All the leaves are brown. . .

Melissa and I closed on a two-year-old house this Monday evening.  It's considerably larger than the one we've lived in on Loyala Chase Lane for the last 14+ years, and it has a considerably better school district for the kids.  Movers are scheduled for next Wednesday, May 8th, and I'm off all next week to help with everything.  Our old house has been on the market since mid-February and no bites yet, but hopefully it sells sometime this summer.  Fingers crossed, because starting in June we're owing two mortgage payments each month, which isn't a fun financial situation to be in.  We also picked out a new living room furniture set this past Sunday, with Megan being the one to eyeball it first.  It's a $3k sectional with a chaise and massive ottoman and is 14' long and barely fits in the new house; along with Time Warner cable, it's scheduled to arrive on the 9th.

Iron Man 3 came out today, so I think Ian and I will catch a matinee sometime this weekend.  The kids are at my mom's tonight, Melissa goes into work at 11 and is downstairs asleep right now, and I just got back from filling up both cars and then going for possibly my last walk down Forest Ridge Blvd.  I sat on the deck before doing this finishing The Wise Man's Fear, a 1k-page fantasy boat anchor.  Terry Brooks has a lot to answer for in his afterlife.

Going to be damn strange leaving this house.  Today, May 3rd, was my last one driving to work from it after 14 years.  We brought both kids home from the hospital to this house, I'll never forget coming home for lunch back in 2000 and finding Melissa upstairs painting the spare bedroom wall's with a picket fence, the moon and sun on opposite walls.  I've never lived anywhere longer except for the house I grew up in Possum Woods, and that's not by much.  I'm extremely unfond of moving, as most people are, so I can only hope the new house is the last, that we live there for at least 20 years, and that if we move again it's to a small brick ranch we retire to.

Melissa just woke up from her 2-hour nap.  She'll leave in a bit and I'll have the house to myself for the night.  At least until I fall asleep an hour or so after she leaves.  The exciting Friday night of a 48-year-old married father of two.