Category Archives: Moving

Licensed and Registered…

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After the two hour ordeal that was my second trip to the local driver’s license issue facility, I’m now all nice and official like and in compliance with all applicable state and local laws. God willing, I should now be able to have the bare minimum contact with these lovely government officials for three years… That should be sufficient to recover from the indignity of it all.

I have a dear friend who is fond of pointing out that in a democracy, the people are sovereign. If what I have seen over the last two days is a true cross section of the people, the Republic is doomed. May God have mercy on our souls.

Getting there…

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I’m please to report that everything here seems to be coming together. Most of the boxes are unpacked now and rooms are starting to take on something approaching the way I’d like them to look. Of course there are still the details to handle; the pictures to hang, the boxes of trinkets to place, figuring out how the hell to cover the ridiculously oversized window in the dining room.

What I’ve noticed is that trips to Home Depot take on a new significance now. Around every corner is something to drool over. While I have always delighted in the utilitarian excess of places like Home Depot, I never got a special tingle going there when I was living in the apartment.

I’m going to try uploading some new pictures in the near future so I can prove that I’m actually making progress down here. I don’t think Memphis will ever be “home,” but it definitely feels better now that there’s more here than me and an air mattress.

Twice as long…

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Happily, I can report that my feud with Best Buy has been concluded satisfactorily. I have my appliances and a $25 gift card. I wasn’t actually trying to get a freebie from the corporate customer service office, but I’ll take it.

I am now the proud owner of a ridiculously large black refrigerator. The down side – and you knew there had to be one – is that the water dispenser in the door seems to have a slow and annoying leak. I’ve taken a deep breath and will hold on to see if it is something that will resolve itself as the seals and piping acclimatize to the cold. We’ll see…

Based on the experience so far, I’m not optimistic that will go according to plan. I may be a little jaded because as I picked up one end of the couch yesterday to move it out of the way, one of the legs fell off. Normally this is something I can fix myself, so I flipped the couch over to find that, in fact, the screws that are supposed to hold it to the frame were all stripped. I’m not going to go on a rant about using the right tool for the right job or anything here, but still. So, next Thursday, I’m going to loose another afternoon sitting around waiting on the furniture company to send out one of their “expert repairmen.” That should be interesting.

I have always heard the old saw that when it comes to home ownership everything takes twice as long and costs twice as much as estimated. While I haven’t really been surprised by the cost of things, I have found that everything really does take at least twice as long as it seems it should. Actually, twice as long may be a bit of a low-ball estimate.

Still, with all that being said, I am incredibly grateful and fortunate to have this place. Somewhere along the line, perhaps I’ll learn patience and tolerance of the stupid… But don’t hold your breath.

First Night…

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You don’t realize how much time you spend sitting down until you don’t have anything to sit on. There’s the floor, of course, but in the final analysis, you just sitting on the floor looking at four bare walls. Not exactly what I was planning on doing tonight. Instead, I’ve spent most of the afternoon and evening hanging blinds. I know that it’s something that needs done, but I would have preferred to spend the first night sitting on the couch, watching TV, and possibly even drinking a beer. I’ve spent the day on my feet and at 9:30 CST, I’m beat… Looks like its time to inflate the bed.

Missing my furniture, cable television, and internet access aside, closing came off without a hitch. The biggest upset of the day was that either I forgot to tell them or Home Depot forgot to order blinds for my frigging giant dining room window. Not a huge deal, but until I manage to get something to cover it, you can see straight through the house. I have as much of a voyeurism streak as anyone, but not when I’m staring in the picture.

Living room furniture and the cable guy are coming tomorrow (Friday) sometime. At least I hope they are. The furniture store called this afternoon to confirm the delivery, but I made the appointment with Comcast almost a month ago and neglected to call and follow up to confirm the installation. I’m hoping for the best, because God help me, the prospect of spending the next five days without TV or the internet is terrifying beyond words.

I’m not dead yet…

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OK, so I’ve been told by those whose advice and wise counsel I trust implicitly that my last post sounded more like a funeral oration than the heartfelt farewell I was trying to hit. I don’t suppose I have to confess that the move has me a bit bewildered and out of sorts. As much as I have moved, it should be old hat by now, but it never really seems to go that way.

I think a large part of my melancholic tone can be attributed to the fact that in the days leading up to Christmas, I was stuck mostly thinking about the future rather than doing something to actually carry out the plan. Now that I’m here in Memphis waiting to close, and the boxes are all on a truck somewhere between here and Maryland, I’m feeling much better. I’m ready to tear in and actually do something.

There are things back in Maryland left undone that I wish I would have been able to get to. There are family and friends I will miss horribly. But tonight, there is new ground stretched out in front of me. There is a new way ahead to forge. There are nearly unlimited possibilities. And that makes me a happy camper.

Moving on…

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Blogger’s Note: The following is a verbatim copy of an email sent under the same subject line. If you didn’t get the original email, please accept my apologies, as apparently, I have not been keeping up with several of your email address changes. Exclusion from the original distribution was not and intended slight in any way or fashion. – JDT

Friends, Family Members, and Sundry Others who have made it to the Distribution List,

As many of you know, it is nearly time for me to say goodbye to Maryland for the greener pastures of Tennessee, but I couldn’t let the occasion pass without saying a few words. To say I part with mixed emotions doesn’t do justice to the raging tides of excitement and uncertainty that I am feeling at the moment.

The last year and a half has been a busy one for me, as I know it has been for many of you as well. Time marches on as they say, and things seem to have a way of slipping away before you really know it has happened. I have not kept in touch with some of you as regularly as I would have liked or taken the time to visit as often as I should have. I regret that and can only express my gratitude for your patience and your indulgence.

Each one of you means more to me than you know and although I have always had difficulty expressing it, you have all helped make me the man that I am today. In some cases you may not exactly think that is a compliment. I assure you, it is.

The next time you have an inexplicable craving to spend an evening in a smoky blues bar or backwater barbeque joint, look me up and then plan a road trip. As long as I have a roof, you’ll have a place to stay.

While my time here grows increasingly short and the thousand and one details of planning a move are again demanding my attention, I did want to stop and take this brief opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and an extraordinarily bright and happy New Year.

Home Station…

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I’m back in the People’s Republic of Maryland for the next week and a half. For anyone who may be interested, the rough plan is to head back to the old homestead some time next Saturday and putz around up there through Christmas, either heading back to the EC very late Monday night or very early Tuesday morning. I’m hoping to have the movers here on Wednesday to clear out the apartment and drive all day on the 28th so I can be back in Memphis to meet the new furniture and appliance delivery people on the 29th.

Christmas is hereby cancelled due to lack of available daylight. The holiday will be reinstated with all rights, privileges, and family activities in 2007.

Happy friggin’ holidays, people.

This old house… again…

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I don’t know what it is that makes me stand in the center hall of an turn-of-the-century house, knowing the back third of the foundation is currently being held up by jacks, that the back porch is quite literally in danger of falling off, and that the entire second floor joist system needs reinforced, and think… I can fix this.

Sure, the place has 16 foot ceilings on both floors, bedrooms that have more square footage than my apartment, and a room downstairs that screams to have floor-to-ceiling book shelves installed, but it also has a bathroom in what should be the butler’s pantry, walls where doors should be, and a kitchen upstairs in what, apparently was once an apartment…. And then there is the location… on the old maple-lined main street, in a neighborhood that has been placed on the National Register, a block from the town square and it’s hundred and fifty year old courthouse.

The asking price is low, in part because of the work that needs done… not quite a gut-job, but close (kitchen, bathrooms, several walls, etc. need go, second floor needs to be reinforced)… but also because the old lady who now owns the place wants to sell to someone who will bring her childhood home back in line with the rest of the neighborhood. The price is low enough, actually, to probably do $100,000 restoration and still be safely inside the margin if I had to resell within a few years.

I know I can bring the fiduciary resources to bear, but can I bring the time and patience to live in a construction zone, with a microwave, hotplate, and “hand shower,” while the contactor guts the electrical, bathrooms, and kitchen, does the structural work, and gets everything to a point where I can do the finish work?

It’s a hell of a project… and could be a hell of a house. Of course I could buy one of the smaller places in the same neighborhood that have already had the heavy lifting done. They wouldn’t quite be in the same “prominent” place in town, but still in the historic district… and more or less ready to move in.

The handwriting is pretty much on the wall that I will be moving here in the next six months and I think I have settled in on an area that could easily be home. Now I just need to stop looking at home improvement pornography and figure out what I can realistically accomplish.

Lust in my heart…

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Again. Being with me on a Saturday morning down here is a bit like being on a grail quest. I’ve convinced myself that the perfect old house is out there, somewhere, taunting me just over the horizon with it’s agonizingly French accent. It takes a leap of faith to make an offer on a house. Making an offer on a house in a state when I don’t yet technically have a job is more like taking a header into the Gorge of Eternal Peril. Yet somehow I think it’s what I am about to do.

This house was the second of three I visited today and was the only one that was ever really in the running. I could go into several long diatribes about the evil things people do to old houses, but that will wait for another night.

Suffice to say that the pictures don’t come close to doing justice to this place. At 106 years old, she was built when Victoria sat the throne of the British Empire and William McKinley was President of the United States, gutted in the last five years with all major electrical, plumbing, and mechanical systems replaced, 2000 square feet put under fresh roof, floors refinished, original trim restored… and for sale at the asking price of $135,000 in a sleepy Southern town of 10,000 (more on the town will follow).

I’m plotting and planning… with a healthy dose of self-doubt and second guessing… the path that wends its way through giving up my seldom visited apartment, moving a substantial amount of “stuff” into dad’s basement and setting up temporary quarters in his guest room to use when I’m required to be in Washington, and finally arrives at buying a house in commuting distance of a job I might actually be assigned to three months from now.

It all sounds perfectly mad and if I weren’t living it, I would probably think I had finally gone ‘round the bend. I’ve had incredible luck with finding places to hang my hat in the past…. Sweet Jesus, I hope it holds for one more round.

You can’t see it, but I’m knocking on wood out here, folks. 😉