moominmuppet

Well, crap.

Sick.

Me, Grafton, Becca, probably everyone else sooner or later. Nasty
cold; Grafton and I are sucking down dayquil, hacking up our lungs,
and watching Tank Girl instead of getting anything productive done.
We had to escort this morning -- I'd been trying to keep us off the
schedule this month, due to the move, but we were too short on people.
At least it rained on the protesters. That always makes me smile.

We stopped by the new place afterwards. I hadn't seen it in a few
days, and they've gotten a hell of a lot done. Carpet pulled up in
both houses, working on cleaning up the floor in prep for the laminate
flooring we found on sale at Home Depot (score!). Back house down is
going to take a lot of work; it's in the worst condition by far.
Getting the nasty old carpeting out is a huge step, though, and Liv's
a powerhouse, so it's moving fast. We need to schedule a duct
cleaning ASAP. Ick. We also need to check the ReStore for doors,
rather than buying new, if possible. We'll need four, ideally. Top
priority is the door to separate off Liv's suite from Bec and Jer's
downstairs space. We also need a locking door for the comic vault.
And a regular door for becca's studio, as well as a new one for where
we're going to punch through and reconnect the upstairs and downstairs
internally (cold toes in winter are no fun! Inside access is the goal
for everything, once we eventually build the deck/three season
room/greenhouse/whatever it ends up being between the two houses). I
picked up all new smoke detectors, CO detectors, and fire
extinguishers today, too. How does anyone ever get this shit done
without a seven-person team? Damn, I'm really appreciating that right
now.

We made the now-daily Home Depot stop after hitting the house for
measurements, and we now have preliminary supplies for sealing off the
front house "pit" (inside motorcycle parking that also opens directly
onto a crawl space). We'll eventually put Becca's scooter-to-be there
(although the temptation to make it a ball pit is _huge_), but we have
to get it sealed off from the crawlspace before the critters move in.
We also bought the gate for the back yard so Jeremy will have a
parking space. We've got enough laminate to do Liv's room, but the
rest of the back house is going to be bare subfloor for a bit (we also
need to build super-heavy-duty shelving for Jer's comic boxes), so I
picked up a cheap area rug for it -- it's the last area we need to get
habitable, so that'll do for the moment. Caleb's working on getting
his basement studio/bar set up. Carpet from upstairs has been moved
down there to cover the area and dampen the sound some. I also picked
up some coax cable, some indoor/outdoor rated Cat 5e, and crimpers,
and I'll finally be able to run our own cabling again for coax, data,
and phone, as necessary. That makes me ridiculously happy. When I
was working for Kenyon, I got used to having RJ-11 and RJ-45 crimpers
on hand, and they always came in so handy for household projects. We
want to hardwire most of the house(s), since Jer's X-box requires
hardwiring, Caleb wants hardwiring for the media server, and just in
general, it's nice and reliable. We'll still have wireless, too. And
we upped our data package through Time Warner, so once they get it
connected, we should run a bit more smoothly than we have been here at
the old place.

Mark's agreed to tackle cleaning and repairs on the old place, as we
get more and more cleared out. That's a big load off, and it'll leave
the place is really good shape for Eddie (our generally awesome
landlord). I'm going shopping tomorrow with Missy (the upstairs back
tenant who's still working on moving out). We've made a deal that
instead of her moving her appliances out of a second floor apartment,
and me moving new ones in, I'm going to buy her replacements at 80% of
the price she paid for them two years ago. It's a good deal for both
of us, and solves the problem of appliances for Bec and Jer, and gets
Missy free appliance delivery in the middle of August. Not something
to sneeze at. All appliances come with my place, except a dishwasher,
so we're pretty set for the moment. I need to get a fridge for Liv's
suite ASAP, and a stove soon. Washer and Dryer will probably come
later, since we'll have two accessible sets on property already, and
Liv will have keys to everything.

I picked up a wireless doorbell that we're going to attach to the
front gate. We're also moving all the mailboxes up there, although
not right this minute.

Right now is all about the practicalities, but we've also been having
fun brainstorming for future fun projects. Hammock for the front
house living room came up today, as did punching through and adding an
abstract bubble-window in the outer wall of the stairway of the front
house. We've also talked about what kinds of creations we could make
with jungle-gym components doubling as plant trellises. And murals,
and installed art pieces, and all sorts of stuff. Also, I want to
paint the foundation of the houses purple, instead of the grey is it
now. The front house is blue, back house yellow, and purple should
work with both of those, and generally be more fun than grey. There's
a house painted that way on W. 7th that I really like.

So, generally, all is going well, except for the Chest Cold of Doom.
Life is very expensive at the moment, but we'll make it through ok,
and we'll be saving a _lot_ by the end. (Overall equivalent housing
costs of 700/mo for the entire property, vs about 1900, adding what
we're all currently paying for the three apartments, and figuring in
water/sewer, insurance, and taxes on the new place).

Well, let's see how much I can catch up on online before the headache chases me away from the screen again. Nothing I like better than being woken up by an escalating migraine. Suck. Hate.

Still feel like death, and something about the cold has been triggering an obnoxious migraine that I've just finally gotten mostly under control. I've rescheduled with Missy, and today is going to be catching up on silly shows and netflix and sleeping. I'm so glad we worked in a month overlap on the move. It's so much better when rainy days or lung crud don't have to be sources of major stress. At this point I'm almost entirely packed at the old place. My bedroom has one bookshelf left to move out, holding G's last-minute essentials. All the decorations are down and packed in the entire house, everything non-essential removed from the bathroom, all furniture moved to the new place except our living room couches and TV, and 2 more sets of shelves with last-minute essentials on them. The kitchen is about halfway done, and won't take more than an afternoon to finish. The rest of the boxes in the dining room (our staging area) could be moved in two or three loads in Grafton's truck. I haven't tackled most of the basement yet, and that needs to happen soon. But I'm doing well on schedule for everything else, I've got all the utilities switched over, I've filed mailing address changes for all of us, we've got supplies to do at least our first few major projects, and things are moving along.

It's only the 9th, so I think we're doing well. Bec and Jer and Liv are all working on getting packed, although Bec and Jer can't start moving in until Missy moves out this week, and then a day delay for steamcleaning the carpet up there (everything Grafton and I recall of our times up there, it's really in very good, clean shape -- the best of any area in the two houses). But since we sorted out the appliance issue, it's otherwise ready for move-in once she's out. Liv's got a lot more work in flooring and cleaning her area before she can really move in a lot of stuff, so that's a priority. Once Bec, Jer, and Liv are all ready to move, though, I'll rent a moving truck for a day or two, which isn't too expensive, and we'll move it that way. Shouldn't be too horribly bad, if we pull together everyone, and a few additional friends. It's so nice that it's about a five minute drive from one place to the other. Makes multiple trips a really trivial issue.

I can't/won't personally move over there until we're set up enough to bring the critters over, so I'll probably be the last person to move. I need to get started on the catbox area; we're going to use the closet under the front stairs, add a cat door to keep Tarma out, install a fan venting to the outside, and build a custom catbox that fills the floor space and protects the walls at least 12" up. We'll be able to clean it with a small rake of some sort, so we can do it standing up. We've spent lots of time pondering how to make the most durable, least odiferous catbox possible. I think we've got a good plan. No moving the cats over until that's done. I want them trained to it immediately. With eight cats, if one starts going in the wrong places, everyone else will start considering it, too. I'm currently really lucky that we have very minimal problems with that, even with a non-ideal number of catboxes for the number of cats (we have two, side-by-side, that generally get cleaned twice a day -- usual recommendation is as many as you have cats, plus one, and to spread them around the house). Also, it's just a lot easier to work over there without having to worry about critters sneaking out open doors.

Trying to catch up... As usual, partially a list for myself, so I haven't finished reading everything here.

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