change one thing...

I've said it before, and it still rings true: change one thing; change everything. Or, at least change so many things that it sure feels like everything.

So, I have the keys to the house. Last Thursday I drove to Dearborn for the closing. I got there at the same time as the seller, which was a good ten minutes before everyone else showed up. My mortgage lender walked me through everything, which was really great. I'm sure the closing agent would have done the same thing, but it was nice to have someone I knew walking me through the process. I meant to do a mental count of the number of times I signed my name, but I would guess it was around fifty. The whole process took a little over an hour, and afterward I drove straight the Ferndale city hall to register the title. The first thing I did when I got inside the house was start pulling up the carpet. Once I got down to the padding, I realized that it had been on for so long that the padding was stuck to the finish and about 1/3 of the finish had to be scraped away with the padding. My parents came over on Saturday and we removed all of the remaining carpet staples, the tack strip, and scraped away 99% of the stuck padding. As it turns out, we're going to sand the floor down to wood and refinish, which is going to take another weekend - hopefully this upcoming weekend. Once that's done, we can really get moving forward moving in furniture and painting.

As for other notable changes... I've been able to keep up reading. So far in the past month I've read four of Vonnegut's books: Bluebeard, Breakfast of Champions, Galapagos, and Slapstick. I just started on Player Piano, his first novel. I decided to completely change over my bank accounts, so now I have everything at Chase. I went to BestBank today to close my account, and I felt kind of bad doing it. They gave me all of my money in cash so I went straight to Chase to deposit it. I've also decided to grow my hair out until after I've finished moving. It's already longer than it's ever been, and I haven't completely decided if I'll cut it at the end of the month, but chances are I will.

Anyone who's interested in helping me paint/move: most of it will be taking place on May 16th and 17th. It sure can't come fast enough for me!