Do You Have Boxes? (I'm Moving to a New House)

So, do you have some boxes I can borrow? You see, we just bought a new house and we... what's that? Oh, yeah, it's pretty nice. It's in Pasadena, a little further east of where we are now. No more walking into Old Town. Not that we did a lot of that, but we sure will miss knowing we could.

Now we'll have to ride our bikes there.

We're closer to a park, Victory Park. It's big and square and has playground equipment and a baseball diamond. We're a block away, just down Paloma.

Paloma is the street we'll be living on. It's very straight and very very wide, and the trees lining it are jacaranda, which means that in the fall we'll have lovely purple blossoms on either side, like a rose day parade inside out.

The hose sits a little back from the street. It has a brick veranda across the entire front, and looks small from the street. It's single story with the red Spanish tile roof sloping towards the front.

Inside the front door is the opening hallway, and to the left is the living room with hardwood floors and a fireplace. We'll need to get that cleaned, because I can see from the outside that there's plant growing over and perhaps into it. The current owners live in Northern California, and I know Susie and will have fires all the time, even if it means cranking up the air conditioning.

Oh, I shouldn't have said that, the California energy police are pounding on my door. Be right back.

Turns out it was only my landlady. But it did make me wonder -- what does the doorbell in my new house sound like? Will I be able to hear it from the pool?

Yes, it has a pool. It's blobular in shape, and has a semi-attached spa. the good news is that it takes up most of the tiny back yard, so there's no messy lawn to have to mow. The bad news is it's squeezed in beside the two car garage, and the garage is current unused because they use the driveway as extra patio area. I don't know what we'll decide to do, but I think we'll park at the side of the house where the garbage cans are.

I wonder if those come with the house or if we have to buy our own...

We'll park and go in the back door, I bet. It goes into the laundry room, next to the back den. From there, it's into the kitchen in the middle of the house. The kitchen has original tile, or at least pretty damn old. The house as a whole was built in 1932. That means it's not officially craftsman, but it still has that feel to it. It has a gas stove, and we'll be getting all the major appliances with the house.

Beside the kitchen are the three bedrooms. One will be filled with Susie's brother, Matt, when he comes out for several months this summer for an internship. The other bedroom will house the server room/ office. Don't know yet about DSL, but I can't imagine it'd be a problem.

Then last but not least, there's the master bedroom with what I affectionately call The Blemish -- a bathroom straight out of an old, cheap motel. I have no idea how it snuck into the hotel, but, if I wasn't broke from buying a house, I'd definitely pay to renovate that sucker.

All this is from memory; on Monday, Susie and I go back to the house with an official inspector and make sure that all the termites are absent, all the pipes are in good shape and there are no boogie men under the beds. If that goes well, then the current owners will hauls all their pretty furniture out of there and we'll stick ours in and by the beginning of June our new address will be 2386 Paloma St., Pasadena, CA.

It goes without saying that you'll be invited to the house warming party.

Incidentally, if you know a good electrician, a good mover, a good floor refinisher, a good plumber, a good pool cleaning guy, a good gardener, a good renovator or a good masseuse (we'll need one!) please let me know!

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