andamu

I have been exceedingly remiss in posting.
First there was the impending news that I didn't want to talk about because I was scared of jinxing it. (And no, of course I am not superstitious!) Everytime I wanted to blog, I just kept thinking of the excitement, anticipation, and the dread that it would all fall through.
Then it actually happened, and even though I could talk about it, my spare time has been absolutely consumed by it.
I know, I know: Enough beating around the bush already! We bought a house. The sale closed on Tuesday, and until the last moment I was afraid that something would happen and we wouldn't actually get the place.
Now in the morning I get up, reach work just after 7 a.m, leave work around 5.30 p.m., go straight to the new house, and start working on cleaning up, tearing down wallpaper, filling in nail holes and dents, scrubbing ovens and floors and showers and loos and preparing walls for painting. I don't get back to the apartment until around 10 p.m. at which time I grab a shower and tumble into bed.
We have a big To-Do list before we can move in. And we plan on doing most of it ourselves. It seems that I'm going to be frantically busy for a while. But I promise I'll try to steal a few moments to post now and again :-)
Really, I'll try.

[ progress report ]
The second coat of paint in the living room did indeed do the trick. When I look at the walls I am still somewhat overwhelmed by my audacity at choosing such a bold color, so much so that I cannot really appreciate the beauty of it yet.
The kitchen on the other hand, using the same paint, just a different color, required only one coat, with nary a mark to be seen. Thoroughly confusing.
Touching up the ceiling in the family room (where we had started the painting experience, and hadn't realized the need to tape off the ceiling as well) went fairly well. The line where Nini stopped painting can't be seen, although some of the spots are still showing through, and would need a second coat. All of which tells me that if ever we wanted to change this wall color, we would have to use about two coats of primer before we can start putting on a different color. So, I sincerely hope that we are going to absolutely love this color. We'd better!

Back at home. Or more accurately, the apartment. Actually, I guess "home" is still apt, since we are still living here; the house will only become home once we move in, in just more than ten days.
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Speaking of the house, we might be running into deadline issues. Obviously I have not been able to work on the house at all these past three days that I have been at the conference, and it turned out that Nini's foot that we thought she had only sprained this weekend is actually broken. The end of the fifth metatarsal in fact. So my poor baby sister has been limping along all across campus, and obviously have not been able to do anything at the house in my absence either.
Needless to say our to-do lists (and our expectations) have undergone drastic changes. The kitchen is finally sparkling, top to bottom. From the mold and sticky goo behind and beneath where the refrigerator used to be, inside and outside the stove (where not even an attempt to wipe out the loose pieces of gunk had been made), behind and beneath the stove, scrubbing the grunge out of every nook and cranny, removing all the kitchen shelves and scrubbing them top and bottom, picking at the ick stuck in the drawer sides, cleaning the grease and filth off the kitchen doors before feeding the wood, and scraping layers of sticky black dust and fly carcasses off the tops of cabinets. We've scrubbed and disinfected the floor, and have finished painting. This monumental job we broke into sections, and completed over the course of several work sessions at the house. Inbetween we've managed to remove wallpaper from the kitchen and Nini's room, and cleaned, patched, texturized and painted the kitchen, family room and Nini's room.
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So, what are the items left on the list of must-do things before we can move in? Touching up the paint in Angel Face's room, cleaning and texturizing the walls in the master suite, installing a few extra brackets and braces missing in the closet, and then paint the master. This would be the biggest paint job we've tackled yet, and I doubt that we'd be able to get away with a single coat of paint there. So figure an entire session for cleaning, taping off and laying drop cloth, ending with texturizing, and then two more sessions to apply a coat of paint in each.
I also still have to measure all the windows currently without window treatments, and buy and install blinds before we can move in.
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We've found the entire experience to be incredibly hard work, but also fulfilling, leaving us with a sense of accomplishment after completing each task. I just wish that we had access to someone who could provide us with advice. We figured out a lot of things the hard way, having made the mistake and had to redo it. I'm also sure that we are still making a lot of errors that we haven't realized yet, and I am scared that they may come back to haunt us later. But we have to do the best we can, given what we have to work with and draw upon.
I promise the next blog will be less like a handy man's diary :-)

Most of the contents of the apartment was packed when I got home last night. The exceptions were mostly the stuff we asked them not to pack - the closets, the bathrooms, the kitchen. Those things we will (and have to some extent already) move ourselves.
I got the call a little while ago that they were done loading the stuff onto the truck. Now just the offloading to be done on the other side.
Next will come the great furniture shuffle as we realize that real life and paper plans are not the same, and what we thought would work well is either an aesthetic or practical disaster. Then the unpacking - let's just hope the shuffle is entirely completed before the unpacking, for heavy as a bookcase might be, it is a lot worse once it is filled!
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We had a little celebration (pizza and pop, and some funny slideshows with insider jokes) to mark the new (fiscal) year, and were told we could have the afternoon off. The problem of course is that my direct boss had scheduled a 1 o'clock phone meeting with engineers in another city, and this is one that I cannot miss.
There are some silver linings to this: first the free afternoon is transferrable, and second, I would be wasting the free time while waiting for the truck to arrive and the stuff to be offloaded. Rather get there when they're all gone, and feel all overwhelmed by the mammoth task ahead.
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I hope the phone transfer went well. They disconnected the phone at the apartment this morning - let's hope they connected it at the house.

The move went... as well as could be expected. I'm thankful that I didn't have to be involved in the organized packing and moving, and relieved that it is all done, and upset that they went so far over the estimate (which was shocking to start).
Nevertheless it is done with only a few things like empty suitcases left at the apartment. We need to go and clean the old place, but we have a week for that. I guess sooner rather than later would be best, but I really want a breather first. In fact, I don't really want to unpack anything at this stage - one more thing that I have to look at and make a decision of where it should go, and I might just explode!
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The griha pravesham went well. Apart from a few missing items, we hit most of the keynotes, and despite a couple of skips, the CD had all the right stuff. The highlight for Angel Face was when the burning camphor sent up thick black smoke and set off a whole series of smoke alarms; fanning fresh air on one stops it, but not the next, and vice versa. Their high-pitched whine formed an interesting counterpoint to the solemn Sanskrit chants. At least we know that the smoke alarms work properly - we were starting to wonder since they don't go off the moment we turn on the stove, like in the apartment :-)
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My precious one's son & his wife, along with darling Anamika arrived during the last ten minutes of the ceremony, and lunched with us at our hastily cobbled-together first real meal in the house. Anamika is just more than five months old now and absolutely gorgeous. Her hair is becoming thicker now, and thus appears darker; coupled with her huge black eyes she is striking, and she was exceptionally happy and placid through-out their lovely long visit.
The new open space with kitchen, dining nook and family room (so no isolation for the cook/s), the new layout and rug, the fire burning in the fireplace, family gathered around just lazing the afternoon away, all seemed just perfect, making the entire process feel worthwhile.
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The router is up, the main computer along with the laptop and Nini's computer are up, but unfortunately we haven't been able to find the box where the network card for the linux (webserver) machine was packed - which means a little while longer without pictures I'm afraid.

Friday evening, as I was preparing to get into bed, we were startled by a loud crash! Scuttling across to the walk-in closet, we found that the shelves have come down. Again. This time it was much more catastrophic, however.
My longer term plans (say six months from now) included outfitting the closet with fresh hardware to maximize the space, create order and increase stability. This event moved everything up. We took the decision there and then to drive the three hours to Seattle in the (Saturday) morning to get the closet organizing hardware from IKEA. Not the way that I had planned to spend Saturday. Nor was the process of installing and building the closet hardware my preferred way of spending Sunday (not the least because the house is still jammed with boxes waiting to be unpacked).

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On the up-side, I asked mpo to drive on the way back from Seattle, which allowed me to do some camera-waving, grabbing mostly sky shots as the sun set amid fluffy clouds.
The weather lately has been really strange. We've had a whole lot of rain very early in the season, then an unusual frequency of foggy mornings, and now a high incidence of sunny days in what would normally be the soggy grey part of the year.
Not that I am complaining, mind you. Give me rain twice a week and I am extremely happy with sunshine for the rest of the days :-)

Pardon the p.j.

Sorted out three sets of curtains this weekend, and might finish a fourth this evening (and finish the last little bit on the third, if we're being completely honest.)

My precious one received his implants, and came through the process in fair form. By this time next week he would be in the air, on the first of the four flights he needs to take to get him home.

It is tough to describe how much I miss him when he is not with me, and how much I hate hate hate hate phone calls.

At least now I can count the days on my hands - no need to involve my toes in the arithmetic.