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The night before last, Kimberly and I each woke during the night quite cold. In the morning, I stumbled downstairs to set the thermostat up from 65, where it had been during our relatively short summer this year.
An hour or two later, the house was filled with the smell of burning dust, as our floor radiator ate away at the few months worth of debris. Kimberly and I both were red eyed and coughing from the experience.
And that'll probably be the last time.
This morning, I woke to our fourth or fifth cool, gray day in a row, and I felt a sense of melancholy settling upon me. It reminded me of the light case of SAD that I used to fight with early each year until I started taking Vitamin D. But, this was clearly psychological, not physiological: a memory of times past and also a reflection of the future.
There will still be warm pleasant days left, here by the Bay. But the pendulum is clearly swinging back. There are likely more cold days left than warm ones, and our days overall are counting rapidly down.
So, September. I was out of the country until the 8th, and I didn't really get back to working on the move until the weekend of the 14th. Which was about what I expected, and better than it could have been.
But it still means I only got half-a-month of work preparing for our move in one of our last four months.
Our big work in September was a surprise: we got our second big painting job done. Our painting company told us they suddenly had an opening because of another job getting pushed back, and would we like to have them in last week. So Wednesday we got Elder back, painting the interior of our sunroom.
This was the first of two rooms we wanted painting. It has nice woodwork all around the seven windows (extending to two more in my office), but over the years that woodwork had become quite damaged. There was some water damage, presumably because the windows that open don't seal great, and who knows what else. It was an eyesore, and in a room in the house that could really be a showpiece.
So, four days of work, Wednesday through Friday plus Monday this week, and we had a beautifully restored sunroom (plus the one exterior window in our upstairs bathroom that had required more work).
It was unsurprisingly another stressful four days, as I was locked in the art room once more, without some of my work files, and with two cats, one of which constantly yowled over her inability to protect her territory, and another who constantly attacked that one, for being so whiny.
But, 'tis done. We have two more painterly tasks: repainting our mildewy downstairs bathroom and doing touch-up around our house, including repairing our art room closet ceiling. But we're planning those for December, because they'll impact our usage of the house (in that we won't want to use that bathroom any more, and we'll need to be much more careful afterward to not bang up paint in the house).
Meanwhile, the packing in the house came to almost a dead halt. My 110 boxes at the end of August only expanded to 120 boxes at the end of September. That's in part due to the two weeks I lost at the beginning of the month and in part due to the days that I lost while we had painting going on (because it always tweaks my schedule in a way that leaves me less evening time for work).
But we also came to the realization that we may not be doing all our own packing ...
That's because I also got in touch with a potential shipper, Royal Hawaiian, who quoted us a "ballpark" rate (whatever that means) of $2.31 a pound, said that included packing, and said they could reduce their rate by $0.04 a pound if they didn't include packing. I'm happy to have packed all of our books and games myself, as I trust me more, and it helped in the culling process, both for games and books and for shelves, but I'd be thrilled to have them pack annoying stuff like furniture and paintings and blank canvases.
Mind you, I'm leery of the shipping company.
First up, I've heard too many stories of people being ripped off on their overseas move. Astronomical prices to box up furniture, sprung at the last minute when you have no option. Astronomical prices for overages past a company's estimate. Lies about goods actually being shipped. But, I researched for a while, and came up with Royal Hawaiian looking pretty good, with complaints being both scarce and not sounding like their fault (like a guy who lost a bunch of stuff because he wasn't there when his things got boxed up, and stuff got left behind, because he didn't mark it all right, and he didn't check into it in the months until his landlord threw everything out).
But, I also wasn't thrilled when we had our assessor from them out last week, whose job was to give us an estimate. First, what he said was at odds with Royal Hawaiian at points, such as what they're going to use as the basis for charging us. (RH was very adamant that they had to charge by pounds because they were regulated by the US gov't, and assessor was very adamant that it was by volume, which is what everyone else says.) Then, he just didn't seem that competent. He didn't really know what to do with the itemized lists I had ready for him, to help him more accurately assess. Instead, he just went from room to room counting things, but kept missing stuff.
(And I didn't even mention how he missed his original appointment, calling me up less than an hour beforehand and telling me he'd just found it on his calendar and couldn't make it.)
So, we'll see. It's been another week now, and I'm waiting to see Royal Hawaiian's quote and contract. I'd like to go with them, because of the ease of them packing and then unloading everything at the other side. If the cost isn't too grotesque, and the assessment doesn't seem totally out of whack, and there aren't any gotchas ... else, it's back to the drawing board, because I didn't have a good second choice.
I also got in touch with our real estate agent this last month, but our planned meeting yesterday got delayed until next week. Which means we haven't talked to any stagers yet, who were the other peoples I wanted to talk with in September.
And there was work getting rid of stuff.
My closet full of culled RPGs went to a few happy people on the Acaeum FB group.
My closet full of culled board games went to a happy J. and M. at Secret, then onward to It's Your Move Games' collection.
Three more book cases went to Uhuru.
Two short book cases went to Mike B.
(I have two big white book cases from Amazon that I haven't managed to get rid of yet: Uhuru didn't want them because of the warping of the shelves, so I probably need to just haul them downstairs and outfront, but there's about a 50/50 chance that they'll get ripped apart by the problematic elements in Berkeley before someone takes them.)
We largely cleaned out our linen closet and art room closet, and that stuff has mainly gone away after being left out front with a free sign.
And Chris picked up the first third of his cube-shelves, which I believe originated in the nice space used by Consensus (and home of the Daily Kos last I checked) and moved on to Skotos, then a dozen of them to my home.
October? I dunno. We have shippers, real estate agent, and stagers all still up in the air.
I want to take a few driving lessons before we leave.
But we've got so much that's done too ...
An hour or two later, the house was filled with the smell of burning dust, as our floor radiator ate away at the few months worth of debris. Kimberly and I both were red eyed and coughing from the experience.
And that'll probably be the last time.
This morning, I woke to our fourth or fifth cool, gray day in a row, and I felt a sense of melancholy settling upon me. It reminded me of the light case of SAD that I used to fight with early each year until I started taking Vitamin D. But, this was clearly psychological, not physiological: a memory of times past and also a reflection of the future.
There will still be warm pleasant days left, here by the Bay. But the pendulum is clearly swinging back. There are likely more cold days left than warm ones, and our days overall are counting rapidly down.
So, September. I was out of the country until the 8th, and I didn't really get back to working on the move until the weekend of the 14th. Which was about what I expected, and better than it could have been.
But it still means I only got half-a-month of work preparing for our move in one of our last four months.
Our big work in September was a surprise: we got our second big painting job done. Our painting company told us they suddenly had an opening because of another job getting pushed back, and would we like to have them in last week. So Wednesday we got Elder back, painting the interior of our sunroom.
This was the first of two rooms we wanted painting. It has nice woodwork all around the seven windows (extending to two more in my office), but over the years that woodwork had become quite damaged. There was some water damage, presumably because the windows that open don't seal great, and who knows what else. It was an eyesore, and in a room in the house that could really be a showpiece.
So, four days of work, Wednesday through Friday plus Monday this week, and we had a beautifully restored sunroom (plus the one exterior window in our upstairs bathroom that had required more work).
It was unsurprisingly another stressful four days, as I was locked in the art room once more, without some of my work files, and with two cats, one of which constantly yowled over her inability to protect her territory, and another who constantly attacked that one, for being so whiny.
But, 'tis done. We have two more painterly tasks: repainting our mildewy downstairs bathroom and doing touch-up around our house, including repairing our art room closet ceiling. But we're planning those for December, because they'll impact our usage of the house (in that we won't want to use that bathroom any more, and we'll need to be much more careful afterward to not bang up paint in the house).
Meanwhile, the packing in the house came to almost a dead halt. My 110 boxes at the end of August only expanded to 120 boxes at the end of September. That's in part due to the two weeks I lost at the beginning of the month and in part due to the days that I lost while we had painting going on (because it always tweaks my schedule in a way that leaves me less evening time for work).
But we also came to the realization that we may not be doing all our own packing ...
That's because I also got in touch with a potential shipper, Royal Hawaiian, who quoted us a "ballpark" rate (whatever that means) of $2.31 a pound, said that included packing, and said they could reduce their rate by $0.04 a pound if they didn't include packing. I'm happy to have packed all of our books and games myself, as I trust me more, and it helped in the culling process, both for games and books and for shelves, but I'd be thrilled to have them pack annoying stuff like furniture and paintings and blank canvases.
Mind you, I'm leery of the shipping company.
First up, I've heard too many stories of people being ripped off on their overseas move. Astronomical prices to box up furniture, sprung at the last minute when you have no option. Astronomical prices for overages past a company's estimate. Lies about goods actually being shipped. But, I researched for a while, and came up with Royal Hawaiian looking pretty good, with complaints being both scarce and not sounding like their fault (like a guy who lost a bunch of stuff because he wasn't there when his things got boxed up, and stuff got left behind, because he didn't mark it all right, and he didn't check into it in the months until his landlord threw everything out).
But, I also wasn't thrilled when we had our assessor from them out last week, whose job was to give us an estimate. First, what he said was at odds with Royal Hawaiian at points, such as what they're going to use as the basis for charging us. (RH was very adamant that they had to charge by pounds because they were regulated by the US gov't, and assessor was very adamant that it was by volume, which is what everyone else says.) Then, he just didn't seem that competent. He didn't really know what to do with the itemized lists I had ready for him, to help him more accurately assess. Instead, he just went from room to room counting things, but kept missing stuff.
(And I didn't even mention how he missed his original appointment, calling me up less than an hour beforehand and telling me he'd just found it on his calendar and couldn't make it.)
So, we'll see. It's been another week now, and I'm waiting to see Royal Hawaiian's quote and contract. I'd like to go with them, because of the ease of them packing and then unloading everything at the other side. If the cost isn't too grotesque, and the assessment doesn't seem totally out of whack, and there aren't any gotchas ... else, it's back to the drawing board, because I didn't have a good second choice.
I also got in touch with our real estate agent this last month, but our planned meeting yesterday got delayed until next week. Which means we haven't talked to any stagers yet, who were the other peoples I wanted to talk with in September.
And there was work getting rid of stuff.
My closet full of culled RPGs went to a few happy people on the Acaeum FB group.
My closet full of culled board games went to a happy J. and M. at Secret, then onward to It's Your Move Games' collection.
Three more book cases went to Uhuru.
Two short book cases went to Mike B.
(I have two big white book cases from Amazon that I haven't managed to get rid of yet: Uhuru didn't want them because of the warping of the shelves, so I probably need to just haul them downstairs and outfront, but there's about a 50/50 chance that they'll get ripped apart by the problematic elements in Berkeley before someone takes them.)
We largely cleaned out our linen closet and art room closet, and that stuff has mainly gone away after being left out front with a free sign.
And Chris picked up the first third of his cube-shelves, which I believe originated in the nice space used by Consensus (and home of the Daily Kos last I checked) and moved on to Skotos, then a dozen of them to my home.
October? I dunno. We have shippers, real estate agent, and stagers all still up in the air.
I want to take a few driving lessons before we leave.
But we've got so much that's done too ...