Back in Capitol Hill for now

Today I decided to call it per yesterday’s rantle and moved (minimally) back to my Capitol Hill condo, since it hadn’t sold yet anyway and there was only like 1.5 weeks left on the listing time. (I have also requested cancellation of the listing, of course, not that there were likely to be any scheduled showings this or next week due to Thanksgiving.)

I loaded up my car with basic necessities for the next week — clothing (namely my last two weeks' worth of dirty laundry), work and personal laptop, a very minimal recording setup, my Apple TV, and my Nintendo Switch, as well as my old cable modem and router. Also an air mattress and sheets and pillows for it. I refilled the cats' water and food dispensers and bade them adieu for another day.

I got back to the condo and then learned that all the curtains, including the shower curtain, had been disposed of, because they were deemed unfit for staging. So I went down to Target and got the cheapest weighted shower curtain I could find, then had my first proper shower in about two weeks1, which felt amazing.

Tomorrow I have things to do back in White Center, namely there’s some followup from my heat pump installation which I need to be there for, and I also have an extremely overdue 1 PM massage session, so after my massage I’ll be bringing a little more stuff to make my life slightly more comfortable, such as maybe a computer monitor and definitely my cats. Fiona’s going to be so disappointed to not have outdoors again, but then again she hasn’t had much outdoor time in the last two weeks anyway.

While I’m back in Seattle I’m trying to only buy stuff that’ll be helpful for my house when I’m back down there. So, I might get a folding picnic table to make do with as a desk (because transporting any of my current desks is challenging in my small car), and I’ve gotten a clean low-profile litter box for up here because that’ll be going into the completed bathroom anyway. I’m also trying not to get too comfortable here, although I do at least want to be comfortable enough to try to do some more Novembeat tracks, as frazzled as I am right now.

As far as things with the house go, the contractor is still insisting that the whole project will be done “on time” but I’m sure some other ridiculous thing is going to come up that keeps pushing everything back even further. No work got done today, and I’m baffled as to what the plumber thinks the issue is with the plumbing at this point. He’s redone it like three times now, but just tells me that it doesn’t work. The contractor says that the concern is that there was some “debris” in the line from the old shutoff valve but I’m pretty sure it’s just rust and that’ll flush itself out over time (and I wasn’t seeing any signs of rust whenever I was using my running water the rare times I had it).

Anyway. Today it felt really amazing to have a good, hot shower, and even things like washing my hands in hot water is something that I’m now realizing I usually take for granted.

The plus side to being back in Capitol Hill is I have amazing access to much better food. Also I was able to get my Crowd Cow box diverted to my condo, so maybe I’ll have a nice solo Thanksgiving after all. I don’t have any turkey in the box but roasted chicken is just as good, right? Or maybe I will eschew tradition entirely and have filet mignon.

I wonder if I should pick up my sous vide gear tomorrow, on that note. I think I’m fine just cooking with the couple of pots and pans I brought, though.

Oh, and as far as coffee goes I didn’t feel like schlepping my coffee station here so I’m just making do with an Aeropress, a stovetop kettle (thanks to my condo’s induction stove it’s faster than my electric kettle anyway), and some preground decaf I accidentally bought. Maybe I’ll pick up my Hario Mini Slim… but I probably won’t. Capitol Hill is basically Eden as far as good coffee shops go, anyway, and Vivace is, like, right there.

In other news, I’ve been talking to the property management company that handles my neighboring condo unit, and they offer pretty good services at a fair price. They’ll do tenant screenings and placements for a finder’s fee of 1 month of rent, and they’ll do full-service maintenance/management/etc. for an additional 10% per month. I asked them about having them only do part of the ongoing management (namely collecting rent, dealing with lease-related issues, and being a point of contact for the tenant) and they said they can reduce their monthly fee accordingly, so that’s definitely worthwhile. I hate the idea of being a landlady but nobody’s buying this place and it’s better to have the unit be occupied and making me some money than just sitting vacant and costing me ridiculous amounts per month. It’s all about harm reduction.

Comments

Before commenting, please read the comment policy.

Avatars provided via Libravatar