"Let me explain," said Inigo Montoya
Nov. 17th, 2010 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanju"No, there is too much. Let me sum up...."
We've received, loaded, and sent off the PODS, uh, pod withall most of our worldly goods. It was very cool to watch them deliver and retrieve it. It arrived on the back of a flatbed truck. I had imagined that it would be winched down off of the truck's tilted bed like a car. Not at all. Also on the flatbed was The Machine. No, not Count Rugen's machine. This was...imagine four upright metal posts, each on its own set of steerable, powered tires. Now imagine that these uprights were connected by a horizontal rectangular frame. There's a set of levers on one corner of the frame that controls all the hydraulics.
The PODS driver hooks the pod to the frame with chains and hooks, then lifts it free of the truck's bed.He then drives the truck forward, out from beneath the pod, which is supported on this free-standing, mobile framework. Then he lowers the pod into place. He has such fine control of of the frame that he can move it in any direction, and if one or more tires goes up over a curb, no problem. He can also widen the framework with hydraulics in the frame's narrower horizontal pieces, so he can adjust exactly where the pod will set down. He can even "walk" the frame by degrees to assure placing the pod as close to the curb as it can get.
Once he's got the pod where he wants it, he unchains the pod, raises the horizontal framework enough to clear the top of the pod and steers it free of the pod before loading it back onto the truck bed. To retrieve the pod when we'd filled it, he reverses this procedure, lifting the pod while keeping it level, lowering it onto the truck and driving away. It was really cool to see.
Twoson and I spent most of a Friday filling most of the pod. Then we spent some time on Saturday and Sunday adding this and that, and making sure everything was tied down as well as we could manage. Lots and lots and lots of boxes of books. Boxes of clothing and household items we could live without for a while. Some furniture. Basically, everything we were prepared to live without until we're able to get it all back out of storage. Fun.
Once we'd cleared out the house, it was time to get it ready to show. Staging the house involved cleaning, vacuuming, and eliminating clutter. Removing curtains in the kitchen, dining and living rooms. Removing curtain rods and curtain rod brackets in all those space, and hiding items we'd failed to load into the pod in the basement or garage. Everything we kept for personal use had to be kept ready to hide on short notice so the house looked as unoccupied as possible. Once the house went on the market, a realtor could call at any time of day to give us two hours notice to vacate so they could show it.
We had a checklist of things to do, things to clean, and things to hide (in the basement, garage, or the trunk of the car. Also, the house and yard were full of workmen. We hired a handyman to do repairs and paint, and another guy to clean up the yard. So there was lots of activity round here last week. The yard guy and his team worked their asses off and the yard looks incredible! The handyman did some exterior work and started on the interior work, but that's on hold for the moment for reasons I will explain shortly.
This weekend we attended Orycon, and boy were we glad to get out of the house! After all the work and worry of preparing to sell the house, a long weekend of hanging out with our fellow geeks was just what the doctor ordered. I ended up taking a long nap Friday afternoon because I was worn out. Job hunting, house prep and worry about my dad's condition will do that. But I felt much better and enjoyed the rest of the con. It wasn't my best ever Orycon, but it was better than some.
Saturday morning the house went on the market. By late afternoon, Snippy had fielded five or six calls about showing it. I had to return home to pay the yard guy for his work--and give him a considerable tip because he came in way under what we'd half-expected it would cost. Since the house would be showng that afternoon and the handymen had been doing interior work and painting on Friday, I ended up spending the couple of hours I'd thought I might spend netsurfing while waiting for Hector tidying up, hiding away personal items, and vacuuming the house, sweeping the kitchen floor, clearing the counters, and so forth.
Early Saturday evening I received a text from Snippy. We'd gotten an offer on the house! It was for more than our asking price, for cash (no bank/mortgage issues), and they wanted the house "as is". We jumped on it. (By Tuesday evening we also had a back-up offer, just in case the first offer fell through.) The buyers specifically wanted us not to finish the repairs or get the foundation we'd scheduled done--they wanted the house ASAP, I guess.
We emailed the handyman to let him know to hold off. The foundation repair company, whom I'd been waiting on for weeks at this point to get to us, called Monday morning to arrange to start the work. Snippy answered the call and told them that we'd sold the house, the buyers didn't want the work done, and thanks anyhow. I gather that they weren't too pleased. On the one hand, I understand--I'd bugged them about getting it done and now we canceled on them. On the other hand, we'd been waiting for six weeks with no firm start date. If they'd gotten to us sooner, they'd have earned the $5,500 it was going to cost us. As it is, because we didn't have to pay for the work, the effective price of the house (out which we're paying for all the work we had done) is that much higher.
By the time we got home Sunday evening (we had to kill the afternoon after leaving Orycon because we'd already allowed a couple of realtors to schedule showings Sunday afternoon before we accepted the offer), we had to shift abruptly from Sell the House! mode to "Find an Apartment! mode. The buyers would like us out by December 3rd. We're probably gonna have to negotiate another week or so before we can get out, but we'll be out of here by mid-December.
We've received, loaded, and sent off the PODS, uh, pod with
The PODS driver hooks the pod to the frame with chains and hooks, then lifts it free of the truck's bed.He then drives the truck forward, out from beneath the pod, which is supported on this free-standing, mobile framework. Then he lowers the pod into place. He has such fine control of of the frame that he can move it in any direction, and if one or more tires goes up over a curb, no problem. He can also widen the framework with hydraulics in the frame's narrower horizontal pieces, so he can adjust exactly where the pod will set down. He can even "walk" the frame by degrees to assure placing the pod as close to the curb as it can get.
Once he's got the pod where he wants it, he unchains the pod, raises the horizontal framework enough to clear the top of the pod and steers it free of the pod before loading it back onto the truck bed. To retrieve the pod when we'd filled it, he reverses this procedure, lifting the pod while keeping it level, lowering it onto the truck and driving away. It was really cool to see.
Twoson and I spent most of a Friday filling most of the pod. Then we spent some time on Saturday and Sunday adding this and that, and making sure everything was tied down as well as we could manage. Lots and lots and lots of boxes of books. Boxes of clothing and household items we could live without for a while. Some furniture. Basically, everything we were prepared to live without until we're able to get it all back out of storage. Fun.
Once we'd cleared out the house, it was time to get it ready to show. Staging the house involved cleaning, vacuuming, and eliminating clutter. Removing curtains in the kitchen, dining and living rooms. Removing curtain rods and curtain rod brackets in all those space, and hiding items we'd failed to load into the pod in the basement or garage. Everything we kept for personal use had to be kept ready to hide on short notice so the house looked as unoccupied as possible. Once the house went on the market, a realtor could call at any time of day to give us two hours notice to vacate so they could show it.
We had a checklist of things to do, things to clean, and things to hide (in the basement, garage, or the trunk of the car. Also, the house and yard were full of workmen. We hired a handyman to do repairs and paint, and another guy to clean up the yard. So there was lots of activity round here last week. The yard guy and his team worked their asses off and the yard looks incredible! The handyman did some exterior work and started on the interior work, but that's on hold for the moment for reasons I will explain shortly.
This weekend we attended Orycon, and boy were we glad to get out of the house! After all the work and worry of preparing to sell the house, a long weekend of hanging out with our fellow geeks was just what the doctor ordered. I ended up taking a long nap Friday afternoon because I was worn out. Job hunting, house prep and worry about my dad's condition will do that. But I felt much better and enjoyed the rest of the con. It wasn't my best ever Orycon, but it was better than some.
Saturday morning the house went on the market. By late afternoon, Snippy had fielded five or six calls about showing it. I had to return home to pay the yard guy for his work--and give him a considerable tip because he came in way under what we'd half-expected it would cost. Since the house would be showng that afternoon and the handymen had been doing interior work and painting on Friday, I ended up spending the couple of hours I'd thought I might spend netsurfing while waiting for Hector tidying up, hiding away personal items, and vacuuming the house, sweeping the kitchen floor, clearing the counters, and so forth.
Early Saturday evening I received a text from Snippy. We'd gotten an offer on the house! It was for more than our asking price, for cash (no bank/mortgage issues), and they wanted the house "as is". We jumped on it. (By Tuesday evening we also had a back-up offer, just in case the first offer fell through.) The buyers specifically wanted us not to finish the repairs or get the foundation we'd scheduled done--they wanted the house ASAP, I guess.
We emailed the handyman to let him know to hold off. The foundation repair company, whom I'd been waiting on for weeks at this point to get to us, called Monday morning to arrange to start the work. Snippy answered the call and told them that we'd sold the house, the buyers didn't want the work done, and thanks anyhow. I gather that they weren't too pleased. On the one hand, I understand--I'd bugged them about getting it done and now we canceled on them. On the other hand, we'd been waiting for six weeks with no firm start date. If they'd gotten to us sooner, they'd have earned the $5,500 it was going to cost us. As it is, because we didn't have to pay for the work, the effective price of the house (out which we're paying for all the work we had done) is that much higher.
By the time we got home Sunday evening (we had to kill the afternoon after leaving Orycon because we'd already allowed a couple of realtors to schedule showings Sunday afternoon before we accepted the offer), we had to shift abruptly from Sell the House! mode to "Find an Apartment! mode. The buyers would like us out by December 3rd. We're probably gonna have to negotiate another week or so before we can get out, but we'll be out of here by mid-December.
Monday was intended to be a rest and recovery day. Snippy and I always take an extra day off work after Orycon to rest, take care of our usual weekend chores that didn't get done because of the con, and so forth. Instead, she spent the morning surfing rental sites and we spent the afternoon examining a couple of locations. The first one we looked at we both liked a lot. It was fairly new, nice looking, in a small complex. We looked at a couple more sites, but with the idea that unless they really blew us away, we'd go for the first one. By Monday evening we were half convinced we'd be taking that one. We filled out the application forms and I delivered them on Tuesday morning.
Then I learned that Snippy had checked a local website that tracks crime stats and we discovered that the apartment complex was in a relatively high crime zone. Shazbat! Well, the background check fee was already spent, but oh well. I scouted a couple of other complexes, taking pics to show Snippy since she had to work. I also checked on a complex we'd briefly looked at a couple or three months ago when we first decided to sell the house, located behind Clackamas Town Center, just off the MAX line. They'd had no 3BR openings at the time but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask, so I called. They had one being vacated on November 30th! I hustled over and looked at a 2BR demo. I liked what I saw, so I gathered more application forms. That evening we filled out those forms and I delivered them to this complex this morning. Amanda, the saleswoman, told me we should know by Friday whether we were approved, and maybe tomorrow. I arranged a couple of tours of more apartments for this afternoon and tomorrow as back-ups.
At 12:30, just as I was heading out the door to go look at another complex in Gresham, my cell phone rang. It was Amanda. We were approved. Yay! I still went and looked at the other complex, just in case it was a glorious opportunity. Not bad, but much too far out on Powell for folks who will need to commute to downtown Portland every weekday. Snippy and I agreed that the Clackamas apartment was our best choice. So...we'll be going over there Saturday morning so Snippy can see it with her own eyes, then we'll sign a six-month lease. That'll give us time to figure out if we want to settle in or look for someplace closer in (assuming we find one we like and can afford). The latest we should be able to move into the new apartment is December 8th, though it might be sooner. The buyers of our house may have to wait a few extra days for us to get out, but not all that much longer.
So there we are. We sold the house in less than 24 hours, and found an apartment three days later. So we're not doing too badly.
In other news, I haven't written in quite a while. I've been busy with other things. But I want to get back to it. Now that things are relatively settled (aside from a job interview on Friday for a two-month long term temp job and the inherent uncertainty of knowing whether I'll be employed again), I hope I can find the time to get back to it.
Though I haven't been writing, I've been studying--both writing (specifically, how I can work at improving my plotting and storytelling) and business. I've learned some things about epublishing that should be helpful in deciding where and how to submit stories to publishers and about the possibility of doing some self publishing electronically. It should be interesting.
Then I learned that Snippy had checked a local website that tracks crime stats and we discovered that the apartment complex was in a relatively high crime zone. Shazbat! Well, the background check fee was already spent, but oh well. I scouted a couple of other complexes, taking pics to show Snippy since she had to work. I also checked on a complex we'd briefly looked at a couple or three months ago when we first decided to sell the house, located behind Clackamas Town Center, just off the MAX line. They'd had no 3BR openings at the time but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask, so I called. They had one being vacated on November 30th! I hustled over and looked at a 2BR demo. I liked what I saw, so I gathered more application forms. That evening we filled out those forms and I delivered them to this complex this morning. Amanda, the saleswoman, told me we should know by Friday whether we were approved, and maybe tomorrow. I arranged a couple of tours of more apartments for this afternoon and tomorrow as back-ups.
At 12:30, just as I was heading out the door to go look at another complex in Gresham, my cell phone rang. It was Amanda. We were approved. Yay! I still went and looked at the other complex, just in case it was a glorious opportunity. Not bad, but much too far out on Powell for folks who will need to commute to downtown Portland every weekday. Snippy and I agreed that the Clackamas apartment was our best choice. So...we'll be going over there Saturday morning so Snippy can see it with her own eyes, then we'll sign a six-month lease. That'll give us time to figure out if we want to settle in or look for someplace closer in (assuming we find one we like and can afford). The latest we should be able to move into the new apartment is December 8th, though it might be sooner. The buyers of our house may have to wait a few extra days for us to get out, but not all that much longer.
So there we are. We sold the house in less than 24 hours, and found an apartment three days later. So we're not doing too badly.
In other news, I haven't written in quite a while. I've been busy with other things. But I want to get back to it. Now that things are relatively settled (aside from a job interview on Friday for a two-month long term temp job and the inherent uncertainty of knowing whether I'll be employed again), I hope I can find the time to get back to it.
Though I haven't been writing, I've been studying--both writing (specifically, how I can work at improving my plotting and storytelling) and business. I've learned some things about epublishing that should be helpful in deciding where and how to submit stories to publishers and about the possibility of doing some self publishing electronically. It should be interesting.
