Today’s word of the day in my inbox was hyperobject. Wordnik provided this definition:
noun. Any object so massively distributed in time and space as to transcend localization, such as climate change and styrofoam.
I am completely mystified about the styrofoam reference so can someone explain that to me?
But it struck me that “the move” is our personal hyperobject…in fact what could be a more perfect example?
Accordingly, I am at a loss to know where to begin to describe the events of the last week. I will sketch it out and try to keep it short.
The very first morning in Austin we toured a home for rent which was way far out of town and although we differed a bit on our ratings of the home itself*, it was just too far out of town!! And three homes we had found on Zillow were snatched up by the time we arrived in Austin!
Naturally, we decided to reflect on the situation at a brewery that afternoon. As I waited for Rob to bring over the beers, I flipped through an Austin free fitness mag and found lots of neat random things including an article about some new business that features mushrooms. Very interesting! And it is located in the neighborhood called MONTOPOLIS which is my favorite name and I want the t-shirt. So we saw where that neighborhood was and Rob recalled we had once seen a home on Zillow near there and he pulled it up on his phone, contacted the owner, and we arranged to view it that very evening. The house is actually in “East Riverside” neighborhood but I would prefer to describe it as being just outside MONTOPOLIS.
And that’s the house we ended up renting! Assuming it doesn’t fall through** but you can learn about that part later. We did view some other homes but even ones that were fine seemed like regular homes you might live in in Minnesota and we wanted to enjoy the warm climate! Anyway, the place we chose has lots of deck space (1st and 2nd floor), a large screened porch, and in general feels like a fun vacation home!!
Also I couldn’t understand why so many homes have fireplaces but just so you know, they do.
The only downside as we see it to the place we chose is that we can not walk to stores, restaurants. We must drive. However, we can get anywhere in 10 minutes! That’s including downtown and all the cool neighborhoods.
I’ll spare you more details about the search but today we are trying to plan some details… so Rob was trying to setup the internet stuff and naturally there’s gonna be complications. Our house is on the same patch of land as the owner’s and we were told ours is “B” and hers is “A”. Well the internet company, Spectrum, has a different nomenclature so we are either “main house” or “A”? There was also a choice of “B” or “N/A” when the address was entered into Spectrum’s system. So anyway the point is you know this is just not going to be easy.
On top of that, when applying for our lease, Rob provided the name of a prior landlord who apparently complained about “scratched furniture” to our prospective landlord! Perhaps the guy is senile as the facts are incorrect since Rob never used any of that man’s furniture, also the final walkthrough went great and Rob got his whole security deposit back! And that man had given a good reference to Rob’s last landlord! The thing is Rob is like the ideal tenant too! This, btw, is classic for Rob—he always seems to get weird bad luck on things like this…so we are both wondering when we move in together whose luck will prevail- Rob’s or mine? I think I have regular luck which is way better than his bad luck.
As I write this, the plot thickens. That prior landlord also advised her to do a background check and mentioned something about Chicago…??? I think he should be locked up for slander! Unbelievable.
So also this house is next to a farm or something so the day we looked at it there was a huge potbelly pig in the yard eating some flowers. There can also be goats and ducks (they were in pics of the property) and there was a cat that was outside our kitchen pawing at the screen.
Crucial finds: grocery store nearby, H-E-B, seems acceptable. Also the best market I’ve ever seen, city center market, is a 12 minute drive. Also Jackalope bar in our neighborhood. And trail is maybe 1/2 mile away or so? Pretty close.
We took a 30 minute drive our last day to check out the town of San Marcos. The funniest part of that excursion was when I was discovering that beers are designated on an IBU scale which stands for International Bitterness Unit and so we were all about looking up our favorite beers’ IBUs and in the process of this (while drinking beer at a brewery) I started to talk about my beer’s BTU’s and Rob started laughing and I realized that I had used the term for British Thermal Units instead of IBU. Actual LOLs were happening.
Another observation in Austin: pretty much everyone*** has a Texas lone star decoration on the front of their homes. I started to count them and in two days I counted 21 of them.
*We did use our spreadsheet with our weighted preferences. It did provide some good discussions when we found we varied our ratings on certain criteria.
**We already signed the lease and mailed the security deposit so we should be good. The concern is just the poor reference from that landlord but hopefully that’s not enough to cause the owner to renege. Clearly there will be follow-ups as this is an ongoing issue.
***Hyperbole but you’d totally notice if you spent a day there.