Life - New Digs

So we bought a house and we moved. Tried to inject a few dollars into our country's economy, you know, patriotic and all that.

Plus we wanted to have our own place. Hang things on the wall without worrying about not getting our deposit back, things like that.

Bikes? Yeah, they're here. I even rode one yesterday, but right now, honestly, the focus is elsewhere. It's hard to focus on anything when I'm living in the middle of a pile of boxes. Hard to believe that's me saying that (I used to think it was fine), but the way it is right now it's too much even for me.

I like describing things, when trying to impress myself, using multiples. You know, something like this:

"He rode at twice my theshold wattage for the last climb!"
"That car accelerates to 60 miles an hour in one half the time it takes for that other car."

So, to impress myself, I'll briefly describe the new place in "multiples plus". This is where I run out of multiples so I have to actually describe additional things, i.e. the "plus" part of the "multiples plus". This exercise justifies buying the place so bear with me.

Compared to the apartment, the new place has 2.5 times as many bathrooms, 1.5 times as many bedrooms, and an infinite number more garage spots (what times zero equals two?).

Compared to the beloved house we sold last year, it still has 2.5 times as many bathrooms but it has only twice as many garage spaces, about 1/2 as many parking spots, and three times the number of finished floors (or twice the number of floors above ground level).

We have some non-multiple features too.

We now have an official dining room. This is, of course, the room "least likely to be used ever" so it's currently the laptop room, Tiger's hang out room (if I'm using the laptop), and the Room of Many Chairs. I count 9 chairs around the dining room table (the table is a beautiful new addition to our family, as are 6 matching chairs, all from the home's sellers). In the future we hope it's the room that no one goes into except on special occasions, sort of like the old fashioned living rooms.

We also have two finished rooms in the basement. I was thinking of making one a nicer version of the Dungeon but I realized that having space would be good, so I am looking to sell the big yellow machine. It takes up 90% of the room and doesn't leave much for a trainer, my bike memorabilia, spin bike, hanging all the bike posters and such I've saved over the years, and other assorted bike/winter must-haves.

In case I am not clear, I am selling this (fyi it weighs 465 lbs empty, uses a 10x12 foot space completely, and I don't want to sell the weights I have):

Yours for only $700, with a special SDC discount available if you ask for it (or I'll do a partial/full trade for track bike equipment - not SS/Fixie stuff, real track - or really tall aero wheels).

I can't deliver except under extreme duress and I figure it'll take me eons to deliver (to retrieve the van will take me about 6+ hours, and to load it will take another 30-40 minutes) so forget about the SDC discount if you are thinking of having it delievered- in fact the gas to get the van here and back will cost me about $60-70 alone.

The new kitchen will be big enough for two people (the apartment has a one person kitchen, the old house had an enormous three-four person kitchen), wash dishes sort of automatically (we had an special edition SDC dishwasher in the apartment), and give us some counter space so we can pull some of our appliances out of their storage boxes.

Well, right now the counters are full of various packed boxes so right now we're still eating with plastic utensils, at least until this morning when I found our normal metal ones. Those have been put in their place and now we can start filling the silverware part of the dishwasher.

Our garage is a bit of a misfit garage. Much of it is only four feet tall, preventing me from having, say, a beautiful high ceiling workshop, or from parking my 52" tall cars underneath. It is great for storing van bench seats, bikes, and other assorted things under four feet in height which will be dust and spiderweb covered in no time at all. I'd like to get it into more usable shape but right now it, too, is filled to the brim with packed moving boxes.

We do have an office room (or, more accurately, a room designated as an office). This has yet to be set up as we have no normal internet connection, no desktops, no chairs even. The latter are in the Room of Many Chairs (naturally). Hopefully it'll become the office soon, the IT/business hub of the household.

Upstairs, like way up on the second floor, we have the most luxurious of things - a second full bath. The missus and I rarely venture up there and we made a point of walking up the stairs a couple nights ago just to see what it looked like. I think it'll be like coasting after a winter on the trainer - it'll take some getting used to, because right now our mentality is that there is a downstairs (the basement) and the upstairs (the main floor). We've lived so long in two story residences that the second set of stairs going up just doesn't register.

I may take a shower up there just so I can say we used it, but right now it's a quiet spot. It doesn't help that Tiger found the top of the banister overlooking the living room - in other words the hand rail that prevents people upstairs from falling into the downstairs. It's really nerve wracking to watch him sitting 15 or 20 feet above the living room floor with only a hard, painted surface (i.e. no traction for claws) underneath his paws. I put padding on some of the tables below but I think we need a better solution.

We plan on using one upstairs room as the hobby/TV room. It is a nice sunny room and I figure that in the colder months it'll be a nice warm hang out spot.

The other room upstairs will be our guestroom, situated conveniently next to the luxurious bathroom. Instead of making our guests sleep on the floor of the living room, they'll sleep, err, well, on the floor of the guest room. Hey, look, we don't even have any couches, how would we have an extra bed?

At least they'll have their own room with a door they can close and their very own bathroom.