Category: relocation

09:43 – I just got back from walking Colin, who has the squirties. I wore just my hoodie, since the thermometer said it was 47F outside. I’m sure that’s correct, but it didn’t account for the wind, which was gusting up to 25 or 30 MPH. The cold cut through my hoodie and my sweat pants. I have my own metric for wind chill. I subtract one degree from the nominal temperature for each one MPH of wind speed, which yields an accurate “feels like” temperature for me. That means it felt like 17F to 22F out there, which indeed is what it felt like to me.

I did laundry yesterday as usual. Barbara is cleaning house today, as usual, although with all the stuff sitting around packed up she’ll only be able to do a quick run through with the vacuum and clean the bathrooms.

With only a week to go, we’ve still got a lot of stuff left to pack up. I actually thought about renting a storage unit up in Sparta so we’d have somewhere to pile stuff until we can get into the new house, but we might as well spend our time down here getting stuff packed up and then just move it directly to the house once we have it. Barbara said there’s no way she wants to move this stuff twice.

Barbara got a lot of the science kit component inventory boxed up and stacked yesterday, and will get more done today and this coming week. I’ll be working on other stuff, including making sure we have what we need up there to have functioning computers and a TV once we’re up there and have Internet service working. I also need to call the Blue Ridge Electric Co-Op tomorrow about scheduling them to install a propane tank and heater in case we have a power failure. We’re going to get an unvented 25,000 BTU/hr heater, which is enough to keep the downstairs den and bedrooms at normal room temperature and keep the main floor warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing. The biggest propane tank they had when we visited them the other day was 100 gallons, which is enough to run a 25K BTU/hr heater running 24 hours a day for about 25 days. I’m going to see if they can install a 250 gallon tank instead, or even a 500 gallon tank.

Back to packing.

08:56 – We’re still packing stuff up for the move. Yesterday, we started staging stuff for the trip up for the closing. We’re making piles of stuff to go into the Trooper that’ll give us what we need on closing day to stay at the new house overnight, including our dorm refrigerator, spare vacuum cleaner, trash bags and cleaning supplies, our air mattress and bedding, tool kit, clothing, drinks and munchies, etc. With less than two weeks until the closing, there’s a lot to get done.

I finished book three in Theresa Shaver’s Stranded series last night. As I mentioned earlier, the first book was a bit rough around the edges, but showed real potential. The second was better, and with the third Shaver is really coming into her stride as an author. I sent her email to let her know I’d mentioned her books on my blog and got the following response:

Wow, Bob! Thank you so much for plugging my Stranded Series!

There are so many amazing prepper/apocalyptic books out there that I LOVE written for adults that I decided to go with the soft touch of Young Adult. It was also my way of worming the idea of being prepared into young people so they might be aware of the basics. Who knows, it might help save some clueless sheeple if their kids have an idea of what’s happening!

There are a few swears in the books because let’s be honest, no matter how “pure” you think your teen might be, chances are they’ve dropped the Fbomb a few times lol. The 4 swears in the book are in extreme situations and I just can’t believe the teen would say “Holy Golly Gee!!” Just my thoughts but I have been called out on putting them in.

I recently reread the first 3 Stranded books for the first time since I published them and there were some cringe moments for me at the writing so I hope that means I’ve gotten better as a writer since then lol. 6 books in I sure hope I have! I’ve just started the fifth book in the series, Frozen. Let’s see how these kids manage a -30 to -40 Alberta winter with no heat!
As for prepping, I do try and keep most of what I have stored to myself but I’m not too worried about it as I will be “out of here” if IT ever happens. Thankfully, we have a decent fall back point if needed. I’m just not sure how I’ll transport all that duty free booze yet!

Thanks again,
Theresa Shaver

Which reminds me of an incident back in about 1962. My mother was driving us over to my grandmother’s house. My younger brother, Bill, who was 7 years old at the time, was in the passenger seat and I was in the back seat. Not far from my grandmother’s house, another driver ran a red light and almost rammed us. The interchange went something like this:

Bill: JESUS CHRIST!!!
Mom: BILLY!!
Bill: I’m sorry, mommy. I thought that asshole was going to hit us.

I’ve never understood why most adults treat kids as almost a separate species, and a stupid one at that. I’ve always understood that infants are already as intelligent as they’re ever going to be. The CPU and RAM are already there; they lack only data on their hard drives. And young people are constantly gathering data, whether or not adults are aware of that. It’s what kids do. At least some of those data are things that adults would rather the young people not know yet, but they’re going to find out if they have any interest at all. In the era of the Internet, kids are inevitably going to learn more faster than our generation did. We had carefully stashed Playboy and Penthouse magazines. They have an entire world of hardcore porn just a click away.

08:03 – We finished the BBC Wartime Farm series last night. That was the last of the BBC Farm series. I told Barbara I wished they’d make more. She wondered what was left to make Farm series about. I suggested Neolithic British Farm, Roman British Farm, Saxon British Farm, and Norman British Farm.

More relocation stuff to deal with today via phone calls. It’s getting late enough in the year that we may not be able to get this done until the first half of next year, but we’ll keep plugging. Almost everyone involved wants this sale to go through: us, the listing agent, the selling agent, the bank and other creditors, and probably all the neighbors. The only ones who don’t want the sale to go through are the current owners. As our agent said, they’ve been living there for free, running up bills and debts, and they want to continue living there on other people’s money for as long as they can. They’re already bankrupt and judgment-proof, so they’re motivated to throw up as many obstacles as possible and just keep living in the house. At this point, Barbara doesn’t think we’ll get the house unless we drive up there, drag them out, and shoot them.

17:28 – We’re just back from Sparta. We met our agent and the home inspector at the house, and spent the next 90 minutes or so looking at everything. The inspector didn’t find anything serious. Stuff like a GFCI socket that needs to be replaced, some loose weather stripping on the bottom of one garage door, and so on.

One surprise. When we got there, I started following the inspector around while Barbara walked around shooting pictures inside and outside. She shouted up from the basement that it looked like they were taking the woodstove with them. I thought she was kidding, but she was right. They disconnected the pipe to the flu and disconnected the ducting. I didn’t think one was allowed to rip out items that were physically connected to the home, but they obviously plan to take the stove with them. That pisses me off, but at least they’re packing stuff up, so it appears they’re going to show up at the closing.

We also spent some time driving around town to familiarize ourselves with where things are. We filled out an application to join the rifle club. Apparently, shooters are a majority in Sparta. That doesn’t surprise me from those few people we’ve met. Our real estate agent is a shooter, as is another agent at her agency. He’s an officer of the Alleghany County Rifle Association, so we filled out an application while we were sitting in his office. We need a sponsor, and he volunteered to sponsor us. Our real estate attorney is also a member of the ACRA, as is her husband, who owns a gun store. From what I’e seen, I’d guess probably 75% of the adults and teens, men and women, in Alleghany County are shooters. We also filled out an application to join the electric power co-op, and found out what we need to do to get Internet service. There’s already fiber-to-the-home, and the lady at the Internet co-op said all they had to do was press a few computer keys to get the service turned on once we give them the word.

While we were signing up at the electric co-op, I noticed large propane containers and propane appliances out in the display area. I asked about those, and the lady explained what they offered. Assuming the sellers do carry away the woodstove, we’re going to buy an unvented propane heater to heat the basement finished area. It’s only 25,000 BTU/hour, but that’d be plenty to keep us warm and to keep the upstairs pipes from freezing. That heater will consume propane at a bit over one pound per hour, or roughly four gallons per day. A 100-gallon tank will last nearly a month running 24 hours a day. That’s probably plenty to cover us in any normal power failure situation, but I still may talk to them about installing something larger, say 250 or 500 gallon.

Barbara was lobbying in favor of propane. I wanted to go out and buy a woodstove. She understands why I want a renewable fuel but she makes good points about the advantage of propane over wood in normal circumstances. But I’ve already told her that I plan to build an outbuilding eventually, and that will certainly be heated with wood.

08:23 – We’ve had only basic cable TV service for the last decade or so. We watch almost nothing on live TV, other than the local weather forecast when storms are threatening, and Barbara sometimes watches golf on the weekend. As of October 27th, TWC discontinued providing analog cable TV service and switched to 100% digital. They’ve been heavily promoting their digital TV adapter boxes, which are free for the next year or so and then start being charged for at several dollars per month.

Barbara walked into my office yesterday and handed me the TWC bill, which covered Internet service and basic cable TV for 11/7 though 12/6. It was for $83.99. She suggested I call TWC and drop basic cable TV service, since we’re not really using it. So I called TWC and got into their automated attendant service. The option that seemed to be closest to what I wanted to do was “moving”, so I picked that one. I told the guy who answered that we wanted to drop basic cable TV and keep Internet. He said that would drop our bill to about $66/month, but that he had a better deal. Rather than paying $66/month for Internet only, we could get that same Internet service plus telephone service for $9 less per month, a total of $57/month. I figured we’d have to sign up for two years or something, but he said that was the month-to-month price and we could drop it any time without penalty. I asked him what the catch was, and he admitted that we’d have to drive to a TWC store, drop off our current cable modem, and pick up a new modem. I told him I wasn’t interested in doing that and asked what I had to do to get the Internet-only service for $66/month.

He said that he actually dealt only with moves, and to get a service dropped I’d have to talk to another department. He warned me that when I talked to that department not to even mention that we were actually moving, because as soon as they heard that they’d stop listening and transfer the call back to him. So he transferred me. I told the woman in the drop department that we wanted to keep Internet service and drop the basic cable TV service. She had a big list of questions she wanted me to answer, all designed to help her keep me from making any change. I didn’t answer any of them. I simply told her each time she asked a question that we wanted to drop cable TV service because we don’t watch TV. Finally, she admitted that we could have Internet-only service for $65.99/month. I told her that was what we wanted and asked what we had to do to get it done. She said that she did have one more option that would cost us less. The Internet-only was $65.99/month, but we could have Internet plus basic cable TV for $5 less per month, or $60.99. I asked her about the details. It was the same Internet service and the same cable TV service we’re getting now. No new modem needed. No service commitment for 12 or 24 months. Just month to month, but for $60.99/month instead of $83.99/month. So I commented that they apparently rewarded their good long-time customers by charging them $23/month more for the same service. She hemmed and hawed and said that her department had some pretty aggressive offers for customer retention. Bastards.

The lesson here is that you should call your service provider at least every few months and bludgeon them into giving you the best price available without any service-length commitment. And I suppose all of us should file complaints with our state authorities about our service providers using discriminatory pricing.

12:47 – I just got email from our real estate broker up in Sparta. Everything is now signed off on. She’s taking the paperwork to the real estate attorney this afternoon, and calling to get inspections set up. It looks like we’re going to get the house. Of course, with winter approaching and all the stuff we need to do here to get this house ready to go on the market, it may be quite a while before we’re actually living up there.