Leaving Winter Harbor

It's now been just over a week since we left Winter Harbor and seems like a good time to sit down and take stock of our situation.

We had a wonderful last evening with the Gerrish staff: a late night dinner out at Frazer Point and then a last trip to the tip of Schoodic Point in the pitch-black darkness to bid a farewell to this part of the planet.

The following day, Tuesday the 4th of September we packed the last of our stuff, drove to Gerish's for last goodbyes and last coffees and then headed north to Orono to spend the night with Joyce and Carl.

On Wednesday we packed up the Mini with as much stuff as we could carry. As it turned out Carl had to go to New Hampshire for a meeting on Thursday and he planned to hand off our remaining boxes to Bruce D. from Douglas, MA. Bruce was attending the same meeting and we arranged to pick them up from him when he returned. And sure enough on Friday he called and I drove over to pick up the last of our things. Ten minutes later we had all of our things back again.

We now have all our stuff in one place -- what isn't in storage in Vermont at any rate. Thanks Bruce and Carl!

In the meantime we started looking for a home in earnest in Providence.

Initially we had planned to rent a place but after a short trip down earlier in August to look at possible rental units and then comparing the cost of renting versus just buying we opted for the latter.

We next had to find someone who could help us wade through the confusing and often perilous quagmire of Real Estate World! And we couldn't have picked a better or more able person than Seth Price of Residential Properties (no kickbacks here). We had been given Seth's name through word of mouth -- always the best source of information I believe -- and met with him for the first time on Thursday morning at his office on the east side of Providence.

Seth is tall with an open face, an easy smile and has a way of being comfortable with anyone and everyone. And the more time we spent with him the more we realized he knows a great deal about Providence and, equally important, he knows a lot of people in Providence. His easy-going personality just brings out the same in others I suppose.

We spent the better part of Thursday looking at perhaps a half dozen condos, broken up by a stop for sandwich and root beer at Seven Stars bakery on Broadway on the west side. Seth even introduced Susan to one of the owners, Lynn, who was just on her way out the door. Most of the units we visited were double- or triple-deckers that had been recently remodeled and are now just awaiting someone to buy them and starting living.

One in particular caught our attention, an octagon-shaped building that was built in the Armory district in the 1980s. In fact we even brought Dick and Dorothy to see it on Saturday afternoon on our way to dinner. The condo was very nicely appointed throughout; someone had put a great deal of care and time in making the space a very comfortable living space. The problem was the lack of storage: it had virtually no additional storage beyond what was in the unit itself. Although we are certainly keen on downsizing our lives we can only downsize so far, I mean really. . .

So after much discussion and a couple of visits we decided to pass on the Octagon House.

Back to square one.