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adventures / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
4
Jul 23

Happy Fourth

We spent the day doing little things around the house, because those little things add up. Eventually. Also, we did a little of this.

The local community had a fireworks show, of course. So we made our way down to the park and sports fields for the show. Took a guess on the spot, pulled out the lawn chairs and settled in for the extravaganza. The appointed time, 9:15 p.m., came and went. We looked in one direction, nothing.

We faced another way, no dice.

In a third direction, and at some distance, you could see some fireworks that were probably an enthusiastic front yard show, but nothing that felt coordinated. And then, after having consulted several websites that promised us pyrotechnics at this time in this place, The Yankee found a Facebook post that had a graphic showing that the Fourth of July fireworks were on … the second of July.

We had a good laugh about that.

And so we headed back to the house to enjoy cheesecake and watched the Philadelphia fireworks on TV, but not before a really flat Demi Lovato concert that seemed to run long. (But her fans liked it.) It was an easy Fourth. Not ideal, but ideal. Not perfect, but perfect. And we saw fireworks exploding above Independence Hall. That was quite something.

Monday / photo — Comments Off
3
Jul 23

Grupo compacto

All of the stuff is in the new house. About 39 percent of it has been sorted and settled. The living room and kitchen are basically opened for business, but still a bit cluttered. The bedroom is unboxed. The basement has come together nicely. The home offices, the dining room and the library are still to come. But, at least, there are some parts of the floor plan where you don’t have to shuffle sideways, trip or take comically big steps over things. That’s a nice change of pace after the last week.

So, naturally, with that sort of progress under our belt, we went to pick up the cats on Sunday. They’ve been staying with The Yankee’s parents the last few weeks, and that, in retrospect, was a great move for everyone. She’d also taken a load of things we wouldn’t want to put on a moving truck. So we took care of that yesterday. Rented an over-sized car (for the stuff) and drove the three hours north for the reunion. That trip is now much shorter than it used to be.

We had a short visit and had an early dinner. We loaded up the rental with everything we’d sent ahead. We had room for almost everything, except the cats. Aside from a half hour of complaining about it, though, they handled the trip like champs.

It was dark when they got to their new home, their third place in the last few weeks, but despite Phoebe’s judgmental look here, they’ll adjust quickly.

Poseidon is going to be very interested, aggressively interested, in everything. Here he is, trying to figure out the basement.

(Yes, I need to get a door sweep there.)

And they are already enjoying their new views.

It is always a bit unnerving when they do the same thing at the same time.

This made us feel better. We found a nearby grocery store on Friday evening, and it was hopping. This place just opened, it turns out, and it is pretty amazing. But more on that, I’m sure, later.

So we’ll continue the process of putting the house together when we’re not enjoying the summer.

And you’re more than welcome to come help me unpack books in the coming days.

adventures / Friday / photo — Comments Off
30
Jun 23

Status: lol

We unpacked stuff today. Moved boxes from one room to the other. Organized tubs. Started figuring out how to store things in the basement. And then we unpacked a few more things. We did all of this until we decided we didn’t want to do it anymore.

And then we stopped.

adventures / New Jersey / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
29
Jun 23

The new house needs a name

Did our walk through of the new house this morning. Everything is lovely in this new place. Aside from some additional cleaning — of course the sellers cleaned things, but still — everything is lovely here. One of the rooms has a blackboard wall. This will be The Yankee’s home office. The sellers left us a lovely note.

We went over to an office to sign all of the forms you must sign to buy a home, and all of the forms you must sign to acknowledge that you just signed the last form. So long is the process now that two separate people race through a thumbnail sketch of what they’re putting in front of you in a lab-tested voice that sounds interested but, you know, has gone through this so many times they’re clearly just bored with it and won’t you sign it so the fees can get transferred.

So we signed them.

There are at least 762 treaties that ended armed conflicts that involve less paperwork and signatures than the modern house process. I know because I counted them, in my head, in between the taut recitation of how this form notes that you will provide your own ninja security detail on your new property, and this document notes we’ve not told you which agencies to hire them from …

When all of that was done, everyone went their separate ways. Someone must work in that office, but I’m not sure which of the four people in the room that might be. And we went back to the new house. The movers were there waiting for us.

They loaded us up with four guys. They unloaded everything with two guys. Two guys plus us. Those fellows worked so hard today, and so did we, to a slightly lesser extent.

At the same time, the ISP guy came by. Bald, long braided beard. Probably rides a motorcycle when he’s not in his service van. It made him look older than he was, and older than his humor. Overly polite, like he’d just come out of some company-mandated customer service workshop. He got his job done in a hurry, and gave us more of the gigabytes than we expected.

At the same time we met our first neighbor. She was dispatched by the sellers to pick up from us a few things that they’d accidentally left behind. We were, of course, happy to oblige them of the sentimental. And the neighbor is lovely. A retired teacher, she watched the kids that used to live here grow up, and now those children are young adults. That’s just part of it for teachers. We talked for maybe five minutes, a welcome break in the air conditioning for me, and you can already tell she’s got plenty of stories and is ready to share them. In a week or two, when the house is in order, I’m going to have to think of a good excuse to stop by and visit her.

Everything is everywhere, but everything is here. Well, except for the cats. We’ll fetch them on Sunday. Because we’ll have wrung order from chaos in just two days.

Hah.

Tonight, we set up part of the kitchen and living room. Tomorrow we learn where all the light switches are and start breaking down boxes.

adventures / photo / Wednesday / windshield time — Comments Off
28
Jun 23

I played “Country Roads” across West Virginia

Do you know how long this drive is? Hint: the answer is, “Longer than online maps suggest.”

So this is a quick photo post. We are staying at my godsister-in-law’s (just go with it) tonight. Tomorrow, we do the last walk through on our new house, sign 1.2 million documents to make it ours, and then watch all of our stuff come out of a truck and into the house. Ya know, the easy part.

I am so tired.

When the bucket of the dozer needs a series of supports, you’re talking about some serious machinery.

Do you know what it is like to stare at your bike for nine-plus hours, and not be able to ride it?

Yes, there was a lot of traffic like that. But, then, somewhere in eastern Pennsylvania, around dinner time (because we’d driven through breakfast and lunch already, so why not?) all of the cars just disappeared. Everyone had gotten where they needed to be. That’s always a warm thought, especially when you’re not there yet. But the sun was getting low, which meant we were getting closer.

And it was good to see it in the mirror behind me.