A Room of One's Own

On Thursday evening, we arrived in my new hometown. Here's a few more tidbits from the trip.

This was a "fortune" on a bottle cap of Jones soda that we opened during our drive:


I started off the trip trying to cautiously maneuver the rental truck. However, by the last day I no longer cared what anyone else on the road was doing, and ignored all of these helpful suggestions:


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Friday was a pretty stressful day. After going to the bank to get a cashier's check for an ambiguous amount of money ("just take your bank's estimate and add $1000"), we went to the house for a quick walk-through. It turned out that the sellers still had a bunch of junk in the basement and random stuff here and there. They were really sweet though in that they also left me a small bouquet of flowers, champagne in the fridge, and a note that named the neighbors and everyone who had done major work on the house.

After that, we raced off to closing. I had expected it to involve discussing fine points of the transaction, but really it was just a convient place for us all to get together (me, the sellers, our respective agents, the bank's lawyer, my lawyer, and the seller's lawyer) to sign paperwork. For an hour. Poor Ru sat in the lobby and got pretty far through a novel!

After closing, we went out for a quick lunch, and then I raced to return the car carrier while Ru held down the fort at the house and made sure that the movers I had hired to help us unload the truck didn't disappear. I don't really own a lot of stuff, but had been given a few family antiques that I thought it would be wiser if the two of us didn't move ourselves.

After unloading the truck, and setting up our respective beds, Ru and I decided to reward ourselves with a movie. We saw "Click", which I think is one of Adam Sandler's better movies. Other than having to make THREE separate trips to Penske to return errant furniture pads, turning in the rental truck went pretty well.

After the movie, I realized that the first time in two years, I have a home to go home to. No more moving around, no more delicately pretending not to hear other people's business as they scream at each other and slam doors, etc. I now have many rooms, all my own--pictures soon to follow.

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Today was a good day as well. Being from the desert, I like to feel air moving against my skin. Before I left Arizona, I had purchased a couple of ceiling fans that I felt confident that Ru and I could install. We bought a few small necessities this morning, and set to opening up the first one. There was already a ceiling fan in the living room, but I wanted one with lights, so I thought it would be easy to switch out. However, once we got it down, we realized that the existing electrical box was the wrong shape, so we returned to Home Depot once again. They were not very helpful and insisted that I needed to carve a big hole in my ceiling and install proper support. I looked at him like he was crazy, and walked out of there pretty fast.

I pride myself on being pretty independent, but I caved this time and called an expert. I hate asking for help, but on Monday I not only have a guy coming to rekey all my locks, but now an electrician as well. In the meantime, I guess I'll just have to stare at those bare wires hanging out of the plaster in the living room and avoid the temptation to mess with them.