[Paisleychick-lj] Moving to Coughlan

[Beatrice M's blog]

Internet access has been limited as in we **didn't have any** for the past 3 weeks. ::shudder:: We have ordered cable internet access from Telecentro. Theoretically it is being installed on Wednesday morning. Let's see if that actually happens. Boy howdy do I miss being online; I feel like a junky going through withdrawal. I've been absent from livejournal, flickr and other sites. Every once in a while I'd post a twitter update, and download and upload email when we could hop on an open network around town. But, we've been busy and Kragen's been very productive with writing programs and notes and thoughts. He likes not having access as it's not so distracting. What have we been up to? Well, we moved.  
  
This shouldn't have been a very big deal as we didn't have a bunch of stuff. We've been traveling around South America with backpacks (but we did have some items we'd bought stored on Gorriti street in Palermo. We now have more stuff. We packed up our temporary apartment and moved our crap to our new place and also used a _flete_ (movers) to pick up a used fridge, sofa, two beds, and a side table. First time we'd ever used movers. They were helpful as a lot of things had to go down the stairs because the elevators here are *tiny*. We also now own a massage table, a small beanbag (needs more stuffing though), a small balcony table, a couple of chairs and other side tables. We didn't have to sleep on the floor and our food didn't go rotten from not being refrigerated. Yay.   
  


[![][1]][2]   
[Lampshade][3]   
Originally uploaded by [blmurch][4]. 

Unfurnished apartments here in Buenos Aires are very unfurnished. There are no light fixtures, there are no towel racks, there is no fridge. I bought some light bulb holders and lampshades and decided to put them together. Be industrious and useful when I was "trapped" inside the house. We were trapped because the front door was completely stuck. Kragen jumped off our balcony onto the balcony below and then off that one down to the street level to go to the airport to meet with our inaugural house-guest, [Glenn][5]. The locksmith was due to come over that morning to check out the front door anyways at 10:00 am, so we called him earlier and he showed up at 8:30 instead. He drilled out the lock and then was able to open up the front door! I was free! While he was fixing this, I was working on the light fixtures. I successfully installed the light in the guest room ceiling so that Glenn would have light. Flush with that success, I moved to installing the light fixture in the living room. I shorted out the circuit. The circuit box blew, fine. No problem, I can deal with that. I switched back the circuit breaker and there was no power! I was now hostage in the apartment because not only was there no lock on the door BUT there was no power. I talked with our property manager, Maria and we called the electrician and then called the electric company and they finally showed up 4 hours later. Turns out the electric meter was installed incorrectly, so not having electricity was not exactly *my* fault.  
  


[![][6]][7]   
[Half waxed guest room][8]   
Originally uploaded by [blmurch][4]. 

Because we opted to not pay for having our floors finished with polyurethane, we have been waxing the floors ourselves This is a big deal and has taken up a lot of time and is stinky because the wax paste has kerosene in it that needs to off-gas over time. As of now, the living room floor & both hallways have two coats of wax, the guest room has three coats and the bedroom has none. Once we finish waxing all the floors we will rent a buffer and go to town! I already rented one power tool: a masonry drill.  
  
The bathroom didn't have any fixtures in it - no towel racks, soap dish, TP holder, etc. So, I went to Easy™ and bought a bunch of stuff for the house, including a bathroom accessory set. It sat in the bathroom for about a week and a half waiting for installation. I went back to Easy™ on Thursday of last week and rented a masonry drill with two bits. I took it back to the house and after a bit of hesitation about placement of items, I started drilling away with the big masonry drill. I specked out a place to put the toilet paper holder and drilled. Great! I plunged through the wall as normal - great! Then I took the drill out and a bunch of water came pouring out! D'oh! I had drilled through the toilet tank. Double d'oh!!!!! I broke down a bit, "why is everything so hard here?! Why are the toilet tanks *in the wall*?" Kragen watched the whole thing and laughed hard after we realized I hadn't drilled through a pipe, just the tank, and while that didn't make me feel better at the time, I did eventually see the funny part. It has now been fixed, we have water again in the bathroom, and I can laugh.  
  
[David][9] and [Katie][10] have been our guests for a week. They contacted us via [couchsurfing.com][11] and have been very wonderful guests. I think my mother would be mortified if she were hosting people in a place so unfinished, but we're all making do and having fun*. We need to buy more cutlery though. We've been taking turns with the 2 knives and forks - Kragen´s buy of chopsticks has come in *very* handy. :D I did buy more glasses and plates. We still need to find a futon for the living room and a table and chair set so that we're not eating standing up at the bar, or at the sofa & coffee table. We want to try and find used items so we're not spending so much money. All of our furniture thus far we've found on [buenosaires.craigslist.org][12]. We did buy a washing machine new and I think we're going to get an air conditioner new as well. We've survived thus far, but January might be hotter. As an aside - anyone know how to get soft towels when they are air dried? I don't like the fact that they're so incredibly rough from the drying rack. I'm looking forward to having this all done so that we can just be and get two kittens. We don't want to get kittens until the floors have been fully waxed and polished.   
  
*fun with Katie and David and S is a whole other blog entry. Saturday was most enjoyable.

   [1]: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2053/2103932827_19457fb887_m.jpg
   [2]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/blmurch/2103932827/ (photo sharing)
   [3]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/blmurch/2103932827/
   [4]: http://www.flickr.com/people/blmurch/
   [5]: http://www.think.org
   [6]: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2196/2099776936_4e66bd2f2a_m.jpg
   [7]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/blmurch/2099776936/ (photo sharing)
   [8]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/blmurch/2099776936/
   [9]: http://www.couchsurfing.com/people/d.mickler
   [10]: http://www.couchsurfing.com/people/dorkmeier
   [11]: http://www.couchsurfing.com
   [12]: http://buenosaires.craigslist.org

URL: http://paisleychick.livejournal.com/329369.html