the surround sound stereo system that Claudia and I bought for my parents, unloading Egyptology books from boxes and into the two oak bookshelves that my sister gave to us (ironically, the same bookshelves that we gave to my sister a few years ago!), putting together two Billy bookshelves with glass doors from IKEA and hanging a rope pulley bike rack from the ceiling of the garage.  And I didn’t even worry about cutting the grass, which probably should have been done this week!  Guess that is a task for next weekend.

 

I hurt my back moving my sister over a week ago and it is just starting to feel a little bit better.  It probably doesn’t help that I have been carrying these boxes of books around our house and putting together furniture.  But I am hoping to get a mountain bike ride in this coming weekend on the south side of Simi Valley on a trail that I have not yet been on.  That will probably be my older mountain bike since I broke my chain 2 weeks ago on my Specialized S-Works Stumpjumper during a ride near Corriganville on the southeast end of Simi Valley.  I have to take a few links out of the new chain and adjust the derailleur before I can ride that bike again.  I really should probably also adjust the rebound dampening on my front fork that I have been putting off for a couple of months now.

 

On the television front, we still do not have Dish Network yet.  This is becoming a comedy of errors!  We had the installer out the first time but he brought the wrong dish for our installation.  We had the installer out a second time and he could not place the dish in the regular spot and receive the signals from all the necessary satellites.  So we had to apply to the HOA to get special permission to put the dish in an alternate location.  That alternate location was not approved but another third location was approved that we hope will work.  We then set up another appt with a dish network installer.  My wife asked for an appt on Sunday afternoon between 1 and 5pm but then checked her calendar and let them know 30 seconds later that that would not work for us.  The woman at Dish then changed our appt to Sunday morning between 8am and 12pm.  Needless to say we got an automated call on Saturday night from Dish Network confirming our installation appt for Sunday afternoon between 1 and 5pm!!  Claudia then called them back to clear this up and the earliest appt that we could get was this upcoming Saturday.  If this doesn’t work out, I am considering not having Dish Network at all and getting an HDTV antenna and living with local network television.  It may just be too much trouble to get Dish Network! 

The Everyday Life in Simi

 

So we now made it back home and are continuing to try to get ourselves situated in our new home.  That is not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination!  We still have a whole room full of boxes, mostly books and other stuff that we are having trouble finding room for in the new house.  This past weekend was a big work weekend.  My dad came over and helped me to accomplish a number of things that I had not been able to accomplish so far by myself.  We put in the baby gate at the top of the stairs and installed a CPU rack underneath our computer desk in the office.  My parents then let us borrow their car so that we could take two cars to IKEA to pick up a new entertainment center and a few bookshelves that we desperately need to store the china and books that currently have no place to live.  It felt really good to be able to get a few of these long-term projects accomplished that have been nagging me for the last month or two. 

 

On Sunday, I was able to fit in a bicycle ride with my dad up into the hills surrounding Simi Valley.  We went exploring a number of different areas at the north end of Kuehner Ave and in Corriganville on the south end of the valley that we had not visited previously.  Unfortunately our exploration was cut a little bit short by a broken chain on my bicycle.    My dad was good enough to pull me back to their house along the stretches of the ride that were not downhill.  I did offer to do the pulling on my Dad’s bicycle but my Dad refused.  Claudia joked that my Dad didn’t want me to break his bicycle after breaking mine!   In the afternoon after that little adventure, we took a trip to LAX to pick up Oma Kirsten who was arrived on the afternoon flight from Hannover via Munich.  Nuria was very excited to see her Oma again. 

 

This week we are continuing with new CA training at my work.  We have a really good group of new CAs joining the returning CAs for the 2007-08 school year.  As with every school year, there is a sense of renewal and excitement in the air across campus right before fall quarter begins.  This sense of cyclical renewal is one of the reasons that I enjoy working at UCLA so much.

 

I am going to try to keep this blog more current than it has been in the recent past.  I have just bought a replacement battery for my tablet PC that should allow me to get a little bit of writing done on both my dissertation and blog in the morning and afternoon during my van pool commute.  Ah, the joys of getting to work in Los Angeles without having to  personally drive in rush hour!  I am really enjoying it and the company of the very nice group of people on the vanpool.  At this point my commute is much more pleasant/relaxing and Claudia’s commute is much shorter since she no longer has to drop me off at UCLA before heading to work in Pacific Palisades.