Last Thursday we big [tag]Barre[/tag] goodbye. It was a great place to live and I’ll certainly miss it. If only work would have agreed to relocate there. Alas, it was not meant to be. Anyway, we turned our keys over to the new owner and hope that the joint treats her as well (or better) than it treated us.
As for us? Today is the day for [tag]Burlington[/tag] (or as A. calls it: Burling-tron - - City of the Future). All the t’s should get crossed today and the i’s dotted tomorrow. But we expect everything to wrap up between today and tomorrow.
I might finally be able to stop holding my breath and let my life get back to some kind of normal…
Thursday evening it seemed that we’d never get moved and then Friday everything sort of collapsed in on itself and we discovered that we had about 5 or 6 days to wrap everything up. (EEK!) That said, A. & I are now in a mad scramble to cross our various t’s and dot the various i’s to close the book on our [tag]Barre[/tag] chapter and get ourselves settled into [tag]Burlington[/tag]. It’s certainly not going to be a fun next couple of days as we make all of the various phone calls to turn off this and activate that and update the mailing address on the other thing… Unfortunately only about a quarter of the above can be done easily (read “online”) and heaven forbid you attempt to cancel any services without speaking to a human being who will no doubt interrogate and/or berate you for your decision. While I don’t necessarily expect that from (for example) my local, municipal water/sewer department, I must admit to dreading that call to Verizon.
The real pain in the neck has been trying to unload some of our “good but we don’t want it anymore” furniture. When you’re not armed with a truck, it’s difficult to move around these kinds of items. Thanks to JDS though, we got turned on to the Washington County [tag]Freecycle[/tag] list and have a couple of takers (apparently) on those items.
Anyway, this whole “move” business just so happens to fall square in the middle of what was planned to be one of my busiest weeks at work and so now not only is everything feeling “last minute” but “panicked” and “last minute”. Lucky for my A. has volunteered to handle many of the arrangements but there’s still too much for any one person to do. Seeing as how we’re about 60-70% packed at this stage (and have dumped all but three of the items we’ve been looking to dump), at least that part of the equation is in decent shape. Anyway, appearances here are expected to be scattered for the next week or so. Wish us luck!
A crazy couple of weeks tearing by. Seems like we just got through the grand’rents’ 50th and then our own kitchen counters ordeal and things just keep grinding on. Aside from the usual hands full action (work for me, dissertation writing for A.), all the other down time is filled with those all-important projects like writing/revisions or else fitting in last-minute-ish things on the house.
But the sigh of relief comes in the first palpable steps toward halting the hour-each-way [tag]commute[/tag] that we’ve each endured for the last two years. We’ve gotten pretty attached to [tag]Barre[/tag] and would probably stay right here (in this little house) if it weren’t for that blasted hour door-to-door. So we got all excited this week as we (1) got the letter from the bank green-lighting us as “serious” buyers and then (2) got the paperwork signed to get us on the market as serious sellers. The part that got us a little down though was how discrepant the markets seemed to be between Barre and [tag]Burlington[/tag]. I’ll admit to a near heart-sinking when we realized that the competitive price we’d extrapolated on our place based on Burlington prices fell a little dramatically when we lined it up a little better with the Barre market. Maybe that was just a mistake on our part. Still, the realizations over the past couple days illuminate why I’ve met so many people that commute 45-60 minutes here in Vermont. The factors start flying by: little to no public transport, geographically discrepant housing vs. job markets, lower apparent overall salaries (with only slightly lower apparent COL)…
I’ll just be glad when this phase of my moving process is over and it works out to be not nearly as catastrophic as I’m making it out to be. Wish us luck.
currently playing: a portable dishwasher marketed as silent is not nearly the case
