View from the Old Apartment
Woodpecker visiting the balcony feeder
No place is perfect and that was true for this one too. The building was full of immigrants. Some of the immigrants were not too concerned about trash and left it wherever, the stairwell, on the floor of the trash-chute room, instead of throwing it into the chute, and then there were the roaches. We could keep them out of the apartment but if the neighbor was not as careful then were would get the overflow. At least the building staff was good at cleaning up after the tenants and were also good at attacking apartments that we mentioned might have a roach problem. Not that I have a problem with immigrants, but I would have preferred more of a mixture of tenants, otherwise how will the newcomers learn how to behave in our society. At a more basic level, I would have preferred more people like me.
Then there was street parking. During the four years while living there, a tree fell on the car, the car was scratched, the license plates were stolen, and the car was broken into and my toolbox stolen as well as two pairs of sunglasses. The last incident prompted me to leave the glove box open and empty whenever it was parked, just so any other thieves could save themselves the trouble of wondering what was in there. I had also welded the replacement license places to the car to prevent them from disappearing again.
And finally, with it being DC, there was all that came with the city being the Nation’s Capital. Motorcades, diplomats, snipers, terror threats and the occasional anarchist protestor attempting to shutdown a road by running into the street to block traffic. (Hint: if this happens to you, speed up and show no emotion. If you happen to hit someone claim that you feared that they were going to pull you from the car and beat you. My experience is that they WILL get out of your way.)
We have decided to leave all that fun behind. After two weeks of packing, we got a rental truck for 9A.M. Saturday morning. My brother came over to help, as did a friend couple of ours. It took only two hours to load the truck and then three to unload it. Not bad considering that our new apartment is on the third floor of a building with no elevator.
The most interesting part of the move was driving the truck around. I rented it in VA and I had limited options getting it into DC as many of the main roads prohibit trucks. In the end, my route took me within blocks of the White House, but just far enough away to not be a threat. I was tailed on the way out of the city for a couple of blocks but must not have fit the profile. Go downtown enough and you will see no end of moving trucks pulled over because they didn’t realize all the truck restrictions.
So now I am kicking back enjoying my new apartment. Other benefits will include, lower state taxes, lower car insurance, safer neighborhood, shorter work commute (3 miles compared to 10 miles before,) and I can now legally own a firearm. Don’t think that I am a gun nut by mentioning the right to own firearms. The DC prohibition actually created a problem for me as I already owned three rifles. During this time I needed to keep them at my parent’s house since I could not keep them in my DC apartment.
We are quickly unpacking a ton of boxes as well as getting used to the increased space and new neighborhood. There is so much to do before we go on vacation in a couple of weeks to Finland.
Question of moving day: “Fred, why do you have a shovel?”
The view from the new apartment
No sign of birds, yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment