breaking through the end of last year and pushing forward into this year has been one of the most difficult challenges i’ve faced thus far. as petty as it is, i am also surprised by the level of unhappiness the prospect of this upcoming move has brought to me. and it’s not just the having to keep everything constantly clean, or being the most-available idiot to drop everything and clean up after everyone else when a realtor calls from ten minutes away, or knowing that the hardest part is still ahead of us: the moving itself. no, it’s just the seriously-not-wanting-to-move that’s got me down, in a far more pervasively general way than i thought possible. literally everything about it annoys the living crap out of me. eventually, i’ll get over it, i’m sure. and it doesn’t help that my soccer team isn’t having a very good indoor season, either. what was once a pleasurable weekly exercise is rapidly becoming an angst-filled hour of watching the other teams run circles around us every week.

okay, enough of that. i’m not as depressed as i sound, and that’s not denial talking. sure, the minor annoyances pile up, but they’re still just minor annoyances. i’ll survive, no doubt.

we’re getting more traffic through the house: a mixed bag, but basically a good thing. of course, no one will be coming out today; the weather has seen to that. which is also good because i’ll be able to get some work done. my realtor did a stupid thing: went to synthaetica.com and decided to use some of those images in one of the local home-selling rags to promote the sale of the house. that was a bit of a catch-22 for me: weighing the value of the copyright on certain pieces of fine art (along with the way in which allowing them to do that technically undermines the value of those pieces of art that i’ve sold), versus the need to sell the house. the realtor claims their office assistant didn’t know that was illegal. that is, she supposedly didn’t know that taking images off a website and manipulating the watermarks was illegal. that is, she supposedly didn’t know that copying images off a website that clearly states the intent to sell the images as fine art was illegal. well, wherever she got her graphics design training, she can shove her diploma up her ass, but i licensed them use of the images for the express purpose of selling our house.

i haven’t let on to the Spouse Unit just how much that torqued me, but if a realtor pretends to that level of incompetence in advertising practices, how trustworthy can they really be in terms of how the rest of their business is run? i suppose this is the karmic payback for using a realtor found through a system to get points on our time-share instead of using the professional contacts we built through the local Chamber of Commerce and other business contacts. ultimately, i guess it’s not that big of a deal: one of those little real estate pubs is a temporary flash in the pan, anyway.

completely unrelatedly: i added several blog-friends to the blogroll on the left this morning. please visit their sites. they’re in better moods than i am today.

and so, we are guests in our own home, now. we put it on the market yesterday. we placed an offer on a house in town on Friday and it was accepted, contingent upon the sale of our house, on Saturday. nothing like working things backwards and living from behind the eight ball.

concurrent with all this, we got a new computer system in, and i have yet to get this old 21″ NEC MultiSync monitor calibrated on it. i’m about ready to give up: i can’t process photos on it right now because the color’s off and it’s way low-contrast even after several iterations of the half-hour long calibration routine. bah. it’s just one of those things, i guess, but i’ve been fighting it for two days and not getting any real work done, other than getting some print orders out, and those had to be done off the old machine with the new monitor. bah. computers suck. it’ll piss of #1 Son, but i think i’m going to swap monitors back and put the new one on here. there’s a point wherein the clients do have to come first.

obviously, the imminent move (presuming someone doesn’t out-bid us on that house with a non-contingent offer) weighs heavily on all of us. an interesting side-benefit is watching the kids actively seeking to gain parental favor by virtue of picking up after themselves. but of course, the weather has been crap, so no one’s seen these ultra-clean guest quarters we continue to call “home” other than ourselves and our realtor. winter’s a stupid time to be trying to sell a house out here, but we really had no control over the Spouse Unit getting laid off. and the timing with my not having any contracted client work from January through April was just one of those coinkydinks where you roll your eyes, sigh, say “Go fucking figure”, and sigh again.

other than that, we’re all doing fairly well. the Spouse Unit has accepted a job with a former employer out of California that is going to pay her decently without expecting us to move out there, so that part of our futures is looking bright. it’ll also suffice to see us through in case we have to leave this house on the market through the spring. sorry if that was redundant to a previous post. i’ve been so busy with trying to serve client orders, getting the house ready to show, and getting the new system configured, calibrated, and all the software installed, that i’ve become too damn lazy to go read any previous posts. forgive me. i’ve gotten very adept at not allowing some emotions to show to my fellow family members, for what it’s worth, so i suppose it’s only natural that i bitch and moan a bit on my blogs.

as i was taking photos of the house for the realtor on Monday, i couldn’t help but to think about all the photos that were taken from or of this property. so, i made a compilation of the ones that had been previously published on synthaetica.com.

we’ve been without hot water since Monday morning. we got a company to come over and look at it, but they couldn’t come until Tuesday afternoon, and the guy didn’t come with parts despite having been told that manufacturer and model of the water heater. he did come with some sort of cock-and-bull story about how we’re supposed to have some overflow reservoir in there for the way we’re set up, in order to meet “state code”, and he wasn’t “supposed to leave a house that didn’t have that done.” since he didn’t have the parts or equipment for that, either (in his little 1-ton pickup truck), i generously let him leave without kicking his smug ass.

i don’t know why the Spouse Unit called that particular company, anyway. today, we’ll call the guys who came out and worked on our furnace a couple of years ago. they were cool, and one of their managers is the brother of our next-door neighbor.

but yeah, anyway, it’s sub-20 outside and we have no hot water. brrrrrrrrrrrr…… and i’m going to leave out some serious gripes with this company without elaborating on them in the spirit at least attempting to be positive today.

{there, i got the bitching and moaning done first, because there are some great things to celebrate today}

Celebration #1:

First and foremost, a heartly congratulations goes out to Tramplingrose, on the birth of her baby boy on January 3, 2008. I hope Rachel and Alexander will continue to do well, and will accept my apologies for not getting around to other blogs much of late. In fact, I’ve been really bad about that for the past several weeks, so I’m really sorry Rachel. I hope you’re feeling better. And Jay, go have a beer. It’ll help. Not much, to be honest, but it’ll help. I do know how it feels from your perspective, my friend. Best of luck to all three of you!

Celebration #2:

Yesterday, the Spouse Unit received her first formal job offer for a position that would employ her to perform work here in Sioux Falls, comes reasonably close (very reasonably, I might add) to paying her what she’s worth, and would allow her to continue on in the most recent augmentation of her career track, the usability testing and analysis. Even better, the offer is from a former manager of hers out in California who told me, when that company laid her off, that his next big problem at the time would be to find three people for very little money to even replicate her work for him. In other words, he’s been missing the Spouse Unit as an employee ever since that happened, and literally jumped on the chance to get her to work for his new company. They talked on Friday and the offer letter came yesterday. The only down-side, in fact, is that she’d be having to learn how to work from home, which would almost make us co-workers, at least in terms of proximity. That might really be interesting, though!

Celebration #3:

Well, this isn’t much of a celebration per se. We did have our most successful bridal show ever this past Sunday, however, and it really turned out to be a turning point for me, attitude-wise. I’m looking forward to the wedding season now, instead of dreading the work I’ll probably have to be doing alone again this year. But the clients we booked at the show seem to be really great couples, and the ones we’re meeting with from the show over the next couple of weeks are all in the category of ‘very strong’ leads. It helps that I did a better job this time around in communicating what my services actually are and being candid with how they compare to others. But actually, all my clients thus far this year seem like really great people, and we have gotten along quite well in our meetings. This is going to be a fun year!

We’ve got some minor repairs and cleaning up to do yet before we put this house on the market, but moving from here is something that would be good in many ways, as sad as it will make us to leave here. One of the other oddities in that upcoming move for us is that we’ve never move made a ’simple’ in-town move before. It’s always been from city to city. And with at least one wedding reception at the golf course that’s about a mile away from here, driving past here will be kind of sad when it happens, and of course I’ll miss just looking out the back windows and seeing the hawks. Nothing I can’t live with, of course, but still….{sigh} At least we can now move forward with finishing up this little bit of work (plus the damned water heater, now, of course) knowing that at least one serious (in my definition of that term) offer exists for the Spouse Unit’s (and thus our) future. I do believe we’ll be okay, and maybe even in the short term as well as the long term!

That’s really it as far as catching up with where I’m at. Please go browse my blogrolls here and over at the otherwhirled.

moving choices now range from Colorado Springs, CO to Dahlgren, VA. whichever one of you sees me next, don’t be surprised if i’ve pulled out all my hair and tend to stare vacantly at some point between the end of my nose and whatever else is in front of me.

of course, it ain’t all about me. or the Spouse Unit. we discuss each option with the kids. they’re excited, but talking about it just brings to mind the uncertainty of their future.

oh, how i miss the old days. you know, back two months ago, when we didn’t know the Spouse Unit was getting laid off.

grumble. grumble. grumble.

okee…well…i have to confess that the Spouse Unit and the Otherlings are not the only pack-rats in the house. guess who has tax records for his business, including State taxes across three States, all the way back to 1995. but not just the tax filings. all the manuals, preparation forms, multiple copies of W-2, 1099’s etc, etc, etc…gah. it has taken me the better part of two days to purge the office of literally hundreds of pounds of needless paper and other things, and i haven’t even managed to clean off my desk, yet. i have cleaned out my desk, though, which is kind of nice. instead of having four drawers full of outdated computer cables, connectors, small tools, and soccer referee paraphernalia (coins, pins, etc), i now have places where i can put things! whodathukit?!?!

what’s actually amazing is how long i’ve been carrying that stuff around, even paying to move it twice. {sigh}

this really hasn’t started getting fun yet, but i am certainly glad to feel lighter.

are we there yet?

i can readily foresee that moving, even across town, is going to be, if not a long painful process, then certainly one in which every detail is going to be experienced with jolting clarity. and the fact that i sincerely, seriously do not want to move isn’t helping any.

we did find a cool house on Thursday, so if we can get all our ducks in a row and get this house on the market and somehow manage to sell it in the middle of the winter, we’ll be good to go. i wouldn’t expect that house to be available much into the spring, that’s for sure. the property value there is questionable, and thus a bit of a concern, but other than that, it really does look like i place we’d be happy in, and the mortgage would be considerably less. it’s even on a half-acre, so we’d only lose around 2.8 acres of our current space. {sigh} but the current owners tricked it out pretty well downstairs, and built into the underside of the core-floor garage. so, with that addition, the house is actually about as big is this one. and since part of that addition is still unfinished (electrical, air and wall/ceiling treatments), the space of the addition doesn’t show in the price of the house. all we have to do is finish it, and the price of the house goes up as much as it can given the location (there are lease homes starting next door, and the whole neighborhood is interspersed with them).

oh. as the three of us (#1 Daughter was still with her grandparents on Thursday) rolled out of the car, i believe i spied one of our youth referees shoveling snow out of her front driveway. so there’d at least be someone in the neighborhood that #1 Son and i know. on the other hand, she’s a high school senior next year, and that means two things. 1. i better damn well be shooting her senior portraits, and 2. there will be parties at her house next year. neat. and i would not doubt at all that her parents will ask us at some point to ‘keep an eye’ on her while they’re away. at least they’re good people!

anyway, Friday was spent largely in contemplation of the imminent change coming our way. the Spouse Unit also had some work to get done, and a meeting that wound up being almost four hours long. so, i really thought about the move and tried to come up with ways to make it an enjoyable experience for all of us, and then, of course, i started thinking about all the things we’ll have to get done around here to get this house on the market. to be honest, after a full day’s consideration, as well as some time on the same subject spent yesterday, i haven’t quite figured out the best way to get all that going, especially since i really don’t want to move.

i think i’ve probably mentioned that before. i find it rather telling that i have friends dating back to the early 1990’s, largely met solely on the computer, whose friendship has shown more constancy than we have managed to show for settling down in one place, despite our expressed desires to do exactly that.

bah. i don’t want to move. that means very little, though, when part of the reason why we need to move is the massive amounts of money i’m not making in my own business. at this point, it’s either move or be in debt forever. i recognize the need to move, but the doing of it, i’m not so interested in. it’s exciting in its own way, but it’s not really the type of excitement i want to keep experiencing every few years.

all of which ultimately matters very little, and i have to set it aside. now i have to be Mr. Helpful and Mr. GoodExample (and don’t forget Mr. JuggleTheClientsWithTheCleaningAndTheFixing), and i will soon get to be Mr. QuitWorkingAndDisappearWheneverSomeoneWantsToLookAtTheHouseSoPleaseCallAheadYouDumbassRealtor. and then i’ll get to be Mr. JuggleTheClientsWithThePackingAndTheMoving. eventually ending in Mr. JuggleTheClientsWithTheTilingAndTheFinishing. because if we get that house, there is a large room downstairs that will definitely need tile because it has a full sauna in it already and it’s wired for a hottub, which the Spouse Unit very much wants (and we can get pretty decent ones for list price through out brother-in-law). but the absolute last thing that’s going to work in that kind of room is carpet, which is how the current owners left it probably because they realized how much it would cost and/or how much of a hassle it is to tile a room that size (roughly 18×22 with irregular walls). and we all know who bought a big-ass tile saw last time he had to do this stuff, and who moved the big-ass tile saw all the way out here from California, and who has been quietly pleased the whole time he’s lived here to have avoided tiling the entire downstairs of this house.

karma sucks. but i digress. as previously noted, this is something i do well.

we started yesterday going through clothes that should have been given to Goodwill ages ago. #1 son took most of my old referee t-shirts and polos from AYSO soccer out in California, though, as if he needed more crap in his room to work around. after we go through some other stuff today though (old kids games and things like that), we’ll have a van-load of items for Goodwill that never should have made the trip from California with us. the Spouse Unit and i were just so tired during that move that it became easier to throw everything on the moving truck than separate it out. we’re not making that mistake again. there’s really not that much to fix up around here: some minor things, is all. i get to figure out how to touch up the paint on the front of the garage when it’s only 15 degrees outside, though. that should be fun!

doing all this is going to be a challenge. luckily, i like challenges. i’m exceptionally afraid that we’re going to get moved, and the Spouse Unit will land a job that would have seen us sitting pretty in this house, though. maybe someday we can move back out here or someplace like it. i’m certainly glad i shot up the back of here quite a bit already, and in all seasons. i will be pulling photos out of those collections for fine art work for a very long time to come. when it comes time for that, that’s probably what i’ll do if/when a realtor calls wanting to show the house, too. i’ll just put on the snow boots and head out back with a camera or two and do some last shoots.

at 3:00 p.m. central time.

yes, at 3:00 p.m. central time, we begin the frickin’ god-forsaken intriguing process of looking at houses.

everyone just look at your watches or clocks or whatever at that time and heave a big ol’ sigh for me. there’s a couple of reasons:

1. i don’t wanna move.
2. i wanna be incredibly melodramatic about it, at least here on the blog, because it’ll be a decent amount of work to get us out of this house.

ever notice how quickly people collect shit? gah. we’re in trouble….

on the other hand, this will be the first move while (actively) blogging, so at least i’ll be able to vent.

posts regarding the move will be filed largely under ‘tempered impatience’ because i’m already ready for it to be over….

oh…and lest i forget…WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!! and BOOO-HOOO-HOOO!!!!