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As of a few hours ago the house is empty except what we are taking with us. We’ve been cleaning and spending some final time in the pool. We’re heading out for dinner now. One of Amy’s friends from the neighborhood is going with us. Then a few errands. Then once we drop the friend back home it is off to a hotel. There are no beds. Our last night at home has already happened. :-( Tommorow one last time back home in the morning then we will be on our way! The movers arrived almost on the dot at 12 UTC. I had meant to take a few more pictures and such. (And take a shower.) But that didn’t happen. They arrived and then it was a whirlwind. Us scrambling to make sure the things we wanted to take with us in the car were seperate. All of them running all over the house sticking things in boxes. They have been here six hours now. Almost everything is packed. A couple more hours and they will be gone for the day. By the time they leave everything in the house except what we will need for the trip West will be packed nicely in boxes. Then tomorrow they will come back and load everything into the truck. boxes and furniture. Tonight will probably be our last night in this house. Tomorrow will be a hotel. Then we’ll leave Palm Bay… presumably for good… on Wednesday morning. I am a bit overwhelmed, so I’m reatreating to the computer for a little bit. Most of the house is already packed. It is already not quite home any more. And it makes me very sad. THere is absolutely no question that this was the right move. Absolutely no question that things are better and will be better in Washington than they were in Florida. But when I moved here. When I bought this house. For the first time since I was 9 years old I left myself think of where I was living as not just where I was living, but as HOME. I indended to stay here for many years. I intended to marry Brandy here, adopt Amy here, and maybe even have another someday. And this was the place for it. This was the place to settle and finally grow some roots. This was a house that would be good not just for a couple years, but which I would have been happy staying in until I retired and beyond. It was never supposed to be a 16 month house. It was supposed to be home. It WAS home. And now we are leaving. After driving cross country we will arrive at a small 2 bedroom basic apartment with a six month lease that is almost up. We’ll probably renew that lease for at least a few months more. Then maybe get a slighty nicer apartment. We won’t however be looking at buying a place again for many years most likely. On top of the much higher cost of housing there, we also made the decision to send Amy to private school, which will basically use all the money we might have considered spending on buying a house again. So… maybe sometime. But definately not in a timeframe we can forsee and predict. Apartments can be OK… depending on the apartment. But I had definately gotten used to being an owner. And I liked it. The movers pack our lives away, taking them away from this place. Some of it will come to our apartment in Bellevue. Most of it will just go into storage, most likely for many years to come. Anyway, this is a sad goodbye that is in progress. The final goodbye will be Wednesday morning. In the mean time, there is not much to do. The movers are doing their thing. I sit and watch and am sad. And I trust. I trust that before too long, with all of us there, one way or another, Washington will start to feel like home and not just where I happen to be this year. But not yet. Maybe in a few years.
This is one of two volumes. I’ll get to the next one before too long I imagine. I picked them up in Aylesbury during my 2002 Q1 Random Vacation. It is basically a book full of pictures of old postcards… as the title would imply. Each one captioned with a bit of history about what is shown, when it was, what has changed since then. I actually find this sort of stuff facinating. So I was very interested. Plus of course, it was about a place I had been for my random trip. So it brought up good memories of the place. I recognized many places on the postcards even though they had often changed quite a bit. I just read a little at a time, otherwise this would have been a one day book. It was mostly pictures after all. That is Seattle from the air. But I am now in At-lahn-ta waiting for my flight to Melbourne. I got some sleep, but I am still tired. So I used the last of a Starbucks card Brandy gave me months ago and I am now caffinating myself. I’m in the shuttle heading for the airport. Heading home to see Brandy and Amy for the first time in months. I miss them so much. It will be so good to be together again. But then it will be time to say goodbye to the house, which will make me very sad. But for now… heading home!!! Over the holiday we dropped the price on the house again. When we first priced it we priced it several percent less on a cost per square foot basis than the last few houses in the area that had sold, which was also below the going rate for houses on the market at that time. We still got very limited foot traffic. One or two showings a week. After a month we dropped the price 10K. It took a week or so, but then we saw a significant increase in traffic. Up to about five or six people looking at the place every week. But no offers. So now that it has been another month we drop it another 10K. Yes, we could leave it where it is and just presume the right person will eventually come along, but we just can’t afford to wait month after month for a sale, so… drop the price. Hopefully we’re getting close to the pricepoint where we will get an offer sooner rather than later. Next week the moving trucks will come and all of our stuff will be gone, and WE will be gone. We need to then close that chapter of our lives quickly, not drag it out all summer. Of course, we are not alone. It isn’t like everything else on the market is selling and we are not. The market is just very very very slow. And prices are dropping. Which sucks. But that’s the way it is. We’re still in the overall profit zone though. So as long as it sells soon, I can’t complain too much.
Other than that, born in Vermont. Lived a while in Maine. Married twice. No kids with the first wife. Two with the second. One of which was my (Great) Uncle Rod, and the other of which was my Grandmother. He was a minister in the United Church of Christ. Although it didn’t become the UCC until right before his death. I believe the branch he came from was the Congregational part of the UCC and he probably would have identified more closely with that. And that is about all I know.
Well, OK, I whizzed through this one kinda fast didn’t I? First let me explain why this book is the book I read. You see, as I’ve explained before, I don’t have my whole book pile from home here. And some non-fiction books that were for work skipped ahead in line, cause they were for work and all. So I finished the non-fiction book I was reading and needed a fiction. But the next fiction in the pile had a higher number than the next non-fiction in line, and I can’t read them out of order. So I needed a fiction that did not have a number. The next fiction in the pile I had HERE that did not have a number was James Patterson’s The 5th Horseman. See, Brandy had left that here last time she visited, so it became part of my pile. But that was the 5th in the series, and you can’t start at #5, that would be wrong. So I ordered the first one and that is what became next on the list. So… the book itself. First of all the speed is deceptive. Yes, I did 236 pages a day, which seems really high for me. But this book is printed with a big font and large margins on the pages, and is written in short uncomplicated sentences. Each chapter is only a couple of pages. It is designed to be a quick read that doesn’t require all that much thought or analysis. It just sweeps over you. It is much more like watching TV than reading really. But, having said that, it is exactly what it is supposed to be. A quick fun read. Well, aside from the grizzly murders. But hey, that is part of the genre. It is supposed to be about four women in their little murder solving club, but three of the four really were supporting characters. It was about the first of them. Maybe that changes in the next four books in this series. Dunno. In any case, I’ll enjoyed it. As with any book in a series I read, the next book in the series has already been ordered. And of course #5 is still in the pile, so I’ll eventually have to read the ones in between to get to it. That is just how it works.
This is the longest I’ve let it go in many many years. And not cause I’ve been trying, just cause I’ve been crazy lazy. It itches. And with it I am looking a bit too much like my dad. So it will probably go away quite soon. But I will take votes in the comments here. Should I shave before going to work on Wednesday? Or should I let it go longer? All votes left as comments here up until I stop into the shower Wednesday will be accepted. |
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