Now officially homeless and unemployed!

We're finally done with moving from Tallinn to our temporary residence in Kuressaare!
It's 8:30 in the morning and I am sitting here in my parents' house. Everything is dark gray except for the glowing lcd screen, and I have to pinch myself to believe that the worst part of this cross-continental move is already over. Things really sped up in the end and I'm really proud of us for managing everything, so here's a short recap.

Our last workday on Tuesday happened to also be our boss' 40th birthday, so the day was spent drinking copious amounts of wine and doing very little to get any actual work done. We arrived late because we were busy redesigning Mike's demo DVD cover and sending it off to the factory. I had to leave our apartment before Mike, and was greeted by all of my coworkers already in party hats and foggy eyed, jumping on me to hug me. Mind you, Mike and I were far from hug mode that morning, as we had spent the night packing and stressing out. After everything was done, our apartment's door also managed to be slammed shut so that the surrounding plaster cracked from floor to ceiling, and was threatening to fall off and leave an extremely nasty sight. That, of course, added the worry about the damage deposit to the list.

My coping mechanism, naturally, was to dig into the cake and pour myself a glass of wine. And then another one. And then another one. That really worked wonders. I did a few minor final tasks while Mike took care of some additional bidders and his own migration matters. We left work early for the final crunch in the evening, and had our friend George come over and pick up a bunch of crap that we didn't want to throw in the trash. We got to bed at about two or three, but were too pumped with adrenaline to sleep, so we got up uber early to take care of any extra things.

We made the mistake of going in to work after our last day, because we agreed to finishing up our contracts then. That, of course, involved tears and more hugs, and getting presents from the boss. The goodbye was extremely painful and awkward, and I barely managed to catch myself from breaking down and bawling in front of everybody. We basically ran out of there. Being comfortable and close with your coworkers definitely has its pros and cons.

We then ran off to the bank to take care of business, and proceeded to go to another bank branch as the lady at the counter didn't speak much English. There, we were greeted by a happy starry eyed girl who was really excited about our case, and fun to deal with. By the time we left the place, we were 20 minutes from meeting up with our landlord, which was spent taking the bus back, freaking out, passing another package on to a good friend, mopping the floors, and running out the trash. And oh joy, the landlord even gave us our deposit back, despite the crazy crack in the wall. I suspect that it may have had something to do with the fact that we had previously mentioned the tax agency that we were going to contact if she tried to keep our deposit with no reason. Is this blackmail? Or just self-defense? Hmm.

Anyhow, after sorting things out with the landlord, we magically arrived at the bus station ON TIME, lugged our suitcases on the bus, and plopped down in the first available seats. What a RUSH! I think we must have been quite the sight sitting there hyperventilating, expecting something else to happen, some other challenge to pop up. The thought of being DONE took at least 30 minutes to settle in, after which both of us were overcome by a wave of surreal serenity, and proceeded to pass out for the rest of our journey across the mainland.

Moving madness

We're in the midst of the ultimate moving madness, accompanied by the madness preceding Christmas in all capitalist countries.

We've put most of our furniture up on an auction and got some decent bids on it. Our bed was picked up by a nice young couple and our cubbies went to a very nice fellow, who told us that we were a godsend as he really needed the storage space and couldn't afford to buy new furniture. We're still waiting to hear back from the people who won the auctions for our computer desks, but I have a feeling that those will get picked up soon as well. (Unlike our coat rack that went up to a ridiculous 55 dollars, even though it was originally bought for 20. The guy is simply ignoring my e-mails. Not all Estonians are great bidders.)

My parents helped us move by transporting most of our things to the town of Kuressaare for storage. We sent the last batch of random and unnecessary items off today, so we're left with only our computers, some pieces of furniture, and an inflatable mattress on the floor. The computer speakers are gone as well, so we're left with no means of audible entertainment, or television (as our 20-year old mute tv set is entirely dependent on the broken VCR we rigged up to funnel the audio from our cable connection, and the vcr used to be connected to the speaker system). That's alright though, TV's not that great this season. Of course, I'm only saying this because I want to prove to myself that I can live without all the wonderful and fun seasonal entertainment that's designed to trick you into thinking that all is still well with the world.

So the plan is to work until Tuesday, party it down with the coworkers Tuesday night, and then move to Saaremaa for the holidays on Wednesday.

Our "last Saturday in Tallinn" turned out to be a blast, even though we had to cut it down on the drinking, due to the utterly ingenious 9 a.m. moving date the next morning. It's kind of sad how I don't get to see my best friends until I threaten them that I will be leaving. Great times though, complete with beer, tequila, spicy food, moaning about how we all work too much, agreeing that we will all work less and enjoy life more, dancing to top eighties hits at a raunchy artists' club, dodging old people looking for sex, hugging, and breaking down in tears of sadness and joy. I love my friends.

I should cut this short because I have to play Santa for a while, before Mike gets back from geeking out with one of the Estonian gearslut friends.