Day: January 10, 2020

You Belong In The City

Fandango11 Comments

55579248-5C20-45E9-BD52-772259318475Wow, the timing of Jim Adam’s Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Music Challenge couldn’t be more prescient. Jim focused on a song by Glenn Frey, the late singer and cofounder of The Eagles, “You Belong In The City.” Is Jim trying to tell me something with that choice of song?

Earlier today I wrote a post announcing that my wife and I are moving out of the city and into the ‘burbs to be physically closer to my son and his wife, who are expecting their first child.

It’s been at least two decades since my family has lived outside of a “real” city (i.e., one with NFL, MLB, and NBA teams). We lived in the suburbs when our kids were younger so that they could go to the best public schools. But when they went off to college, my wife and I, as empty nesters, took up residence in an urban environment.

But now, with our first grandchild on the way and with grandparenting duties in the offing, we are heading out of the city and into the suburbs.

So, Jim, if by choosing the song “You Belong In The City” for this weeks music challenge, you were trying to send me a message, you’re too late. It’s pretty much a done deal. If anything bad happens to me out yonder, I’m blaming you for waiting so long to say something.

Buying and Selling

Fandango56 Comments

C004A3A3-7663-4CE4-AA07-F7FEA4299F1EYou may remember in this post from December 19th I wrote, “…there’s a lot going on in my life right now. Some of it good. Some of it exciting. And, unfortunately, some of it not very good at all.” The “good” was that my wife and I are going to be grandparents. The “not very good” was that I would be having ear surgery around the end of the year. This post is about the “exciting.”

Our son and daughter-in-law both work and they have asked us, as well as our DIL’s parents, to help out with childcare after the baby is born. DIL’s parents live pretty close to where our son and his wife live, which is on the “East Bay.” But we live about 35 miles to the west, in San Francisco. And because we have to cross the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge, which is always jam-packed with traffic, it’s an onerous drive that typically takes us about 90 minutes each way.

So, we decided — okay, my wife decided — that we needed to sell our house in San Francisco and buy a new one on the East Bay. And we did! Well, we bought one on the East Bay and we will putting our San Francisco house on the market soon.

Our new place will be only 10 miles south of where our son lives — about a 15 to 25 minute drive. And with no damn bridge to cross to get there and back.

Living in the ‘burbs will be a whole lifestyle change for us. Where we live now in the city, we can walk to shops, restaurants, entertainment, or we can catch one of a number of buses if it’s a little too far to walk. We hardly drive our car anymore (except when we go visit our son and his wife).

Once we move, though, we’ll be car-dependent, as our new house is located a little over two miles from the “downtown” section of the town. Not walking distance to shops or restaurants. But we may buy a couple of electric bicycles so that, rather than always having to drive into town, we can bike without exhausting ourselves riding up and down the hilly terrain. Fun times ahead, huh?

Why am I telling you this? Because, it’s all happening very quickly. We have the final walkthrough of our new place next week and the closing the week after that. And we’ll be physically moving in early February. Between now and then we have a ton of work we need to do. We need to get our current house ready to be put on the market. We need to pack up all of our belongings, arrange for movers, get stuff we’ll need before we can move into the new place. It’s going to be hectic and time consuming.

Bottom line, I’ll be a bit less prolific on WordPress for the next month or so. I will still post my daily FOWC with Fandango prompts because I can schedule them weeks in advance.  But I’m not sure if I’ll be able to participate in too many other daily or weekly prompts or to keep up with all of your posts, as my days will mostly be taken up with move related tasks. I’ll do my best to respond to your comments on my posts, which should be easier for me to do because I won’t be posting as much as I usually do. And I’ll read as many of your posts as I can.

Anyway, this is just a heads up that for a while, anyway, you won’t be seeing as much of me as you’ve seen in the past. But once we’re settled into our new place, I plan to come roaring back.

FOWC with Fandango — Rubber

Fandango19 Comments

FOWCWelcome to January 10, 2020 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.

I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (US).

Today’s word is “rubber.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. You will marvel at their creativity.