I'm unemployed and moving

Last Friday I quit my job. As today is Monday, it is my first real "unemployed" day.  I was planning on putting in my two weeks notice, but my boss said "well, I know you're planning a wedding, which takes a lot of time, so you don't have to stick around for two more weeks you don't have to. Today can be your last day if you want." After some careful consideration, prayer, and consulting with Justin, I decided to take his suggestion. So last Friday was my last day to be an IT consultant!

For those of you who don't know, my plans are to finish planning my wedding/move out of my apartment and relax a little bit before my wedding, then spend the summer in Denver where Justin has an internship, then begin a Ph.D. program at Rice University in the Fall.  I am really looking forward to all of that! Wait... not ALL of it... 

I HATE moving! It's always such a hassle.  Besides the sadness of leaving a place I have spent a considerable amount of time in, there's the hassle of going through all my stuff and deciding which is worth moving, and which I don't really need, and how to pack it most efficiently into boxes.  And this move is even worst than most.  The unusual difficulties in this move are:

• Combining households with another person.  So for everything I move, I have to ask "does Justin already have one of these? Or is this really girly and/or something that Justin really doesn't like?"
• I have to decide which stuff I want to take with me to Denver for a few months over the Summer, which stuff is not worth taking on that 16+ hour one-way trip for that short a period of time but are worth keeping at my parents' house for when we return to Houston, and which stuff is not worth keeping at all.
• I want to get rid of stuff for which I will receive replacements for my wedding. For example: we registered for a nice coffee maker.  So if we get it, I don't want to bring my dumb old one... but what if we don't get one?
• I'm going to be staying at my parents' house for the next 5 weeks, and then going on a honeymoon, before I actually move into my next place, so I don't want to pack up anything that I will need during that time.

I have spent most of the day today working on this more-difficult-than-usual move. Witnss the wreckage of my apartment:

 

    

On a different note, I made myself a yummy dinner tonight!  I was going to just make chicken because that's one of the few things I have here, so I put some breading and seasoning on it and stuck it in the oven to bake.  After it had been in there a few minutes, I thought "Hm... I have a tomato in the fridge that I ought to use before it goes bad.  I think that would make nice addition to my chicken".  So I chopped up the tomato, sprinkled with salt and basil, cut up a string cheese to go with it, and dumped that onto the baking sheet with the chicken for the final 5 minutes. I was quite pleased with it, but didn't think to take a picture of it until after I was a good part of the way through it.

I was quite pleased with my attempt to make a yummy dinner out of what I have in the fridge.  Hopefully soon I will be a master of this art, like Mama!