Drummer's Corner of the World

This is the post I was working on when Bigfoot collapsed...

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It's done.

All the stuff is moved.

I have the best friends ever. min0taur, Sally WINOLJ, Michael (WI essentially NOLJ, since he has one but never posts) and textdeviant spent the weekend helping me get the rest of the house packed up and moved, even though two of them are allergic to cats and pretty much everybody is allergic to dust (and OMG there was a lot of dust lurking behind and under furniture that hadn't moved in years!). textdeviant fed us fabulous spaghetti and salads last night (and offered to feed us again tonight, but I think everybody was at the "I just want to go home and fall down" stage) which made all the difference in the world in being able to get up and work all day again today, but finally, it's done.

There's a full 10' UHaul in the driveway that needs to go back by 1:30 tomorrow. I'm fairly well resigned to paying for another day, and I'm fine with that.

The PackRat will get here tomorrow late morning or early afternoon. Bob the PackRat Packer will be meeting it here and will become Bob the PackRat Unpacker. Oh... my... gods... that man played three-dimension Tetris with my stuff and managed to fit an absolutely amazing amount of stuff into that 16' box. Worth every penny (and while more expensive than doing it myself, he and the PackRat were way cheaper than hiring a moving company). I hope _I_ never need him again, but if anybody in Indy is moving and needs a recommendation, I'll happily pass his contact info along.

Before leaving the house for the last time, I said my goodbyes to the trees. That's the one thing that makes me sad about this move... I'm very fond of my two huge maple trees and the developers will inevitably knock them down. So I spent some time thanking them for 12 years of not dropping branches on the house or the cars. Hopefully I can keep the maple saplings alive so I'll have some continuity from old house to new.

Tomorrow, I'm off work and the painters won't be here 'til later in the day, so I'm going to get up while it's still cool(ish) out and put the new cart together, then tow it around the yard while I (a) pick up sticks and (b) look for any protuberances that I need to not hit with the lawnmower blades. Once I've scoped things out, I'll make another pass at the mower deck's highest setting. That should be enough to make the neighbors happy and still keep me (hopefully) from hitting anything that I shouldn't. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes to mow 2+ acres!

For now, I've opened the boxes that were labelled "Now!" and extracted the cell phone charger, alarm clock, things needed for my shower in the morning, and I've fed and watered dogs and cats and walked the dogs. I think I'll see if I can get some sleep now.

Talked to the developers this morning, and I have through the weekend now to be out of the old house.

*huge sigh of relief*

Two days may not seem like a big deal, but with my boss out of town this week I can't take time off during the day, and trying to schedule movers for after 5 p.m. was proving problematical.

I feel much better now.

And this week, there's still a list...

Remaining

* Pick paint colors for downstairs bedroom, purchase paint for that and for downstairs bath (bath colors already chosen)
* Select tile for downstairs bath (tentatively done)
* Pick light fixtures for downstairs bath
* Select flooring for downstairs bedroom
* Pack... a lot... dear gods I still have a lot of Stuff
* Drop push mower off for a tuneup and blade sharpening
* Call the movers and Packrat to schedule loading the heavy stuff and moving the Packrat to new house
* Call Comcast and cancel internet at old house effective July 19th.
* Call fence company and schedule fence installation (pending info on financing)
* Jump start Beetle and get it to ASG for timing adjustment and tuneup

Accomplished

* Finished mowing the yard at the old house
* Arranged to move firepit boulders (will happen Monday afternoon... must mark target locations this weekend!)
* Took the Big Scary List to Lowe's and got everything ordered/bought and delivery scheduled (my 10% coupon saved me about $240)
* Called Dish and arrange for satellite service to be set up at the new house (will install Sat. morning 19th)
* Stayed at new house 'til after dark and verified that solar path lights do indeed provide enough light
* Picked paint colors for downstairs bath, bought paint for den

On the packing front... about half the contents of the frig/freezer have been moved, along with half or more of the dishes. Hopefully I'll get most of the rest of that done this weekend while I'm running up and down the road. Over half of the books are packed and out in the Packrat. Maybe half of my clothes are packed. Bedroom 3 is completely empty except for boxes that need to move to the Packrat. Bathroom 2 is likewise completely empty. Tonight's project is to finish packing CDs/DVDs/etc. in the living room, and to finish packing the books in the living room. Then tomorrow I pack everything I can of the remaining two bedrooms, with an eye to, by Monday, being at the point where I can just sort/pitch and I can have friends help pack the stuff that must go. Otherwise, there's no way I'm gonna be ready to be out of here in a week, especially since I can't take any days off next week.

Also... the road to TinyLittleTown is astonishingly dark at night in the rain. Just sayin'.

I've been sitting on Big News for weeks now, but I couldn't say anything before now...

My sister Jenna and niece "T" are moving to Indiana to live with me while T goes to high school! How cool is this going to be?

( Details, details... )

So change is afoot at Reddog HQ. I'll not only have a roommate again, but Jenna and I will be living together for the first time since she was fresh out of high school, and I'll have a teenager in the house, which is alternately exciting and terrifying. :-)

Timeline is that I've got 11 days to be out of the current house (*gulp* ... the new house has no paint on the walls... and the downstairs bathroom construction hasn't started... and I'm only about 25% packed!!!), so I'll be sleeping in the new house by the 18th. Then Jenna comes out from NYC the weekend of the 27th and has a little time to get settled in before T, who's spending the summer with her grandparents, arrives around the beginning of the second week of August.

Fun fun fun! :-)

I swear I feel like I'm moving backwards. I know I'm actually making progress, but boy the list of things that need to be done just keeps growing! Thankfully, I accomplished some things today that hadn't been on my original list for the weekend, so that helped me feel more productive!

( Cut for the sake of the list-phobic )

Note to self: Remember to go to bed at a decent hour. Set the clock. Don't ignore it when it goes off.

Well.

That was... interesting.

I left home this morning, planning to go to the office for a couple of hours and then meet my friend Steve at the new house, to see which of my various and sundry projects he was interested in tackling. (As it turns out, pretty much all of them, including the fencing, which just rocks!) I was going to be in Frankton for a couple of hours, then swinging back past the old house long enough to shower and change before meeting poltr1 for an early dinner since he was in town (and by "town" I mean Indianapolis) for a meeting this afternoon.

I made it to work a few minutes early (miraculous for me on a Saturday), which seemed a good start. Spent longer there than expected and was running late, so I called Steve and let him know I'd be a few minutes late meeting him at the house.

Spent a couple of hours talking about what all I want done so that he can work up some numbers for me, and met the lovely older lady who lives nextdoor, then realized it was after three and I was going to have to rush to make it back to Indy. Hopped in the Trooper and headed south out of Frankton and realized the air conditioning wasn't working. No, wait... the fan's not blowing at all. And, hmmm... the brake and alternator lights are on, which is what happened when the serpentine belt broke, which was just a couple of months ago.

Oh dear. That's not good.

( So, Debbie, what's wrong w/ your poor old truck now?? )

Big plus for the day: I have a new mechanic. Seems like a great guy, comes well recommended, and has certainly bent over backwards to help me out of a jam today. He'll be convenient from the new house, and having a good mechanic who's closer than Indy is a Very Good Thing (plus, his regular biz is a Mobile Mechanic gig, so if I get stranded at the house in Frankton, he can bring his truck full o' tools to the house!).

Other plusses: Having a chance to hang out w/ Jim, after having just met in passing a couple of OVFFs ago. Not being stranded on the side of the road, or having the Trooper out of service for days. Finding the handy O'Reilly's. Meeting another friendly neighbor. Discovering that Anderson (which has some kinda scary areas since the Delco plant closed and a bunch of people moved out) really isn't all bad, and has some super-nice people if I just open my eyes and look. Having time to just sit and read or work sudoku puzzles for awhile.

The only real downside? I lost four or five hours that I should have been packing.

You know, given the way my day could have gone once all the dash lights came on... I think I can live with that! :-)

Got the last items that the mortgage company needed and forwarded them on to my loan officer. (I'd packed my W2 forms. Oops. Thankfully, payroll sent me PDFs.)

Got the appraisal back, and it came in right where it needed to be. (My purchase contract specified that the house had to appraise at or above my offer price... the appraiser, hired by my mortgage company, didn't know that. Appraisal came in at $300 over the contract price for the house, which is reassuring, since it tells me that the price was reasonable.)

Inspection has been done and repairs are being made per our inspection agreement.

Closing on the current house is on Wednesday. Closing on the new house is a week from tomorrow.

Now if I could just get the Packrat delivered so I can start loading boxes. Unsurprisingly, most of the Packrats are tied up with people who needed a way to get their stuff away from the flooded areas of the state.

PODS website says "the average wait time to reach an operator has been 12 seconds" when waiting for LiveChat.

I'm at 7... now 8 minutes... no sign of a human, but the bot wanders through and does the "All operators are current assisting others" thing every minute or so.

Edited to add: And now, 35 minutes in, I have a human telling me to wait, instead of a digital recording. Gee, that's an improvement...

Edited again: Oh, gee, that's customer service. I asked my question, in the window where "Patty" kept saying "thank you for your patience" alternating with a few other platitudes, and then I finally went to sort through some stuff so I could take out the trash. In the five minutes I was gone, "Patty" apparently finally showed up in the chat window, never answered my question, and then disconnected me "due to no response." Maybe I don't wanna do business with PODS after all...