Points:
00. Some people are ridiculously good at this moving thing. I should be - I've done it something like fourteen times - but I'm not. Probably because I've been at my current place for a good five years or so and have had time to really settle in and build up some inertia. Some of the bad kind of inertia, really. Over the past couple of weeks this bad inertia has been soundly beaten about the head and dragged off to juvie. I'm not out of the woods, but the woods, they are starting to thin. While the situation is sub-optimal it's very far from shitty - it's an Apocalypse - not the Apocalypse - in the original uncover, reveal sense of the term. Limit one per customer per stage of {his|her} life.
01. Need to be out of my place by midnight August 31 (a Sunday), leaving me Labor Day to setup wherever.
02. Wherever is still up in the air, unfortunately. I'm aiming to tenant on with a couple of friends who are looking to buy a house (as opposed to rent one), but there are a lot of options and apparently all of the sexier ones still need some degree of work. Nobody really knows how long this process will take or where it will lead. My guesstimate is six months - three to find, three to renovate to habitable levels. Anyone who's ever done any kind of renovation or construction work (or commissioned said) would probably have a more realistic estimate. With the house an unknown, the amount of work and the time it will take is also unknown.
03. So I need a temporary place for anywhere from three to six months. Maybe longer. Month-to-month would be preferable but that can be really difficult to find.
04. I have some money (by my measure a lot, but y'all know just how fast the stuff burns these days), thanks to a person who's a lot better at managing the stuff than I am - you know who you are and you know how grateful I am ;) - so at the moment, money is a reasonable (read: responsible) non-issue. The where and with who (as well as the how much) are the fuzzier parts of the equation. The parts that need to get glasses, or something.
05. So, need a place. The guys I'm throwing in with may dig up something. The tone of the discussion has been along the lines of "uncomfortable enough to kick us into finding a place, but comfortable enough that we don't kill each other in the process." (paraphrased) They have an Emergency Fallback they can use if they absolutely have to, but they're not reaching for the ripcord just yet.
06. I don't have an emergency fallback. For temporary (read: more temporary than the five years or more I spent in my current location) housing, my coworker has an apartment with a living room slightly larger than the fricking death star. In October. Maybe. Expensive but affordable if I'm a good boy and treat my liver with the respect it deserves.
07. Leaving September as this big gaping "uh." that will need filling this week.
08. I have one Emergency Couch on deck that will cover me for a day or two tops. It's there if I have to, but it's incredibly short term, so I'm loath to make use of it unless absolutely necessary. The owner of the couch is an incredibly nice guy - the sort that makes you wonder if you haven't stumbled onto the set of a sitcom or feel-good movie. I'm a generally murkier sort of character - so much so that thinking on this scenario always breaks off into flashbacks of Edward Scissorhands.
09. I have received offer of a "futon in a basement" for unknown duration, also assumed to be temporarier than the temporary I'll need before I can go longterm again. I'll be engaging in liver abuse while hopefully finding some answers to this possibility on Saturday.
10. I could always get a Shitty Studio or a Shitty One Bedroom. Lease length is an issue there, as well as other factors like total cost, location, and the ability to move into it in a timely fashion. If I have to go 10, then I can hopefully make use of various couches/futons as the details are sorted. I'd obviously prefer 05, or perhaps a time travel device that will allow me to work September while sleeping, say, all those hours I burned in the summer of 2000. All that sleep ought to be useful for something, right?
11. I've made a couple of massive, massive garbage drops over the past few weeks. My old roommate Ben swung by last night and scooped up some shelving and some other odds and ends. Mom came down today (<3) and rescued a bunch of stuff - CDs, the better part of a decade of backups, old role playing manuals (not the bought kind, the "I wrote these in my spare time" kind), my AIP art bag, clothing, etceteras. We even managed to make a run to Goodwill to drop some stuff off. She'll be back this coming weekend for some more stuff - hopefully just the stuff Jen left that she didn't get to, but if worse comes to worse, some computer hardware and the ATC production noteboks and artwork. The landlord has agreed to arrange a sweep and clear for the remainder. I assume he's realized that given the volume of crap and just how much of it isn't mine, he'd probably be stuck with removing it anyway. While this is worst-case true, I'm trying to offload as much as I can through other methods first.
12. Progress on The Five Person Mess is being made. Sometimes it feels glacial, sometimes it feels like huge chunks of The Wall have suddenly Floyded away. It's eroding, and at an acceptable pace - assuming I don't blow up and go catatonic for a few days.
13. I've set my Newtons and associated kit aside for Martin.
14. While my Mission Critical Data is not backed up (390 gigs to DVD-R? Don't have the time, don't have the time!!), it is mirrored. I should have enough time to cook off the less critical stuff this week while performing other tasks. The the full 50-spindle and the empty 50-spindle the media will spool onto stare at me accusingly. Stare, they do, with those ghastly ethereal eyes.
15. Gridlock is going away this coming week. Thanks to an offer from _Lasar, the major hosted sites won't be. The major hosted services, however, will be Gone for the foreseeable future.
16. Which leaves September, lurking in the pale moon light.
I solve that, I can start thinking long term again. |
