big YAY for an awesome weekend

My new room -- complete with funky sheets (courtesy of a birthday present from Riki & Oren)


Our fun new shower curtain


The view out of our mirpeset sheirut (balcony outside of our kitchen) -- looking out onto all the other balconies. And there's a few really cute cats. It's like they have their own little kibbutz. :-)
















The odd looking house/building/out of use factory on our street. We've done wonders with our imagination thinking about what it may have been used for...


A little bit makeshift in terms of furniture -- but it was awesome to eat our first meal on the balcony of our new place!











Wow, so many great (and tiring) things happened between Thursday evening and last night... from the beginning:

Thursday evening my second cousin Dvir had a moving guy come and the two of them carried a huge desk, a bed, a bookshelf, a nice big table for the living room, another big table/stand for the TV, a stereo system, and a big box of kitchen stuff. First of all, I'm still in shock in how great things worked out with him leaving for the States and my needing furniture -- not to mention how he and his girlfriend Chen have been so awesome about delivering it all :-) Sometimes, the world just gives you a big hug and says, here you go.

Friday morning began with going to Ishay's (bro-in-law) parent's (Arie & Shula) house in Ramat Gan to -- well -- clean out their storage closet of all the extra kitchen stuff they have from various places, apartments, etc. We filled the car up will enough pots and pans, cups, plates and other necessary items to start a catering business and made our way to the apartment. Sivan had already managed to have the movers download into the van from her old Nordau/Dizengoff apartment and upload into our new place by the time I got there, so she helped bring all the stuff from the car up the three flights of stairs. Moving is a good way to get in shape if anyone wants to know...

After all that, Dvir's girlfriend, Chen, and a friend of theirs, Ben, came over with their nice big TV (apparently the heaviest one ever made, according to Ben, the one who had to lug it up the stairs) and a microwave (which should be operational in the near future).

Soon after that we were off to southern TLV to order our big closets/dressers. It took walking up and down the street a few times to figure out where we were, if we walked by the place already, and who would give us the best deal, but eventually we managed to order nice big closet dressers from a semi-deaf but very concerned and nice old man. They should be coming sometime this week -- until then I'll be living out the suitcases (it's a good thing this doesn't phase me too much at this point).

Some pasta and salad for lunch later, we went and bought necessary bathroom items (see above very cute shower curtain), and managed to run back to the apartment on time for the arrival of our new fridge! He's pretty slim, but well-built, a little shorter than me, but overall really attractive. I think we're going to have a lovely relationship really. We've already managed to fill him up a bit too so he doesn't have any self-esteem problems. riiight. (she's gone off the deep end folks...)

So...yeah. Fridge, cleaning, hanging out, and then off we went with Tiferet to watch the Maccabi basketball game, followed by a yummy dinner and ice cream from the Gelatteria next to Tif and Idan's place. One of the best parts of the night was walking home with Sivan, it taking 20 minutes to do so, and going to sleep in the (same) new apartment :-)

Besides a couple points of waking up and being slightly confused, the first night was great, and I woke up and called Riki to see what the current status of "shnitzel"'s arrival in the the world is...she was having contractions but not too frequently or strongly, so it would be a while. Regardless I made my way to Petach Tikva, and filled up the car (again) with the rest (or almost the rest) of my stuff there, plus some temporary furniture until we figure out what we're doing in that regard. A few hours later, after the hospital doctors told Riki to go home (she was only 1 and 1/2 centimeters dialated at the time) my uncle Suki and I drove back to Tel Aviv, unloaded the car and he left me to do some more setting up/cleaning.

Tiferet came over and Sivan came home and we went food shopping for the first time, followed by the cooking of our very first dinner :-) It was lovely (see pictures above) . I'm sure many more will follow in stride.

After that we took a late evening stroll, walked Tiferet home (it's amazing how many people are out at 11pm at night on Rothschild...in a good way) and made our way back to Nachmani. It was during this stroll that my mom (in the US) called me to tell me that Riki (my cousin HERE) had the baby. Oh the powers of Yahoo messenger...my uncle happened to be talking to my mom when they called to say she had the baby, so she found out before I did....not that I'm all that surprised. These things happen quite a bit with my family. It's ok, I'm getting used to being the last to know (not really, but i'll pretend).

It was also my brother's 18th birthday yesterday, so now he has to share it with our new little baby boy cousin...but he seems to be ok with that.

So BIG YAY for my new cousin who i'll meet today after work, and BIG YAY for the new apartment that I love love love and smile every time I think about it. Now people just need to come and visit ;-)

Ok, that's definitely way more than enough for now...more to follow soon I'm sure...