Much Ado About Nothing

As I mentioned, this year we relocated from Fort Worth Texas to Columbus Indiana. After working as a consultant for three years the company traded me (and my project) to a team in Indiana and, as part of the employment offer, we had to move.

So back in January, I had to travel to Columbus to partake in the Onboarding process – a week-long series of meetings that sought to instruct (and indoctrinate) new employees into what it means to work at this company. My relocation package included expenses for a house-hunting trip, so we combined the two by having Mary accompany me. The plan was for her to work with our real estate agent while I was in meetings, and when we broke early on the last Friday we’d go back and revisit all the places Mary liked.

We arrived Sunday evening and figure that, since Onboarding didn’t start until after lunch on Monday, we’d use that time to meet the real estate agent together. It turned out that we all got along splendidly, and with no paperwork pre-requirement we could visit a couple of listings before I had to leave.

Our agent took us to one place, which right away we didn’t like. You see, we’d lived in Fort Worth for 20 years and so had a built-up list of things we liked and didn’t like. The listing was too small and badly arranged for our family, so we passed on that one.

The next place was a model home in a partially completed development community. Of course models are notoriously beautiful, with features and furniture that we wouldn’t necessarily get but that put it in the best possible light. Still, it looked gorgeous. It had enough bedrooms to accommodate everyone plus a separate sewing room for Mary and an isolated office for me. But time was running out and I was due for Onboarding, so I left them to continue without me.

Every evening Mary would tell me about the listings and how she didn’t necessarily like something in them, and before long Friday rolled around. Along with a minor blizzard. Did I mention there was snow? Yeah, they got a bit over the winter. So the Onboarding last day was cancelled, and that left us with the whole day to go over Mary’s short list.

Along with the agent, we hit up the first place on her listing and it was… “meh.” Mary herself wasn’t terribly sold on it, but it was better than most of the others. That was when the agent piped in, informing me that all week every time they saw a new place Mary would compare it out loud to that first model home. So, we decided to go back there to remind ourselves of what it looked like.

Only, when we got there we realized that it was the one we liked the best. So, we basically wasted a week of riding around when we could have knocked out the search on that first day.

Oh well, we got a few nice dinners out of it. And the house has been pretty nice so far.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *