I won't be able to properly put into words how productive and tiring and fantastically fun this weekend was, but I'll explain it like this: My parents left Chicago at 4 a.m. on Saturday morning, drove through whiteout conditions, then basically worked uninterrupted from 1:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon through 1 a.m. Monday morning. Uninterrupted? Seriously. We had about an hour worth of dinner on Saturday night, and about two hours' worth with a coworker on Sunday night, and that was it. They slept from about 10:45 (at which point I, in a way, 'snuck out'...ha!) until probably 6 on Sunday, and then from about 1:30 until about 6:30 on Monday, and probably put an additional three hours of work in Monday morning before brightening up the office for a half-hour, then departing.

Seriously. It was, like, three hours of leisure for them in a 63-hour period.

And they brought some seriously fantastic stuff up. Yes, the chairs are pink. (No, seriously, they're pink. But they're sweet.) Yes, the couch is kind of flowery, but it also kind of works. And we've covered it with a less flowery 'throw,' which is a word that I can't properly use as a noun. And they just kind of threw the plant in the corner of the living room, and it absolutely fits perfectly.

My living room, friends, is genuinely nice. Or, rather, it was when I returned from work on Monday evening. Now, instead, there are about seven white t-shirts on the couch, some clean underwear strewn on the floor, and unread junk mail and a plastic grocery bag on the coffee table. And I think one of the pink armrest-covers is on the floor. And the mirror that I was supposed to hang hasn't been hung, nor has the small painting that'll look perfect at the primary access point to the kitchen. My CDs, however, have been put away. There are more of them than I even realized, though I lost count at about 180. I'm thinking maybe 400, which is about the most stupid thing in the world. (400 includes free promos or mixes that have been burned for me, but those represent a fairly insignificant percentage. And I can't find The White Stripes' Elephant, ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead's Source Tags and Codes, The Wrens' The Meadowlands, or GbV's Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes, which I lent to an intern in the summer of 2004 - days before he quit. Please return them if you have them. And I never should have forced 69 Love Songs on The Boy, because it's so, so good, and so, so pretty, and now in his hands.)

My bedroom, friends, is similarly nice. Better than nice. A beaten-up old desk given to me by my company's HR director was a piece of trash when we picked it up on Saturday afternoon. An antique piece of trash, but still a piece of trash. My mom inhaled toxic fumes for three hours doing it, but it's somehow clean and beautiful and serving as both nightstand and desk. Though mostly nightstand. Then there's some other thing with a drawer and some cabinets that's on the other side of the bed - apparently, my sister stole it from somewhere. The dresser fits, and we'll have a beautiful reupholstered and repaired rocking chair in the corner, under a reading lamp, within the next two weeks or so. And some bitchin' lampshades, too, are already there.

The bedroom's colorful, with some orange and some navy and some yellow to go along with the already-there green. Wal-Mart plush washcloths, too. And a metallic soap dispenser, for reasons I cannot understand. It'll be colorful-er when the boy-fishing-in-the-toilet painting is placed in its rightful location. I'm not going to say it's better than "Bare Bottoms Welcome," or whatever, but...well, actually, it's totally better than that tacky thing.

The best part of the kitchen is the chrome countertop utensil holder that was purchased for me (nearing 27 years old, and still no shame, let's be honest) Sunday afternoon, I think. It sits perfectly next to the stove. (I think one of the burners doesn't completely work, however.)

The only thing I purchased this weekend was the dining room table and matching chairs. It works perfectly.

Point is, friends, I'm so excited about this place that I want to invite people over. To my place! That's never happened before, even though my place in The 'Port was quite the pad. (Actually, it was dirty.)

Of course, there's cleaning to do, though mostly just tidying and finding places for things and perhaps putting up those things that need to be hung. But I think a coworker is coming over for The Office on Thursday night, so I guess I need to do it between now and then.

I'm definitely entertaining, at least two, on Friday night. Then we're going to karaoke, which will be trashy-fun, and my first time back since August or September. And then I'll say goodbye to one of my favorite Ring Fingernailians, who is headed down to San Antonio with her boyfriend. Sigh.

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Weekend highlight: Seeing the U-Haul out front, the elderly-er upstairs neighbor came down to introduce herself. Later, my parents looked at her living room arrangement. Then at how her dryer was installed. Then, Sunday, she came down with free soup and blueberry banana bread. I haven't repaid her yet, but I think I'll do it with this fantastic, flavorful chicken and leek soup that I've made successfully a few times. And I think I'll bring it to her Saturday late afternoon, but I'll need to cook Saturday afternoon, then.

On the washer and dryer: My parents finagled a free matched set from the neighbors. Then I found out it wouldn't work. So they finagled another free matched set from the other neighbors. But I think they paid the contractors some cash to bring it over. Then we had to buy some piping to ventilate the dryer. (Me to the office person: "Do you have a handyman or something that can hook up our dryer properly?" Her to me: "You can't install a dryer?" Me, later, but not to her: "Nope.") Then we tried to hook them up Sunday morning. Then we realized we probably needed different piping. So we returned to Home Depot. Then we installed the ventilation tubing stuff. (I'm not good with a screwdriver, honestly.) Then we got ready to plug it in, and realized that our power cord didn't match the unit's outlet. New code, we later heard. So we returned to Home Depot. They gave us a new plug ("this one's ground, this one's neutral, and these two are hot") to install. After popping off the back of the dryer and staring quizzically at the way the cord was hooked up to the thing, it was determined that we'd be better off paying someone. So he's coming Saturday, which is why I've got (relatively) fresh-from-the-laundromat clothing on my floor right now.

On the chairs: They're pink. We brought them to the upholstery guy, recommended by a coworker. We flipped through some fabrics. And some more fabrics. For an hour or so, on Sunday morning. Then some more fabrics. Then we kind of maybe kind of settled on something. Then he talked price. "Well, it's $425 for the labor for one of these. And then the cost of material...and this is probably seven yards' worth." It was at this point that I realized the pink wasn't really that bad, and actually worked kind of nicely. But we left the rocker there out of sympathy, kind of, and then my mom hit the jackpot. And we wound up dropping off an old office chair Sunday night, only because it wouldn't fit in my parents' car for the drive home.

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My mom on Saturday: "Every time I say something, I'm afraid it's going to wind up in your blog!" Only when you say something particularly memorable, Mom.

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I'm not yet completely moved in, but it feels like home. It will actually be home come Sunday afternoon, I think. We're expecting 40-plus degree temperatures over the weekend, which means I'll try to get in my first run by the lake. And on Sunday night, we got a fantastic sunset. How awesome.

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By the time you read this, Northwestern will have probably been eliminated from the Big Ten Tournament by Michigan State. I'd just like to write that this has been the season I've enjoyed following the Wildcats the least since I've been a fan. Even less than the 0-16 season, though that would've been the worst had I not been a student at the time. But there was absolutely no chance this season of the postseason, though we tried to convince ourselves of that. But the worst part is that our (arguably) best player, Timmy D., is a joke. Can't jump. He works hard, but he's a joke, and it sucks when your best player pretty clearly wouldn't be on the top eight on any other team in the conference. I honestly believe that to be the case, except for maybe Penn State and the Gophs.

Coble is fantastic, but he's such a dork. I just wish we had cool players with cool names who didn't look like dorks. Doyle's a dork. Coble's a dork. Ryan's a pale, pale, creepy dork, though I think he's got the potential to be All-Conference. Okrezik has piercing but dorky eyes, and can't shoot. Scott's an oafish dork, though my favorite.

The Cats have some ins on a few Chicago Public League players for the upcoming spring signing period. You have no idea how badly I want them to bring in a guy named Isiah, or Demond. A Wildcat named Demond? How sweet it could be.

I just wish that NU could be good one day. Some day, some day soon. ("Soon" being a relative term.)

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In the last few days, I've determined that The Princess Bride is one of my three favorite movies. With Fargo and Billy Madison. I think The Princess Bride might even be worth owning, even if only for the "so it obviously cannot be the glass in front of me!" scene.