Augh-ust

It's been an eventful month in the Harrington household.

I spent most of August preparing for and executing my first jury trial.  More on that experience in a future blog entry.  (Though the execution was great, the result was unbelievably disappointing, to the point where I'm considering a career change.)

August has also been moving month.

The combination of those two facts has meant Michelle has done most of the work.

When we first came back to Little Rock about this time last year, we took the first property that met our basic needs (two bedrooms, pet-friendly, in a decent area, affordable rent) and it was essentially sight-unseen.  A year of that revealed just how big a mistake it was to rent something sign-unseen.

But this time, we began looking for a new place to rent about 3 months before our lease was up.  We knew exactly what we were looking for.  We were on Craigslist nearly every day, searching for properties, reporting the scams (unbelievable in many respects), and driving through neighborhoods to see what fit and what didn't.

As it turned out, it was driving around that landed us the place we're in now.  This place was not advertised except for a yard sign.  But here we are, and even though we're not settled in, we love it already.

It's great to live in a place you love--and since I work from home (when I'm not on the road), it's doubly important to enjoy my surroundings.  But before you can get from a place you hate to a place you love, you have to move.

Thus the "augh" in today's title.

I have blogged previously about our efforts to simplify our lives.  We embarked on a campaign a couple of years ago to focus less on accumulation and more on appreciation.  As successful as I thought that was, it turns out we still have a lot of stuff.  To be fair, a lot of it is office stuff that I can't throw out, at least not for a few years.  But even a sparsely furnished apartment can hold a lot of bulk.

So I suspect we will be on to round 2 of the reduction.