Monday, August 20, 2007

The difference a day (or two) makes

Yessiree, a whole lot can change in a few days. Take, for example, this past weekend. Friday, I closed on our Ross Street house (best of luck to the Peck family!) and arrived to a quite empty ATL house.

Saturday, I return from my (17 mile!) run to find a quite full ATL house


And by Sunday morning, the chaos of household goods has subsided enough for Paul to make one mean British fry-up.


The entire process has left me with a few new thoughts about stuff:

1. Having too much stuff is troublesome. It's hard to find room for it. And you appreciate things less when you have a lot of them. On a very small scale: when I have a new package of 50 hair bands, I lose them left and right. When I only have three, I keep track of them very carefully. Why would I ever need 50?
2. If you don't have too much stuff, what you do have makes you feel happy. I have to say, our house in ATL was pretty depressing with only minimal stuff in it. It was echo-y and lonely feeling. Now that our stuff is in place, it feels downright homey (or homily if you're from England.)
3. We probably still have too much stuff. We have sold and donated boxes, and boxes, and boxes - and yet we still have much more than we need. And that means we have to find room for, keep in good-repair, and keep track of stuff we don't use - which is just a pain in the a**. It clearly takes a move to shed light on this. Maybe another one is in order? Oh, the joy.

5 comments:

Chaka said...

Please tell us more about the fry up.

Chaka said...

Okay, you were no help, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. Most of it sounds pretty good:

Toast - Check

Sausages - Can't go wrong

Fried, Grilled or Tinned Tomatoes - Let's consider these as we would the gives those three dudes brought for Baby Jehu. You know - er, thanks a lot for the toast and sausages, but don't worry too much about the tinned tomatoes next time.

Fried Mushrooms - Absolutely not. What they heck were you thinking!

Chips - Can't go wrong with potatoes.

Black Pudding - See "Fried Mushrooms," and add "oh hell no."

Baked Beans - You've gotta do better than Dinty Moore this time.

Sauted Potatoes or Hash Browns - You serve those AND chips? Potatoe happy limeys!

Condiments, such as brown sauce or ketchup - I'm not too sure what to think about "brown sauce," either. Is that like the gravy they put on putin in Quebec?

By the way, what's quorn?

Anonymous said...

Good to hear you're still running! We did 16 last weekend and felt great. Leaving for England tomorrow and plan on doing a 12 and our 18 while we're there - hope we don't get too lost!

The Hall said...

That would be the very traditional version. Paul's special breakfast consists of:

- Fried eggs

- Baked beans. Original Heinz from England in the tomato sauce is the real deal, but they're hard to find. Unfortunately this weekend, we had to substitute regular American baked beans.

- Bacon, cooked under the broiler in the oven. This means it gets less crispy and has a more meaty texture. The real deal in England is a little more like Canadian bacon.

- Toast.

- A proper cup of tea with milk and sugar.

There are no tomatoes or mushrooms to be found during breakfast at our house (although I do have to admit I like them.).

If Paul's mom was cooking this meal, she would add sausage to the menu and she would fry the bread in the bacon grease instead of toasting it. (Right Sylvia?) Hello, heart disease. Dave, you game?

Sharon, have a blast in England - what a fun place to do your long runs!. And make sure to have a proper fry-up while you're there.

A2Girl said...

from personal experience, i will say that paul´s fry up is darn delicious and is great for a hangover...just fyi

Sher and Paul good work on the move, I am so curious how you made the decesions on what would stay with you in the house and what went to storage and what went to good will...very curious indeed....you know you could start a business on helping others clean out their clutter, Marie´s sister in law does that...just a thought