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November 01, 2007

There and Back Again

The rape of our finances is finally over. We have sold our house in NJ. Almost 15 years of consecutive home ownership has come to an end, and what we are left with is not much more than with what we started. So much for my piece of the "American Dream." I am seriously considering not ever owning a house again, but we'll see.

I returned to NJ during my Fall break from school to shoehorn the last of our things into another POD. As the NJ-based moving company, with which we had planned to contract this task, tried to take shameless advantage of our situation (why should I have not seen this coming?), loading a POD by hand in the rain was the only affordable option.

The road trip up from VA was uneventful; with my father staying true to his promise to not putter along like an "old man." And with the exception of the precipitation which waxed and waned in a most miserable conjunction with every trip from the house to the POD, the "move" went smoothly.

Of course, NJ couldn't let us go without levying a few more fuck-you fees; like one by the county Fire Inspector who came out to confirm that a fire extinguisher and smoke and CO detectors we in the house and working; tasks that were also performed by the house inspector. The difference? The house inspector was paid by the buyer. The Fire Inspector was paid by me, the seller. Same task. Performed twice. For a wad of money each time. New Jersey: Where Redundancy Is a Career Field. (And there's probably a union for it too.)

Despite the rain and the excessive bureaucracy, we actually finished early, and were able to return to VA on Saturday, leaving my Sunday free until I had to be at the airport for the return flight home. I managed to visit with a few friends, but not nearly as many as I would have liked. I managed to blank on a number of friends' contact information, and so missed them. I can be such an idiot at times. For others it was simply bad timing. Sorry for crossed connections.

I arrived at the airport two-and-a-half hours before my flight was to depart, and good thing too. At two hours before take off, someone triggered an emergency alarm effectively shutting down the airport terminal for almost an hour. I was one of the lucky ones who had made it through security screening prior to the alarm, and had a nice sit-down wait at the end of the concourse tunnel at the base of a steel security door. Boarding time was un-delayed, but then we waited for thirty odd passengers to trickle in who had been caught outside security screening during the alert. We departed 30 minutes late. But the adventure wasn't yet over.

En route to Atlanta, we had to defer to Raleigh-Durham for a medical emergency: the passenger next to me experienced a Grand Mal seizure in his sleep. Luckily, there were both an MD and an RN onboard (both passengers), so skilled care was on hand. After the paramedics took the passenger off the plane, we were back in the air.

The remainder of the flight was uneventful until after landing and taxiing to our assigned gate, where the gangway that pivots out from the terminal to the plane would not function properly and so took some 20 minutes to be coaxed into position. Then there was some confusion with the luggage as we had been a flight from VA (and our luggage was tagged as such), but we had come in from Raleigh-Durham. It took another 30 minutes to find the right luggage carousel. In the end, a 2 hour delay, but an interesting series of events.

During this all I couldn't shake a nagging feeling—that all of these events were actually the New Jersey hooks (that for three years held me fast) snapping free of my life. That miserable state was trying to hold onto me despite my efforts to be free; the persistent bastard.

Posted by Tacitus at November 1, 2007 11:27 PM

Comments

Posted by: kerrie at November 4, 2007 05:59 PM

Posted by: nakhira at November 9, 2007 08:40 PM

Posted by: Tacitus at November 9, 2007 08:55 PM