A Richmond Year

Gas and painting

Tried again to get the gas transferred into our names. Busy, still. Grr.

Painted the master bedroom today, the same mocha as the office. Still amazed at the choice of yellow paint. There’s also a hospital-esque TV stand in the bedroom — a metal bracket shelf thing in the corner. Tried to remove it, but the thing is bolted in pretty solidly. One of these days I’ll get a plasma torch and take care of it.

Painting

Richmond shoppers are like New York drivers. I can work with this. :)

Today was a painting day. Much of the house looks great, but the office is orange and the master bedroom is yellow. Who does that? I mean, how does that conversation go?

“Honey, let’s paint the small bedroom.”

“Great idea. How about bright orange?”

“Sounds good to me.”

Now the orange room is mocha brown, which goes with the carpet and, you know, everything else.

Gas, again

Tried to get gas hooked up, but the phone number for Richmond public services was busy (!). Over and over. (Garbage is private but gas is public. Got it.) Evidently the old tenant is still paying, but that won’t last forever.

One neighbor

Is it impolite to say that you have a hot neighbor? Especially if she’s really friendly?

Local services

Got the electricity and water in our name. Garbage is private — weird. Our neighbors all have different color garbage cans depending on which company they use. I wonder if pickup is the same day for everyone. I put my cans out when I saw other people do it (regardless of color) and a few hours later my trash was gone. So that works.

Leaf pickup. Hmm. In Roanoke you just swept them into the street and the city magically made the piles disappear on a particular weekend. Here I have no clue. Some neighbors leave a line of bags off their curb, others just sweep piles into the street. Is pickup private? A guy offered to clean up my leaves for $200. No, thanks. Despite the fact that I rent, we have a lot of trees in the yard. If he vaccuumed them all up in a few days the ground would be covered again.

I’ve got a rake and a leaf blower, thankyouverymuch. And now I have big piles of leaves.

Mixed switches

There are a lot of light switches in this house, many of which appear to do nothing. I see myself spending considerable time figuring things out.

Air mattresses

Air mattresses always leak. Doesn’t matter the brand or the warranty; I’ve used a bunch. They always leak.

Shoes

The Boy learned first-hand why we said, “Wear shoes if you go out.”

Dogs

Our new neighbors have dogs — dogs that are louder than ours. This is a good thing.

The move begins

Began the move with just the essentials, including two borrowed air mattresses and a borrowed card table and chairs. Camping out, it is, but with nice bathrooms and a great kitchen. Too bad we have, like, three small pots and some plastic dishes. That’ll change in a few weeks.

Lots of beech trees. Lots. Parked and were attacked from above by falling beech nuts. The ground is covered with leaves and nut shells; the backyard has almost zero grass. That’s OK, as long as we don’t plan on walking outside without shoes.