The Eagle Has Landed

The Shark family arrived at our new house in Seattle on Saturday afternoon. We've been here for a little more than 24 hours and there hasn't been any rain yet. In fact, the weather has been mostly warm and sunny, a bit more so than what I'm used to in San Francisco.

The house is a 1920s Craftsman that has been almost completely rebuilt. We bought the place when the reconstruction was still in progress, and there are a few more final touches that are still being finalized. The renovators who sold it to us have done an amazing job, working round the clock these last few weeks. Still, no project of this magnitude goes off without glitches or odd incompletions.

All of the bathroom tiles and kitchen granite are brand new. Yet, for unexplained reasons of trade custom? superstition? deliberate cruelty? the contractors refused to apply the stone and grout sealants for us. So we are forced to do this work ourselves, getting down on our hands and knees with tiny paint brushes and inhaling chromosome-altering fumes for hours at a time before we can use the shower, lest the moisture turns our bathroom into a forest of furry black poisonous mushrooms, arrayed in neat rectangular patterns where the grout used to be.

Speaking of bathrooms, we are now one of those households which have more bathrooms than residents. We now require a continuous parade of houseguests if only to ensure an adequate supply of fresh rear ends to keep all of those toilet seats fully utilized.

All of our furniture and most of our worldly artifacts are on a long truck somewhere south of here. Will they arrive tomorrow morning as promised? Who the hell knows. In the meantime, I am reduced to blogging while sitting on the floor. If I don't get a table and chair by tomorrow I will change the name of the blog to "Floor Pundit".

We don't have any window treatments yet, so for all intents and purposes we live in one of those proverbial glass houses. Women from all over the neighborhood have been swooning to stolen glimpses of my impressive grecian physique. Meanwhile, other neighbors are apparently wagering on the frequency and duration of our marital performances.

Today I pulled a Lileks and spent the afternoon at Target. What a great store. Is there anything they don't sell?

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at May 11, 2003 09:01 PM