It’s been ten days since Stephanie and I moved into our new home. Compared to past moves this one went so smoothly that I wasn’t quite sure what to say about it. So I’ll just tell what happened.

On the Saturday of our move, we woke early to pick up a 10ft U-Haul truck we’d rented for the weekend. It took almost no time to load with the few things we’d accumulated in our studio, so we were on the road towards our storage unit in Santa Rosa by 10am. After a few errands en route, we arrived in time to meet Mark Levitt for lunch. He’d offered to help us unload our storage unit and load the truck, which gave us a great excuse to catch up.

We had the storage unit emptied in record time. I think it took us under 2 hours, and most of that was spent going up and down the freight elevator. We were done well before our dinner plans, so we had time to squeeze in a beer (or two) at Russian River Brewing Company. Day turned into night, and we all headed out for sushi with Nailah’s family (Stephanie’s old dance partner in crime). Even though the first half of the move had been so painless, we were tuckered out, so we retired to the house of some friends who were out of town.

We were up early again on Sunday morning for our date with destiny: meeting the sellers at 10am to get the keys. We got there just as they were picking up the last few odds and ends—they’d only just moved out the day before. Casey and Kyle showed up to help us unload the truck, which we emptied in an hour flat. Perfect timing for lunch—which I think they felt guilty about, given how quickly things went. Nonsense! Sweat was shed by all; we earned it.

We’d had a mattress delivered that afternoon, but the bed-frame wouldn’t be arriving for another day, so that night we slept on it directly on the floor. Around 5:30 in the morning I was awakened by a slap from Stephanie and some intense, prolonged shaking. Our first earthquake on our first night in the new house! What were the chances? In my sleep-addled mind I thought to myself that I should probably get under the bed, except it wasn’t possible because the mattress was on the floor! Eventually the shaking subsided, and I quickly fell back asleep.