Larger update
Right, so, I'm not in Montana anymore. I friggin' LOVED it there. Mountains, snow, chili cheese burritos, no sales tax, no people....just fantastic. However, there's no smoking, either. No one will fucking rent to you if you smoke. No joke. I spent 3 months looking at the classifieds, watching the rental prices skyrocket, and either there was nothing listed that didn't say "no smokers" or they simply neglected to include that in the ad. I must have gone to see 10 rentals only to be notified by the agent that the owner didn't wouldn't rent to a smoker. Thanks for wasting my time, pal. Those of you disbelieving this must trust me that I am totally serious. NO ONE would rent to smokers. I've never seen that ANYWHERE. New York, Philadelphia, Austin, Nevada....even San Francisco wasn't this psycho.
June rolled around and my good friend Marlene (some of you know her as Tiruna) was flipping out in Florida. She was mere months away from being able to collect a pension from Prudential, but she was losing her mind in the flat, sweltering, suburban hell that is Naples, FL. She decided she was getting out ASAP. She couldn't go back to Hawaii for financial reasons. Instead she decided to sell her house in Hawaii and buy a cheaper one near Spokane, WA, to be near her elderly father. She invited me to be her tenant. Since I was having such great luck finding a place in Montana, I accepted the offer. She found listings online while I went to check them out in person. A short search revealed a well-insulated, well-lighted 3 bedroom/2 bathroom house in Davenport built in 1890, at the end of an unpaved semi-dead-end street on the better part of an acre for under $100k.
Marlene flew up to look at it and close the deal at the beginning of August. I and my stuff moved in a few weeks later. I then drove back to Montana to pick up the brand new FJ Cruiser I had ordered there several months beforehand. I drove to Chicago to go see Touch & Go's 25th anniversary concert featuring reunion after reunion including Scratch Acid, Pegboy, Killdozer, and even Big Black. More on that later, maybe....it was friggin' awesome. I stayed with Kelli/Kagee for 4 days and barely saw her. I then drove to New York to visit my folks for 36 hours and then headed back to the left coast. I picked up Marlene's cats the next day from the Spokane airport. They did not look good, but, being cats, they managed to clean themselves up within a few days. About a week later I got Marlene from the airport. She didn't travel with the cargo and uses more than her tongue to groom herself, so she looked slightly less pathetic than her cats did. That was about a month ago.
Marlene's stuff arrived 9 days ago via sleazy Russian couriers who reminded us no less than 3 times to tip them, but managed to ignore markings on her boxes such as "fragile" and "this side up", and complained when told her bed and dresser should go upstairs. Here's a tip: NEVER HIRE MOVERS.
Neither one of us has finished putting our stuff away, or arranging furniture into its ultimate positions, but our place is slowly turning into a home. The cats don't sleep in my bed yet, and I'm quite certain I will never be able to get Luna on my side (little white bitch), but I intend to steal Gabbie away as soon as I can figure out how to get him to want to be near me without letting him attack my armpits.
So, that's the nittygritty update for now. Human interest stories follow.
June rolled around and my good friend Marlene (some of you know her as Tiruna) was flipping out in Florida. She was mere months away from being able to collect a pension from Prudential, but she was losing her mind in the flat, sweltering, suburban hell that is Naples, FL. She decided she was getting out ASAP. She couldn't go back to Hawaii for financial reasons. Instead she decided to sell her house in Hawaii and buy a cheaper one near Spokane, WA, to be near her elderly father. She invited me to be her tenant. Since I was having such great luck finding a place in Montana, I accepted the offer. She found listings online while I went to check them out in person. A short search revealed a well-insulated, well-lighted 3 bedroom/2 bathroom house in Davenport built in 1890, at the end of an unpaved semi-dead-end street on the better part of an acre for under $100k.
Marlene flew up to look at it and close the deal at the beginning of August. I and my stuff moved in a few weeks later. I then drove back to Montana to pick up the brand new FJ Cruiser I had ordered there several months beforehand. I drove to Chicago to go see Touch & Go's 25th anniversary concert featuring reunion after reunion including Scratch Acid, Pegboy, Killdozer, and even Big Black. More on that later, maybe....it was friggin' awesome. I stayed with Kelli/Kagee for 4 days and barely saw her. I then drove to New York to visit my folks for 36 hours and then headed back to the left coast. I picked up Marlene's cats the next day from the Spokane airport. They did not look good, but, being cats, they managed to clean themselves up within a few days. About a week later I got Marlene from the airport. She didn't travel with the cargo and uses more than her tongue to groom herself, so she looked slightly less pathetic than her cats did. That was about a month ago.
Marlene's stuff arrived 9 days ago via sleazy Russian couriers who reminded us no less than 3 times to tip them, but managed to ignore markings on her boxes such as "fragile" and "this side up", and complained when told her bed and dresser should go upstairs. Here's a tip: NEVER HIRE MOVERS.
Neither one of us has finished putting our stuff away, or arranging furniture into its ultimate positions, but our place is slowly turning into a home. The cats don't sleep in my bed yet, and I'm quite certain I will never be able to get Luna on my side (little white bitch), but I intend to steal Gabbie away as soon as I can figure out how to get him to want to be near me without letting him attack my armpits.
So, that's the nittygritty update for now. Human interest stories follow.