One night stand

I’m working in my old Northern Virginia Verizon office for a day, en route to southwestern Virginia to cover the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl for D3football.com, and instead of making Verizon or D3sports.com pick up a hotel room for the night, I decided to spend the night at 406.

And it feels pretty weird.

I have been fairly worried lately about the house. We took it off the market in mid-October because nobody was buying houses anywhere. Thanks, economy. Well, since then, there hasn’t been nearly as much traffic around it, from either our realtor or our friends who might check in on it on occasion. So I was trying to prepare myself for the worst.

And it turns out the worst was unnecessary. The house is actually in fine shape. Looks like we left it. Or like I picture we left it. I’m amazed, after walking through it now, how much we actually got done, and a lot of it in the final weeks.

Plus, for some reason, there's this extra detail work done on the stairs we didn't know about.

Not much to nitpick right now, either. The fridge was plugged in, which seems like a waste if nobody’s looking at the house. At least one of us will be back in the D.C. area in January before we put the house back up for sale, so it can be plugged back in then. And the thermostat was set 10 degrees higher than we asked. No wonder the electric bill last month was so high. And the grass needs to be cut and the leaves raked. I will try to take care of the leaves on Sunday, if the weather cooperates … and if we still have a rake here, come to think of it.

There’s a box of canned food that was supposed to go to a food bank. Nothing I can eat tonight or really for lunch tomorrow, though there’s a can of soup I would be interested in -- if I could only open it.

Of course, the telephone was disconnected months ago. There’s no Internet and nobody to steal from. Our next-door neighbors appear to have abandoned their house. Not sure if they’re in foreclosure or what, but a month or so before we left, they bought a massive Yukon Denali. (I prefer the anagram Denial.) Remember what gas cost this summer? Then the week we left I was talking to one of the people who lived in the house and they said they were going to have to move because they couldn’t afford the mortgage.

But hey, they had a nice new vehicle.

We have little to nothing here in the way of furniture. I brought a towel so I could shower in the morning. The washer and dryer are still here, of course.

And, thankfully, so is the couch. Night, everyone.