Taz is here. We're finally moved, omg! →[More:]

Our movers came last Saturday, and we took the overnight train to Athens, arriving Sunday morning at 6 a.m. The movers were right behind us, showing up at 8:30, but the streets are so narrow where we are, they had to park around the corner and we had to carry everything in from over a block away (yay for friends, we had help!).

It's been a whirlwind of activity since then, and my hands are dying the death of a thusand small cuts, but I'm very happy. The house feels great, the water pressure rocks, and... la,la,la we have natural gas! This is only a recent thing here in Greece, and it means we have instant hot water all the time, which is a big difference from the standard way, in which one turns on the electric hot water heater at some point before bathing, etc., waits for it to heat up, and turns it back off afterwards.

I'll miss my old neighborhood, which is truly awesome, but it's lovely here - very quaint and quiet and green and neighborhoody, which is exactly what is needed as a respite from the totally insane traffic and noise of the city. We're right in the center, about a 20-minute walk to the Acropolis and all the important shopping, etc., downtown, but it feels completely apart from it all, like a tiny village, once you step inside the neighborhood. There is jasmine growing outside our front gate, and you can hear birds twittering and chirping in the morning. Sweet!

The telephone company is running true to form, and won't install our phone/adsl until the end of the month (despite having told us it would only take a week), but our upstairs neighbor is letting us share her wifi, so, yay! We still have one whole room full of boxes, no curtains on the windows (but we have shutters), our mattress is on the floor, and I can't find anything, but I'm delighted that we have three mostly functional rooms, our new fridge and washing machine installed, and stove hooked up. I was able to bathe on Tuesday after an initial klaflooey with the water heater that had to be recalibrated, I cooked the last two nights, and washed clothes yesterday after the washing machine arrived. Last night we even made the traditional red Greek Easter eggs on the traditional day, so life is good. In fact, the user's manual that came with our fridge says so right on the cover: "Life's Good." Our washing machine manual did not supply any such reassuring information, nor, indeed, even proper installation instructions.

So! As you can see, I'm getting things ready for our grand international mecha meetup in Athens!

I will continue to be pretty sparse around these parts, as we still have tons of work to do, but I promise that in my next post I will tell you about the most amazing cleaner ever in the history of the universe, that I've discovered since moving to Athens. Excited? Yeah, me too!

(Oh! And photos, once I find my camera!)