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And now a bit of landscaped fauna meditation to help you through Wednesday:
Here’s another picture of some of the hand-planted things:
Inside: though the control room is dark today, the engineers are down to the last bit of their build. We should be in the new studio in the next few weeks:
Very exciting indeed.
There comes a moment when everyone thinks they can be an artist …
Outside:
Inside:
At a reception in the Franklin Hall Commons:
I got this book through an interlibrary loan from the University of North Carolina:
It is a book of oral histories from northwest Alabama, covering the Civil War era, which was a hard time for the people in the area. Most of the folks there didn’t want to be involved, they saw it as a rich person’s war. But when the Confederates came through they would press men into service. And when the Union came through they would press men into service. And then there were the Booger men, guerillas, bushwhackers, thieves and murderers, led by “Mountain Tom” Clark. In 1872 Clark confessed to 19 murders and was lynched. One member of the mob remembered Clark say “No man will ever run over Tom Clark!” So his body is now buried under Tennessee Street and is supposedly still there today, where he’s run over by everybody. At least that’s the folklore. Interesting read.
We grew up hearing sanitized versions of stories like this.
The book has that Due Date card inside, of course. The last time it was stamped was 1995.
I should have made a video about that.
I haven’t seen one of these in a long time:
In fact, out of the corner of my eye, while we were riding our bikes through some of the local lowlands, I saw that today and thought it was real. This guy needs help!
That guy is actually a cool decoration.
And I would have stayed around there all day, it was nice and cool in the shade, but there are boxes to unpack. And soup to eat. Here’s the ceiling fan in my spoon in my soup:
So we got into the new house this morning. We emptied the cars and then we went to sign the paperwork. I wish they’d left these guys:
I took that picture in March, when we were house hunting. They were just moving out the day that were looking. We had about 17 places on our list and a handful of them came off the market the first day we were up. It was a huge sellers market in the spring. Of the rest, some looked better online than in reality and a few just weren’t going to fit our style or desires. Which left us the place we ultimately got. They were moving out, big family, and didn’t want to let us in because they were concerned it would be too messy. By the time we got to go inside they were down to that “Do I really have to go back and get that last little bit? Can’t I just set fire to it in the backyard?” stage. The house was not messy. In fact it looked fine. It is a fine house. And two of the things they still had to pick up were those decorations above. I was really hoping they would stay with the house.
Anyway, We’re getting settled, see?
This was all done out of order because of the processing agency and the many layers of paperwork and bureaucracy couldn’t take care of itself in time and there was another meeting and so that changed our schedules and so on. And, oh, simultaneously the moving company was arriving with all of our things. Four guys directly out of central casting who were here to do a job, politely, quickly, and leave. And they did. They only balked at carrying all of my books, so I slung some of those boxes around.
Some things you’d just rather do yourself, anyway.
By the time we’d come back from signing the paperwork, and picking up lunch for the movers, they were almost all done. Those guys hustled. And then we were left with all of our things scattered all over and trying to figure out where to put it all.
This is actually easy because, when we were house shopping, I’d brought a tape measure and compared all of the rooms to our old house to make sure everything would fit where we needed it to. By then we were on our second realtor on this end of the deal. The first guy, let’s just say, didn’t work out.
You knew people like that, say the boyfriend of a friend of yours. You know, the young woman who didn’t know of her own self-worth and so never noticed he was walking her into an emotionally exploitive relationship? The signs were there, you could see them. I didn’t need that out of a realtor. Could you imagine that person standing there while I produced my tape measure and spent six minutes decides which wall the china cabinet was going on? So we thanked that individual, apologized for this not working out and found another one. And, it turns out, she was the selling agent of the previous owners of this house. They had to upgrade here in town. So here we are. Full of boxes, new door locks and so on.
All of the housing difficulties are done. The literally-going-crazy-before-our-eyes realtor representing the buyers of our old house. The logistics of getting a move done. The fired realtor here who went on and on about how they were doing you a favor, the actual realtor and her stand-in. The negotiating. The paperwork, the emotion, the finishing of the packing, the where-the-heck-is-my-charger, the making sure the cat never slipped outside. All of that is out of the way. Now, it is just us and the boxes.
And this wacky ceiling fan I most definitely did not buy at Lowe’s:
