New people and new stuff

 This past week I found I'm still accumulating new stuff (ugh, but I need it!) and meeting new people (yay!).

I took a trip downtown on the bus to go to Watson Kennedy, a store filled with beautiful tableware, home decor, cookbooks and gourmet food.  I was very happy to find these Westie bookends, which made the perfect gift from book loving friends to hold up books in my stairwell.  I didn't bring many books with me, just a few art books and photo books, but Westies are a rather small dog and even iron ones need to team up to hold books in place.  I love this little corner os much.

And my couch arrived!  It needs a good lumbar support pillow, but it's looking great in my living room.  All I need in there now is for the television that was reported by Amazon as "delivered directly to the resident" last week to actually make it here.  When I called Amazon to say that I was the resident and no one handed me a tv, they said it must have been mismarked as delivered, so if it didn't show up today, to let them know.  Hmmm.  Anyway, with the sofa in place, I have started hanging art and in the photo above, works painted in Maine by Christine Lafuente and Jill Hoy.  

In my studio/guest bedroom, I'm needing to get that center woodcut by Spencer Tulis professionally installed in its frame, but I'm thinking it will be great over the fireplace with work by Christine Lafuente and a painting from Rock Creek Park by Edward Bear Miller.

Organization is a huge challenge, as I had no closets and I've been slowly adding storage (including an Ikea closet and half of the things in the container store).  I had both given away a lot of jewelry before I left, donating it to New to You in Bethesda, and given away the jewelry boxes it was in.  I ordered a new jewelry cabinet, which has a full length mirror on the front, and this intriguing translation on the box.  Apparently it's German.  Who knew?

Yesterday, the car I ordered in mid-January was ready for me to pick up!  And here it is, parked outside my kitchen door with just enough room to get in and out and for my neighbors to open their car door. That little box in the front on the wall is my current charging station for my EV and I'll be getting an upgraded one that will charge a bit faster soon.  And I hope to avoid Amazon ordering and cardboard boxes from here on out.  My little electric car is so easy, fingers crossed!

So enough about stuff.  I had three social engagements last week to meet people who live here, recommended to me by friends.  I am going to get in touch with everyone you all have referred to me (and keep those referrals coming!) as it's been lovely to meet people and go places that they send me to.  Such fun.  I have met with a group that started as a mom's night out, and is made up of 4 really nice people including a high school friend of mine.  I met with an artist who does amazingly wonderful still lives and landscapes and has taught at the Gage Academy here, and he shared ideas for where and how to meet up with other artists and join in the art scene.  And finally I had dinner with a new friend who is involved in Seattle's Film Festival and other arts in the city and we had a grand time. 

This coming weekend I have my second fruit tree steward training session, this time at NW Fruit, a facility in Mount Vernon (north of Seattle).  It's an all day event on Saturday and another chance to reconnect with last months cohort of volunteers.  

Although I'd say a very high percentage of what I've tried to accomplish in my move has gone according to plan (yay!), I did learn yesterday that Task Rabbit is not the entirely intuitive service I'd hoped.  I need a curtain rod installed and thought if I hire someone to do it right, that would be worth it.  I put the job into Task Rabbit, which estimated it would take under an hour and then listed a bunch of contractors with star ratings to do the job.  I picked the top one, which showed his name, star rating and hourly charge at the top of his listing.  8 hours later, as we are finalizing when he'll come for the install, he sends me "confirming, and it's a 2 hour minimum charge."  I'm thinking if I had 2 hours to stuff to do, fine, but this is maybe 1/2 hour of work, so I ask him about that.  He pointed out it's plainly on his listing that he's got this minimum (plainly at the bottom of his listing, not alongside his hourly rate and ratings) and I've wasted his time asking about this.  I think we exchanged 5 text messages, so I'm sorry to have wasted the 10 minutes of his time, but I cancelled the planned service and I think I may slowly and carefully use my own drill and just hang the curtain rod myself.  Oh well.