One day to go. Escrow closes tomorrow.
I was such a fool.
I thought two or three loads with the van today and I would be done – plenty of time for a BBQ tonight.
It’s 22:30, I’m wrapping up my 7th load for the day, and there are two more to go after this.
Twelve-ish hours to go.
Death will not release me.
Filed under Uncategorized
Two days to go. Escrow closes on Tuesday.
Probably 99% of everything is out of the old house. Five or six loads of the remaining “miscellaneous” stuff got brought up to the new house today – probably three or four loads left for tomorrow.
That’s cutting it closer than I had hoped for – I was hoping to have it down to one or two loads for tomorrow. But if my biggest concern is getting the last load done in time to BBQ tomorrow instead of getting the last load done in time to go to work without any sleep on Tuesday morning, we’ll be fine.
Forty-eight hours and counting.
Filed under Castle Willett
Three days to go. Escrow closes on Tuesday.
Probably 98% to 99% of everything is out of the old house. What’s left in there now is a lot of the “miscellaneous” stuff, the odd-sized things that didn’t fit into standard sized boxes, the things that didn’t stack and order easily.
I’m still throwing out an amount of stuff that’s either discouraging or encouraging, depending on your point of view. It’s encouraging that it’s getting thrown out and not continuing to take up space in storage or the new garage – it’s discouraging to think that it probably all could have been tossed out ten years ago or more.
Better late than never.
I’m not getting that “relief” or “rush” that the pop culture cults of decluttering seem to promise as I throw things out. I am getting much more ruthless about sending things off to the landfill after I realize that, despite my disdain for the disposable and consumer-driven culture, it really is faster, easier, and cheaper to toss the old or damaged items rather than try to repair them or salvage them.
I am also finding a number of things that I KNEW were stored away someplace, but couldn’t ever find for years. For example, the controller for my Celestron 5″ telescope.
Finally, I love the things that have me saying, “What the hell is this and who would have given it to me and when, since I sure as hell wouldn’t have every gotten it for myself!!” I’m too embarrassed to even mention the “best in class” here, but it does bring a proper sense of perspective to the whole process.
Seventy-two hours and counting.
Filed under Castle Willett
They’ve vanished.
It’s weird, the first week that we were here you literally could not go outside AT ALL, EVER during daylight and not have at least two or three crows barking at you and flying over to some spot above the yard to keep an eye on you. EVER!
Then we had the wounded crow, and the great shitting all over the bench on our front porch incident, at which point I put a sheet over the bench to protect it. The wounded crow refused to sit on the sheet, hopped over to the neighbor’s yard, and hasn’t been seen in three days.
But all of the other crows vanished with him.
It’s really weird.
Filed under Uncategorized
Five days to go. Escrow closes next Tuesday.
Probably 97% to 98% of everything is out of the old house. Much of it to the new house (which will be lovely when the boxes of stuff piled everywhere have been dealt with), much of it to storage (which will be it’s own little version of semi-functional Hell for a while), and way more than I expected to the trash.
I’ve now filled four of the nine cubic yard bins, with another bin on its way for tomorrow. Not to mention all of the stuff that’s been taken away by the regular trash pickup every Friday, our trash barrels filled to overflowing every week.
And then there are the little surprises…
I OWN A CHAIN SAW!!!
Hell, if I had know that was in there I would have cleaned out that back corner of the garage decades ago!
Filed under Castle Willett, Photography
I hate the ads in Facebook and Twitter with the white hot, fiery passion of a thousand blazing suns. I routinely and automatically, even reflexively, delete and block every ad. Even companies or products or people I support and like get blocked if they start spamming and advertising my feeds.
Every.
Single.
Time.
Never an exception.
Until tonight.
This might finally be the thing stupid enough, tacky enough, tasteless enough, and NEEDED enough to make me break my rules for the first time.
I’m trying to remain strong.
But…
How in THE HELL did Tom Hanks **NOT** win Best Actor in 2001 for “Cast Away?”
What was so freakin’ fantastic that it beat him out for the award?
Russell Crowe in “Gladiator?”
You’ve got to be freakin’ kidding me.
As a side note, yes, it continues to be a really, really, really busy time. It reduces you to the little things, one minute at a time.
Filed under Uncategorized
Edgar had an exciting day. He still hasn’t been seen flying, but he hops from yard to yard. When he’s in our yard he prefers the bench on the front steps, hopping from the back to the arm to the seat.
Edgar has terrible diarrhea.
If you park anywhere under a wire, Edgar’s relatives will shit all over your car in massive quantities.
Filed under Uncategorized
Long-term followers of this site will know that at our old house we had raccoons, lizards, coyotes, skunks, rabbits, hawks, and various other critters roaming about. We’ve only moved a mile away, so I’m not expecting a lot of difference at the new place.
We have seen rabbits, far more than at the old house. There I would often see two, very rarely see four at once – here I came home on Wednesday night and found seven or eight of them at once munching on the lawn.
But by far the most prominent wildlife to date at the new house are the crows. They’re loud, they’re active, there are a lot of them, and they most certainly seem to be territorial and aggressive. Quite often when we go out to the front yard, the pair in the nest across the street will start cawing loudly and fly over to the telephone pole in our yard and let us know they’re there.
Today things turned weird with the crows.
We were spending the day moving stuff from the old house to the new (as well as throwing out a ton of stuff from the old house) and shortly after noon, while being screamed at by the crows, we noticed one of them near the ground in the neighbor’s driveway across the street, sitting on top of their car. It was weird.
Just a few minutes later, as we were leaving the house, this guy appeared on our porch:
He isn’t aggressive at all – he actually appears to be very subdued and possibly injured. The neighbor across the street shouted that she thinks he’s a youngster who’s been hurt or sick, and all of the frantic activity by the other crows is over concern for him.
It was definitely not any kind of normal behavior that I’m aware of in a wild bird, allowing us to get this close to him without so much as a twitch.
We went off and picked up our next batch of stuff, and when we got home, we found him here:
Again, he doesn’t appear to be concerned at all about us, nor does he seem inclined to move or leave. Very, very odd behavior, again leading us to think that he might be sick or injured.
Being that I’m a critter-person and being concerned that this big, beautiful bird might be in distress, I put out a bowl of water and food. The internet says that fruit and whole grains are the best for crows, so a half apple chopped up into what I hope are bite-sized chunks and a handful of Cheerios is the best I’ve got on short notice.
When putting it out, I put a few Cheerios and a chunk of apple right next to him, with the rest on a plate next to the water on the bench seat. Edgar (for so we have named him) watched me, but never moved, never flinched, not even when I put an apple piece and a couple of Cheerios only an inch or so away from his feet.
Sadly, as of right now:
He’s still sitting there, shifting around from time to time, but it doesn’t look like he’s touched his food at all. And if he sits there, a not-so-friendly neighborhood cat could find him easy pickings.
Good luck, Edgar! Eat and drink if you can! Heal! Fly away! Go scream at us from the top of the telephone pole. Maybe you’ll be cussing us out, maybe you’ll be thanking us – we’re good with either.
Update regarding Edgar’s condition to follow as needed…
Filed under Castle Willett, Critters, Photography
That feeling when all you want to do is get some sleep, a lot of sleep, get caught up on sleep without being woken up by stress dreams or fever dreams or a full bladder or leg cramps (most of all by leg cramps!) and when you wake up you want it to all be better so that tomorrow (as being defined as “what happens when I wake up”) is missing all of the really shitty things from today but keeps all of the really good ones.
Not sure you can get there from here.
The only way out is through. Sleep deprived or not.
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Music, Paul
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