Re-case the place and settle down

And tonight I cooked my first real meal in this apartment, since stove-heated chowder is delicious but not exactly labor-intensive: tuna melt on pumpernickel, with derspatchel. (He provided the critical information that ranch dressing can be substituted for the traditional mayonnaise. We've received suggestions for curry and avocado since. Between that and the deletion of celery from tuna salad, there may be hope for my willingness to eat non-sushi tuna yet.) We sat on different couches in the bare-bones furnished living room and noodled around on our respective computers. We drank seltzer and tea. There was lashing rain outside the windows and quiet inside. The house smells a lot more like cooking now than it does like new paint and linseed oil. I like this.

The kitchen is full of adrian_turtle's boxes and mine, partly unpacked, mostly still taped-up. There are upwards of seventy boxes of books in the library. I still don't have a dresser, so I'm trash-picking to find clothes in the morning, and the wireless seems to play fine with my computer, but it's standoffish toward Adrian's. The apartment is mysteriously bereft of shelves or hooks, so we're draping things over other things and planning a visit to hardware stores and/or Costco. Still no art anywhere except stacked on the garbage bags at the end of my bed.

But I think I am beginning to feel I live here.

Rob and I have been engaged for a week.