Empty Nest

Wow, it really has been a while since I've shared anything here. Sorry about that. I am happy to report that, after a very long time, we are finally reaching the end of the repairs to our house. For any of you counting, it has now been 14 months (exactly, I just realized) since our fire. I never imagined that this ordeal could possibly last so long. I'd always heard people complain about contractors, but kind of assumed that they were exaggerating with how bad it could be. Now I know better.

Shortly after the new year, we got everything packed up to vacate the house for the final repairs (mostly painting and refinishing the floors). Our original plan was to stay in some corporate hotel kind of place (but with small kitchenettes) in Emeryville (which is where I work), but when we stopped by to visit the place, it was a bit of a disappointment. We briefly considered another place that was a bit nicer (and about twice the money), but then decided that maybe we should just look around for a place that would make us a bit happier. We managed to find on craigslist a short-term rental on a 1 BR half of a duplex that's very close by to our actual house (only about 4-5 blocks away). It would be a bit cramped for the long term, but it's fine for the 3-4 weeks that we expect to be here.

Thankfully we had some other company to do the main work of packing up and moving most of our stuff into storage. But moving still was a bit of a pain. Partly because this company (like every other company we've dealt with) turned out to be a bit incompetent, and didn't really fully do the job that they're getting paid to do, so we ended up having to do a bunch of stuff ourselves anyway. And they didn't really have any way to take care of the growing collection of indoor plants that we have accumulated, so we ended up moving all of them to the new place, which was a bit of a delicate operation.

Even for a very short journey, Dirk doesn't like to travel, and he was a bit skittish at first in the new digs. He spent a lot of the first few days hanging out under the bed, but he has grown a bit more accustomed to his new surroundings and is now more relaxed. The backyard here is beautiful, with a number of redwood trees, some of them quite mature, and Dirk likes the opportunity to wander outside. That is, when he's not intimidated by the bitter cold that we've been experiencing lately. (We've wrapped our small lime tree back at the house in christmas lights leftover from the wedding to try to protect it against the frost.)

The painting at the house was finished on Friday, and the refinishing of the floors is scheduled to start tomorrow morning. If all goes well, that will be done at the end of this coming week, and the following week will be devoted to cleaning up and moving back. And then we'll be done. I'm fully expecting things to go wrong, because they pretty much have given any opportunity to do so, but maybe just maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised and 2 weeks from now we'll be back in our house and can get on with our lives.

I do have tons more to say, trying to catch up on the past 4 months when I've been a bit negligent in my blogging, but both Lorien and I (she's working now) have to work tomorrow morning (corporate America doesn't seem to feel that the achievements of Dr. King are sufficiently worthy of a day off), so I should be turning in. More to come soon...