It looks like we have a house. · 9:20am Jul 25th, 2014
A little update on my life, it looks like we have a house to move to.
Over the past... however long... we have been negotiating for a home in the Portland area. Hillsborough. We are just about to sign - this weekend, actually - and then we will own a home about six minuted from the Intel campus.
It will need a little work - in order to provide me with a roughly equivalent 'Uniplex' room - the common place where my family gets together to watch or play, and the place I do everything in - the garage will be turned into a finished room with a proper floor and insulation and nice walls and skylights and suchlike. A replacement Japanese soaking tub will take a little longer, but it is in the plans.
The house we are getting has some upsides and some downsides. It has enough rooms for a polyamoric family of four, which is good - one thing we have learned about being in a group marriage is that having enough private space is really a vital thing. People need some alone time. So a house for us has to have places where family members can just isolate if they need to. Say to work on something without interruption, or even just to chill out.
The house is quirky, which is good. It appears to have been several houses, in a way. A house that was built on, then built onto again. The stairs are crazy in it, short stairs mostly, but strange in placement because of the haphazard way the place sort of grew over time. It has a moderate yard in the back, decent for gardening in, and a very nice front yard with a mature cherry tree. Mmm. Cherries.
On the negative side, it is not very isolated - it is in the middle of Spielbergian Suburbia. It is next to the distant outer yard of a gradeschool, hopefully that will not be too awful. We are not 'kids' people, and we don't like noise and screaming and people breeding all over the place. Also, there is an airport nearby, somewhere. We have no way to know if we are on a flightpath that will be hell to suffer under. I guess... we'll find out.
I tried packing some of my little, fragile things, and I broke down in tears. It was also hard on my stamina. Ever since my heart attack about a decade ago, my stamina has not been great. I'm going to need help packing, a lot of it, and I'm not sure how that is going to work out yet.
But... the plan is that in three weeks or so, I will be living in a new house. When the shit hits the fan, it happens fast.
That is the update, for those that care.
I will keep working on my novel with dedication, but because of circumstances, I cannot promise, nor hope to always manage a chapter a day. I am sorry. I hate this unfortunate fact. I was really hoping to perform like I used to. But... life. The real world always gets in the way of ponies, and that is why real life is always inferior! 
Oh, how I wish that the Bureau Mythos, my own Pony Singularity, or the Optimalverse was real.
But then, I doubt I am alone in that.
- Petal Chatoyance, July 25th, 2014
There is a huge blank space of text under your name and I keep expecting a picture to load up or something.
Wonderful! I know it's not ideal, but, well, what is? I hope that the move goes well and the house turns out to be at least no worse than you're expecting.
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I sometimes do a few enters to give myself some space to type in that does not look overly crowded. I usually remove it before posting... but I forgot. So... sorry, no pictures. Yet, at least.
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Thank you, kind Reese. Just gotta keep my ears up and my tail from dragging.
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…I'm not sure anyone's ever called me kind before. I mean, not that they've called me mean or anything, but it's not something that I recall being commented on.
"Just gotta keep my ears up and my tail from dragging."
Well, your new house isn't as good as your old house, but you were worried that you wouldn't find one at all or would have to settle for something much worse. You're disappointed in yourself for not managing a chapter a day on the new story, but you're writing again after you weren't for a while (and, well… most writers don't manage a chapter a day). Things could be a lot worse.
"So... sorry, no pictures. Yet, at least."
It does sound like a rather interesting assembly of architecture.
You sound like my kind of neighbors. Hopefully the little *cough* darlings don't give you too many headaches. Cherry tree? Lucky you! I still miss the cherry tree from my first house (military brat, moved every few years). As for the airport, trust me, you can (probably) learn to deal with anything. Another house I lived in was at the end of the runway where Herky birds would run up their engines for up to 30 minutes for testing, and we were under the flightpath. The first night was rough, but by the time we left two years later, we didn't even consciously notice them anymore. (Yes, I still have my hearing.
)
So pleased you found a next right thing to do
That's great news, Chat! I'm glad you've found a place with some character of its own, and I'm sure – like every home that I've lived in – it will find its place in your heart.
As to the neighborhood, well I'm a middle child from a large family. Noise IS life. Quiet just puts me to sleep. As a consequence I always need at least a moderate amount of background noise in order to truly focus on a task, so I like to study in restaurants, coffee shops, etc.
Moving is, well, a moving experience. It's hard to pack everything up and say goodbye to a place you love, but then every door leads into the unknown and the pleasure of discovery.
Good luck to the whole family with the move!
I'm glad that there is good news for you. I hope everything goes well, and that everything works out.
The Real World gets a bad rap. Sure, it's demanding, and time-consuming, and hurtful, and never seems to go your way when you want it to.
But you have to remember, The Real World is the driving force behind most every fiction in existence. I doubt that Tolkien, or Lewis, or Baum, or Carrol or even Lauren Faust, would have been disposed to create worlds even half so interesting were The Real World a more idyllic place.
If the price for being able to enter the many fantasy worlds that authors create, is to live in The Real World, then it is a price I will pay without protest.
But I digress, congratulations on your purchase of a house, and I wish you the best of luck in making it a home.
Well, it's certainly better than the earlier forecast. Here's hoping the spawn chamber stays at a reasonable volume.
This is great news. Hope things go well.
Congratulations on the new home! The way you describe it, it seems like a dream, even if it's smaller compared to your current one, which sounds even more dreamy.
I have to say, I cannot easily picture either one. Being from and living in a 3rd world country I'm usually amazed by how big US houses are, and this applies here too, as I guess either one is easily four times the size of mine, which in turn already is twice the typical size for my income bracket. But that's the extent of my mental vision of either. Other aspects simply don't compute.
I'm sure you're going to be happy there. Just give it time.
I'm glad you found a decent place. I hope the packing won't be too much trouble.
And yeah, I agree, real life is a whole bunch of horseshit.
Good luck to you all!
You learn something new about people every day.
My mother owns a house like that. My old room (now a storage room) is a part of an extension that didn't have insulation put in very well, so it's very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer.
The biggest issue you may run into is things like that. Every time an addition was made to the house, it took a new crew of people to create the new portion of house, and all of them have a different idea of how things should go. Some places will creak more than others, some will have oddly formed doorways, and some will have poor insulation. Maybe the pipes in one portion of the house will be a lower quality than others; maybe the roof tiles weren't tarred properly when applied. Keep an eye out for shortcomings on the part of the construction crews; I'm fairly certain at least two things will be poorly done.
That would be highly dependent on the price of the house. You gotta ask yourself if it's worth forking over that much cash every month to have to deal with school kids playing games on your fence, possibly cutting through your yard to get to school on time (or just take a shortcut), and hear that infernal school bell clanging whenever it's time for class.
Also, depending on how far up the grade school goes... I mean, 6th graders certainly have some passing thoughts of such things. Seeing that kind of thing while sipping your coffee in the morning probably wouldn't be all that pleasant--though, I would love to be an old man getting to do stuff like that. Yell at the new generation for ruining society and the like.
Emotionally trying due to your moving? Or something else?
"The house is quirky", "house that was built on, then built onto again", "The stairs are crazy", "haphazard way the place sort of grew over time".
Sounds somewhat like a house not too far from where I live - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Mystery_House . Which is to say, this is cool, wish I could own a place like that. Come to think of it, when I was living even closer to there, it was very close to the airport too.
Sorry to hear about the noise though. Personally, I prefer crowds, crazy people and no need to drive a car (which is why I eventually moved to SF), so cities are better for me, but I know these things can be annoying / distracting for others.
Anyways, it's good to hear you finally have a house. Take your time setting everything up - writing and ponies are important, but then your home, health, personal well-being and other real-life stuff is too (especially considering you have your family to think about as well).
That's awesome, I knew you'd find a good place. It sounds like this one has a lot of personality and potential for crafting into something that is at least the spiritual successor to your old place.
Seconding what people have said about getting used to noise—I grew up in the woods, so when I first lived in the dorms even the whisper of a passing car eight floors below would be jarring, but now I live next to an alley and have learned to distinguish a "coming through" honk from a "getcho ass out here" honk from a "your drugs are here" honk, in a Puerto Rican neighborhood that loves festivals and fireworks, but unless construction is going on or the garbage truck is beeping I can easily tune it all out.
Also yeah, don't worry at all about regular updates. Priorities and all that, plus it's already a rather superhuman pace and not something anyone has a right to expect in the first place, but an amazing bonus, on top of the storytelling and characters, which are more than enough on their own.
Best of luck with the move, and here's hoping it can go at a pace that won't be too taxing.
Congrats on finding a new place, I know you said its not the ideal location or what you are used to but I am happy to hear that you and your spouses found a place. If I lived closer to you I would be more than happy to help out with the move (I'm I helping kind of guy) and l live in western PA so that would be a bit of a drive. But good luck with everything there and I wish you the best in your new home.
Not much left to say aside crossing fingers that the signing goes well!
I don't have anything smart to say:
FUCK YEAH! Take that mini boss in your dumb face and you did it without save scumming on Ironman mode when the EDF, EDF deploys!
*Hugs tight*
I'm glad at least the new house sounds like somewhere you and your family could stand living.
Good luck with everything.
I'll take the updates when we get them. Right now, if you have more important things to do, do them. Hope to see you safe and sound soon, even if it's kind of traumatic to be uprooted.
Sounds like the layout you have is a bit of a Winchester Mystery House. Make sure to keep an eye out for secret crawlspaces, houses that have work like that done tend to have a few excess spaces that you could sneak things into.
Glad to know your house hunting has turned up something livable.
*hugs* at least you found a workable place. If you will be spending a lot of time in a refurbished garage you may want to invest in some sound buffering for the room to make it someplace you can escape the sounds of the herd of children,
Very glad to hear the good news - congratulations!
Please don't worry about story updates - you've got a lot on, and even if you didn't, I'm sure we'd all understand. Just focus on rebuilding your home, and let the rest come as it may. We'll wait.
Wishing you all the best!
Glad to hear things are looking up a little bit at least.
Good luck dearest heart. I hate to see thee suffer unduly.
I'm glad you managed to find a place, and that it has character. As for the rest, I send my hopes that the adjustment will be tolerable.