footpad, posts by tag: house - LiveJournal (original) (raw)

Moving mayhem	[Feb. 1st, 2009|01:38 pm]Footpad
[Tags**|house, house move] [Current Mood**	functional]We got out of our old house on time.It was close. If we hadn't already cleared out the cellar and garage and taken their contents to Weilerswist, we'd have had a serious overload. But, free of that encumbrance, we spent all of Thursday making sure absolutely everything in the house was packed, taped, catalogued, disconnected, unplugged, secured, labelled and ready to go. And on Friday morning we got everything into the removal truck in barely more than three hours, leaving nothing in the house but an indescribable quantity of dust and malamute hair. It took me nine hours to clean everything up.Late in the evening I took a last tour around the darkened house. I'm not a deeply-rooted sort of person; leaving a place is something I find refreshing rather than sad. But a house becomes a set of habits that are hard to leave behind. The paths one treads through the rooms; the habitual press of a light-switch as you enter the bathroom; the exact pattern of muscular effort that carries you up the fourteen stairs and into your own room. And of course the memories, lingering like ghosts in the brooding empty rooms. So I took a little while to say goodbye, if not to the house itself, than to the parts of me that had become part of it, and which were now to be left behind forever.Then I called Mischa to me, closed the door behind us, and moved on into the night.÷The new house is coming along nicely. We spent all day painting; today we have another three rooms to paint; and tomorrow morning the removal truck comes by and we'll unpack everything again.Meanwhile we're all living in the tiny apartment of Draugvorn, who'll be sharing the house with us. He'll get the space under the roof, which is kitted out with its own bathroom and micro-kitchen; we'll very much be living together, but it gives him his own distinct territory to retire to. I get a little room of my own, which will mostly house books and servers since I'll often be in Zurich for the immediately-foreseeable future.mischamute, of course, gets whichever bit of the house he wants. Currently he's showing a marked preference for the cellar, which is of course quiet, and uncomfortably cold by human standards.And me? I'm enjoying myself. My happiness would be complete if only I could find my antidepressants, since the withdrawal symptoms are starting to kick in.
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House!	[Jan. 22nd, 2009|12:29 pm]Footpad
[Tags**|house] [Current Mood**	active]We got a house!Of all the houses we've been to see, our second-favourite choice is owned by a couple who vacillated so endlessly that we'd given up on them. We were therefore astonished when their agent called us this morning to say that they'd come to a decision, that they liked us, and that in fact they would accept a year's rent in cash up front as proof of our liquidity. The house is available right now so we will, in fact, be out of this house by the end of the month. akeela won't be left to handle the move alone while I'm working in Zurich. And our landlords, who sold their house a month too soon, won't be left homeless because of it.But just before we accept that offer, we're going to make one last-ditch attempt at a house we saw on Tuesday and which we liked even more.
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Zurich	[Jan. 11th, 2009|09:19 pm]Footpad
[Tags**|house, life, the bank, travel, work] [Current Mood**	businesslike]We went to see the prospective house today. I liked it. It was ancient—low ceilings, nutcracker exposed beams, warren-like layout, wind whistling through gaps everywhere, and not a right angle nor flat surface in the whole damn building. But in other ways it just wouldn't do. Poor Draugvorn, our potential housemate, could only stand up straight in two rooms in the house; the garden was on a north-facing hillside; the heating was electric and therefore hideously expensive in such a draughty house; and it wasn't a detached house as described. So, regretfully, we decided against it. We keep looking.Poor akeela is being plagued by our landlady. She arranged to move out of her house at the end of January, then gave us notice until the end of February, which leaves her and her husband with nowhere...[It's 21:01, one minute past Mischa's feeding time. Prompted by the unnervingly accurate clock in his stomach, he has just stood up and started pacing around; and now he's lying with his nose pointedly indicating the route to his food bowl. Brief intermission... ...done, and he's now golloping down kibble soused with yoghurt and a chicken-liver goop. Happy dog!]... to live during that month. We did say we'd try to be out by the end of January, but we sure didn't promise anything... and now she's trying to get us to pay to put all their furniture in storage for that month. As you can imagine, we're making the necessary preparations to fight over the rental deposit.I am sorry to leave my poor little garden to these people.÷Meanwhile, just to complicate my life, it looks pretty certain that I'll be starting work in Zurich on the 1st February.
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Form and substance	[Jan. 8th, 2009|04:25 am]Footpad
[Tags**|geek, house, job, late night, music] [Current Music**	Faithless, God is a DJ, followed by _Insomnia_] [Current Mood	cosmic]I'm messing around with imposition software. I'm a bit caffeine-buzzed, since a friend of mine dosed me up on "mild coffee", which turned out to have "reduced caffeine" in the way that airport duty-free shops have "reduced prices". I've got a beer by one elbow and a chocolate pasty (don't ask) at the other. Today I took long walks with Mischa in the snow, and then I spent all afternoon teaching Mischa's girlfriend's owner how to use her computer.My day has been full and I'm deep in creative endeavour. I'm flying so high right now, I feel like the whole universe is open to me in all its range and potential.This is my church, my place of the mind.÷I really, really enjoyed teaching Angelika computer basics. It's really starting from scratch; she can sort of use a mouse and keyboard, so she does things incredibly laboriously and slowly. But that doesn't matter. I have all the time in the world. It's like a kind of meditation, an exercise in creative empathy, keeping an intuitive and sympathetic track of what the student knows. Where she's getting stuck, what she wants to do, how she's trying to do it. When to step in handle something she doesn't need to know (like fixing a DNS problem). When to drop in a suggestion, a tip, a reassurance (my favourite is, "Try it!"). And, finally, when to sit back and watch her figure it out, since that's often the most instructive tactic of all.It's kind of strange: the teacher has to be not only one step ahead of the student, but one step outward. The student focuses on the task at hand; the teacher focuses on the implicit, general understanding that that task will bring, but which the student doesn't yet perceive. You can't teach someone to use a computer. You can only show them specific tasks—which individually are no use at all—and let them osmotically acquire the conventions, language and praxis of computing. It's like becoming someone else's intuition.I've never thought of myself as a people person, but I realise now that I could quite easily envisage becoming an teacher—at least of people who want to learn.÷House-hunting goes on. akeela had found a place we liked near Cologne, but then the landlords have been so serially disorganised that we can't wait for them, and we aren't sure we'd want to rent from them if we could. So Aki's gone on searching and, as so often happens, ill-luck breeds good: he's found a place that looks so wonderful that we're begging the Fates to make it as good as it seems. It's a fairly solitary house in a hamlet in a sizeable nature reserve; it looks well-appointed with lots of space for Mischa; the price is right; and the landlady seems nice. The only catch is that there are twelve other interested parties, so we're going to be trying like hell to make a good impression when we visit on Sunday. Aki will be his usual affable and competent self; I will muster the best of my charm, see to my grammar and perhaps play up my English accent; and—best of all—they've asked to meet Mischa as well, to make sure he won't kill and eat their children. Instead he'll be our secret weapon in the charm offensive.The house is in a place called Wolf-stall, with a nearby village whose German name can only be translated as Under Male Dogs Over. We believe the Fates are trying to tell us something.÷The job in Zurich is looking very probable indeed. I had an e-mail from the bank today, asking, "When can you start?" An informant tells me that the IT middle-managers are discussing my hiring as a done deal, and the Human Resources people generally listen to them. So I give it a 90% chance that I'll be in Zurich within two months. It only remains to negotiate the salary. I'm angling for a little more than I got when I left. Between you and me, I'd take less (still not a salary to be sniffed at), but I'm damned if I'll tell the HR people that. *wag*
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The Ways of the Lady	[Nov. 26th, 2008|11:43 am]Footpad
[Tags**|house, life, luck] [Current Mood**	thoughtful]The more of life I see, the more I wonder at the strange inversions and reversals of luck.First of all, it's not going to be a big problem finding a house—there's plenty of decent choices available within our budget, and there'll be no problem finding a place to suit us. We've hatched the plan of getting a larger place and inviting one of our many congenial friends to share it, so we're looking at places that have a reasonably private space—a loft with its own bathroom, say—that can be their private space. That way everybody gets more space; we get to share the costs; akeela has company while I'm away in Zurich; mischamute has another person to attend to his primary needs of food, exercise and love. It could actually be better than our billet here.Then, just now, the man at The Bank rings me up and tells me, with a certain note of apology, that things have been put on hold at his end, and the job won't be available until February. "Great!" I enthused: that gives Aki and I two months to move instead of one. _Optimal._Of course, knowing human-resources departments, that one-month delay might just drag out until the contract never materialises. But then I'll just have to get my arse in gear elsewhere, and maybe trust to luck.
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Oh Bugger	[Nov. 20th, 2008|08:56 pm]Footpad
[Tags**|house, trials of life] [Current Mood**	philosophical]Our landlords just visited and explained—very nicely and reasonably—that the husband had had his income drastically reduced, and they were going to need to sell one of their houses.In short, while they haven't yet sent us the actual letter, we've basically got three months to find another place, get it set up, and move into it. And all this while I'm in the middle of organising a move to Zurich.It could be a lot worse, of course (I read recently of a friend who got an eviction letter at two days' notice because their roomie had broken the rental contract), but it is still An Embuggerance.Not to worry. I have faith. With akeela's ingenuity in finding a place and making it habitable, and my chaotic enthusiasm applied to moving house, and Mischa to keep us all sane—we'll manage somehow. All is not lost while we have some kind of shelter and enough money for dog food.Still.Bugger.
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Cleaning up	[Feb. 24th, 2008|11:33 pm]Footpad
[Tags**|house, life] [Current Mood**	bleak]At last. I've finally cleaned out the stuff-moving boxes that have been cluttering my room for months. I've swept up the dust, and scrubbed the floor where it needed it. I've cleaned up (or at least moved to my desk) the cluttered bank-related papers that were using my floor as a filing system. My room seems like an oasis of space and order.This morning as Mischa and I were out walking, we encountered another dog-human couple who're vaguely known to Aki and me. The human is a middle-aged woman who of course adores Mischa. The dog is a gorgeous little husky bitch who entrances both Mischa and me (though hopefully for different reasons). We ended up walking together for hours, and Mischa and I showed them some of our favourite back paths through the woods. The husky is an undisciplined little brat who spends half her time lunging forward on the leash; Mischa seems beautifully disciplined by comparison.nerkitt and Draugvorn came round for roast chicken. We cooked enough to feed eight normal people, and ate most of it. Aki gets the rest in his sandwiches tomorrow. And there's still leftover lasagne from yesterday. And I cleaned up the kitchen after cooking, and I am now boiling the chicken remains for stock.In short, this weekend I have been industrious, organised and generally a Very Good Pup, and I think I deserve a reward of chocolate mints. And, good heavens, I have some. Maybe they'll help this caffeine headache.
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