3 DAYS

Whew. Everything is done. Apart from picking up my dress this afternoon, I believe that I've done just about all I can do at this point. The checklists are checked, the random post-it reminders all taken care of... now, we wait.

We moved everything into our apartment this weekend, very successfully :) Mike and Sarah and Em and Josh came to help us out. We had everything packed up by 10:30am and had everything unloaded by 1pm. Pretty efficient, huh? And ask any of them, we (well, really just "I") had A LOT of stuff to move! For living at home, I sure have accumulated a lot of stuff. And I think I did an excellent job purging and throwing stuff out and leaving stuff behind that wasn't necessary. Ben's mom and his other sister arrived after we had finished unloading (conveniently... LOL! it's ok Amberly, you were VERY helpful!) and helped us do some unpacking and re-arranging and all that. It was great to have the long weekend, because we were able to get just about EVERYTHING unpacked and put away. I was actually very impressed with our progress. We really didn't leave any boxes unpacked, except for some office supplies and books (2 boxes) that I threw up in the loft. I didn't focus too much on the loft because I don't need my study space all set-up JUST yet. We also went to Ikea with Em and Josh to help them pick up their new couches (we took the ones they were using - they were my mom's old ones and we were basically using their living room to store them, which worked out well for everyone!). They split the cost of the moving truck with us since they needed it for their couches too, which helped us out a lot! So anyway, our bed is put together, a lot of decorations have been hung/displayed, new furniture has been built and set up, new dishes have been washed and put away... it's ready to be lived in! It felt VERY different walking in there and seeing all of OUR stuff, as opposed to an empty space with some paint on the walls. It didn't FEEL like "ours" before - now it really does :) We can't just visit on the weekends anymore - all our stuff is there! It's kinda crazy. In a cool way :)

Oh, BY THE WAY, we got an incredibly generous wedding gift yesterday. Unreal. Ben's groomsman/ex-boss/great friend Ron and his wife Jeanne called us yesterday afternoon to see if we were in White Marsh, and then told us they'd be coming by to go for a ride with Ben and that they'd need his Jeep. Hmm. So when we met up with them, they told us that they were taking Ben to pick up our wedding gift, and that they'd need to put the seats down in the back of the Jeep to fit it so it would just be Ben and Ron going to get it. 15 minutes later I get a text from Ben that says "42 inch plasma". HOLY CRAP. They seriously got us a 42-inch Samsung plasma TV! It's amazing! It looks awesome :) And luckily my dad, the home theater expert, happened to be there helping us hook up our speakers to the old TV, so he was there to help us get the new one all set up correctly. Ben was just OVERJOYED - he knew this was the only way he ever would've gotten to have a TV like this, at least in the next decade. Ron told us "if there's anyone in our world that deserves this, it's you guys" :) I just don't even know what to say.

In other news, my zebrafish aren't breeding this morning, which means no work for me! On a normal day that would probably mean that I'd sit around here and do wedding-things on the internet or something til 3:30, but since I'm 3 days out from the wedding and Marina has mercy on my soul, it means I'm going home :) For now though, I'm waiting for BGE to call me back about the HEINOUS bill I got for last month. I'm convinced that they're still estimating on the last person who lived there (they don't physically come out and read the meter every month), because our bill was $89 and we didn't even live there. We turn everything off when we leave and unplug the electronics and everything. And we were only in the apartment for two of the four weekends that this bill was for. If this is a legitimate bill, it won't be long before our gas and electric are shut off! I HATE monopolies. I HATE BGE and I HATE COMCAST. HATE. Lord forgive me, but it's an accurate representation of my feelings.

Gotta go, but quick update - yeah, that bill was correct. Apparently the average bill for that apt is $174 a month. Highway robbery? You be the judge.