Category: Blog Page 13 of 141

Things are moving along nicely with the preparations for moving.  With luck, we’ll be able to actually move our computers down this weekend and start actually residing in our new residence.  I’ve been bringing down small carloads of stuff during my daily commute¹, and taking advantage of my parking space in the building.

I had called to set up cable and internet service, and they told me I’d need to actually go to one of their offices and pick up the CableCARD that would allow my TiVo to act as a cable box, because they don’t ship those by mail.  No problem, the nearest office is just a few miles from my office, so I  popped up there during lunch.

I was impressed by their waiting area, which had a ticket system rather than making people stand in a serpentine line.  And there were little computer stations, so I spent some time reading a couple of news sites while waiting.  Finally, they called my number and I went up to the counter.  The young lady behind the counter looked vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn’t place her so I shrugged it off and told her why I was there.

While collecting my information, she noted my phone number (which is still my old 678 number, because I’ve had no real reason to change it) and asked if I was from Georgia.  I told her I’d recently moved here from Atlanta.

“I used to live in Atlanta too!”
“Really, what part?”
“John’s Creek.²”
“No kidding?  I lived in Alpharetta.”
“Oh, cool.  I worked at the Comcast location in Alpharetta, over on Main Street.”
“*That’s* where I knew you from!”

Seriously, what are the odds?

1. And just today, had the first thing to break in the course of the move. *sigh* ↩

2. Alpharetta and John’s Creek are right next to each other. ↩

I had been doing a pretty good job of rebooting my blog back in June, but I fell off again for a variety of reasons. The early part of July was a pretty bad time for a number of reasons, some inside my head and some outside.¹ I went to Nerdtacular in Salt Lake City for the second year in a row, and I had a good time;  the following several weekends were taken up with a variety of out-of-town visitors, which brought us to early August, at which point we entered a period of unexpected flux. Very positive flux, mind you, but flux which made it hard to figure out how to talk about what was going on, so I kept waiting for it to settle and figure out how things were going to play out. Now that it has, here’s the news…²

• One of our houseguests, happyfunpaul, is now dating our housemate, runnerwolf³
• Said housemate is moving to Boston to be closer to him, and will, therefore, no longer be our housemate.
• As a result, kitanzi and I are moving to a new apartment in Seattle.
• Everyone’s joy quotient has been raised.⁴

As early as a month ago, we weren’t sure what the timeline was going to be, but as things stand now, we will all be completely out of the Redmond apartment by October 20th, when our lease ends. runnerwolf is heading out to Boston prior to OVFF, and will either simply move at that time, or else return here for a short period before making her transition to the east coast.

Yesterday, I put an application and deposit on an apartment near my office. Astonishingly near my office. Could not be closer to my office without actually working from home near my office. Today, they accepted our application, and we should be able to take possession of the unit by next Friday, which gives us a full month to affect the move.. It’s a very nice 1 BR flat that is probably roughly the same size as the part of the space in the current flat that we’re actually using, and my commute will be reduced from 2-3 hours on the bus every day to a pleasant stroll down the street.  Hopefully, it will be a bit less remote from various people that we’d like to socialise with, as well.⁵

The next month will be spent packing and shifting things, and we’ll probably do the big lift once we know the Internet is up and working at the new place (since kitanzi works from home, its essential that the Internet be up and working the day we move in). We should be nicely settled in before it’s time to fly to Ohio for OVFF.

So what’s new in your world?

1. At this point, I’m just going to let that go with a vague wave of my hand.  I’m feeling much better of late. ↩

2. Pending future revision, but this is looking like the plan, now… ↩

3. Surprised, weren’t you? ↩

4. Joy Quotient is my New Order cover band. ↩

5. Ironically, a couple of my friends — Bill and Brittany, who lived in Redmond when we first met — moved out of the neighbourhood just before we moved in.  I found out the other day that Bill’s brother and HIS wife, whom I met at Nerdtacular,  have just moved into Redmond as we are about to leave it.   It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it. ↩

Nine years ago, I walked into a courtroom in Atlanta, and walked out married to kitanzi.  On that day, I had only one lingering question.

“How on Earth did I get this lucky?”

I never have found the answer to that, but I still have the question, and I hope I always will.

Happy anniversary, sweetheart.