FIRST POST!!! (from my new house)

Okay, so I didn’t get around to blogging about all my experiences over this, my first week of home ownership, until just now. Chalk it up to my wanting to try to suck the marrow out of my vacation while I had one, given that the majority of it was spent either packing, cleaning the old place, performing the actual move (which took until 10:30pm on the day of the move to actually complete, due to a signature being needed from the mortgage firm that is headquartered in Saskatchewan), or puttering around unpacking and putting this place together.

The house is in pretty damn good shape, for only having had a week to do everything we’ve done so far. The only outstanding major projects we have are to pull up the carpet in the cat-slash-exercise room and replace it with the wood veneer laminate flooring that we pulled up from the old place’s basement, building a bookcase out of my old standing closet thing that I have been dragging with me since moving back from Toronto, putting in the fence so Ginger (our dog) has a place to run around in without being tied to a leash (poor Ginger Pie isn’t used to being a leash dog at all), and maybe finally getting around to sorting all the nuts, bolts and screws I have all over my work table in my office. And all of those are major projects, but still within reach. We’ll have to get a gate from Kent as I certainly can’t build one myself out of the materials provided here (quite inexpensive though, thankfully), and the floor replacement can definitely wait because at this stage in the game, we’ve only had to lock the cats up one night (last night, specifically) for being too noisy after we’d gone to bed.

The old place is all cleaned up, and the out inspection is scheduled for tomorrow night. I plan on going over to visit one of the co-op members to do a bit of pro bono computer maintenance, in compensation for some handyman work he’s done for us in the past. There was a bit of a scene when the headstrong 75-year-old neighbor did his level best to kick us out of the apartment as soon as humanly possible, and at the last meeting (which was yesterday), he tried to ensure that our unit didn’t get a vote due to our upcoming departure, despite my being paid til the end of the month and having been not only in good standing, but having singlehandedly paid off all previous debts owing on the unit prior to my arrival. The man had a grudge against our unit simply because he wasn’t able to evict Jodi’s mom, as well as being unable to lord anything over me except for having loaned a few tools which were returned in a timely fashion. At any rate, his effort failed, and upon seeing that not only had his committee on suggesting tenants been denied a tenant recently (mostly due to him trying to push the tenant through without anyone being any the wiser that that same tenant had once been evicted for having been over six months in arrears for rent), but also that the person he was trying to take a parting swing at was going to get a vote despite him, he declined the position of co-op president that he had himself put in an application earlier in the month. He knew which way the winds were blowing, and that his bid would fail since, as I did the numbers prior to the meeting, I would have been the deciding vote.

Anyway, that bit of long-winded, rambling schadenfreude aside, so far so good. There are some quirks of the house that are going to take some adjustment, though. The land seems to have a habit of collecting a good deal of water by the back of the house, near the shed, which as I understand will be the land owners’ job to build a trench to drain some of it back off to the street. I might have to put in some gutters to guide the water away, which might help the situation somewhat. Also, the water pressure seems to leave much to be desired. I’ve been trying to draw a bath, and it was a third full when I started this post, and is only half full now. I’m definitely going to have words with the land owners about that as soon as I can get a hold of them. You could go down to their office twenty times during the course of a month, all during their ostensible hours of operation, and you’ll see signs of life maybe three times if you’re lucky. I tried dropping them an e-mail, which they were more than happy to answer promptly when I was just a potential buyer, but now that I’m in the lot, they’re doing less than their part to respond in any semblance of a timely manner.

Getting back to work was a bit of a difficult thing to have to cope with, as well. It’s not easy to have only a week off, even less so when you feel like you’ve done nothing but work the whole time, just maybe not for the company. I played a good deal of catch-up today, where everyone seemed to have problems not unlike me walking into a triage unit dealing with a dozen or so bleeding patients in various degrees of battle-damage. The covers did an admirable job dealing with what they could remotely, but as nobody was local to handle the hands-on stuff, a good deal of work piled up. I got through the majority of the important stuff today, though, so tomorrow should hopefully see a bit more work on the long-term projects again.

My ability to put in a solid day of work was significantly hampered by the timing of what was supposed to be my housewarming party over the weekend — originally slated for Saturday, very few people showed up (only Clifton, Jodi’s friends Mark and Sara, and Kelly from work), the smaller, more private gathering I had planned for those antisocial types in my circle of friends became the real deal housewarming party instead.  I probably drank a bit more than I should have, meaning I was dragging and in need of coffee much of the day.  Not hangover territory, but definitely not a fantastic way to start my first Monday back to work after a week’s “vacation”.

Anyway, that’s the gist of my life state now.  The bath is at almost 2/3 full, so I’ll go soak in that for a while.  (It’s a big tub, but damn, the water was only a trickle.  I don’t recall it being so low at other times in the day, and especially not when we came to tour the place when it was on the market.)

What’s everyone else up to anyway?

{advertisement}
FIRST POST!!! (from my new house)
{advertisement}

9 thoughts on “FIRST POST!!! (from my new house)

  1. 1

    Congratulations man! I’ve been thinking about home ownership for a while. I kept telling myself I had to find a place I wanted to buy in. Well I think I have, Vancouver. The only problem is that I couldn’t afford a house here even if I were to some how marry into the Lohan family. The cost of living here is ridiculous, and it keeps on building up for the olympics. Lets just pray after 2010 the market out here plummets and I can get in cheap!

    Your house sounds awesome! You should try to set up a open source security system!

  2. 3

    Oh, right.

    ALL OF YOU SUCK. Except Clifton, Mark, Sara, Kelly, and those people that showed up on Sunday instead.

    I’m totally going to put together a picture album of the place as soon as I can. Or maybe a video tour or something.

    Kyle, you don’t want to marry into the Lohan family, not without permanently grafting a full body condom or ten onto yourself for self-preservation’s sake.

    You’ve got my gears turning, a few magnets on metal blocks on the windows and door frames could make for a very simple home intrusion alarm… you know, wired up to a parallel port, the computer could be programmed to alarm on the circuit being broken if you don’t first go to the computer and unlock a particular window. I’d have to do something a bit more convenient for the front door, though. Wiring up a little panel might not be too difficult either. Definitely worth thinking about, not that I’ll have any kind of time in the near future.

  3. Me
    5

    CLIFTON!!!!!! The blind rage belongs to ME! As Tibo so eloquently demonstrated with his weak and feeble you suck line.

    TIBO! Congrates on the new place. I know that for you this is huge and life altering and you’ve earned it.

    To the lazy worthless fuckers that didn’t show up to the housewarming, be lucky that Tibo isn’t upset otherwise I might feel inclined to hunt you all down and explain to you in excruciating detail just how I feel about your poor manners. Instead I shall curse you all with my favorite Arabic curse. May you know nothing but female children for 7 generations and may the fleas of a thousand camels infest the face of thy firstborn.

  4. 6

    Yeah. I talk a good talk about expressing blind rage, but I just don’t feel it. Far too mellow for that. I leave the blind rage gig to my surrogates, such as the inestimable Bob. Anyway, I was happy with the gathering on Sunday, and since it came after the supposed “real” housewarming party, it was a bit of a rage-dampener.

    I love that curse. Good luck marrying off your firstborn flea-ridden girl child, and if you survive to generation 2 because of that first bit, the rest of your line is going to be damned ugly.

  5. 7

    hahahahahahaha
    Oh Bob, I enjoy you immensely. If we were still dealing with the situation at our old place I may have considered hiring in your expertise to take care of one very nasty old Irish man. He’s already spent 75-80 miserable years on this planet I think it would be happier without him.

    I’m also loving our new house, yay us 🙂 All of the people to whom the blind rage was not aimed are welcome to come back any time for dinner or drinks or wii or poker (boo we didn’t get to play poker, again). We have a wonderful kitchen now and we want to use it! 😀

  6. Me
    9

    Damn… Clifton being nice to me. How can I insult him after that.

    Thanks dude, I appreciate the kind words. And I’m not done with them yet. I have a lot more to write. There will be a novella coming, to be published on the internet.

Comments are closed.