Monthly Archives: March 2015

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. LinkedIn: The World’s Largest Professional Network. Meh. I’ve had an account on LinkedIn for longer than I can remember. I have no idea why. I’ve never used it. I’m not interested in networking. I don’t like it online any better than I like it in person. But still, 347 times a week I get spammed by the one social media site that I’ve found utterly useless for my purposes. It doesn’t take much effort to hit the delete button, but there’s just a certain pain-in-the-ass factor at play here. All things being equal, the chances of my ever looking for a job “on the outside” are somewhere between slim and none… and processional accomplishments on the inside don’t exactly translate well to that world anyway. Unless someone can give me a good reason not to pull the plug, my LinkedIn account is heading to the trash the next time I do some digital housekeeping.

2. Survey. When you’re buying a house in Maryland you’re only required to have a location drawing rather than a full blown property survey. The drawing showed the location of the house and any other “improvements” against an overlay that more or less corresponds to the size and shape of your lot. It’s a minimum degree of assurance for the lender that the house is where it’s supposed to be. Surveys require people to go out with tools and physically locate and mark the defined corners of the property. It’s the way to definitively know what you’re about to buy… so yes, when I say I want a survey instead of a drawing, I know what I’m asking for. I know it’s more expensive. I know it’s not required by the state or by the lender. It is, however, required by me, the guy who’s on the hook for paying the bills.

3. Full weeks. Due to the combination of snow and taking the occasional half day to deal with house-related stuff, this is the first full week I’ve worked in a long while. It’s more exhausting than I remembered. It’s probably a bad sign that I’m excited by the idea of moving not so much because it’s a new and awesome place to live, but because dragging boxes three miles down the road and spending a week unpacking them means that for a week I really only to have one job. It’s sad that’s what passes for relaxing these days.

The best and the worst…

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First I’d like to thank Chrissie for letting me off the hook to coming up with a new idea tonight. Since she asked three questions, I’ll do my best to take them one at a time. The first, and not just because I’m waiting for what’s cooking away in the stove is a response to (and I’m paraphrasing here) “the best and worst meal I ever ate.”

The best I’ve ever had makes it a bit of a loaded question as I’m not a foodie, per se. My tastes tend to run a bit towards the traditional. No surprise there I’m sure. I could tell you about the half dozen out of the way local crab houses on both sides of the Chesapeake between St. Mary’s County and Crisfield that are all in the running for best crab cakes and/or blue crabs I’ve ever had. I could tell you about a remarkable slice of beef served at the top of the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. I could tell you about the world’s most perfect cheeseburger, french fries with brown gravy, and strawberry milkshake combination that came from the kitchen of a health code violating former county sheriff in my home town. It’s not an exaggeration to say I’ve had dreams about that one.

With all that said, the best meal I ever had was actually a regular occurrence throughout my formative years. The local chapter of the Loyal Order of Moose had a steak feed once a month. They packed people in shoulder to shoulder at paper covered tables and served us the biggest bowl of buffet-style house salad I’ve still ever seen in person, a t-bone steak, and a potato. It was a monthly staple. It wasn’t the best cut of steak I’ve ever had (although they weren’t bad), but it was the company that made the meal. Steak at the Moose was one of the few times you could count on the entire extended family being together in one place. That was before my grandparent’s generation passed and the whole thing split into warring camps, before a couple of decades of hurt feelings and animosity. I’ve had better meals purely in terms of technical excellence, but I’ve rarely dined in better or more entertaining company.

The worst meal? In a world full of really appalling fast food options that’s a little more difficult to pinpoint. The only one that really stands out in my mind is more because it’s a meal I regret than it was because the chow was bad. The award belongs to some long forgotten Ethiopian restaurant in Adams Morgan. I was a college freshman in the city on a school-sponsored trip to get us hillbillies some culture in the form of dinner and a show. I liked the show well enough – I think maybe it was Rent – but I wasn’t quite evolved enough just yet to appreciate the virtue of truly ethnic food. The flavors were strange, the service was different, and I wasn’t a fan of everyone around me just diving in with their bare hands and some spongy bread. Between the end of the meal and when the time the bus showed up to deliver us across town, I managed to get a get across the street and wolf down a quarter pounder… and that’s what and why it ranks as my worst meal even though it says far more about 18 year old me than it does about the quality of the food.

A better place…

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I don’t think I’ve ever really understood people who don’t like dogs. I understand people are allergic and that makes dogs somewhat problematic for them, but the ones who just downright don’t enjoy the company of a dog are an utter mystery to me. The one thing I don’t think these non-dog people fully understand is just how much individual personality these creatures have. I’m always a little surprised when I hear comments that “dogs do this” or “This breed behaves like that.” While of course there are certain shared characteristic of all dogs and other characteristics shared by a specific breed, like the stock market, past performance is no guarantee of future results.

What I’ve most recently been struck with is just how different my two are from one another. They’re the same basic age, have had the same basic life experiences, but there are decided differences that I’m not sure can be attributed to their type. Winston is my cat. He wants attention purely on his terms and otherwise is happy to find a comfy spot, preferably somewhere in the sun, and keep an eye on everything from a distance. Maggie, by contrast is my needful thing. While I’m getting ready for the day she is never more than three steps from me. Every morning – and I mean every single morning – when I sit down to pull on my shoes, she bounds back onto the bed and tucks herself under my left arm insisting on a few minutes of chin rubs and belly scratches before heading outside. It’s my absolute favorite part of the day and as much a part of my morning routine as the first cup of coffee. Winston on the other hand doesn’t seem to be interested in much else in the morning than getting outside, having breakfast, and then putting himself back to bed. Like I said, basically a cat.

For their differences I wouldn’t want either of them to be any different – and I certainly wouldn’t want them to be the same. If anything, I’d like to see the folks who don’t like dogs act a little more like the critters they try to avoid. I’m not going to offer them belly rubs, but I still think it would make the world a better place.

The virtue of realtors…

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This morning I got to experience the real value of working with a real estate agent. It’s not so much that they are board certified professionals who spend every day facilitating technical sales with dozens of moving parts and a propensity to run into trouble at every step of the process. What makes the realtor so valuable than any of that, however, is they allow the buyers and sellers to stay at arms length through almost the entire transaction. For most people real estate is the single largest purchase they’ll ever personally experience. Throw in the emotional dimension of a place called “home” and the whole thing is fraught with issues.

I’m bringing this up because I went by my house-in-waiting this morning to get some measurements, look at a bit of furniture the sellers are interested in being rid of, and to make sure the truck actually fits into the garage (Yeah, that’s actually a thing with a large truck and a standard size garage). Unlike the other showings and the inspection the seller was there. So was his son. So was his daughter-in-law. They all seem like nice enough people – the son and his wife apparently live a couple of streets over so we’re even quasi-neighbors. Despite that, I’m still the guy who chiseled them down to a rock bottom price and then presented a longish, but reasonable, list of repair requests on a house, their home, that the seller and his departed wife designed for themselves from the basement up. But there we all were standing in their living room (that in about three weeks will be my living room) making small talk while I made snap decisions about their furniture and then wandered from room to room with a tape measure and clipboard figuring out where my own furniture will fit. The whole experience was just awkward.

It needed to be done, but the whole thing just felt so very odd… and I’m pretty sure I’ve come to the preemptive decision that I will never even consider a sale “by owner.” I have enough weird in my life without adding that to the mix. For this one small thing, the realtor is worth every penny of their commission.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. I’m trying to buy a house. I understand that there are effectively hundreds of bits of paper that I need to sign. As a matter of procedure, though, it’s not a good idea to send me a dozen of them and then disappear. When I email you, then follow up with a voice message, then follow up again the next day, and then email again the day after that and still get nothing in way of response, you can reasonably expect to assume it’s not looking good for your company to retain my business much longer. I tend not to make unreasonable requests and I’m Johnny-on-the-spot getting things done on my end, so expecting the same of the companies I engage to work on my behalf doesn’t feel like a big ask.

2. Today is the first official “snow day” for my office this year. “Free” days off are always something I appreciate whenever they occur. Of course even being an “off” day I find myself up and moving well before the crack of dawn, but it’s my time and that makes it OK. Unlike other people who would just take the day and enjoy it for what it is, my mind is already turning towards thoughts of “Damn. It’s only Thursday… I wonder what the chances of getting tomorrow off too will be?” Maybe it’s just my nature to never be quite satisfied with something good… but seriously even a full scheduled day of work tomorrow will mostly be a lot of people milling around waiting for the weekend to start – and the level of disinterest only increases if there would happen to be a few-hours worth of delayed opening.

3. Maggie is an emotionally needy dog. She has been since the day I brought her home. I have a share of the blame here, of course, since I’ve always let her get away with it. Since the boxes have come out, though, it’s been even worse. Even though there is no sign of “moving” anywhere here on the main living floor, she’s attached to my hip even more than usual. At the moment that translates into sitting on my foot with her chin on my knee while I type this with one hand and scratch her ears with the other. So I’m an enabler. Yet another reason I’ll be glad to have this entire process over and done with. Settling back into “normal” will be a good thing.

The realm of the possible…

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Since I’m in between moving estimate appointments it feels like a good time to jam a blog post into the day. It’s been a big one here at the Rental Casa de Jeff. After the requisite dose of coffee I spent the better part of three hours extracting boxes from their long term storage spot in the crawl space. At least half of them were still full – and taped shut – from the move back to Maryland from Memphis. I’ll be curious to see what it was I paid to haul a 3rd of the way across the country yet haven’t touched for almost five years. Personally I’m rooting for pirate treasure, but I have a terrible feeling it’s going to be a dozen boxes of plain junk. At least the crawl space is empty and the basement is 2/3 the way along towards being packed out.

In the last two weeks I’ve been making an effort to cut down in all the extraneous spaces – the office, basement, guest bedroom. If I pushed I could have all three finished in an afternoon. That leaves the living spaces we occupy as the next items on the hit list. My bedroom is a spartan affair. No more than an hour or two of work there. The living room is the same story. Two or three medium boxes and all the rest is furniture. That leaves the kitchen as the last redoubt. It’ll go into boxes as late in the process as possible. By the end of the week, I should even have several estimated costs of having someone show up and haul it all a few miles down the road. On the packing front at least I feel like I’m running ahead of the curve.

The documentation is even coming together. My mortgage approval came through this afternoon. The appraisal came in better than expected and more importantly with no lender-required repairs. I’m throwing electronic reams of paper back and forth with the closing attorney. I’m just trying to stay on top of Mount Paperwork in hopes that we can get to settlement at the end of the month as smoothly as possible. It’s one of those rare times that being a natural born worrier seems to be paying off. No one has asked for anything I can’t dredge out of Ye Olde Electronic Files. Being an electronic pack rat does have an occasional upside.

There are still 1,276,384 details to be worked out between now and the closing table, but on the whole it’s feeling less intimidating today. It’s entered the realm of the possible.

Books…

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One of the first things I do at the start of every move is box up the contents of two large bookshelves. They’re the “quick hit” to get the process started and they’re not going to be something I can’t live without for the month or so it’s going to take me to get them unboxed and back into their proper place. As part of my current “ask the blogger” segment, someone asked what the books were and why I’d bothered hauling them around across 10,000 road miles and 15 years. There’s a story there, but I’m not sure it’s a particularly interesting one.

I’ve never counted the exact number of physical books I still have – at 13 boxes I’d guess somewhere in the neighborhood of 175-200. Measured by weight it’s got to be something on the order of 3,729 metric tonnes. Since I’ve loved books since long before the Kindle came along, they’re something I’ve acquired over a lifetime of reading. I’ve purged the collection before many moves and seem to have it down to a core group that I just can’t bring myself to part with. They’re mostly biographies and histories – covering everything from Cicero to the Iraq War. There’s a much smaller mix of historical fiction and the occasional “classic” a la Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, and 1984.

As someone pointed out there are these buildings called libraries where large volumes of books live permenantly. Theoretically I should love libraries, but I’ve always had a hard time with the idea of giving a book back once I was done with it, especially the once I’ve found interesting or meaningful. The habit has gotten easier since the rise of the e-reader, but that doesn’t do anything about the stack of bound paper I already have.

I have a tendency to hold on to them for the usual reasons – maybe I’ll need to reference them some day (which I actually have done for more than a few blog posts and while I was working on my last short story). In all likelihood I know the only time most titles will ever leave the shelf is the next time I move. Still, I like the idea of having them. I like the way they look on the shelf. I like the way a room full of books smells. I like the way they feel in my hand.

Plus there’s the one I never talk about – the fact that the furniture has changed, the clothes of changed, the critters I have around change, the locations change, but the books stay the same. Maybe they’re the touchstone; the hearth at the center of what whatever house I happen to be in whenever I get where I’m going.