Tag Archives: home

A good dream…

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Aside from a couple of spots that are going to have to be backfilled once they settle, the great fence build of 2015 is mission complete. I’m well satisfied, the dogs (even Winston) are doing their best to chase off the rabbits, squirrels, and birds, and for the moment all is right with the world. I won’t go into the vast number of new and interesting landscape projects that this opening effort of the spring fighting season has brought to mind. There’s no end to the brush that needs cut, stumps to grind, and nature that generally needs to be beaten into submission at every turn. This week has already been a damned good start, but I’m all too aware that what I want to get done is likely a project of years and not of weeks or even months.

The up side is that I’m pretty sure I can now, at least in my own mind, justify the cost of a chain saw and maybe even a pole saw if I want to really push the limits of belief. See, all I wanted was a fence… but in the best traditions of home ownership one expense finds a way to bleed seamlessly into the next. That’s the dirty secret of the American Dream that no one ever mentions.

It’s a good dream. A happy dream. But the little bastard will nickel and dime you to death.

Benign oversight…

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I’m sure that watching people build a fence isn’t nearly as tiring as actually building the fence, but after 9 hours of making sure (most of the) posts ended up where I wanted them, I’m just plain worn out. The 300% air-to-pollen ratio and two dogs barking non-stop probably didn’t help with that. I feel guilt even bringing it up, really. After all, I wasn’t the one knocking 30 post holes through tree roots as big around as my forearm. At best, my role today consisted of providing benign oversight, occasionally pointing, and offering access to the bathroom. It wasn’t exactly a backbreaking exercise.

With that said, the project advanced nicely so far. Tomorrow calls for digging about five more holes, hanging the rails, and running wire mesh inside it all. Supposedly it’ll all be wrapped up by closed of business tomorrow. Maybe it is doable, but it feels like something that falls into the category of “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Until then, I’ll just go on about the day trying to remind myself that 4:30 PM isn’t an acceptable adult bed time… Which right about now feels like a real shame.

Fence me in…

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Note: Yes I’m still keeping an eye on Baltimore. Yes I have plenty more to say. No I’m not going to throw it all out at once. No it won’t be an epic rant. Unlike a common street criminal, when I make my opinion known I want it to be well reasoned, articulate, and not hidden behind a mask. In that light, I now restore you to your regularly scheduled Tuesday post.

Roy Rogers sang an old cowboy song that twangingly implores listeners “don’t fence me in.” Not being a range rider, I have no such compunction about the value of good fences. After a call this morning from the contractor, in fact I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of the supplies and manpower to get my fence off the drawing board and into the ground.

Given the terrain changes, visible rock outcroppings, standing trees, and undergrowth they’re going to have to deal with to get the job done, I’m paying through the nose for the privilege of sectioning off a little slice of my portion of the American Dream. I don’t begrudge them a penny of the price, though. They’re going to have some real work to do and fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your perspective) “low bidder” materials aren’t exactly my style.

The fence is the only real construction project I’m planning to take on this year. The master bath renovation, patio pavers, and kitchen tweaking are all on the board, but (mostly) not on any kind of rushed timeline – or really on a timeline at all. They happen when I get around to and funds are available to dedicate to them. The fence, by contrast, is a quality of life issue. Being able to turn the dogs loose at 10PM when it’s pouring rain and staying high and dry on the porch is about as good as it gets. I’ve obviously reached the point in my life where I have mostly small, reasonable dreams.

Based on this morning’s conversation work is on schedule to start next week. Now I just need to live through the load of construction equipment, wire mesh, posts, and rails that will be occupying the driveway over the weekend and things should be all set. All in it’s a small price to pay for what I’ll get in return.

Doesn’t play well with others…

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After spending more hours than I want to admit trying to get a little electronic gizmo that will remain nameless hooked up wirelessly, I’m finally calling it quits. Wired direct to the router, all is well and it works like a champ. Unplugged it just sits there blinking out a steady reminder of its failure to play nicely with my home network.

Maybe it’s because I’ve spent so much of the last ten years entrenching myself in Apple’s near-seamlessly integrated garden, but my tolerance for tech that has to be tinkered with is probably at an all-time low. It’s trite, but I want my gear to come out of the box and just work. Some might call that an unreasonable expectation, but those people are, for lack of a better word, simply wrong. There are any number of companies out there proving that tech doesn’t need to be complicated for the end user. Unfortunately there are even more in business that don’t seem to have much of any regard for providing an elegant solution to whatever problem their device is supposed to solve.

I was looking for a piece that would integrate into what I’ve got already with a minimum of fuss or trouble. What I found is a bit of kit that probably works ok if you’re willing to change or make compromises on the set up you have already. I’m not. That means instead of integration, I’ll be stuck with a standalone solution. In the end I’d rather have to manage two sets of controls and two apps than compromise on functionality.

Take that for what it’s worth.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The first taste of spring. I’ve paid my dues and part of my reward has been “graduating” to a cube next to the windows. Usually that’s a good thing. Except this time of year when the weather finally starts shaking off the winter doldrums, things start greening up, and our courtyard looking more like an ill-tended park than a well-tended prison yard. It’s good to have a view of something, but once the rain stopped this week and the sun came out the view has mostly left me with a feeling that I’d much rather be outside working in the yard (or holding down a stool on one of my favorite deck bars) than sitting here working on version 43 of The PowerPoint Presentation that Will Save the World.

2. Being common. Pretty much everyone I know professionally carries around something called a Common Access Card. The theory behind the CAC is that it would be the one ID card to rule them all. It’s a good idea. Except that it’s not. Although it is ubiquitously common, it provides access to basically nothing. One way you know this is by standing behind a woman at the front door card scanner and watching for almost a minute while she tries to use it to unlock the doors. Even offering up a helpful, “Uh, I think you need to use you other access card for that door” was met with a furious gaze and a firm “No. You have to use your CAC.” Yeah. Fine lady. Don’t mind me while I reach past you to swipe my card so I can actually get to my desk.

3. The yard. One of the reasons I liked the new house so much was that the yard took up a relatively minor space on an otherwise spacious lot. The rest is filled in with reasonably large trees and plenty of undergrowth. The house needs a few odds and ends, but I made my peace with living with it for a while to decide what and how to attack those. The yard on the other hand is probably only a few days – a week at most – from demanding immediate attention. Trimming shrubs, weeding front and back, new mulch, dirt patches to seed where gas and septic have been dug up, areas where grading pushes water towards the house instead of away from it, the eventual fence project, and the general mowing and edging. Assuming the yard stays dry some of those things are going to have to start this weekend with others following on shortly thereafter. I haven’t had the amount of time to plan the attack that I’d have liked. By the end of summer I’ll have it sorted out, but don’t expect progress to be coherent or consistent in any way. Sadly that means it’s going to take more time than expected to bring the outside up to my probably unreasonable standard of “finished.”

The hood…

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I’ve been so busy talking about the house and the move that I feel that I’ve neglected talking about the neighborhood. The new place, as much as I might want it to, does not exist in a vacuum. That being said, this is about as decent a subdivision as I’ve really ever come across. Acre lots are the minimum, with most being a little closer to two. No more than 40% of any lot can be cleared. Translation: Even in areas where the neighbors are closer than you’d like them to be, there are still plenty of trees between you and the next guy so if nothing else you have the illusion of space.

It’s the kind of neighborhood where everyone (except me) is out jogging on Saturday morning. It’s the kind of subdivision where everyone’s trash cans hit the curb at 6AM on the dot. Except mine, of course. I’m the redneck neighbor who throws it all in the back of the truck and hauls it away myself. Everyone has a fire pit instead of a burn barrel. I wonder if I cut a 55 gallon drum in half if it’ll look enough like a “fire pit” to get away with it.

Since the weather was nice and I wanted a chance to eyeball the people living on my left and right, I took a bit of a walkabout this afternoon. In order proceeding from my left it’s mom, dad, and two kids; ditto; mom, dad, three kids; mom, dad, two kids; mom, dad, four kids. That’s where I stopped. I know this because house-for-house ever single homeowner was out doing yard work this afternoon and I tamped down my inner hermit enough to make introductions. It’s almost a company town, with at least one half of most of those couples working for the government in some capacity. The rest are commuting to Baltimore, Philly, or Wilmington. I’m apparently a rare an exotic species in my hood – single without dependent children. Other than that, I’m living the stereotype of exurban bliss.

My friends living in DC or Baltimore would probably find this place as deeply unnerving as I find those cities… but now that I’ve had a weekend of “living” here rather than just spending time taking things out of boxes it feels more and more like the only right choice. I’m over the natural uncertainty of transition and find that I really do like it here.

And I’m not just saying that because the HOA Architectural Control Committee approved my plan to put up a fence in 36 hours. Over a weekend. Clearly these are my kind of people.

Interoperability (or lack thereof)…

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One of the only bit of electronics I haven’t managed to really set up yet is getting all my devices to play nicely with one another yet. The current state of affairs has me forever wondering whether the files I’m looking for are on the desktop, the laptop, the external hard drive, or somewhere in the could. This is obviously an unacceptable situation… and the one that it looks like I’ll spend the balance of the evening trying to wrangle. As much as having the occasional cardboard box sitting around is unpleasant, trying to run the house on tech that isn’t communicating is downright intolerable.

Entrenched and natural…

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I’m glad to say I had the wherewithal this afternoon to make it back to the new house instead of following the well-worn path to the old. Given my tendency towards routine and habits, I’m calling it an accomplishment. While we’re on the topic of habits, I hadn’t quite realized how much being in a new place would though my week-day schedule totally out of whack. I hit all the marks on time (even a few minutes ahead of normal), but couldn’t shake the feeling of being off. I wonder how long it takes for new habits to feel entrenched and natural. By the time they do, it’s probably not something you even notice.

The dogs survived their first day alone at the new place, so that’s something. It’s going to take a while before I’m managing everything quite so well. I’m ready to have a deep, passionate love affair with this house, but it’s going to take some time before I start thinking of it as “home.” I have a funny feeling that getting the last bedroom/current storage area sorted out, unpacking the garage so I can do more than squeeze the truck in, and getting the giant stack of flattened cardboard out of the dining room will go along way towards making that happen.

In the meantime I’ll be trying not to let my OCD take over and remember that sleep is actually a good thing.

A week later…

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image2So I’ve been scarce for a while and I feel badly about that. A week after moving I’d like to report that everything is up and running and normal life has resumed without much of a hitch. As long as you don’t look too closely the house might even give that impression. For the most part flat surfaces are clear(ish), closets aren’t straining their doors, and all the lights and appliances work.

It’s a start. I say start because I still can’t seem to figure out where anything is. I find myself wandering around from room to room alternately forgetting what I was originally looking for and then finding something that I want to put somewhere else. Then, of course, there’s also the “catch all” room that still has boxes stacked around every wall and the dining room that was pressed into service as a temporary cardboard recycling center. The house is clearly reminding me that moving isn’t an event so much as it’s a process – a time consuming, exhausting, madding process.

Aside from the obvious items I knew I wanted to address coming in – reworking the master bathroom, installing a fence, and a few others – the house is busy informing me about other projects that will image1need my attention sooner rather than later. There are grading and drainage issues in the back yard and landscaping that will take a season or two to beat into shape. There is carpet that needs stretched and cleaned. There are approximately 1,372,261 nail holes that need filled and painted. It’s a well put together house, but despite being easily rated move in condition it’s going to be a work in progress for quite some time.

The dogs are slowly setting in to their new routine as well. They’ve adjusted to being lead around on a leash temporarily better than I have to be honest. They’re still barking at every bump and thump when the washing machine runs or the furnace kicks on, but other than that there the move hasn’t caused them any apparent trauma.

I could use another week or two to really get things settled here, but work beckons… which I suppose is a good thing as in a few weeks I’ve got to start paying for this mess.

Feeling settled…

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And here’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for – or at least the moment I’ve been waiting for – the last post (probably) from the house I’ve been renting for the last four years. I moved in basically sigh unseen. My furniture was about 24 hours behind me and it met all the major criteria. Basically it was available immediately and it had a fence. If I had to describe it in a word, I’d say the house as been “serviceable.” I’ve had my troubles with the place, but it’s been a good enough roof over my head and I’m sure next week when I drive past it I’ll look at it a little more fondly that it probably deserves. Sitting here now with boxes piled on every flat surface is not exactly bittersweet – I’m enormously pleased to be leaving – but there have definitely been a few moments of nostalgia this morning. There won’t be time for that tomorrow.

If I’m honest I’m still finding it a little hard to believe I’m a homeowner again. The reality hasn’t quite sunk in yet, although it got a little more real yesterday when two trucks and a trailer’s worth of “stuff” were deposited. George the Russian Tortoise has even taken up residence already so I’ll make at least one trip down this afternoon there to see how he made it through the night. I know it will feel a lot more like mine tomorrow evening when the furniture is basically in place and the dogs are threatening to trip me at every turn. At the moment, even with a few of my odds and ends there, it still feels like a big empty house – someone else’s big empty house. I keep expecting the old owner to wander down the hall and ask what the hell I’m doing in his house.

It feels a little like I’ve been in some stage of moving since I pulled up stakes in Memphis. In fact there are still boxes taped shut from that move that will get loaded on the truck tomorrow. That probably explains a bit about why I’ve never felt entirely settled here. We’re about to resolve that issue… and I can’t wait to get this all behind me so I can get out of a “moving” mode and into a “living” mode.