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Wednesday. Maybe.

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It’s looking like we may actually be able to close on the house on Wednesday, which means I will be free of the place at last. That’s about a month later than the original planned closing, and let me make it clear that it has been a month of pure suck.

It has also pretty much eliminated the possibility of my annual Thanksgiving trip to Toronto the first week in October.

Am I bitter? Yes. Yes, I am.

Will no longer owning the house that’s been making my life hell for the past few months help me deal with that bitterness? Yes. Yes, it will.

Honestly, I’m just too damned exhausted and too damned done with it to spend any time getting sentimental…which is likely a good thing. And I’m liking my childhood home a lot better now that I have a much higher proportion of my own furniture in it. Either way, it will be nice having a weekend where I don’t have to move furniture or load boxes into my car. Except for the vacuum cleaner and two lamps, everything is out. I may go somewhere. I may park my ass on the couch and watch movies while eating bon-bons. The possibilities are limitless…

Order amid the chaos

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Being optimistic that I may actually close on the house I’m selling this week, I finally moved everything out on Thursday. There are a couple of boxes of odds and ends, and a couple of things for the junkman to pick up — things that Goodwill and Habitat would not take — but generally, it’s pretty much empty. If there were any chance of this turning into something emotional, they were basically negated by all the stress that’s been involved with the repairs and the oil tank.

Since I’ve pretty much been living in my “new” house for two years, I think I underestimated (or was in denial about) how much stuff was still in the “old” one. I’m a little overwhelmed by the influx of stuff. It’s mostly a storage issue, and when I get all my shelving set up I should be fine. There’s also an issue of excessive furniture, but I’m working on that with the consignment shop and with Habitat for Humanity.

So I spent today getting the place habitable. I can’t live with chaos for any length of time and even if I really need to be doing something else, minimizing the chaos is always going to be the first priority. I have to have one living space that’s completely normal, and I have to be able to at least walk through every room. I did manage to get to that point by this afternoon.

And then I made the mistake of driving over to Winston to pick up a few odds and ends. Shouldn’t have done that. I tripped on the curb while carrying a box, and did awful things to my knee. I’ll spare you the picture, but I have a feeling it’s really going to hurt tomorrow. The most fun part of the whole thing was that I didn’t even have anything to dress the wound with, since I’ve already cleared out the house. I had to run to Target with my bloody knee fully exposed and…um…bleeding. That was attractive.

It’ll all be over soon, right?

Randomly Thursday night

Random realization upon hitting the ripe old age of “middle” (an ongoing series):

  • it is OK to pay movers to handle the big stuff.
  • if you don’t ask anyone to help you move, you are absolved of any responsibility to help anyone else move.
  • The only reason I still have cable is to keep TCM. Now that I no longer need cable to do that, there is no good reason not to cut the cord.
  • Good meatloaf is always worth an extra five-minute drive. Really good meatloaf even merits an extra ten-minute drive.
  • Having a job and a boss that you like is an incredibly wonderful thing.

WQDR and the death of commercial radio

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Interesting article.

Listening to WQDR (and WQFS from Guilford College) when I was in high school is what taught me that there was more to pop music than theTop 40.

Contrary to popular belief, real AOR stations were nothing like the miserable “classic rock” format that they morphed into. Although they did play some hippie rock that was already past its “sell by” date, there was at least some variety to their interpretation of it–not just the same 17 Lynyrd Skynyrd and Led Zeppelin songs over and over again.

And they also looked to the present and future by playing artists like Elvis Costello, the Clash, and even Earth, Wind and Fire (which just didn’t happen on rock stations in 1979 when all music by African American acts was assumed to be “disco”). They gave their listeners credit for much more sophistication than commercial radio stations do now.

It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was better than most commercial radio before or since.

Another restaurant, another fifteen years…

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So I heard it again today. This time I was in pancake house in Richmond, Virginia, rather than a hoffbrau in Daly City, California. Again I found myself in a time capsule of a restaurant (one that had a juicing machine that invoked the spirit of the Florida Sunshine Tree).

Fifteen years have passed since that odd moment in Daly City, but I still remember the sensation of wonder at how I came to be in that place at that time. It wasn’t a negative thing, really. I think I was just a bit bemused.

Yeah, that’s a good word…

A hell of a lot has happened since then, and I like to think I’m a little less baffled now. I’ve bounced around a good bit more and I did much of that bouncing with a partner. But I’m alone again, as I was this morning, and I pretty much think that fits. It works for me and doesn’t cause anyone else problems. I have a bit more direction now, and maybe my life is a bit more “orderly” but I still have a lot of fun. Granted, I define “fun” a little differently now, but I still love more than anything else to explore…which is why I was in a pancake house in Richmond, Virginia, this morning.

Yes, I’ve found several more occasions to think the world was ending since 1999, and yes, things have still not always worked out according to plan. And all in all, the world has still not really ended, no matter how much I thought it might. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve developed a little more perspective; even though I still start bawling from time to time, and even though I’ve known a whole new world of stress the past few years, I also know it’s not a terminal condition and that I will eventually get through whatever is causing me trouble.

I have no idea where I will be fifiteen years from now. Im dying to find out.

Wow…

So that article about which I was so stressed went through peer review and was accepted with minimal revisions in four days. That’s a pretty enviable turnaround time for an academic journal, some of which take many months for a decision (a good example being the other article of mine that got accepted this summer). Even better, this one was accepted in time for me to add it to the tenure package, giving me two extra publications to include.

And I’m already done with the revisions.

Pretty good way to start a long weekend, methinks.

Submit

I finally submitted that article, approximately seven hours before it was due.

  • It’s either going to be really good or really awful. I basically wrote the whole thing over the course of about a week and a half, due to all the drama in my universe this summer, and I didn’t even have a chance to let someone else read over it. Pressing “submit” felt kind of like having unprotected sex with a complete stranger.
  • When your article is to some extent a case study about things you did at your own institution, which is named in the text, the concept of a blind peer review starts to sound a little bit ludicrous
  • There are no journal content management systems that are not incredibly irritating for authors. None. Not one. That includes the one we use for the two open access journals where I’m the managing editor.
  • Unless this article gets approved in the next two weeks, it will have no effect whatsoever on my tenure decision. I knew that going in. I still wrote it. Go figure.

I’m going to go have leftovers from last night’s delicious meal with no name now.

Randomly Sunday afternoon

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No attention span. Latest stuff:

  • The house sale continues to be a nightmare, thanks to that fucking oil tank that we thought nine years ago would be “no big deal.” So far it’s probably cost me $15,000 and I still don’t have a clean bill of health. the buyers (and their lender) are getting nervous. So am I.
  • That said, the house is mostly cleared out. And the non-tank repairs came in at (slightly) under $6500, so there’s that. If I can keep expenses at this level, at least I won’t owe money at closing.
  • The chimney sweep was as cute as a bug’s ear. it was a lust connection.
  • After moving them yet again, I’m torn. Should I leave my records to someone I really like or to someone I really hate?
  • Finished my next article today, more or less. If I can get one or two of my librarian pals to give it a look tomorrow, I may actually get it submitted on time.
  • Pondering Pittsburgh for Labor Day weekend, as Toronto for Thanksgiving in October is looking much less likely.
  • Someone who gets it.
  • Best news of the week? I am once again not at Burning Man. That fact may make up for all my other stress.

A productive sort of Thursday

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Sometimes you have to take a day or two off just to catch up with your life.

Today was that day for me. I knocked out a huge pile of things that have been hanging over my head, related to the sale of the house and to my mom. I no longer feel like everything is so out of control. And I’m thinking I may actually take a day off this weekend (and not use it to write an article like I did last weekend).

That said, the disposition of the house has been delayed, maybe for several weeks, due to a storm this week that forced the contractor to push back the oil tank removal. No comment yet from the buyers, but I think they’re pretty invested at this point and they apparently love the house, so I’m thinking things will be OK.

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Got rid of a car today, and a shitload of stuff leaves tomorrow to help Habitat (or to line the pocket of the junkman). Just for reference, you can sell a car without a properly notarized title transfer in North Carolina as long as it’s for salvage and the car is more than ten years old. You apparently cannot, however, donate it or sell it to someone who may actually want to register it. As I’m all about making things as simple as possible these days, I opted for the $175 path of least resistance. The extra cash will cover one or two per cent of the oil tank removal cost.

Also for the record, no one (charity shops included) wants big, useless entertainment centers or particle-board computer desks. And Greensboro is much more advanced in its waste management program than Winston-Salem. By “advanced”, I mean that recycling is easier and everything else is generally less of a pain in the ass in Greensboro. Unfortunately, most of the stuff I need to get rid of is in Winston-Salem.

Getting rid of stuff makes me strangely happy. So I should be ecstatic tomorrow night. Maybe I’ll even splurge and do this. I saw them a couple of years ago and they do put on quite the show.