1989

A New Start

Me at door of townhouse we rented

Julie flew up to Virginia the last week of December to help find a place for us to rent for when her and Anne would move in January. A couple of days before she arrived, I had found a three bedroom, two bath house to rent in Vienna which was about a 20 minute drive from where I worked.  The house also had a garage which was important to me as I have a lot of tools and missed woodworking. I was quite excited to show it to her, telling her about it as we drove over to see it.  The house was in a nice neighborhood, streets lined with large trees, sidewalks, and the houses were 20-25 years old.  We arrived at the house and went in, and we walked through it and returned to the front door Julie says, “I can’t live here.”  I say, “What?”, I’m sure I heard her but could not quite believe what she said.  She says again “I can’t live here.”, and I ask why.  “It’s too dark, it needs painting, and it smells funny.”  Well it was a bit dark in the house, but there were no lights.  Yeah, the paint was a bit old, you could see outlines on the walls where pictures once hung, it did smell a bit musty, but the place had been empty and closed up for some time, all it needed was a good airing out.  But Julie insisted, she could not live there.  I was a bit irritated, I had spent a fair amount of time looking for a place to rent and thought the house had everything we wanted and even put down a $1,000 deposit, so told her that that if she couldn’t live in that house then she would have to find another place. 

And so she did.  The following day she got the newspaper, looked at the for rent ads, and she found a three level, three bedroom, two bath town house in Reston. We went over and looked at it, it was just a couple of years old and looked brand new inside.  It had a nice bay window in front, and being an end unit, had extra windows on the side.  There was no garage, but it had a good sized basement work area.  I had to admit, except not having a garage, it was much nicer than the place I found.  We signed a year lease starting January 1st.  Julie returned to Florida to where she took care of the final moving arrangements and arranging with a real estate company for our house in Melbourne to be rented.

It was really cold in January in Northern Virginia, several inches of snow had fallen, although mostly gone in open areas, there were still patches of snow in the shady places and in mounds along the road where the snowplows had piled it up. It was my first winter in such conditions, I had always lived in Florida and had never experienced such cold.  In some ways I found it invigorating but could only take being outside in it for short times. 

The townhouse we rented was only a few blocks from Willy’s place so I could walk to it in a few minutes.  This was fortunate for I still didn’t have a car when I had to meet the gas company man to have the gas turned on.  I bundled up in my warmest coat, gloves, scarf and hat and headed over to the house at eight in the morning.  The gas company said the man would arrive between nine and noon.  It was very cold that day, gray, overcast, and looking like it might snow again. It had warmed up some the a few days before, melting some of the snow which now which now was frozen black ice on the sidewalks.  I learned a lesson that day as walked down the sidewalk past people’s houses.  The sidewalk was safe to walk in front of their houses of the people that shoveled the sidewalk clear of snow, the sidewalk was treacherous of houses that didn’t. I would be a shoveler.

After slipping on ice and falling only once, I arrived at the townhouse and let myself in.  The house was cold, my breath making a small cloud with each exhale.  The gas heater was turned off of course, that’s why I was there, the gas company explained that after the gas man turned on the gas outside, he had to check that there were no leaks inside.  After entering I checked out the house again, figuring what furniture would go where. I look at my watch, 8:25, and hoped the gas man would arrive soon.  Nine o’clock came around and still no gas man, I was getting really cold, perhaps a glass of hot water would warm me up, well no glass, just drink from the faucet I think as I go to the kitchen when I realize, no hot water, it is a gas hot water heater.  I do a few jumping jacks to warm up, which helped but only for a few minutes.  Nine thirty, still no gas man so I lay on the carpet in the living room, curl up in a little ball, drape my coat over me, and wait.  Ten o’clock, still no gas man and I start to doze off in spite of the cold.  Sometime later I’m startled awake by the sound of the doorbell. I sit up, finding my legs a stiff from being curled up, then getting up, I answer the door and was happy to see it was the gas man.  I confirm he is at the right place, and he proceeded around the back of the house to turn the gas on.  After a few minutes he returns to the front door, I let him in, and he checks the furnace and hot water heater for gas leaks finding all was good. After the gas man left, I was still cold, too cold to walk back to Willy’s so I huddle over a heater vent embracing the warm air. 

The first week of January the movers came and picked up all of our things in Melbourne which then was to arrive two days later in Virgina.  Julie and Anne spent the night at a friend’s house then the following day drove up to Virginia in the Volvo.  In the car with them was our cat Tute and the fish from the aquarium.  Anne was quite resourceful in bringing the fish, finding a plastic container and a battery run air pump to keep the fish alive.  Julie, Anne arrived, and we spent the first night sleeping on the floor. The movers arrived the following day and I took a couple days off to get moved in although it would take several weeks to get settled in.

I did have a minor complication and that was with Willy.  I had signed a year rental agreement for the room which would have run to then end of April, so I wanted to terminate it early.  When I told Willy he wasn’t too happy about it and wanted me to still pay for the remainder of the months.  He grudgingly accepted that I wasn’t going to and when I asked for the $100 security deposit back, he said he wouldn’t and made up a list of things why I owed him the money, I had used some of the firewood he had, $20, a spot of wine on the couch, cleaning $20, and so on until it came exactly to $100.  We also had to forfeit the $1000 deposit for the house in Vienna.  Oh well, lessons learned.

CCI Acquired by ICL

In January a meeting was called at CCI for all employees where it was announced that CCI was being acquired by the British company Standard Telephones and Cables or just STC as it was known by.  STC mainly wanted the CCI telephony division while the CCI computer and Office Product divisions would become part of the STC unit International Computers Limited (ICL).  It was presented as good news as ICL was a much larger company and would provide additional investment in OfficePower and was painted as a bright future.  Everyone was excited.

Retirement