Category: Diary (Page 29 of 38)

Lisa got a haircut today, and I went along and got my hair cut as well. No more ponytail.

Long hair is apparently no longer supported on this platform.

There are some who might say, it never was.

I have set my laptop up on the island in the middle of the kitchen whilst installation men run through the house installing things. In order of appearance, we have:

• Roland, from Eagle Sentry, to install the security system – pet-immune motion sensors and window and door contacts, two keypads (one at garage entry and one at front door);
• Eddie and Jesse, from Eagle Sentry, to perform wall fish operations at six locations, installing 4 cat5 lines into every room except the bathrooms and living room, and installing a wiring closet into our hall cupboard, with a coaxial cable link for broadband internet access.
• Shirley, from Costco, to measure up our bare windows for a quote for later installation of 2″ wood blinds (it turned out that she didn’t do measuring; another guy would have to come and do this);
• Unnamed Guy, from Greystone Homes, to install the tub enclosure that they forgot from our options list;
• Jeff, from Toucan Landscaping, to look at our section of desert mud and block wall, to discuss possible ways of enhancing our back yard experience;

And, not here yet but expected:

• John, from Bulwark Pest Control, to squirt some organic spider/scorpion deterrent into our walls and surroundings.

So far, it looks like we’re spending the entire day here.

Roland has just shown us how to use the new security system. It’s pretty cool, it even monitors the point where our phone lines come into our house to prevent line tampering. We’re going to have to set up a “bypass” on that zone while we are way to allow the Sprint people to connect our additional three lines.

On the way out we were just testing our new security system in preparation for leaving when the phone rang. It was the guy that Shirley had asked to measure our windows. Since we really, really, wanted to get this done before we left for a week, we arranged to meet him at the house the next morning, early, before our flight back to San Francisco.

The guy’s name turns out to be John Steadman, and he is a really nice guy who briskly and methodically measures up the windows, chatting to us as he does so. Apparently, after the blinds are manufactured, he will be installing them for us, and we’re looking forward to that.

The flight back to SF was uneventful, as a flight only can be when you don’t have a cat under the seat in front of you. I did manage to spill my drink in my lap though. Doh!

We arranged to meet Dominic from Eagle Sentry and Jeff from Toucan Landscaping at the house in the morning. Even though we don’t have keys and don’t officially own the place yet, we figure that it’d be ok to wander around the back yard. Incidently, the “back yard” is a rectangular patch of dirt and rocks surrounded by a grey concrete block wall.

It turned out that Jeff couldn’t make it and so we arranged to meet Dominic at his office later in the day instead. Eagle Sentry are located close to the airport, so we figured we could visit the cats on the same trip.

As we walked into the sales office to borrow their phone, we were alerted by Donna the salesperson that the Title company were currently on the phone and needed to talk to us! This was a coincidence… it turned out that one of the pages we had initialed was incorrect or invalid (“bad document” was written across the page) and could we come down and redo that particular page? We agreed to do so immediately.

After that, we spend some time driving around Las Vegas. We stopped at a kind of plant nursery/museum, a place where all the different kinds of plants that grow in the desert climate are laid out for you to admire. (See http://www.lvvwd.com/conservation/ddg/ddg.html.)There are some experimental sections where plants are “on trial” to see how they survive. It was very interesting, and we saw lots of plants and herbs and things that we would quite like in our own back yard.

We did get to drop in on the cats in their little yellow prison cells, and they were doing fine. A little grumpy, a little reticent to admit to owning us, but safe and well.

We also dropped in to the offices of Eagle Sentry, and filled out some paperwork so that their installation guys could show up at the house on Friday.

The following day we did our final walkthrough, and signed on the bottom line of the acceptance form, and then expected to get our keys. But wait – the money takes some time to be transferred from the back to the title company (or something like that) and we can’t get our house keys or in fact, we can’t start work on the house and store stuff until the money is transferred and everyone is happy.

We postpone the pest control appointment until tomorrow (boy, Friday is really filling up) and go shopping for a couple of additional items of furniture.

Our house walkthrough was with a guy called Dale, who took us through the various built-in appliances such as the water softener and the range, etc. There were a few minor problems, but most things got fixed there and then.

Then we drove down to the offices of the Nevada Title Company to sign and initial an enormous pile of final documents and hand over our cashier’s cheque for (more money than I’ve ever held in my hand before).

We were taking as much luggage as we could, because this was a time when anything we could take to Las Vegas and leave at the new house seemed like a good idea. We knew we’d be at the house setting things up and installing things, so we took a telephone, a network hub, a network firewall/router, and lots of cat food all packed into a big black suitcase. Our clothes were packed into another bag.

The cats did not appreciate being pushed into their matching black carry cases, and then lugged to the airport on a door-to-door-shuttle van. We thought it would be easier for them (and us) if we couId be dropped at the terminal rather than finding long-term parking  for the car; catching a shuttle bus, and then crossing the road from the bus stop to the terminal. As it turned out, we might all have been less car sick than we were after riding in the back of the door-to-door shuttle. The shuttle driver had two other stops to make and they all seemed to be at the top of a hill at the end of a windy road.

We did eventually get to the airport – it just took longer and involved more rolling around. Kami yelled the entire way, but Karma was very well behaved and so quiet that I thought there was something wrong with him.

When we got to the airport, we tried to give the cats some water using the bottom quarter of a paper cup (cut down with our trusty penknife) but they were both too upset to drink, even though they must have been thirsty.

    Travel Tip #322:

    Never, ever, try to walk through a airport security
   checkpoint with two cats and two laptops.

For a start, the cats were in their carry-on travel units, and the airport security made us take the cats out of the bag – and put the bags through the xray machine. So we were holding a cat each – I had Karma, and he was so well behaved, it was uncanny, he just went limp like a ragdoll – and I was holding him with my right arm, and I couldn’t get my wallet and keys out of my right back pocket with my left hand. Meanwhile, my laptop and cat bag were going further out of my sight on the conveyor belt. Argh.

Lisa had a worse time, because in addition to holding Kami, the security droids demanded that she take her laptop out and switch it on!

We’d never flown America West before, but I can report that there is plenty of room under the seat in front for the largish cat-carry-ons.

We were late departing the ground, and the reason according to the pilot, is this: “OK, we’ve discovered a leak. There’s some oil or something leaking from a place it isn’t supposed to, we’re not sure exactly what it is or where it’s coming from. There’s some duct tape that seems to have come loose, so we have to check this out before we take off.” At this, the guy sitting to Lisa’s right actually got up, took his carry on baggage, and left the plane! Perhaps he was superstitious.  About 15 minutes later, the pilot reported, “Well, you’ll be happy to know we’ve got that leak all taped up again, and we’re ready to go.”

Karma did NOT like the take off or the landing. He yelled a lot and thrashed around. All I can say is, I’m glad he was in the cabin with us this time instead of on his own in the luggage compartment.

Stan met us at the gate and after an anxious wait for our bags to come off the carousel, we drive to the VIP Kennel where Kami and Karma were booked in.

VIP is no Cat’s Cradle, but it was convenient and not too horrible. Karma has stayed in worse places. We spent some time with the nice young man who would be looking after them, and he was very concientious and keen to understand their needs: Kami = diet food, Karma = urinary health formula. Karma can eat as much as he likes, Kami should not be overfed, etc.

We promised to visit when we could, and then drove over to Summerlin where we would be staying with Stan and Jeanne – for the last time!

This weekend was one of great weather: sunny, warm… All the fruit trees in the area had obviously decided that Spring has arrived, because pink and white flowers are everywhere.

We celebrated this by – you guessed it – packing some more boxes.

Jeanne rang up from Vegas to say that on her last visit to the house, the carpet was in and looked great, but noted that our walk-in bedroom didn’t have any carpet and there was a seam visible in the living room.

Lisa rang Dupont to check and was told that in fact, yes, there was a problem with the carpet as installed in the house, and that they were going to pull it up and replace it with a roll of the same kind of carpet. We have been assured (again) that the carpet will be the one we chose.

We don’t want to know any more. They’d better be carpet in the house when we close on the 20th, that’s all we say.

Pontoon (a.k.a. Kami, a.k.a. Miss Maroon) arrived with Derek tonight. Our original plan was to not have the cats meet up until we took them to a Vegas cat hotel, but timing didn’t work out. We have to get them health certificates before we can take them on the plane, so this is going to happen on Friday. In the meantime, Karma and Kami seem to be coexisting quite well. They both enjoy climbing around the many stacked boxes piled around each room.

Lisa’s stepfather, Larry, passed away this month after a bad bout of pneumonia put him in hospital for several weeks. I had met him several times over the years, and he was always friendly and decent to me. Lisa has been calling her Mom every day, and will probably go out to New York for a week sometime after we move, to spend some time with her Mom.

Mummenschantz

We took ourselves (along with Derek and his girlfriend Teresa) to see this wacky mask- theatre-mime troupe, who were playing at the wonderful local Marin Center Veteran’s Memorial theater. I had seen them twice before in New Zealand on a couple of their previous tours. This show, called “Next”, was really more of the same. It ought to be easy to describe Mummenschantz but it isn’t. Best I can do is to say, imagine giant sea creatures made of thin material and foam rubber, geometric shapes that come alive and do stuff, Transient faces. Magical.

Packing

Things go into boxes. Some boxes are heavy. Others are light with fragile stickers. Sometimes fragile stickers don’t stick and fall off. Much packing tape is used. Eventually there are boxes everywhere.

A house-screw-up works in our favor

One of the guys at Dupont rang us up and said they were having a problem locating the specific carpet that we chose for the house, and that we might have to “make do” with an upgraded style. They even sent us some samples of possible replacements. They were very nice replacements, and the idea of getting an upgraded carpet for only a slight increase in cost was very appealing. Could it be? Would a weave of carpet fate actually work in our favor?

Time seemed  to be flying by so fast! It was just over a month until we were planning on moving, so we took a few hours on Sunday morning to browse the farmers market up by the civic center to look for pieces of decorative artwork from local artists that would suit the spaces in our new house. We found lots of things we liked, but retrained ourselves to just a few pieces, reminding ourselves that anything we bought we’d have to pack!

On February 8 Lisa and I had our wedding anniversary. Rather than celebrate on the day, we arranged to go an see the mime troupe Mummenschantz who were scheduled to play in Marin at the end of the month.