Tag Archives: Moving

A little less moldy…

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It’s a little less moldy here at Casa de Jeff tonight. The mold remediation company was here today. They appear to have done all the right things so far. The offending drywall was cut out, fungicide was sprayed, and things are airing out as we speak. A cursory (and completely uneducated) look around doesn’t appear to show any mold intrusion into the wood. This is a good thing and makes me at least a little optimistic that soon the drywall will be back up and I’ll be able to finish shoving stuff around the basement and make it into something approaching usable space… or at least let it be halfway organized storage.

With starting back to work this week, I have to confess that I haven’t made any real progress on sprucing things up here or even putting much more away. That seems like something that’s going to be reduced to a box-at-a-time pace for the foreseeable future. I’d at least like to have everything upstairs finished. The basement can be out of site and out of mind almost indefinitely, but the real living space still needs some work. I should probably knock off the blogging and get back after it.

Back to good…

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Since life is starting to take on some semblance of normalcy again, I thought it was probably time to get back to posting more than whatever passing through wandered into my head. I wasn’t able to get into the trials and tribulations of moving in the level of detail I had hoped to cover, but I think in the next few posts I’ll be able to come up with a nice summary. The fact is, I didn’t remember moving being this traumatic (or time consuming), though in fairness, the last moving from an apartment into a house doesn’t take much effort. Moving into a rental after being use to your own place is a whole different version of complicated… Especially when the place was not quite ready for prime time when you walked in the door. The Previous tenant’s junked out Expedition is still sitting in the driveway waiting to be hauled away. The gas company still hasn’t delivered bottled propane for cooking. And of course there’s always the basement mold issue. I’m doing my level best not to go ape shit crazy about these issues, but I know if either of my properties were ever turned over to a new tenant in the condition this place was in, there would be a property manager looking for a new client. It’s a piss poor business practice and tells me all I need to know about who I’m dealing with.

Thoroughly annoying as those issues are, It’s time to focus on actually going to work tomorrow. No, I haven’t forgotten that I actually came here for a new job… Though that’s sort of ancillary to being back on the East Coast. I haven’t had a “first day” since 2003 so it should be an interesting experience. I’m glad I in-processed last week. At least the agony of the paperwork drill is mostly out of the way.

This old house…

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So far since Monday, I’ve moved into a house that wasn’t completely painted, still had some of the previous tenant’s furniture in the basement, has a junked out Ford Expedition in the driveway, and now has a mold problem in the basement. Roll that into checking in with the new job and trying to sort out a tractor-trailer’s worth of stuff and it’s been trying. Don’t get me wrong, I’m completely grateful to be back in the fold, but a smoother transition would have been a real perk. It won’t seem like much in a few weeks, but just now it’s been a real pain in the ass.

Last…

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No in depth discussion tonight. No rants. No raves. Just a guy ready to catch a few hours of sleep before loading up the dogs (and the air mattress) and heading east. It’s been a long time coming. I’ll miss the house… And even a few of the people I’ve met here, but it’s time. I’m ready.

Brass tacks…

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For those of you following along at home, the great packing saga of 2011 is coming down to brass tacks. By this time tomorrow, the only thing not boxed will be the cable modem and sundry electronic gear… and by this time Monday, everything should be on a truck and headed in a north easterly direction. I’m sticking in town for a couple of extra days to wrap up the loose ends, but have every intention of being on the way myself by Wednesday. There’s still a metric crapload of things that need to get done between then and now, but for the first time, I’m starting to feel like I’ll have it all done by the time I collapse tomorrow night.

I’m going to do my best to keep posting throughout this ordeal, but if things go dark around here for a couple of days, you’ll know that I misplaced some charging cables or accidentally sent my modem with the movers. Stay tuned, this story is about to get interesting.

What you do when you catch it…

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Between stressing out over getting a job (and getting away from the one I have now), packing, getting a property manager/tenant, actually moving, finding someplace new to live, and not sliding into bankruptcy in the process, I’m going to need a vacation before I even think about being productive somewhere new and different. Then again, being officially productive will be such a different experience than I’ve had lately that it might be a tonic all by itself.

The one thing that I didn’t expect about finally getting what I’ve been after for the better part of a year was that I’d be absolutely exhausted when it happened. I’m not complaining, mind you – Just observing that at some point, I’m going to sit down and sleep for three days straight. Hopefully not in the middle of a 900 mile drive… but it won’t be long after that.

This isn’t the weekend for rest. By Sunday night, everything not in a box will be in a Hefty bag at the curb. It’s time to get gone.

It’s like House Hunters in reverse…

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One of the least entertaining aspects of moving is the fact that I’m about to be the owner of two homes that there’s virtually no chance of my ever living in again. That sounds ok at first blush. Property is property, right? The real estate market always comes back, right? Right? That’s not really the down side, though, as at least intellectually, I know that at some point in the future I will be able to sell at least at the break even point. The real kick in the teeth is that at least for the forseeable future (5 years under current laws), one of these houses counts as a pure liability no matter how good a money make it is as a rental property. It seems that the fine people who make the laws and implementing regulations have decided that rental income doesn’t count as real income (except for tax purposes) until it’s been actively rented for at least five years. What that really means is that I can’t use the rental income from the house here to help me qualify for a loan on a new house. Don’t worry, though. The government is happy to treat the those funds just like regular income for tax purposes, so they’ll be sure to get their cut. Awfully nice of them, don’t you think?

I’m pretty ok with needing to rent when I get back to Maryland. Alot has changed in five years and I’m not really an expert in the northeastern part of the state. Having some time to feel out the area is probably for the best. It would still be nice to know I’d be in a position to buy if the right property and the right price happened to come along. Not much chance of that. It seems mortgage companies are a little skittish these days about writing four mortgages on a single income. Go figure.

All on the home front isn’t doom and gloom, though. It seems the property manager I’ve hired has been doing strong work in the last few days. She called tonight with a strong lead on someone who is very interested in getting into the place as soon as I can manage to get my stuff out of here. Since it hasn’t made the listings yet, I’m hopeful that’s a good sign for getting someone in here and paying the bills quickly. The mortgage writers might not consider it real income, but their accounts receivable department will sure thinks it’s the real deal. That’s a box I’ll be extraordinarily happy to have checked as quickly as possible.

Taking down the tech…

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After finishing what was left of the packing in the garage, I grudgingly turned my attention this evening to the tech. The cinema screen monitor is safely tucked in its box. The printer is surrounded by packing peanuts. The wires are unstrung and zip-tied. The office is pretty much down to a desk and a laptop – which is the bare bones requirement to make it through the rest of the week. I don’t have it in me to disconnect the cable modem just yet, though. I’ll need the high speed right up to the bitter end. Some things a civilized person just shouldn’t be expected to live without. One more step down on the long road home. Now it’s down to the kitchen, the dog’s room (yes, they have their own room). Pull the sheets off the bed, disconnect the living room TV and it’s showtime.

I’ve got to admit that this whole moving things is harder than I remember it being. Nothing goes as quickly as I think it should. Something I need is always in another room or requires one more trip to pick up more boxes, or tape, or packing paper. Then again, the last time I did it, I was leaving a one bedroom apartment. Is it Monday yet? I’ll feel better when all this gear is on a truck and headed east.

Things I should be doing…

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There are something like a million and a half things I should be doing rather than sitting here tapping out an update. The nice men are coming with a big truck on Monday to cart away everything that I can’t jam in my own truck for the 900 mile drive east. The good news is the checklist is turning green at a nice pace. The bad news, of course, is that the big ticket items are still red or just barely amber. Not time to hit the panic button yet, but definitely time for some moderat spazzing out. I’d probably feel better if there was a little less stuff sitting around waiting to go into boxes. Of course the down side is that it’s the things I’m still using that are sitting around waiting to get put into boxes. I mean I still have to live here for another week, right? How does one resolve the OCD need to have everything nicely packed before noon on Sunday with the need to not spend the next five day sitting quietly with my hands folded waiting for Monday?

I’ve got some good leads on potential places to live, but have decided the better plan at the moment is to obsess needlessly about one thing at a time… and at the moment, that one thing is closing the loop on whatever I need to do to get outta Dodge on time.

Stuff…

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I’m not a horder. I’m a neat freak (thanks for passing on that family trait, mom). Knowing that I have a place for everything and everything is generally in its place begs the question, where did the boxes and boxes of stuff now filling every room in the house come from? Seriously. If there’s a flat surface in the house, it’s got boxes stacked on top of it. And the worst is yet to come. I still haven’t attached the kitchen in anything like a meaningful way. My closet and bathroom and still pretty solidly intact. And I haven’t even contemplated bringing down the vast grid that networks my TV to my computer to my phone. The cabling alone will probably needs its own box… with everything zip-tied and neatly labeled, of course, so I can reconstitute the network right out of the box as soon as I actually find a place to live. So yeah, food, bathroom, and network, those are the things I have deemed essential to life and those that will be the last to find their way into the growing mountain of boxes and crates (remember the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Arc?).

The last time I moved, I had enough “stuff” to nominally fill a one bedroom apartment. I think it’s safe to say that I could probably make life livable in several of those now. I know that at some point I’ve had to hand carry all of this stuff into the house, but I can’t for the life of me remember where most of it came from. I suppose knowing where it’s going is really the important part.