I Am Going to Miss My Forest

Although the new house has even more forest, some of it hickory. I am not yet sure if this the species with edible nuts.

Boxes

I found that Home Depot's Heavy Duty Large was big enough for the absurdly large Canon PRO-300 and a much more modest Canon MG2522 with lots of bubble wrap. We are almost done packing and I will be glad to be done 

Google Earth is Amazing

 

Lost Keys

I misplaced the keys that hold the roof rail crossbars on my wife's Hyundai. I eas planning to pay a locksmith to fit keys for them.

It was not an opium dream but a dream nonetheless revealed their location.

In Hyundai Tucson glove box, a stately key set i did find.

Shipping Boxes

The next time you buy something expensive that comes in a custom box, save that box! We are trying to pack some expensive, oddly-shaped items: HP LaserJet, Canon PRO-300. If you put them in a box that is wide enough, it is likely so tall that any weight on top will crush the box down.  You do not want anything heavy in the box on top of the printer.  If you put anything soft on top of the printer, it needs to be compressible enough to absorb weight without transferring it to the printer. 

Monitors, at least are standard sizes and shapes. Boxes for them are surprisingly expensive, especially when you get the 33" monsters that I have on my desk.  The 65" TV seems to not be a common moving box size.

We have historically discarded these boxes because of storage space.  Next time, I will find space. 

Heavy duty foam for padding around printers in boxes is available from U-Haul and UPS.

Home Depot has a double wall box that just about exactly fits the Canon PRO-300.

My Wife Was Skeptical of the View From Our Yard

 So I asked Google Earth:

Pool in New House

 

Buyer For Caldwell House Finally

I was hoping to close here before close on new house but it will only be a week or two of short-term financing.

I Took The Girls For Their First Ride in the Cadillac (Driving Miss Rosie)

This got scrambled first time. A potential, and eventually actual buyer, wanted to see the house and Mom's Taxi was not home, so I loaded our Springer Spaniels in the back seat and away we went. Lillie tried to climb into the front seat, but I explained that she could not drive and she lay down in the back. Both girls calmed down and saw quietly in the back seat, without sedatives, sometimes looking out the window. I explained to my wife that Rosie and I could split driving shifts.  She was not convinced. The first prairie dog or pronghorn antelope along the road and we would driving after it.

The more I drive my CT5, the more impressed I get with the electronics. The SuperCruise lane change capacity at first disappointed me. I turn the turn signal on and I have to turn it off after the lane change completes. 

A few weeks back, I watched a YouTube video about features present in many cars that are not explicitly in the manuals and are very nice. One is that on many cars, if you turn the turn signal stalk just a little, it turns on the blinker just long enough to warn those in that lane, "I'm coming over." (In the 1960s, I repaired the blinkers on my 1964 Chevy Malibu wagon, and saw the very curious mechanism to implement that in plastic, without electronics.)

So I did the brief warning mode. SuperCruise did the lane change with no need to turn off the blinker. Very nice. It also will do uncommanded lane changes to get around road hogs. I do not understand how it makes this decision but it is possible to tell it to not make uncommanded right lane changes,  I have never seen it make a dangerous decision on this.

Final Negotiations for House Repair Complete

We negotiated the price down $2000 to cover some important repairs that the selkers are too strapped to pay for. We have a number of ambitious renovation plans to bring it into the 21st century which we can afford to do.

We leave on August 4th and become Tennesseans August 12th.

Packing Ourselves

Trying to find a company to pack our stuff in a professional manner was too hard. We have enough time to pack ourselves. I have started on the telescopes. The 17.5"v Dobsonian looks impossible but is a half-Serrurier truss design so it can be broken down to four 24x24 boxes.

My wife is helping me get everything bubble wrapped for safe transit.

Moving is So Much Fun

We were going to use UPack to get our stuff cross-country.  We are not inclined to pack and load ourselves but UPack has an affiliated business that provides local pack and load services. 

I made a reservation with them. They do not bring or supply boxes, tape, or moving blankets to protect your furniture. So how many boxes will I need? I really do not want to buy 100 boxes and they only use 80. This is not something that I would expect professional movers to do, and yet this is a local moving company. 

SuperGrok thinks the full service movers can do it for about $15,000 (no appliances, 300 pound gun safe, not heavy but oddly shaped telescopes). I am getting estimates this next week. If it comes into that price range, it is only a few thousand more than UPack and whatever the local pack and load service would cost. 

Frustrations

The initial burst of showings of our Caldwell house had trickled down. I hope this is because of 4th of July.

That the first offer fell through because they were not really looking to buy a house was odd, but several realtors now have told of people who finally admitted (in one case after wasting 18 months of her time) that they could not buy a home. They just liked shopping.

Our Caldwell House is Under Contract

Our realtor managed to sell our daughter's house in six days and our house in six days, and on the seventh day, Danielle rested. 

UPDATE: The buyers withdrew. Apparently this is a recurring pattern. There is a period of time after signing contract to put down earnest money and they reached that point. A couple realtors that I know have a problem with people who spend lots of time looking at houses they have either ability or interest buying because it is so much fun! Shopping for houses for me is better than filling a cavity but not by much 

House Hunting

The first day was a mixture of houses that were sad (enough unrepaired water damage to show that someone had stopped repairing the obvious problems; to make you wonder about the subtle problems) or reminders that a 1960s houae needs renovation of fixtures to not look like it is looking for a place in James Lilek's Interior Desecrations.

 Some houses were beautiful but failed to meet our needs: 2 car garage with no way to easily build a detached garage (for shop and telescope storage) slopes so severe that building a dog run would be hard. Houses with pools and no other yard.

I Promise to Get Back to Current Events and History Soon (Fireflies As Light Pollution)

This relocation is just burning up all my time and energy. We have an offer on the house in Idaho. While not as much as we had originally hoped, it is sufficient to pay for the Tennessee house, the staircase rebuilds, adding a small staircase for the dogs from back porch to back yard, and a split A/C for the shop.

We drove up there last night about 11 PM to do s sky survey. Adding to the difficulty was a Full Moon and some high cirrys clouds. While not as dark as the house we had in Horseshoe Bend, it is better than what i have now. Beta and Gamma Lyrae, both magnitude 3 5 stars, were easy to see and Delta Lyrae, magnitude 4, was visible with averted vision. Polsris, magnitude 2, of course was plainly visible. I expect without the planet's most annoying nightlight I will see magnitude 4 and 5 stars easily. 

There are streetlights in the area but they are at least 100 feet below us and hidden by our front forest. The biggest light pollution problem seems to be fireflies. This is somewhat magical to us, still.

We Close on New House Aug. 12th

Now organizing movers.

Tennessee

This is my fourth visit to Tennessee.  My first was a 1980 corporate trip to support introduction of the GenRad/Futuredata in-circuit emulator product. This was a product well ahead of its time. Some day, I will engage in archaeoengineering that will fill all your nerd requirements for the year by telling you about it. I barely remember thst trip except getting Salisbury Steak dinner on ceramic plates with metal utensils on an airliner. I was fortunately not in the smoking section. (At the dawn of time: the pilot wore a leopard-skin loincloth.

The word pilotess would have been incomprehensible and unneeded.)

My second trip was to speak at Lincoln Memorial University School of Law. I think it was in the 2000s. I no longer remember what my presentation was about.  I met Dr. John Lott at this event. 

My third trip was to look around last year in preparation for considering the move with our daughter. 

This is my fourth trip and the first as summer hits.  What a summer! The positives:

1. People are friendly and polite.  Only a couple of drivers that make me say, "Go back to Los Angeles!"

2. Everything is so green here. Northern Idaho is like this, too. But the Boise area is completely brown right now except where irrigation has corrected the problem. That picture i took yesterday from what I hope will be my backyard really shows what the adjective verdant means.

4. Gasoline runs from $3.13 to $3.28 per gallon depending on location. 

Downsides:

1. Hot and humid. Between May and September, I expect my daytime will either be indoors, in a car, or in my pool. Of course, right now in the Boise area, the situation is just about as bad. It is dryer but temperatures often exceed 100 degrees.  Misery is similar.

2. Houses are different here. Most houses here have small windows.  Even though electricity seems similar in price (loss of hydroelectric) they build as though every kilowatt is being rationed like your life depends on it. I think it is because they are generally poorer here.

3. Houses are often built with a colonial facade but interiors are quite similar.  Lots of basements. Idaho has them also but not so abundantly.  Partly this is using earth cooling. Partly this is hoping thr rare tornadoes will let you survive even without a purpose-built tornado shelter.  The basement in the new house could be retrofitted into a combination fallout and tornado shelter will a lot of cinder blocks and some concrete. It has a toilet, sink, and shower. It could be turned into an expedient fallout shelter in a few hours, I think, but we are downwind of Oak Ridge National Laboratory so probably not very useful. 

4. Those basements come with staircases that range from worrying to terrifying. They are narrow, steep, and in some cases there is nothing to prevrnt you from falling out on to the floor. Many of these would not be up to code if built today, but most building codes grandfather them in. If inspection report does not screech about these, we will spend the money to retrofit something safer.  

5. The existing staircase has the correct run/rise ratio.  Rebuild so the steps are less steep and end in a landing followed by a 180 degree turn and more steps to the bottom. Add studs from joists to floor on which sheet rock goes and another banister.  It will be a little claustrophobic but less scary and safer, especially for the dogs. 

Worst Hotel Stay of My Life (I Am 69)

Red Roof Inn Kingsport, Tennessee. When we arrived, rhe front desk was unmanned. Ten minutes later, the clerk arrived. He gave the same excuse for the empty pool that he gave my daughter two weeks before: "Severe weather." This might explain closing the pool but not the absence of water.

In the morning, my wife attempted shower. It would not start. While attempting to get it going, the faucet came out of the wall. She tried to clean up water on floor. It became obvious the floor had not been cleaned in sometime. 

I went to front desk to check out and get a refund for subsequent days. My wife had checked us in so I had missed the warning signs that something was amiss. 

One sign said rhat they would not rent to anyone who lived in a 60 mile radius.  This suggests that drug dealers, prostitutes, and people whose money ran out before their month did were trying to live here. The other emphasized that you could not stay there on a promise to pay. When we arrived, I had heard a rather angry argument a few doors down.

While waiting for rhe desk clerk, the guy aheadv of me complained th as soon as it started raining, water came through the ceiling. The clerk gave me the phone number for Expedia to arrange a refund.  We had made the reservations through Hotels.com. We had not prepaid.  Expedia tried to talk sense into the clerk who could only say his manager would be in on Monday.

Fortunately we ended up in a lovely Hampton Inn the next night.

UPDATE: I called back to Red Leaking Roof this morning.  Again, they refused to refund the unused nights. I called corporate.  Still waiting for a response. 

UPDATE 2: Never again with Red Roof or hotels.com.Red Roof corporate wanted proof that I stayed in another hotel. They also insisted that Expedia cancel the reservation first. Hotels.com needs an itinerary number to talk to a human. I do not have that in front of me.

UPDATE 4: Hotels.com canceled the reservation and the hotel from hell promised a refund for the unused nights. (The real test will be of refund comes through. Always use credit card for dealing with organizations of uncertain trustworthiness.) 

Hotels.com made this harder than needed but did come through.  Red Roof Inn, about whom I used to have a pretty high opinion, is now on my below Motel 6/random roach motel list.

UPDATE 6: Email from Red Roof Inn Kingsport promising refund soon.

I Think We Found Our New House

Sufficiently close to Kingsport to be on city water but in forested mountains.  The driveway is steep enough that we will probably uaes ice tires in winter. It is about an acre with a 36' x 18'  salt-water system pool. It has an 20' x 30' shop.with a garage door leading out to an adequately wide enough expanse of sky. Other parts of the property are forested. I may need to pour a level concrete driveway for the telescopes.

It is fully fenced for the dogs. 

It is nominally 2671 sq. ft.; a little small. It has a substantial partially finished basement with a bathroom but no windows. While the staircase down to this part is scary enough that we will probably hire an engineer to design a less scary staircase (turn in half on way down losing a small amount of room), that can wait for old house to sell. The basement connects to the garage which has a less worrisome staircase.  We will add banisters to the left side on both staircases also. It looks like a two car garage but one bay is so deep that two cars will fit head to tail. $489,000.

There are lots of houses for sale here. Many are impressively beautiful in a ostentatious way like my current house but too many staircases for us to enjoy.

Some are just weird. This house had the most impressive view:

Unfortunately, it was on a cliff. It was mildly scary looking down. The oartially finished basement had a 15' ceiling. It was bigger than some houses we have owned. There were doors leading to sections that were not even quite at the partially finished stage. $620,000 for a showpiece where our dogs would not have a yard.