first post! (you know what i mean)

well, here it is — the first post from my new place of residence. i’m sitting here in the living room in the dark, drinking some chocalate hazelnut liquor and listening to johnny cash. (which means i got the stereo set up…it’s about the only thing.)
last night i was originally planning on eating with sue at her house, but i realized it was getting late, i had a big load to move, i had to set up my bed at the new place, and i was transporting lenin (my cat), — so i decided to just come straight to the new house. i managed to get the bedroom set up enough to sleep in it. i think raj said they turned the pilot off on the heating unit. if not, i was cold last night for no good reason. i decided to not even try messing with it.
this morning i got up and headed over to 9023. i had left a bit more there than i’d thought, but i managed to get almost all of it in the back of my element. just before i left, the new buyers came by so i talked with them and showed them around the place. i left them the keys since i still had a garage door opener, then i took off.
i unloaded the stuff at the new house, then the potts showed up. we ate lunch at the house of pies, then we dropped jack off at work and i went with sue to my old house. i showed her and jackson my empty old house. i loaded the final few things in the back of my pickup and drove it (with no brakes except the parking brake) to the potts’ house. sue then gave me a ride back to the house so i could get my motorcycle. i made one final walk through the place, both sighed and smiled, then hit the garage door button and ran and avoided the electronic eye while the door was closing. the door closed and that was that. i hopped on my motorcycle and headed to my new place.
i had originally planned to take some pics of the empty place, and to make a video, but i didn’t really have time to plan and execute it. when tamara and i bought the house back in aug/sep 1998, jack and sue went with us when we first took the keys to the place. jack was operating the camera, and he walked behind us as we walked into the place and looked around. it was only two or three minutes probably. anyway, i wanted to watch it and figure out the path, then walk through it now in exactly the same pattern. at the end i would pan down and then zoom in on a picture all by itself in the middle of the floor in a completely empty room. the pic is one of tamara looking pissed off and flipping off the camera. i thought this would be a poignant way of bookending the events of my time in the house.
ah, the pic in question. it was taken by me on memorial day weekend of 2001. we’d gone to fayetteville arkansas to look at the place, look at houses/apartments, and for me to find information about employment (which didn’t much exist for me there). i don’t even remember why tamara was pissed at me, but she was mad about something. we were sitting in the car after driving up to the hotel room we were staying in. it was raining some. anyway, she was mad about something and i had the camera nearby and i jokingly said we should take a picture to capture this moment for posterity, so i raised the camera and told her to smile and she looked at me angrily and frustrated and flipped me off. then i hit the button.
it’s been a good picture to have around to remind me of her and how she treated me. fortunately, enough time has passed and enough things have changed that i wasn’t too affected by the finality of leaving the house. if it’d been one or two years ago i probably would have had a really difficult time going through it, even though i was trying to move on then too. thank G-d i seem to be beyond most of the darkness from those horrible times.