First, the important news:

My shoes are finally out of storage, and today I’m wearing a pair I haven’t seen since September. So break out the squirrels and champagne and let’s have a celebration!

If this post were an episode of CSI, the B storyline—the one where the dead person isn’t as interesting or telegenic as the person who died in the opening scene—would be the fact that we’re finally all moved in. And by “all” I mean “just barely kind of.”

The POD was delivered on time on Saturday, but it wouldn’t fit in the parking-lot space where the condo management company told us to put it. So we put it in the private alley next to our back door. On the plus side, it was incredibly more convenient having it next to our back door. On the minus side, the private alley is really a fire lane, so parking the POD there was highly illegal … and potentially expensive. And if worrying about that weren’t enough to deprive me of two nights' sleep, the place the POD people left it also made it difficult for four people in the neighboring building to get out of their parking spots. So between Saturday’s POD delivery and Monday’s POD pickup, I spent my should-be-sleeping time worrying that I’d be hauled off to fire-lane-violator’s prison AND I’d get to know my neighbors by pissing them off. And if we’ve learned anything from our dandruff shampoo commercials, it’s that you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

(We stuck pre-emptive notes of apology under the windshield wipers of all the affected cars, and nobody seemed to be very upset with us. But this problem is the very reason PODs are more of a liability than a convenience in the city. They're a great idea if you live in the suburbs and you have a driveway or a yard. But after what we’ve been through I don’t recommend them for urbanites.)

Sunday was colder than Dick Cheney’s cold, black heart, but the movers I hired (three beefy fellas straight out of get-me-three-guys-with-streetwise-accents-who-actually-say-da-Bearss-on-purpose central casting) gamely showed up on time and unloaded the entire POD in 45 minutes. (I remind you it took six volunteer homosexuals* almost four hours to load the thing on a lovely Saturday last September. And we had an elevator.)

*By “volunteer homosexuals” I don’t mean Nick Lachey when he finally goes on a date with me. I mean homosexuals who volunteer to help a friend move. And by “volunteer” I mean “get a chance to examine all my stuff up close so they can make fun of it when they’re out of earshot—and get paid in free food.”

So everything’s in the house except a few random things that can be picked up in a few random car trips—and the boyfriend’s giant bed and even gianter dining room set, which will have to come in a separate truck some upcoming weekend. Once we clear the master bedroom and the dining room of boxes and other clutter crap.

So on Monday we celebrated the memories of revered presidents like Reagan and the Bushes (HA! I MAKE JOKE!) by unpacking and dusting and scrubbing and laundering and organizing and cable-guying (which, for the record, is not a verb in the adult-entertainment sense … at least not in this blog post) and installing lights above and below the kitchen cupboards and marveling at the convenience of wireless computer networking and doing that awkward negotiation dance where you try to tell your boyfriend that he has the decorating instincts of a televangelist in a whorehouse without making things awkward for the next 49 years and five months (we've given ourselves the option to re-evaluate the relationship at the 50-year mark) and installing an AirPort Express so you can wirelessly project your show tunes to your speakers from anywhere in the house even though your expensive new AirPort Express won’t show up on your speaker menu after an hour of installing and troubleshooting and also managing to cut a chunk out of your hand while trying to open a bag of assorted nuts and bolts.

And last night, we officially christened the place in the way gay boyfriends traditionally christen new homes: We scooped up giant bowls of ice cream and snuggled on the couch to watch an On-Demand episode of CSI (which was marred by some of the stupidest CSI dialogue ever written along with what were quite frankly uninteresting, non-telegenic victims in both the A and B storylines). And after that, we tumbled into the bed in the guest room and slept, free of concerns about parking violations and angry neighbors and doubts that the day would ever come when we’d actually fall asleep together under our own roof.

And we slept very, very well.