Some of you may have noticed (but then again maybe you
have not) that this blog has been idle for a few months. The last entry was
sometime on November right before the holidays. After that all hell broke out
in our household! Sounds dramatic but it really wasn’t, although there was
enough going on to keep me away from writing for a while.
After Christmas my wife decided to return to Las Vegas
with our daughter and the two grandkids to spend a while there. Over the past
30 years or so Minnie (my wife) and I have spent numerous vacations in Vegas
and after our daughter (Minnie too!) went to live there a few years ago we
started to think about making the move ourselves. Seems like a no-brainer,
right. Not quite.
Both of us are (were) attached to our jobs and, for the
most part, enjoyed working. That soon evaporated for her as she realized that
she was ready to spend some time relaxing and enjoying life. One down, one to
go! I was a harder sell and needed a nudge – a big nudge.
That nudge came in the middle of Minnie’s January hiatus
when she called home (New York) to say she was going to look at houses in Vegas
with a Real Estate friend of my daughter’s. Looking is harmless, or so I
thought. Within a day or two she saw something she liked (loved is more like
it) and the second call home was to say we were buying a house in Vegas! The
place was small, about 1/3 the size of our NY house, and the price was right,
about 1/3 of the price of our NY house. Two weeks after she returned home all
the papers were signed and all the forms submitted and by the middle of
February we owned a house in NY and a future home in North Las Vegas. That was
my nudge.
A few months later, following a purging of our NY house
of most of our worldly possessions so as to “stage” our impending sale as well
as could be expected and a quick (2 weeks) process guaranteeing most of what we
expected to get for the house, and we are sitting around waiting for a closing
date to appear and a trip west to materialize.
From our limited experiences we have learned that buying
a home in Nevada is a lot easier than selling a home in New York. If not easier
than certainly quicker. It took less than a month to make an offer, seal a
deal, arrange a closing and take possession in North Las Vegas. In New York we
are pushing 3 months without a closing date pinned down. I’m sure it will
happen but the waiting is killing us.
During those 3 months Minnie closed up her business, I
arranged to retire (5/31 is my last day on the job), we sold most of our
furniture, Minnie organized three days of successful Moving Sales, we are
saying goodbyes to friends and family, and we are planning our close to a week-long
trip across country with our one remaining automobile and our two dogs, Tiger
and Kiki. If that doesn’t kill us nothing ever will!
Our grandkids have been waiting patiently (impatiently,
actually) to hear that grandma and grandpa are on the road and who can blame them.
Three months is a long wait for us – for little kids (7 and 4 years old!) it
must seem like forever. But we will get there although it’s difficult to say
just when.
And, all of this is my long-winded way of saying that
this blog should be a lot more active in a few weeks. After all, what will I
have to do in the middle of the glitzy desert except play poker, get a little
more exercise, cook and eat in a healthier fashion, spend time with my wife and
family, make new friends, find new exciting things to do, and write blog posts
more regularly. That sounds like a plan.
