Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

A couple of hours after I posted yesterday, the building fire alarms went off. They are very loud and bright, designed to be sure that you notice them and go outside.

This time, there was actual smoke in the back stairs, and I believe a bit of fire in one of the laundry machines. The firefighters came in good time and did a thorough job, but I unexpectedly spent half an hour or so outdoors, in lightweight pants, at about 38F/3C. It wouldn't have been that long, except that the firefighters didn't have the code to turn the alarm off, and had to get someone from building management to come over and deal with it.

Once we got the all-clear, we could only find one of the cats. This looked like a problem, because Cattitude had led a firefighter through our apartment to the back stairway, and the door was open for a bit. We looked around, worriedly, including me climbing the stairs to the fourth floor looking for Molly. I came back, and soon after she emerged from hiding. She'd been under a dresser, which is not one of her usual hiding places.

After all that, nobody was up for cooking, and our usual pizza/Indian food delivery place is closed Mondays, so we pulled the lentil-and-walnut pasta sauce out of the freezer.

I am feeling basically calm today, but when I went for a walk, my quadriceps were reminding me that I don't climb a lot of stairs these days, because they can be hard on my knees. I've also been more distractable than usual today, but nothing seriously bad has happened, and I remembered my pills and to use the flutter valve to clear my lungs.

Adrian continues to soothe herself with the useful task of not just loading books into bookcases, but sorting as she goes. Cattitude and i haven't bothered with much sorting of our books, figuring that we had too few shelves and still a lot of boxes to unpack, but I am quite happy to have it done. One of the bookcases they brought over yesterday is now in the kitchen, with the cookbooks arranged so the ones we use most often are visible and also in easy reach for me.

Cattitude went downstairs today, to see if he could do laundry (no), and thus discovered that the firefighters had broken the lock on the back door of the building, and also the locks on all the small storage units, presumably checking to make sure nothing was smoldering. He went looking for a new lock today, but what we want is a padlock with keys, and the nearby CVS only had combination locks. So we will look elsewhere tomorrow, and not worry about it for a day or two.

I have sorted through several envelopes of old photos, deciding what to keep. I stopped when the decisions started to seem difficult, and my hand started to hurt from flipping through dozens of prints. That was somewhere between eight and a dozen envelopes of prints, and this is just culling, not labeling, scanning, or putting in an album or picture frame.

I'm keeping some photos of people I know, and a bunch of travel photos, including from Hong Kong, Britain, and a trip to Multnomah Falls (Oregon) with my friend Alan. The travel photos include some pictures of me taken in Swansea and Cardiff.

I have many more envelopes of photos, which I hope to look through at some point, when I feel like doing more of this.

This is moving-related because one of the boxes we unpacked contained photos.

cattitude and I unpacked another three boxes today (I wanted him to handle the camera stuff, since almost all of that is his). This means there are no moving boxes left in the kitchen (yay!). I'm not sure where this impulse is coming from, but am going to use it, not argue with it.

I heard back from my indexing client today, apologizing for not having written back to say "yes, got it" sooner because he was out sick, and thanking me for getting it in before the deadline.

Also mood-related, it was snowing lightly when I was coming home from adrian_turtle's today, and my mood ranged from "well, I live in New England" to actually enjoying the mix of sunny sky and light snow as I was waiting for the second bus and then walking home from the bus stop.

Shortly after that, I took the recycling out, and stayed outside long enough to do a couple of my PT-ish exercise. Outside with a sweatshirt, not a coat, temperature maybe +2 C; this is not typical for me.

We have reached a significant milestone: we have unpacked all the boxes except the book-sized boxes. That includes unpacking most if not all of our clothes, pots and pans, dishes, and such food as we brought with us (mostly spices and tea), and getting all the boxes out of our bedroom.

We still have a lot to do: those "book" boxes include a few with labels like "CDs," and somewhere in one of them is my backup drive. (I have grabbed another old drive for backups, but that means Time Machine is starting from scratch, and has to reformat the drive.) The next step is re-assembling bookshelves (putting the movable shelves back in).

We also have a couple of boxes of clothes to donate to a thrift store, things that no longer fit, or never quite fit, or that we just noticed we don't like and weren't wearing, and that are in good enough condition that a thrift store might want them. (Local friends, ping me if you're interested: mostly it's women's sizes 14, 16 and 18.)

The progress in unpacking made it easier and more congenial to have adrian_turtle here for dinner last night (this was planned; last time was impromptu, after she asked if she could borrow an egg).

I have also started getting books from the library, which the cats approve of because it means I sit in the recliner and read, and they can sit on my lap (Molly) or lean against my chest (Kaja). Yes, we own a lot of books; as of this morning exactly one of them was not sealed in a cardboard box.

(There was something else I wanted to say, and if I remember what it was I will do a separate post.)