Back to Normal

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Well, I'm back in the office today after we closed all of last week. Although I did do a good deal of office work while I was off, the vast majority of my time off was spent moving and fixing stuff in the new house. Yesterday afternoon, I went out on one last errand run, stopping at Home Depot for some shelving, swinging by the Ronkonkoma train station to beat the rush for monthly train tickets, and dropping by the condo to pick up the last of my clothes that I had left there. Once I got back, I spent a lot of time arranging my home office. I'm not sure my Color Laserjet survived the move. The thing was spewing yellow toner all over the place. I cleaned it up as best I could and set it up, but I'm getting all sorts of blinking warning lights. Fixing it will likely be my next project.

Basically, my home office is done, though. I took Rob's old desk from the Wading River house, which is L-shaped. I put up plenty of shelves, got my old desktop computer set up and ran a bunch of wires. Everything looks pretty nice. My only regret is that, since it was raining, I didn't get a chance yesterday to go out to Wading River and pick up the boxes of books sitting on the rafters in the garage. So there are all these shelves sitting empty, waiting for books to fill them up.

I've got a bunch of things to do at the house for the next few days, including cleaning up the garage and basement a bit. We broke down a lot of moving boxes and the box from the new fridge and threw them in the garage, so the garage is overflowing with cardboard and styrofoam, all of which needs to go. At some point after work, I need to sit in the basement and take a few hours to get all my music and recording gear set up. Whatever doesn't fit in the basement needs to go to the garage, so I've got my work cut out for me.

My buddy Dan always used to tell me how owning a home is like an endless string of projects. I see projects stretching off into my future ad infinitum. Oh, well. I guess it will keep me out of trouble.

We're In

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Well, Lauren and I are in the new house. So much to do and so little time. Thankfully, lots of folks have dropped by to give us a hand, including our parents, siblings and friends. My office is set up with the bare bones - a desk (a gift from Rob), my laptop and my old desktop, and some shelves. I'm right in the middle of getting all the sound equipment I own set up in the basement. One challenge will be to string a CAT6 cable down from the router (which is in my office on the second floor) to the basement where my Mac Mini will reside. (I tried to bribe the cable guy to do it yesterday, but no dice.)

Lots of sanding, priming and painting ahead, and I see that upon closer inspection, the bathrooms need to be redone in here, particularly the floors. Most of my friends who are homeowners tell me that it's never quite "done." I guess this will be my ongoing project for at least the next several years. In the short term, I've got a bunch of rooms to paint, a broken window (!) to fix, a pool cover that needs rainwater pumped off it pronto, and light fixtures to be installed.

Needless to say, blogging will be light until the New Year.