I should really get back to updating regularly. First, though, might as well give a quick synopsis of the last couple weeks, including The Big Move and the first week in Maryland.

Quincy got in on Monday the 24th, and the whole week was spent doing one of two things - visiting friends, or packing. I was woefully behind in packing, as I mentioned at the time, so I spent almost every night getting little sleep while staying up packing (Quincy, fortunately, gets by regularly on 4-6 hours a night anyway), including staying up all night the night before leaving.

But the other half was much more fun - seeing people! He got in earlier than expected Monday afternoon, and he beat his luggage, so we had food at Brians', went back for his luggage, picked up my new glasses that were finally ready, then went back to the house. After a little nap, we had dinner at Mimi's.

Tuesday was lunch with mikhalmc in La Jolla and a tour of WildStorm Productions, plus a heaping helping of comics for Quincy to read. (Thanks so much, Michael!) After that we visited with Q's friend Flor, and while they were having coffee buddykat met us and gave my car a test drive to see if she wanted to buy it (thankfully, she did). From there it was off to Hunter's for a nice, last household dinner with adventdragon, thomasm and jkusters.

Wednesday afternoon we went back to UCSD for my goodbye party, which was nice, although I still feel it was kind of anticlimactic. Ah, well. Had a nice chat with friends, and my replacement asked me a lot of good questions. From there we had some food at the UTC mall food court, then back to the house (for more packing, of course). That night the gamers came over for one last night of fun, and we even got Q in on a few games, plus tdilliga made a kick-ass going-away cake for me with a very awesome cream cheese frosting. Mmmm. Cream cheese. Q left later in the evening to go say hi to his chorus buddies at the end of their rehearsal, then minotaurs dropped me off at Bacchus House on his way home, but the boys hadn't arrived yet (Quincy, Frank and mike14780), so I waited for them, and then we all decided food at Denny's would be more fun.

Thursday was more packing, and we hit the Darkstar dinner up in north county. Got to see a bunch of folks, including glittercat13, samuraimeg and buddykat, although we missed a few folks like darrelx, jbriggs and galtine1, but these things happen. Quincy decided he needed more clubbing, so we went to Numbers with Frank, mike14780 and udman for a while (I was tres bored, but he was having fun, so it's all good).

Friday we knew I didn't have enough packed, so we sadly had to skip one last trip to Disneyland, plus I'd planned a big dinner out at Downtown Disney and had hoped to see Glenn and Bob, Stanton and James, Sean-Z, pansyfilmmaker and amazonatheart before heading off. (Sadly jsciv wasn't in town, so he wouldn't have been able to make it anyway.) It was a sad decision, but it had to be made, and a good thing, too, as I only just barely finished what I finished (and still had to leave stuff for others to handle for me). So spent the day Friday packing, taking a quick break to hit In 'n Out for dinner (Quincy misses it a bit).

Saturday morning I drove up to the AAA in Encinitas so I could transfer the title over to buddykat, and on the way called both minotaurs and magus_nascitur asking them their advice on handle my last-minute panicking over packing. They were both troopers about my lack of foresightedness, and minotaurs even went so far as to come over in the afternoon after we picked up the U-Haul, crack the whip, and help us pack. What a lifesaver! We broke for one last dinner out at Bucca di Beppo's, and had a very nice time with those who were able to make it (tdilliga, writethewrongs, minotaurs, tinyhand [who is so cute when she's drunk!], Hoai, adventdragon, jkusters, thomasm, magus_nascitur, paranoyd and the_bigbadwolf). T'was quite fun, and thanks to everyone who was able to join us. Plus, afterwards minotaurs came back to help a little more, and magus_nascitur helped pack the truck.

Sunday was a busy day. Up early, drove the truck to the Amtrak station and unloaded 37 boxes worth of stuff to ship. Then it was off to my storage unit, where we upgraded to a 5'x10', and put the rest of the stuff in there (with room to spare). Then it was drop off the truck, back to the house, a quick shower and change, and then off to the LYC pot luck being thrown in our honor. There was lots of food, a yummy Cheesecake Factory cheesecake, and lots of friends, including udman and mike14780. We were there longer than I thought we would be, so we ended up hitting Obelisk in Hillcrest, then going to David's Coffeehouse for the SDQSF game night. We stayed long enough to play one game of Transamerica (and fight with management over who actually had which room reserved - thanks to minotaurs for handling that), and then we had one last dinner with adventdragon and xiaomozi666 at Corvette Diner. Very sad to not be able to hang out with them anymore. :( After dinner buddykat came to the house to actually take posession of the car, then the_bigbadwolf stopped by for a few hours to watch me pack (he kept saying, "Wow, you're really leaving, aren't you?" in disbelief). Q caught a few hours sleep, but I actually stayed up all night packing. And, as I suppose was predictable by anyone who knows me, I didn't get everything finished, but thankfully magus_nascitur and adventdragon have agreed to help me get a few things into my storage unit and help me dispossess of a few final items from the house. Finally, adventdragon drove us to the airport in the early hours of Monday morning, and we were off.

Lazy, uneventful flight to DC, and Q's friend Edward (who was watching his car for him) picked us up. We had a Thai dinner, then I drove us home to Lexington Park. Q was back at work on Tuesday morning.

Much of last week was spent settling in, waiting for his housemates/landlords to come home so we could find out for sure if I was able to stay (and come up with contingency plans if they didn't, but they agreed - they're a very nice Filipino couple), me finding my way around and figuring out what was where, job hunting (unsuccessful so far, but with some keen ideas, and filed for unemployment anyway), taking care of leftover stuff from the move, figuring out my finances for the short term, and of course fighting with Q over a myriad of things (how much stuff I have, how unprepared I was for the move, how sloppy I am, how late I sleep, etc. :) (I kid - he is more of a fussbudget about things than I am, but he'll loosen up and we'll both get used to living with a full-time lover for the first time.) Wednesday night I even called the gamers. Foo. Gonna miss them. :(

Friday night we met up with his friends Steve and Sylvia, had dinner at Applebe's, and went to see Jarhead, complete with running commentary from some real jarheads behind us in the theater. LOTS of military people there to see it, and it was engaging for what it was, but I would have rather have seen Chicken Little. :) Saturday we went shopping, then Edward came down and we rented Eating Out, a cute little gay indie flick.

Sunday was quite eventful. Q had to work briefly in the morning, then we hit the road and drove up to DC. Amtrak had called on Wednesday and told us my stuff had arrived, and we had until Sunday to pick it up or they started charging. So I found a U-Haul rental and storage place close to Union Station, and we went there. Not exactly in the nicest part of town, but it was fine. Got a cargo van, spent way too much time riding around trying to figure out where Union Station was (finally stopped and bought a map - you'd think something that big wouldn't be so hard to find!), loaded up the truck, went back to the storage unit, filled it up, and took home about 5 boxes of mine plus 3 of his stuff. We were tired, dirty and hungry at that point, so we stopped about halfway home to get something to eat... only to discover that the U-Haul place still had Q's military ID. So it was a rush back before they closed (he absolutely could not let them keep it even overnight), then back to the same restaurant to finally sit down to eat. Ugh. We had to skip what would have been his first MCC service since he got back from Iraq, but we'll make up for it later (there are some really nice people there that I'd like to see again and maybe make friends with). It was home and crash after that.

So, now we're up to today. Yay! I slept in a bit, did some more job hunting online, and when he got home we went downstairs and I finally talked to Ed and Mahalia and thanked them for letting me stay (we'd all been in and out all weekend and never seemed to run into each other). After that we went to KFC for dinner, did a little shopping at Target, and he's sleeping while I finish this up.

This weekend he has off on Friday for Veterans' Day, so we're going to head up to Mom's on Thursday night, maybe meet up with folks on Friday night (suba_al_hadid, I'm looking at you), and Saturday night we're probably going to head over to see some friends in NJ before heading back Sunday afternoon. We're thinking my family may do Thanksgiving this weekend since Q's working over the actual holiday and we might not be able to make it up there, plus my evil sister has to work as well.

So, um, there it is. :)

In the final wash, the move was stressful, but that's to be expected. We're having little squabbles, but nothing profound, and that's also to be expected. Also missing my ALL my friends, especially minotaurs, magus_nascitur, and of course adventdragon most of all, all of which is, of course, to be expected. The bottom line, though, is that I know Q is very, very happy I'm here, and I can't say I feel differently. For all the problems involved - moving, money spent on the move, looking for a new job, missing my friends, etc. - this is really where I need to be, and I'm happy. :)