Piles of boxes in the house, but at least we're starting to make it a home. It'll take a lot of work before everything's good, though; the landlord's security deposit policy is: you get it back if there are no roaches in the house. So the last tenants didn't clean the ancient oven or the fridge, the bathroom looks like it's out of a third-world country, the basement (my office) has holes in the walls (and half the walls are made of bifold closet doors instead of drywall).

Thanks to my brother, we got all the boxes moved out of the truck in less than 24 hours, and he got me up to speed on how to replace the wiring in the walls (as the house was wired for ungrounded two-prong outlets, very bad for computers). The two of us rewired the living room and Karen's office, then I rewired the downstairs yesterday. I also put in a CAT-5 cable running from Karen's office, where the cablemodem hookup is, to my office. That was much less hassle than I expected.

My brother's offered to drive down again to help me replace the walls downstairs. I'm thinking of remodeling the basement in a '60s mod style. Lava lamps, shag carpet, psychedelic blacklight posters (or is that more of a '70s thing?)... I'd love to get my hands on a set of Burke chairs.

Thanks so much to the friends who emailed hoping we'd had a safe journey, or who asked us to call when we arrived so they'd stop worrying. You guys are the best.