Still making progress...

Man, I feel like this week has flown by, yet I still have a ton left to do! I have been working my butt off trying to get everything unpacked and put away. I was slowed down on Wednesday when I tried to hang my Elfa shelves and thought I hit metal when drilling into the walls. On Thursday morning, I talked to the super, and he said it was concrete... so I hired a handyman to come drill into the concrete on Friday. Back to Wednesday, I attempted to hang up at least 5 different shelve things all over my apartment to no avail; these walls are ridiculous! Because I couldn't get the shelves hung up, there were so many boxes I couldn't unpack... it was a frustrating day. I was able to put together the one Elfa shelf that was freestanding and unpack my books (6+ boxes), so that was progress. I also spent a small fortune at Bed, Bath & Beyond (thanks to the SBC crew for that giftcard!), and that helped me organize the kitchen. Thursday night we went to Tao; it was a nice distraction from the "wall frustrations".

On Friday morning, the handyman came and was able to hang up all of my shelves. It turned out that there wasn't cement behind the walls but some kind of plaster... It was still too hard for me to drill thru it, whatever it was. The guy spent 4 hours hanging stuff up... He did a good job, but geez... at $85/hour, I didn't want him here for that long! Anyway, all of my selves, curtains, etc. are up, so I was able to spend some time Friday and Saturday unpacking clothes and shoes (which I have a lot of). So far all of the shelves are staying up; I'm paranoid that they're all going to collapse and rip the wall out with them!

A few random notes... 1) I've learned that EVERY store here delivers. I bought two cart-fulls at Bed, Bath & Beyond, and they delivered it all a few hours later. The grocery store delivers, the dry cleaners... Home Depot, The Container Store... It's so nice to not feel stressed about how to get everything from the store back home. 2) I have abnormally long windows. Most curtain rods expand to 120" and my windows are 192"! I had to buy some wire from Home Depot to string across the length of the window... then I had to take my curtains to be shortened because the hooks inevitably hang lower from the wire than they would from a curtain rod... 3) I have a gas stove. Never had one of those before. 4) I'm still searching for a deli nearby where I can get someone to make me salads on a regular basis. 5) I didn't buy the $180 trash can, but I did get one that was $120... Ridiculous, I know... but it's a good one. :)