The joys of home ownership

I thought I would let everyone know how the move in went and what we have encountered in our first few days of home ownership. We have had some ups and downs, which I am sure is normal.

We finished moving the last of our possessions and the cats into the new house on Friday morning.

Moving the bikes and my fern, late Thursday night.

I spent the rest of Friday contacting repairmen to turn on the gas (which had been turned off by the termite tenting company, because some of the chemicals they pumped into our house were flammable) and try and fix the upstairs air conditioning, which had mysteriously stopped working. We did manage to get the gas working, and after a few days of experimentation, managed to both have hot water and have the hot water not scald us. The air conditioning however, has been a complete bust. We have so far been unable to have the repair crew come out and fix it yet. I hope that they are able to do so today, they are supposed to have a repair crew come by this afternoon. I have also managed to get internet and phone service up and running, although right now we cannot use Wi-Fi (again for unknown reasons) . Since our office is on the second floor,( in un-air conditioned hell) I have been practically internet-less in the afternoon hours.

In addition to unpacking and organizing our worldly possessions, we have been trying to make the house more livable by a series of small improvements. Colin has been focusing on taming the grass in the front yard during the evening hours. His tool of choice for this project has been our brand-spanking- new reel lawnmower. The use of this has probably cemented our reputation among our new neighbors as the crazy young couple down the street.

I call him: Herbert.

I have been spearheading the effort to fix doors and windows. For example, the door that lead from the dining room to the servant stairs hung so strangely on its hinges that it looked like it came out of Alice in wonderland. If I looked at it for too long I would actually begin to feel disoriented, and end up with Tom Petty's "Don't come around here no more" stuck in my head. It did not help that the linoleum in the servant staircase is in a black and white checkerboard pattern. Anyway, I undid the hinges and fixed that door so that it hung straight on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Colin and I reinstalled a door that had been removed from the kitchen, effectively preventing Hodag from wandering around the attic unsupervised. I have also been removing an enormous amount of junk from under our porch.

Piles of junk from under our porch. (Please notice the amazing old style fan, and rusted bike, respectively)

Not all the stuff that was left over the years in our yard has been so useless, for instance, we are now the proud owners of two Weber grills. This weekend, we are planning on going to both Home Depot and to Bed Bath and Beyond for more supplies.

Happy Anniversary

It was one year ago today, as best we can remember, that we arrived for good in New Orleans. To mark the day, a few photos from the archives:



Nora was defeated by the first day's driving, and collapsed onto the motel bed:


This is Hodag, investigating his new street. We arrived in the middle of an enourmous rainstorm. Fortunately, it let up just enough (and just long enough) for us to get the mattress, ourselves, and Hodag inside.


Our mattress ended up in the living room for the first few days. We were so tired when we finally got here, and the only thing we could manage to get into the house that first night was the mattress. We spent the first few nights on the bare mattress in that exact spot.


The power was really flaky last summer. We later discovered that that was due to a bad connection at the breaker box; the problem has since been fixed. We were warned not to stress the power too much (specifically, by not turning on all the AC units at once). The power was particularly unreliable during storms. The first thing we did when we arrived was to turn on the AC unit in the living room to air it out a bit. After it had been on for about 30 minutes, the power went out. At that point, we just decided to go to bed without power.