Jun 13, 2008 17:42
Effective as of today, our closing date, we officially own a house. I don't think I can express quite how relieved I am, and simultaneously terrified. For all my excessive learning, I am still basically a kid at heart: now a kid with mortgage payments.
Today, in addition to being my last day at McGill, and the closing date for our house, was also the only day that I could get for the delivery of the fancy solid wood bookcase I ordered from Sears for the incipient Bruce Trigger Memorial Collection which will be housed at the archaeology lab. It still needs some finishing touches, such as a decorative carpet, a plaque, a photo, etc., but the shelves are in place and are looking great! There is a real space now down there for some really neat stuff, some of which is very hard to find otherwise. I am expecting to be back in Montreal at some point next year for the grand opening.
It did mean that I was up at 5:30 with Arthur, got into work at 8 for an 8am-1pm delivery time, then spent most of the morning organizing stuff down in the lab (with my trusty assistant at hand, thankfully). In addition I had to pack up and load into my car 150-odd mugs from the Dollarware project to take to Value Village ... so if anyone wants cheap mugs even cheaper, that's where they'll be! Really I have no excuse for not doing that earlier, just laziness really, but it had to be done (although I was tempted to just junk them all ...).
After that I made the mistake of trying to find a parking spot close to my office so I could load the last of my books and files into the car. Now, I'm not especially good with driving in stressful situations to begin with, but couple that with exhaustion and lack of lunch and ... well, I had a little case of the rage. 45 minutes later and 5 passes around the block in crazy traffic/construction with turning restricted everywhere, I gave up and parked in a no stopping zone, which had the advantage of being as close as possible to my office but the disadvantage of being completely illegal. On the plus side all that rage gave me plenty of adrenaline to lift the overloaded boxes into the car as quickly as possible. But I am now thoroughly exhausted and the only thing saving me from total insanity was that Julie had thoughtfully ordered some Chinese food for me which was waiting when I got home. But ... househousehousehousehouse!
windsor,
academia