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November 27, 2006
moving out, moving in
My name is Mark. I live with my fiancee, Kara, in a charming little condo in the historic Aberdeen neighborhood of Brighton, Massachusetts. All my worldly possessions are in boxes and bags, piled randomly about the place. I have no idea where anything is, but I'm a homeowner, and that's pretty exciting.
Last night, I left 10 Alton Court the same way I came in: at night, on my motorcycle. It wasn't raining this time, though. I said my goodbyes to Pam, who was probably one of the best roommates of the many, many roommates I've had over the years, with sincere promises to keep in touch.
I am really, really going to make an effort to do this. It shouldn't be terribly tough, as I am still going to get my hair cut at Manny's barbershop in the old neighborhood, and Trader Joe's is still around the corner, and while I'm there, I have to visit the folks at Corrib. Might as well give Pam a ring to come have a beer while I'm there. It won't be as often, nor will it likely be on a random Tuesday night, but I'll try not to be a stranger.
Just before I left, Kara and I took her mum out for a birthday dinner at Lemongrass, which is a Vietnamese restaurant I've walked by nearly every day for a year and a half and never eaten at. It won Best of Boston for good reason.
The night before, Kara and I were talking about food, vegetables specfically, and I mentioned that I wasn't much for cooked vegetables because I prefer them to be crisp and crunchy, not soft and chewy. Well, this place did some stir-fry peppers and onions and celery, of all things, that were just as crunchy as if I'd eaten them raw. Absolutely delicious stuff. We'll have to make the trip back there soon.
I happened to meet the guy who rents the parking space next to mine as I was parking the bike. He mentioned that he also rides, and offered to let me use part of his oversized space to keep my motorcycle. I'm liking the new neighborhood already. No more parallel parking every night between the bike and an SUV.
And with the arrival of the bike, we are 100% moved. As mentioned, everything is still in boxes. I have to admit, the moving process went remarkably smoothly. We had plenty of help along the way: Brock, MJP, Robin, Kara's cousin Brian, and Pam, and Kara's mum helped out with stuff yesterday and then cleaned the kitchen and put new contact paper in the cabinets. It took a village.
During the moving process, we kept quoting the Zoloft commercial with the little marshmallow guy. "Where does moving hurt? Everywhere. Who does moving hurt? Everyone."
We only had one real casualty of the move: my pine desk didn't quite fit through one of the doorframes. When I tried to partially disassemble it, it came apart into pieces that resembled a game of Tetris gone horribly awry. We all got a good laugh out of it, though...shoulda taken a picture of that. I managed to put it back together last night, however, albeit with a few more brackets and reinforcing screws in place of the Ikea-supplied connectors. I don't think she'll be up for another move, but with luck, she won't have to for a least a few more years.
Part of our process is going to be getting rid of and/or consolidating a lot of stuff. Some old Computer Gaming Worlds went in the trash last night, and that won't be the last of it. I probably shouldn't take up any new hobbies for awhile.
I think that my original plan to start painting before the move would never have worked, in retrospect, and I'm glad I didn't try. I bought a heat gun the other night so I can try to properly strip the paint from the molding and trim before we redo everything; I want to work on the painting slowly so we can hopefully get it right.
And that's pretty much it. We're homeowners now. There have been a few odd little moments where we realize that a) we live together now and b) we own a place. The first was the other night at the grocery store when we spent a couple minutes actually discussing whether or not to buy the generic brand of kitchen bags, and what size/strength to get. I believe Kara actually said at the end, "We'll try out this brand, and if we aren't satisfied, we'll try a different one."
I am evaluating the performance of housewares. I am domesticated.
Posted by Mark at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)
November 22, 2006
first letter from the new world
Wow! My very first blog entry from the new condo!
We got our cable TV and internet connection this morning, and I just finished tweaking the wireless router. T1nman33 802.11g access point is in business! Took a minute, as it's been some time since I set up a cable modem service. I had to configure the modem when I started, and I was trying to figure out what the criteria was for the modem to let the router distribute the connection. Turns out, I just had to mimic the MAC address of the NIC I used to configure it.
Sorry to geek out there for a sec. It's fun to solve problems.
Ok, so, the old apartment is approaching the full state of packed-ness. Various rooms are completely done or 95% done, and only the closet and my bedroom have significant amounts of packing left to be accomplished. Kara and I have our work cut out for us on Friday, but I think we're in good shape.
The new place looks great. I've tested some of the paint out on the walls just so we can see how it will look when it's done, and I've set up the bathroom for actual use. I am also in the process of drying the first load of laundry. The washer is interesting, a little slow, and a lot loud, but at least it's in the condo and not in some random common area somewhere.
Tomorrow will be fully dedicated to eating, drinking, and watching football. I should have invested in some sweatpants.
Posted by Mark at 09:21 PM | Comments (0)
November 20, 2006
house!
As of about 10:30 this morning, we are homeowners!
The closing went very smoothly, and afterwards, we went to the new place to do some measurements and generally walk around and look at stuff. It still hasn't quite sunk in. I think that there is enough to do over the next few weeks that it will take a bit for me to really realize that this is a home now. Can you believe it?
Our mortgage guy, who is great, brought coffee cake and a little tool kit as gifts for us. Tonight I think we are going to take some boxes over there and then have Subway in our soccer mom chairs in the empty living room. Maybe a bottle of wine too.
The next few days involves a lot of cleaning, sanding, painting, and moving. My goal is to have the place in livable condition by the furniture delivery around mid-December.
Posted by Mark at 04:29 PM | Comments (1)
November 16, 2006
packing, closing, performing
I always get a little cranky and tense when I get ready for a move. I have some time to carry this one out which is nice, but I find that my happiness is inversely proportional to the amount of my stuff which is in boxes.
Tonight I put the dishes away. There's still quite a bit to put away and transport, but I honestly don't think it's going to happen until after the weekend. I have this thing where I tend to cough a lot when I'm nervous. You'd think that someone who moves fairly often would be calmer about it, but I'm not. I'm coughing kind of a lot tonight.
Kara gets back from Dallas tomorrow. Wish she was here now.
The closing date has been moved up to Monday. We do a walkthrough at 9:30 a.m., then go right to the closing at 10. Then we'll both head into work. I have Wednesday off, but I'll probably take a trip or two over to the new place on Tuesday night after class is over. Might even stay over there; not sure. The cable guy is coming on Wednesday morning, so we'll have cable and broadband internet there almost from day one.
I did have one particularly nice moment today. It was almost quitting time and Pete came by and called me into his office. I obviously expected the worst, as pretty much all my closed-door sessions at SL were for something negative.
He started off by saying that he had had a rough day, lots of things going wrong. "Here it comes," I thought. "What did I screw up?"
But instead he said that despite his having a rough day, his highlight was that he was happy with me, and was happy that I was on the team. He said I was one person he could count on to get my stuff done, to do a good job and work hard. Often, he said, he dreaded asking people about their status, but when it came to be my turn to talk about what I was doing, he was always happy to find that I was making progress and crossing things off my list. That I was doing good work, and that he was happy to have me around.
What a world of difference from the old job. To be told that my contributions were valuable. That I wasn't a waste, a dummy, an incompetent putting on some masquerade of pretend skill. That things I always held to be true, best practices and the realities of working in a technical business, were actually valid. I felt like a beaten puppy finally getting a pat on the head.
I don't know that I worked to my full potential at the old place. I don't know that I was really ever able to, in retrospect. I know that by the time I left, I didn't even want to program anymore, that I was questioning everything I had ever known about being a computer geek, a technologist. It was like having a bad experience in Paris and never wanting to eat another croissant.
Well, I made it to Lyon. Some of the French are pretty nice folks. They're still French, of course, with all their quirks and foibles. But they're not all jerks.
The funny thing is, I started off doing a lot of the same things here that I did back there. Well, maybe I made a little more effort to be nice here, to not have an attitude. But my primary feelings about software development, about the role of business in technology, about programming philosophy, were the same. And somehow, here, what I did--what I believed--was embraced and encouraged. Somehow, from the get-go, I was empowered...even trusted. Maybe that's made all the difference.
At any rate, I know now what it's like to be at a bad job. And I know what it's like to be at a pretty good job. I'll take the latter.
And now that I know that the problem isn't all mine, that I can perform, that I have the skill to contribute to a team effort in a technological enterprise, that this bruised little puppy isn't such a bad dog after all, I can honestly say to the folks back at SL: your loss.
Posted by Mark at 12:15 AM | Comments (2)
November 14, 2006
vegas baby!
Just got back from Jody and Brock's wedding in Vegas this morning. I spent a few bucks, but made $135 of it back on Star Wars penny slots. The new "Dark Side" machines are awesome, and as long as you can score some bonuses, it seems like you can win fairly consistently.
The wedding was very nice and Jody's dress was beautiful. Everybody had a great time. It was good seeing everybody and a lot of fun to be back in Vegas again.
Looks like we may move up our closing date by a day, to the 20th. The present roommates found somebody to take my spot, which is great. I'm in the process of putting things in boxes, and I think dishes will go tomorrow. It'll be nice to have a whole week to work on the place and move some stuff over there before the big Saturday official move. I should actually be able to get a lot of my smaller boxed stuff in before we have to get the big moving truck involved, and I might even be able to prime a room or two for painting.
I cancelled the automatic rent check payment the other day. What a great feeling, paying rent for (hopefully) the last time ever. Kinda like paying off my car. No more security deposits for me.
Posted by Mark at 12:05 AM | Comments (1)