The great move has begun. One weekend of not particularly hard work, and I�m already totally stuffed.

Literally exhausted. And not looking forward to the work week ahead. Especially the all day conference on �ethics� tomorrow. All day in an airless room listening to people talk about things only a small portion of which will actually be relevant to my work. Fabulous.

Anyway, I only took three car loads of boxes over during the course of the weekend, but that did put a dent in things, and Smurfette, Nathan, Dad and the Munchkin have now all done the tour of the new apartment and given it the stamp of approval. Of those four, only three decided to close themselves in the walk-in wardrobe for fun � you can probably guess which one refrained (though only just, I must add).

Yesterday afternoon I did have the great pleasure of starting to unpack the kitchen, however. I have never had my own kitchen before. (Okay, I�ve never had anything strictly my own before, but bedrooms are generally ones private domain even in a shared house, while the kitchen is always communal property.) So getting to open the boxes and stack the cupboards exactly the way I want to was a great pleasure.

In particular I had the joy of unpacking a box of wine glasses and coffee cups that has remained unpacked through my last four houses, ie since about 1994.

It�s not for lack of desire to use my great red wine glasses, or the $1 spotty Ikea mugs, that they have remained boxed. Neatly resting among torn up pages of an old Vogue magazine inside a McDonalds French fry box acquired to assist with a move at least five moves ago when Smurfette was employed by the Scottish restaurant. It�s just been lack of space. No space when I moved back to Mum�s, or moved with her to her current house. No space (or time to properly unpack) at my sub-leased house when I was a trainee. Absolutely no space in my current house, and no need to use them over seven years because Betty owned copious amounts of glasses and cups all of which were unpacked and readily available.

But now my 21st birthday crystal glasses and champagne flutes are taking pride of place in my clean new kitchen cupboards, next to the $1 spotty Ikea mugs. Unlike the mugs the glasses are only temporary residents in the kitchen � I plan to acquire a side board for the dining room eventually � but for now it�s just nice to open the cupboards and see all these things that feel like they�re new even though I�ve owned them for 10 or 12 years.

Now I just need to box up all the wine and move the wine rack so I�ve got something to drink out of them. Because looking at wine glasses is only a pleasure for so long. Then you need the booze.