jducoeur

The past six weeks have been beyond insane, as all of my deadlines have begun to crash in on me. But one of them has been the overriding priority: getting moved out of my house. Pretty much everybody I talked to agreed that, if I want to sell a house like this (well-suited to families with kids) efficiently, getting it on the market in the spring is essential.

So there were the mad packing parties (my thanks to everybody who came and helped), the big day with Gentle Giant, and in-between me spending practically all my waking hours there, packing and packing and packing.

(And a zillion trips to storage, and I believe nine full carloads so far to Goodwill. And of course, the epic trip to NH with 45 boxes of books to give to the Five Colleges Book Sale, which pretty much made *their* month. If you happen to be in Lebanon, NH this weekend, go to the book sale -- a fair fraction of it came from me.)

Today, for the first time in a *very* long time, I can't really come up with any reason why I need to spend any time there. I need to swing past and exchange cars (the Matrix is living there until I sell it, but I have it with me today to drop some stuff off in storage), and I need to check in on the enormous number of things I'm Freecycling (all of which I'm just leaving in the carport and telling people to come take them away), but the house is done. I finished packing the interior on Friday; the cleaners came Saturday; the first open house was Sunday; and yesterday I fetched the last items I really cared about. (Eg, bringing my bicycle to WheelWorks so I can start using it in town.)

But somehow, the thing that drives home that I'm really selling the house is finding that, yes, it's listed right there online. The project is now in the hands of the Stockmans. (My realtors, who are blessedly the sort of people I can just tell to make things happen and they deal with it nicely.)

So I am now starting to slowly get back to all my other projects -- and hopefully, soon, stop being quite so stressed-out. This one isn't quite "done", but my part of it mostly is...

Okay -- I did a date grab some time ago, but let's make this more official:

I will be holding the traditional Crossert Memorial Day Party on Monday, May 28th, at my house in Burlington. Y'all are invited -- as always, this will be a relaxing afternoon out in the back yard without a ton of structure. Folks returning from events or other travel are encouraged to drop in and decompress. Children are welcome (and there's lots of room to run around), but should be supervised.

The party will start at 2ish and run until everyone goes home. If weather is bad, we'll move inside and have a quieter day of schmoozing and games.

The day will be light potluck, as usual: I will provide some grilled meat, and I encourage folks to bring sides, chips, desserts, drinks and so on. (But if you decide at the last minute to come, and can't bring anything, come anyway: we've never had a shortage of food.) My old grill is Mildly Kaput, so I need to buy a new one ASAP, but we'll assume that I manage to deal with that.

RSVPs welcome if you know you are coming (helps reassure me that there will be people there, and figure out how much meat to buy), but not required -- come if you can make it. Drop me a note if you need directions.

Hope to see you there!