Saturday, April 05, 2025

I know I have roots there even if I don’t know where the trees are.

A while back, I had this crazy plan to fly in and out of Boston - go see my friends’ band in Albany-adjacent cities and then catch a Bruins game. A nice, low-key, all-me, 50th birthday long weekend.

Yeah. That did not go as planned.

It became fly into Albany, see the two BMS shows, go to Boston and watch them lose to BUFFALO (BUFFALO! ACK!), drive to Maine and buy a house.

Dude, I bought a fucking house.

It’s the third one I’ve owned outright and the fifth house I’ve bought. Buying a house doesn’t get any less stressful the fifth time around, let me tell you.

But, let’s start in Albany. Future me is going to wish I wrote this somewhere, so why not here? I share everything else important here. (This may be a long one. Strap in! (Strap on? Whatever works!))

I get to Albany to find out they’re charging me a $200 one way rental fee for the car. Not only that, they’ve decided me to give me a Hyundai Elantra. The Elantras are REALLY low to the ground. Like, really, really, low. Hated that car since the moment he gave me the keys. Grrr. Glad I didn’t get a nicer car - that fucking $200 would have made the car way too expensive and I was already pushing my budget.

(I bet this is the most expensive vacation I’ll ever take in my entire life. Altogther, I spent roughly $203,000.)

I have always had good luck with Super 8s in Upstate NY. I am sad to say that the original hotel in Cobleskill fucking sucked. It seems minor, but the room had a broken safe. (I had a laptop. I didn’t want to bring it to a bar in an unknown neighbourhood.) They tried to put me in a different room. Broken safe. Third room? So moldy, I couldn’t even walk in the door. I walked out of the hotel in full Karen mode. (Well, they must have thought that. I thought I was being nice about almost dying.  Mold has become something I’m super allergic to. So, yeah, no thanks. You can poison someone else.)

So, I went ALL THE FUCK THE WAY BACK TO THE AIRPORT and stayed at the Tru by Hilton. That was ah-mazing. I’m only staying at Trus from this point forward.

Black Mountain Symphony killed it during that first show. I sat back and let the songs roll over me. It felt like the first time I could breathe in ages. All the stress. POOF! Gone. So nice to be home, surrounded by friends, and the best music ever. Oh, it was amazing.

I left the Tru to stay a little family run hotel closer to BMS’ second show of the weekend. It was a nice room. Nothing too fancy. (The BMS show was great, as expected, and I bonded with Bill’s mom a bit. Love her!) The absolute worst part of the night was when I was woken up by something. The bed was shaking. Literally shaking. Like someone was fucking with the mattress. And then, once the bed stopped moving, it felt like something got on the bed with me. (It could have been Guinness or the ex for the way the bed sunk.) The room got cold and I could feel someone in the room with me. This started at about 3AM and lasted until 3:30. I barely moved a muscle except to breathe and cracked my eye to look at the time.

Turns out there is a cemetery across the street from the hotel.

I guess someone just wanted to say hi.

From there, it was Boston. Battery Wharf Hotel. Eh. It was hard to find and they had valet parking. (I hate valet parking!) The restaurant didn’t serve me the first morning and I had waited for over fifteen minutes, made contact with three different people and was not acknowledged once. Grrrr. It was just… eh. It poured all day Monday so I didn’t leave the room except to go to the Bruins game. It was so weird being back in the Garden. Everything changed from how you get into the arena vs where the trains are. Bruins stank it up, but UConn and BU had boys on Buffalo. It didn’t help that Sweeney traded Marchy and Coyle right at the fucking trade deadline. Bastard.

From Boston, I headed to Maine.

Fell in love with a house in Dover-Foxcroft. $230K, 1.25 acres, river front, a she shed that was livable. I also fell through the floorboards. Too much work for that sort of money.

Ate at Bob’s Clam Shack, spent a good hour staring at the Nubble Lighthouse, and spent the night in a hotel at Long Sands Beach. Nice to reconnect with my memories of my father, even if I didn’t make it to Ogunquit.

Made my home base in Bangor. Millinocket’s about an hour north, but I had some rewards points to use and I didn’t see any Hiltons up there. Spent the next two days looking at houses. FIFTEEN HOUSES.

It was toss up between the emotional choice and the smart choice. The emotional choice had a beautiful view of Mt. Kathadin, but needed a lot of work. They were asking almost $200K for it, and I really doubted it would appraise at $150K. I offered a fair amount and they countered at basically what they were asking. Yeah, that’s a no. The view is BEAUTIFUL and well worth $200K, but a house with dated appliances and asbestos shingles is not.

I ended up going with the smart choice. A little three bedroom ranch, in move in condition, with a garage and a basement I can finish.

We close on May 9th. Movers come May 21st.

Had Chinese for lunch and my fortune was perfect: Trust in the journey of self-discovery; you are evolving.