July 2007 Archives
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve made a pretty big decision: I’ve put my Northern Virginia condo on the market. I’d been thinking about it for a while. In fact, when I accepted the position here in San Francisco last year, I thought about trying to sell it then, but the interviews, job offer and move happened so quickly—less than five weeks from first telephone interview to my start date, with a transatlantic vacation and cross-country move in between—that I didn’t want to rush into the decision at the time, so I hired a property management company to find tenants and oversee the lease.
It’s become clear to me over the past year, perhaps unsurprisingly, that this is my home now; I love it here. And, even if we were to leave the Bay Area, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t go back to DC. So I had started thinking about selling the condo when the lease expired the end of August. But by the end of June I hadn’t actually done anything about it, and started worrying that I wouldn’t be giving the tenants fair enough (even if legally sufficient) warning, so I decided I’d rent it for one more year and then sell in 2008.
But on July 5 I got an email from the management company that the tenants had decided not to renew the lease past August, so rather than have to look for new tenants for only a year’s lease, I decided that was the sign to sell it. So as of today, the condo is on the market.
It’s listed on the MLS and as a “showcase” listing on Realtor.com. It’s particularly strange to see the photos of it there, with someone else’s furniture, arranged completely differently than we had ours, but maybe that helps me in separating from it emotionally.
And it has been an emotionally charged decision. While I know that it’s really the right time (if not already a little late) to sell it for a number of reasons—I need to sell it within the next two years to avoid the capital gains penalties, a number of new condo buildings are planned nearby that will create a glut, I’m not going to be moving back there, we’d need the cash were we to find a house here we want to buy, to list only a few—but the decision still left a big lump in my throat. This was the first (and only, so far) home I’d bought, and I bought it completely on my own, with no financial support from my family. I was there for ten years, the longest I’d lived at any one address as an adult, I made a lot of friends there, Alex came into my life that first year, and Jeff and I had lived together there for three years.
But life moves on, and so will I. Even considering the less-than-ideal work situation and the bad things that have come our way the past year, I’m really happy out here in California, happier than I was back in Virginia. So, positive thoughts, if you will, that the former Chez Thomas sells quickly… and for the asking price. <grin/>
If you know of anyone who might be interested—the Barkley is a really well-respected address in Arlington, at a very convenient location, and my unit is on the secluded, quiet, tree-covered courtyard side of the building, overlooking the swimming pool (honestly, I think it’s one of the two or three best locations in the entire building, high enough to be safe and to have a pleasant tree-top view, but not so high as to get the street noise from Columbia Pike)—let me know.
Saturday morning, at about 10:30 a.m., the doorbell rang and a cute UPS deliveryman in his signature brown shorts (so I’m told by Jeff, who answered the door and collected the package) dropped off my pre-ordered copy of the 739-page Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and last book in the Harry Potter series. Jeff was planning to take his mom to the 13th annual Fil-Am Friendship Festival that day, so I toasted a couple of English muffins and curled up on the couch with the book.
I read pretty much non-stop, with a break to shower and get dressed, until 5:15 when we had to leave to make our 6:00 pre-theater dinner reservation at Absinthe. I started with a caipirinha (mojitos and caipirinhas seem to be my new favorite cocktails), followed it with a caesar salad, and then the steak frites for my entree. The latter was the best I’ve had in my life. One often hears that good steak “melts in one’s mouth,” but this one actually did; it was wonderfully rare, yet not at all tough. And the pesto butter drizzled on top really highly complimented the beef. The frites were perfectly crunchy little shoestring potatoes rather than typical American-style fries. For dessert we shared one of their cheeses—the Portugese Serra Da Estrela Merenda, with fig spread, described in the menu as a “washed rind sheep’s-milk cheese made with wild thistle rennet with a sweet grassy taste”—and the chocolate pot de crème. Yum.
After dinner we saw the Kinsey Sicks show, Condoleezzapalooza, at the Herbst Theater. Long-time readers of this blog may remember that Jeff and I saw the Kinsey Sicks at the Birchmere, back in Alexandria, for our first in-person meeting in June 2003, effectively, as it turns out, our first date (we even use that date, June 21, for purposes of celebrating our anniversary). In the audience, and pointed out from the stage, was a former member of the troupe, Maurice, whom I’d known 25 years ago when we were both members of the Harvard Glee Club. After the show, I went over and re-introduced myself, and we agreed to make plans to get together when he returns from his trip back to Cambridge this week for, of all things, a Glee Club reunion.
We got home around 10:30, and I returned to the world of Harry Potter, finishing the book—and the series, if J.K. Rowling is to be believed—an hour later.
As obsessive as this might sound, to push myself to finish the book in something under 7 hours over the course of a day, I did at least put the book down when we left the house for dinner and the concert. At the concert, we actually saw several people reading the book in their seats, before the show started.
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What a sobering factoid.
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An awe-inspiring photographic essay
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Squaredancing, and several mentions of the Times Squares GLBT club, in New York City
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Another depressing article suggesting that Dems have to wear their faith on their sleeves.
