08:02 – The house is officially ours, and we’re packing like crazy to get ready for the moving company to arrive here Friday morning. As of Friday afternoon, we’ll be moved up to Sparta and officially living there. Which means we need to get everything packed in the next three days that needs to go on the trucks.
Barbara went furniture shopping yesterday. She has several items scheduled to arrive here on Thursday, including a new sofa and recliner chair, a platform bed, and various lamps and other accessories. We’ll have them stick the new furniture in the garage so the movers can load them easily.
I spent most of yesterday on the phone and web, getting services canceled and address changes made. I also arranged to have a Buck Stoves wood stove delivered to our new house next Monday and installed. There’s most of a cord of wood in a random pile back along the back fence line, just sitting there rotting. But it’s good enough for now, and I’ll get fresh wood delivered once we have time to get a rack installed under the deck. But if we do have a power failure, at least we can keep the house warm and we can do basic cooking.
13:27 – We’re taking a break from packing stuff. We’ve now admitted to ourselves that there’s no way we can have everything ready to go on the moving truck on Friday, but that’s okay. We’ll take both vehicles up, and the stuff we can’t get moved Friday we’ll simply move later. We’ll be down here anyway getting the house ready to go on the market next spring, so there’ll be plenty of trips. If we need to, we’ll rent a U-Haul truck large enough to get everything in one trip. That’d also let us transport some heavy/bulky items that we can’t have ready in time for Friday. That may not be necessary, though. The Trooper does haul a fair amount of weight and volume. Interesting datum. We found out on the last couple of trips up and back that we’re getting a bit more than 18 MPG, which I thought was extraordinary for a pretty heavily loaded 5,500 pound GVWR vehicle climbing the mountain on the way up to Sparta.