D's Notebook

Tag: house (Page 2 of 4)

Friday Notes

June 29, 2018 /

Dear readers, I apologize. Between all the craziness of week one in our new home, I’ve not been able to sit down and share some updates with you all. And I realized last night that given part of Monday’s post, some of you may be worried about C.

I can happily report that she is back to normal, acting goofy, annoying us with her hyperactivity, and generally being herself. We never determined, with complete certainty, what caused her issues last week. We have a theory, though, after a visit to another doctor. It’s nothing serious or on-going, but I won’t share anything more than that about it here. The good news is that she seems to have put last weekend’s suffering behind her.

Beyond that, it’s been a week of trying to get settled in. We love our new home. But we are also building up a list of minor annoyances, or questions of “What were the builders thinking when they did that?” For example, our only completely furnished gathering area is what we will eventually call the Girls Lounge on the second floor. We have a sectional, some chairs, and the TV in that room. However in the builder’s plans for this room, there were several options, including one where the room doesn’t exist and the space is open to the main family room below. Because of that, there is no duct work into the floor. Instead, the two central air vents are both in the ceiling. Combine that with being on the second floor, having west-facing windows, in a very insulated home, and this room is like 10 degrees warmer than any other room in the house. We have to run a couple fans and it is still almost too warm to hang out in. Hopefully it is this toasty in the winter, too.

No cable/internet yet. No idea when we will get it. Fuckers. I met a neighbor from down the block tonight and he said he has AT&T Fiber coming into their house. So I’ll be calling them soon to beg them to do what I asked Comcast to do four weeks ago: come out and see if they can hook me into the line that is a block away. Not holding my breath.

Honestly, it’s been kind of refreshing to not be constantly connected. This is the time of year to do it. The Royals are terrible, so I hadn’t been watching them anyway. I miss watching every World Cup game, but we can still see the games that are on Fox. We miss our HGTV and Food Network, the girls miss their Disney and Cartoon Network. L keeps telling me how bored she is. It doesn’t help that it’s been hot and humid lately, so don’t want to play outside much. We can survive living like it’s the early 90s. For awhile.

We’ve been putting together Ikea furniture for the girls’ rooms. That’s always a blast.

It seems that the movers damaged both our washer and dryer in the transition. We had a technician out Wednesday. He got the dryer running; a connection had just come loose that prevented the heating element from firing. But the washer wouldn’t repeat the issue I had with it while he was here. When he left, M threw a load in, and about 15 minutes into the cycle, it started making a terrible, grinding noise. I called back immediately but they couldn’t get someone out again until Friday afternoon. We all really need to do laundry so I’m really hoping they can get it figured out.

I took the girls to see The Incredibles 2 Thursday. We all really liked it. L loved the first one and when the first trailers hit for 2 last winter, she was very excited at first. However about a month ago, she started telling me, “I’m worried it’s not going to be very good. The second movies are never as good as the first.” I loved that! A cynic already at age 9! But I also reminded her that her favorite Toy Story movie was the second one, and The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie. She was very pleased that The Incredibles 2 followed their leads and did not suck.

We’ve still been making at least one trip a day to the old house. We can likely get everything that’s left out this weekend. The buyers’ inspection was Thursday. Knocking on wood, rubbing rabbits feet, lighting candles, etc. that there are no surprises and we can potentially move closing up by a week.

Closing on the lake house Monday went off without a hitch. That was another huge load of stress off of us. Seriously, what were we thinking doing all this at once?

We have a very busy weekend planned. Today we are watching one of my nephews part of the day. M is having her first school buddy over for a couple hours. Hopefully our washer gets fixed. M and C’s buddies from the old neighborhood may spend the night. Saturday L is going on a nature hike with some school friends. We have a designer coming over to help us plot out what furniture and accessories to buy. And there will be a lot of unpacking, rearranging, and stacking of boxes for recycling.

If babysitting pauses allow, I’ll do my best to get a playlist or video up later today.

New Chapter

June 25, 2018 /

What a weekend.

Thursday, we closed on the new house. Which I believe I mentioned. What I did not mention was we also got an offer on our old house that day. It was not a good offer, thus my failure to mention it. But, we had no other offers, we were moving in two days, so rather than just reject it, S and I decided to see how much the potential buyers wanted to dance.

Friday I spent most of the day helping two of my sisters-in-law fill a Uhaul with items they had either been storing at our house or were claiming from our donation list before we moved. That was a nice, five-hour process.

Our potential buyers countered our counter. They were still way too low, but were still showing interest. We sent another counter back.

C got back from camp as I was wrapping Uhaul duty. She caught a ride with a friend, which made my day much easier. She looked tired but said she had a great time during her week down there.

After S got home, we came over to the new house with a couple loads of stuff. Another sister-in-law and her husband brought us pizza for dinner. My brother-in-law and I were trying to figure out why the hot water heater didn’t seem to be pumping out hot water(fn) when I heard a yell from upstairs that C was getting sick. I ran up and she was doubled over in pain in the bathroom, saying her stomach really hurt. The kid has always had a sensitive gut so it wasn’t a surprise that after a week of camp food, woofing down some pizza might set it off. So we went back home for our last night there.

Saturday was moving day! The movers showed up at about 8:30 and started loading. They did an awesome job. We were out of our house by 11:30 – it should be noted because we were still showing our house Wednesday and Thursday, we had done almost no packing, so a lot of small stuff stayed for us to get later – and after a lunch break they were unloading at the new house around 12:30. Amazingly they were completely done by 3:00. We had been scheduled for an eight-hour move and, subtracting their lunch time, they knocked it out in just over five.

As the movers were wrapping we got the latest counter offer. The interested party had come up some more, but were just short of the number we had decided we would not drop below. We talked it over with our agent who suggested this was as high as they would go based on his conversations with their agent. We had a painter scheduled to come in to do a bunch of rooms on Monday, hoping that would help generate interest. We did the math and realized by taking the final offer and skipping the painting, it would be about a wash. So we accepted. We sold the house! Well, inspection pending, of course. Which is a whole other set of stresses to keep me awake for a couple weeks.

All day Saturday C was in terrible pain. She said both her stomach and back hurt. She spent much of the day hiding from the movers, curled up under a blanket with a heating pad on her back, looking miserable. By the afternoon, S was on the phone with one of her partners asking for advice. Their best guess was that C might have a kidney stone, but they also weren’t 100% convinced that was the case. The partner called in a prescription for some super Tylenol and we tried that, but it didn’t seem to help very much. Shortly after dinner, C ran outside and threw up in the front yard. Welcome to the neighborhood!

Earlier, after the movers had left, we made a trip back to the old house to load up both cars with boxes. C was in pain on one couch, crying and moaning. Then L got super emotional and was crying about leaving. I found M hiding in a corner looking down so I couldn’t see her tears. We’ve put these girls through a lot over the past six weeks. It was no surprise that they all needed a moment.

Sunday we tried to get some stuff done around here. But we kept discovering that things we needed were still at the old house. S was trying to get C back to normal. L had a birthday party. We really didn’t get much done. But we did set a new family milestone: we had our first kid ER visit!

C was still in tremendous pain so when I took L to her party, S took C to the ER. They gave her an IV with fluids and pain killers(fn) and scheduled her for a CT scan. Four hours later I hadn’t heard anything so I started running through all the worst scenarios and texted S. She said they had been waiting for scan results for almost two hours. Moments later she texted back that the results came back clean; no kidney stones or signs of other things that might be causing C’s pain. The IV with the morphine much have done the trick, as it did with S when she got food poisoning two years ago, because C seemed back to normal when the got home. Knock on wood that she remains in good health and this was just her sensitive system getting knocked for a loop by camp, the heat, and the stresses of moving.

(Update: I had to spend most of the night in bed with C because she was doubled-over in pain again. This morning she feels better, still some discomfort but way less pain than she’s had since Friday.)

Somehow that was the first time in almost 14 years of parenthood we’ve had to take one of our kids to the ER. I know some of you are shaking your fists in our direction as I mention that. We’ve been very lucky.

We still don’t have cable or internet access because Comcast can’t get a crew to come find the line that is right across the street and tie us into it. I’ve asked for updates six times now, and each time they act like there’s no reason it shouldn’t have been done yet and promise to get it moving. The joys of living in a single cable provider area! I was kind of happy to be done with AT&T/Uverse after over a decade with them. But now I’d happily stick with them if they could get service to our house.

Oh, and later today we close on the lake house.

Good grief we’ve packed a lot in, haven’t we?

We are happy to be in the new home, and roughly two-thirds of the way through this crazy process. We won’t close on the old house until mid-August, so there will be several weeks of going back-and-forth to get stuff, mow the yard, check on things, etc. Luckily the yard here is still a work in process so I don’t have a ton of mowing to do. Have I mentioned that we have an acre of land now, and I’m going to have to figure out how much I want to mow weekly, and how much I want to pay someone to come mow for us every 3–4 weeks? I was walking around outside today and said, to myself, “Holy shit this is a big yard.” I had lobbied for a riding mower but S pointed out how long it would take me to mow our yard even on a riding mower. First world problems, man…

Insomnia Notes

June 18, 2018 /

I had been sleeping better for the past couple weeks. Well, kind of. Instead of lying awake for hours making and remaking 1000 mental lists related to our real estate adventures, sometime about 10 days ago I began falling immediately and deeply asleep, not waking until morning, and then feeling as though I had only slept for half an hour or so. I’m not as exhausted as I had been, but neither am I feeling 100% rested like I normally would have 8–10 hours of deep sleep.

I say had been because I’m typing this at nearly 1:00 AM Monday morning. I don’t know if it is the heat or my brain getting wound-up for what promises to be a crazy-busy week, but I could not sleep tonight. So seems like the perfect moment to get all ya’ll caught up on what’s gone down over the past week and what’s on the calendar for this week.

Our main home remains unsold. Although Sunday night we heard that a potential buyer requested some more information about our house, whatever that means. We went ahead and scheduled a painter to come in next week, after we move, to make some changes that our agent believes could help us. Yay, spending money for other people to enjoy!

Thursday I went down to the lake house and met the buyers, who wanted to take the boat for a test drive before deciding whether to buy it. That went well on several levels. The test drive went well and they decided to buy the boat! Granted, we had to drop our price a bit, but we set the original price high anticipating that. Negotiating 101, fools.

The other aspect of the night that went well was learning about the family that is taking our place. Just the wife came, with two of their three kids. After we introduced ourselves and started toward the dock, she asked, “So, which one of you is the Jayhawk?” Turns out she has two degree from KU – we were on campus at the same time although she was in law school when I was an undergrad – so that gave us some immediate common ground. She had seen a couple KU things in the house and said, although she already loved everything about the house, that’s when she knew it was the house for her. Her husband went to IU. Those of you who have been to our lake house know that each weekend we spent down there, we hung IU and KU flags from our dock. With a Hoosier and Jayhawk taking our places, S and I decided to leave our flags for them. We laughed at folks who know us stopping by when they see the flags and then getting confused when there’s a completely different family there.

One bad thing happened that night: I lost my wallet. Or at least I thought I did. On my way home that night I passed an Indianapolis cop shooting radar on I–465. I was going about 77, as was the car in front of me, but the cop must have been hunting bigger game, as he didn’t even look our way. I chuckled to myself and thanked the traffic gods for their help. A couple hours later, as I was getting ready for bed, I realized I couldn’t find my wallet. I searched through S’s car, which I had driven that evening, and couldn’t find it. I looked in all the stuff I brought back from the lake house, no sign of it. I looked everywhere I had been in the house before and after my lake trip. Nothing. I went to bed for 10 minutes, got back up, searched through S’s car again. No luck.

So I stressed through the next couple days knowing we would stop at the lake house Sunday when we took C to camp. Sunday we looked all through the lake house, up and down the yard, checked every nook and cranny of the boat, and again nothing. I was deeply perturbed. We hadn’t had any strange charges on our credit cards, so I figured it was safe, but had no idea where it could be.

When we got home I took another look through S’s car. After about five minutes, wouldn’t you know it, I found a “secret” shelf in the central console that I had apparently pushed my wallet into at some point in my drives. Stupid. I say secret shelf because neither S or I knew it was there, and she’s had the car over a year and had one almost exactly like it for three years before that. Apparently the engineers at Jeep are cleverer than we are.

Dropping C off at camp went well. She was super excited to get down there. Two classmates are in her cabin and at least one other St. P’s girl is too. It looked like there was a group of 4–5 girls from another school together in her cabin as well. Hopefully they all get along. It looks like she’s going to have a hot, muggy week down there.

As we were driving down S looked at the car’s temperature display, saw it was 95 outside, and wondered, “Why does it always have to be in the 90s when we drop them off at camp?” My response was, “Well, at least it’s not pouring,” and we laughed.

So of course on a day when there was a 20% chance of rain, there was a pop-up storm that sat right on top of camp and unleashed heavy showers from the moment we parked until the moment we got C to her cabin. Seriously, it was rain stupidly hard. We were thoroughly soaked, but at least it was rain and not sweat like normal.

Oh, last Thursday we also had our home orientation. It was a two-plus hour walk-through where we learned about the home warranty program and then went room-by-room through it pointing out things that needed attention like nail pops, paint touch-ups, etc. I guess that’s the good thing about buying a brand new house: everything should be in perfect shape when we move in.

Friday L got her new bedroom furniture. She bumped up to a queen bed and added a new dresser and side table to replace the stuff we bought for her sisters when they bunked up 10 years ago. She was very excited. We haven’t gotten her a new mattress yet, so we have an air mattress on the new bed frame. I kind of think she’d be just fine if we left it like that.

We have a steady flow of other Amazon deliveries bringing various items for the new house. And we have a long list of big furniture purchases that we are actively searching the perfect piece to fill.

Now comes our big week. Wednesday two of my sisters-in-law have rented a Uhaul to come clear a bunch of stuff out of our home that they’ve either been storing here or that we are handing down to them. Thursday we have a final walk through at the house, close at 1:00, and then will start taking stuff over on our own. Friday C comes home from camp; one of her friend’s parents volunteered to bring her home so I can work on moving stuff. And Saturday the movers come to do all the big stuff. Next Saturday night we’ll be sleeping in our new home.

The Last Weekend

June 11, 2018 /

I’ve long documented on the pages of this personal website (aka weblog, aka blog) that Mother Nature is a bitch.

She proved that to be true once again this weekend.

After six weeks of hot, dry weather, she decided to unleash a torrent of heavy rains on central Indiana. Just in time to, more or less, ruin our weekend at the lake. We had about two good hours Saturday, between our first guests arriving and the first storms hitting, and then maybe 45 minutes Sunday between storm waves, to take kids out on the boat for tubing and boarding. The rest of the weekend was spent holed up in our home with three other families, 10 total kids from 14 to 3, trying to make the best of the weekend.

This was significant because it was our final weekend at the lake.

We showed the house for the first time last Wednesday and those folks made an immediate offer. They are paying full price in cash, so things are going to happen quickly. We are currently scheduled to close on July 2. However, the inspection is today and unless anything major comes up,[1] we anticipate them asking to close even sooner.

So that was it. Which made it a weekend full of mixed emotions. As I documented last week, I’m well past done with all the prep and clean up that goes into hosting people. I’m done with moody kids who sit around and pout. I’m done with kids of our guests who make huge messes and neither attempt to help clean them up or apologize for making them.[2]

But I also spent the weekend trying to enjoy the good moments while remembering the high points from the past six summers, of which there were many. When we bought the house it was a little earlier than we had planned. But we wanted to do it while the girls were still fairly young and would be able to make memories that lasted the rest of their lives. They’re not pleased that we’re leaving the lake life behind us. But I know they will always look back and remember swimming and tubing and fishing and all the other fun things they did in our time down there.

The only bummer of the deal so far is the buyers decided not to make on offer on our boat. So I’m furiously working various angles to try to sell it quickly, preferably to either someone down there or to someone who is capable of hauling it wherever they want to take it. I’d really like to avoid dragging it back to Indy one last time, and/or having to store it somewhere for awhile as we attempt to sell it. I have a few leads, I have no idea how promising they are. But some information has been sent out. We’ll see if I can get any bites and hook them before we have to be out of the house.

We will go down at least one more time. We drop C at camp next Sunday, which is right down the road. We’ll make a stop to grab our final personal effects, load the trash up one more time, and then depart. Knock on wood we can include wrapping up things with the boat that day, too.

Anyway, it was an immense relief to sell that house quickly. Obviously any time you are buying and selling properties there are endless stresses involved. When you could potentially own three homes for a stretch of time those stresses increase exponentially. We still need to sell our main home – traffic has still been slow although we had an open house Sunday while we were gone, and are contemplating some changes we can make if things don’t pick up in the next week – but getting the lake house moved in a day was monumental.

First world problems…

  1. Furiously knocking on wood, throwing salt over my shoulder, lighting candles, and having the girls say endless prayers…  ↩
  2. Seriously, we found a “paste” made of Oreos, Gatorade, and something else rubbed into the sheets and run of the bunk room. And another kid spilled red drink on white carpet and never acted like it was a big deal.  ↩

That Real Estate Life

June 5, 2018 /

The first week of summer was exhausting. Not because we did a bunch of fun stuff. Rather because it was spent putting two houses onto the market.

Our main home went on the market last Tuesday, although the sign didn’t go into the yard until Wednesday. So there was a seemingly endless list of cleaning and straightening and other tiny projects to make the house gleam as much as it can. And then the constant checking of things to make sure if we got a call about a showing we could get out of the way quickly and still have everything in order. The girls did a pretty good job with it all, although they are already beginning to chafe a bit under the restrictions we’ve put on them to keep the house in decent shape.

Then Saturday we went down to the lake house to get it ready for our realtor to come take pictures and put her signs up. That house officially went on the market this morning.

All this is new to us, as we’ve only bought houses before, never sold before.[1] As I said up top, it is exhausting. Especially with kids home from school who want nothing more than to relax and make messes and not have to worry about them for a week or two.

All that physical stuff wears you down enough, and then there’s the mental side. The waiting for notifications that a showing is scheduled. Each time I get a text message there’s the hope it is from the booking agency. It could be a text with totally awesome news from a friend or relative, but I still feel a little let down if it isn’t a showing notification. Little things catch your eye as you walk through the house, “Man, we really should have had that fixed. Who’s going to buy a house that has that?!?!” The girls are clearly having some issues, too, which weighs on us. There have been emotions and some acting out which we are assuming come from the stress and uncertainty they’re feeling. Oh, and I’ve not been the best dad, snapping at them for little things.

This isn’t meant to be some “Woe Are Us” post. We are lucky that we are selling our homes because of decisions we made, not because we have to sell them. We knew what we were getting into and could have adjusted our timing if we wanted to. But now seemed like the right time to jump all the way in. I think that will prove to be true in retrospect once we get through everything. But, man, this first week was tiresome.

Now that all the prep work is done, and the first week of being on the market is out of the way, I do hope I can relax a little. We had hoped for more attention on our house in week one. As I mentioned, we have neighbors who had two offers on the first day they listed their home, and our entire area is lacking in inventory. Those unrealistic comparisons/expectations weighed us down, too. Sunday we told ourselves, “We have a great house, in a great location. Someone is going to want it.” Selling a home in a month is awesome, and there’s still plenty of time to do that. It’s going to happen, just on a more normal schedule that our neighbors.

Oh, the girls and I did go pick strawberries one day last week. Which was a lot of fun until someone – no one claimed responsibility – decided to wash all four pounds at once and then put them back into the fridge. We had to freeze them before they turned into a mushy, mess, which was kind of sad. We will have good smoothies for weeks, though!

  1. And, of course, there are all kinds of other stresses associated with buying our new home we’re also dealing with. For example, spending roughly an hour just trying to get a mortgage statement from our current lender, who seem to operate on systems that were built in the 1970s.  ↩

Holiday Weekend Wrap Up With More Big News

May 29, 2018 /

Our summer is off to a very hot and hectic start.

Remember back when I was bitching about how cold it was in April? Mother Nature was paying attention and has punished me, and others in Indiana, who complained about her April offerings. This month is almost certain to clinch the hottest May in Indianapolis history. Yesterday was the hottest May day here in 107 years. It’s stupid. I’m assuming June is going to be wet and in the 60s.

We began the summer as we normally do, heading down to the lake. We went Saturday, taking one of our young nephews, and were joined by other family on Sunday. So the girls were super annoying Saturday without friends to keep them entertained. They were slightly better when aunts, uncles, and other cousins showed up. We had a second birthday party for one of the cousins. The rest of the time we just sweated in the heat.

Each of the past two summers, as we’ve closed down the house for the season, S and I have had a very brief conversation about whether the lake house is worth it. We really only spend six or seven fun weekends down there every season, but we’re paying a mortgage, insurance, taxes, and utilities for 12 months. We always talk about spending a weekend down there in the fall or winter, but never do it. Each of the past two years, the answer has been yes, it is still worth it. That math has changed.

We’re getting ready to sell the lake house, too.

It’s partially because we’re getting busier and it’s going to be tougher to get down there as the girls continue to get older. But it’s also because our new home in Indy is stretching us out more on how much money we’re spending on properties each month. It’s tougher to justify the lake house when it’s no longer in the comfortable financial zone to keep it.

We told the girls a couple weeks ago, and they weren’t happy. One of them cried for an hour. Too much change at once, I think. We explained our reasoning, but also pointed out that this will free us to do other things in the summer. They can have friends over more often. We might get to take some more, bigger trips. Eventually that logic has taken hold, but I still think they are, overall, disappointed.

When they were acting like being at the lake was a chore this weekend, when I spent 90 minutes in the heat working in the yard, when I thought ahead to all the prep for lake weekends and all the clean up after, I was ready to put a sign out when we left Monday morning. I’m sure I’ll be in a better mood in two weeks when we have friends down. But after six great summers, I’m kind of done with it.

We are just full of bombshells lately, aren’t we?!?!

Our home here officially went on the market today. We already have one showing scheduled. It’s been a hectic week or so to get the house as ready as it can be to start letting people walk through it. I believe I mentioned one of our next door neighbors had two offers the first day they put theirs on the market two weeks ago. That sets kind of a high expectation for how quickly things could happen. We also pushed our price up a decent chunk since they got more than their asking price, and we have more updates and a much bigger lot than they do. We could get an offer in a week, which would be pretty good, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be all stressed out since the neighbors were done so quickly.

We went over to meet the builder at our new house today. Even though we bought after it was 95% complete, we still had to run through some bullshit marketing surveys to satisfy their execs. They were putting in all the landscaping today, which made the house look better. Only problem is it is hot and dry, as I mentioned above, and they’re waiting on some final piece of paperwork to get the water line connected. We’re supposed to have a pretty good dose of rain over the next 36 hours as the tropical storm remnants pass us, but if the water isn’t hooked up soon, I worry we’ll have to start over in the fall. Oh well…

I hope all of you had safe and enjoyable holiday weekends free of major, life-changing decisions.

The Family Project Reveal

May 22, 2018 /

I have been struggling with insomnia lately. Several nights a week, despite often being absolutely, physically beat, I will go to bed, fall asleep for 30–45 minutes, and then wake up and be unable to go back to sleep for hours.

This is mostly because my brain has been working overtime of late. I’ve been teasing you with references to a big family project for a week or two. It is that project that has my brain unable to shut down at night.

At last I can reveal what it is that has been dominating my life and keeping me from sleeping.

After almost 15 years in our current home, we have purchased a new house. The B’s are moving!

It’s a long and likely funny story, but I’ll cut to the chase for most of you. We are moving ever-so-slightly south into the Nora area of Indianapolis. We purchased a spec home that was built on a 3-acre property that has been split into three parcels. Our house was built first. On the opposite side a house is currently being built and has already been sold. And in the middle is a third lot that will likely break ground any day.

Exactly a month ago we went and looked at the spec house. We loved it, but were not totally sold on the location, so we kept looking. We also had our eyes out for empty lots where we could build exactly what we wanted. The area we’re looking in is pretty much saturated. We realized that it might take us months to find a lot that both fit our budget and construction needs. So about 10 days ago we began seriously looking at the middle lot I mentioned above. We toured a model home of the design that is slated for that lot and absolutely loved everything about it.[1] So a week ago we were reasonably certain we were going to bid on the lot and build that house.

But after going over the builder’s pricing sheets, we realized that building the house of your choice is often a budget killer. The spec list they gave us was already beyond our means, although our realtor claimed we could make some easy changes to knock the price down significantly. Problem is we wanted to make some other changes that, unfortunately, would have wiped out those savings and added plenty more spending.

So last Wednesday we changed approach and decided to go after the spec home we looked at a month ago. Saturday we walked through, made a list of things we wanted to have done, and submitted a bid. The builder had an open house scheduled for Sunday, so we knew we wouldn’t hear back until after that was done. Sure enough, 15 minutes after the doors closed, we got a pretty reasonable counter. We countered right back and just after noon on Monday we received the builder’s acceptance.

We looked at our first house on April 20. We are set to close on June 21. That’s some fast real estating! We are hopeful we have the same luck with our current home as our next door neighbors just had. They listed their house on a Tuesday and had two offers that night. Our house will likely go on the market a week from today. The area we live in is super hot right now, so we’re hopeful for a quick resolution.

So that’s the big news.

Why has this been keeping me up at night? Because when I hit that magic moment after 30–45 minutes of sleep and wake up, I start running through lists. I admit I’m a little overwhelmed by all that is involved in moving. So I start running through what all needs to be done to get our current house ready to sell. I mentally pack. I mentally purge old belongings we don’t need anymore. I think of all the changes in address that need to be made to utilities, etc. Then I think of all the work that will go into setting up the new home. And so on. Next thing you know it’s 2:00 AM and I finally give up on sleeping and come downstairs to have another beer and read for a little bit to try to re-set my brain. I think I’ve been averaging 4.5 hours of sleep over the past couple weeks, with an hour or so up front, and hour in the middle, and then two-plus hours of exhausted sleep before the alarm goes off. Luckily the excitement of all this keeps me going during the day. I figure I might start relaxing and sleeping again sometime in July, assuming we get this house sold promptly. If not, I may not be able to sleep at all.

  1. Which is kind of the point of model homes, right?  ↩

The Bare Minimum

April 24, 2018 /

Lazy ass.

That’s what I’ve been.

Well, to be fair to myself, we do have a couple potentially large projects in the planning stages that have dominated my attention of late. Should they proceed, I shall share them here at a future date.

But I’ve also just been lazy. Freaking weak-ass weather isn’t helping either.

We got the boat in the water last weekend. All went well in every aspect of that process. No issues getting the boat down from Indy to the lake. S got the trailer in the water as quick as she ever has. And the boat started right up for a very chilly, early Saturday trip from the ramp to our lift. We had to do it early in order to get back for L’s soccer game, so it was still idle speed hours on the water, thus we casually cut across the lake, the only boat out.

We were also able to check out the repairs that had just been completed to our boat dock area after a big-ass tree fell on it in February. Everything looks good as new. The crazy thing is it looks like there was about a 5% chance of that tree making it all the way to our dock without getting blocked by another tree. Somehow it threaded that needle and did a fair amount of destruction in the process. I think it may have actually bounced off another tree on the way down. Freaking gravity…

Spring sports are officially underway, although our family has more rainouts than games played in kickball so far. I have a legendary kickball story to share in another post at some point.

Other things I need to write about soon:
* KU basketball and the FBI
* A Reader’s Notebook
* Something about the Royals maybe
* Perhaps some NBA playoff chatter
* Share a couple more good links

It’s supposed to start drying out here tomorrow and slowly begin getting closer to normal April/May temperatures. Hopefully that will get me re-focused on providing you quality content on a more regular basis.

Friday Notes

April 6, 2018 /

It’s been a busy week around these parts.

First, crazy ass weather. Sunday night/Monday morning we had our fourth snowstorm in the past two weeks. This time we got somewhere between 3–4” of snow. We received almost as much snow in those two weeks than we had gotten all of this winter before then and last winter combined. Weird.

We followed that up Tuesday with ridiculous rains. Some areas got 5” of rain. Pretty much any low land around here was/is still flooded.

And then Wednesday it snowed again, flurries all day.

I actually kind of like this late winter burst. Only because we’re leaving for a week in Mexico on Saturday. I like leaving for spring break when it still feels like winter. It’s kind of strange to leave when it’s already in the 70s and sunny every day. Now the real trick is for spring to finally kick winter’s ass out of here while we’re gone and come back to normal April weather.

Another sign spring – and summer – are getting closer: I had our boat scheduled for its spring start-up so it is ready to put in the water in two weeks. That’s a little earlier that we would like to do it, but we had to switch storage places this year and the new business has an earlier pickup deadline than our old place.

Today was also confirmation that our boat survived the winter. I forget if I shared this already, but the place we store our boat had one of their storage buildings burn down right before Christmas. I assumed our boat was fine since we never got a call. But I was reserving about 1% of my brain for there to be a long pause and then the owner asking me to come into his office when I was setting things up today.

Our new deck at the lake was not so lucky. About a month ago a large tree fell onto it during a wind storm. The tree took out one side of deck railings, destroyed a few of the floor planks, split our peddle boat in two, and also damaged a bunch of pavers that form a retaining wall. Luckily insurance will cover most of it and the repairs have already begun, so everything should be 100% when the summer season begins.

Wrapping up college hoops, I remember when my mom used to tell me, when I was a kid, that I should always want the team that beat my team to win the championship. She argued that validated my loss. I always thought that was garbage; I wanted the teams that beat mine to go down in flames in their next game. I wanted them to feel the pain I felt. Besides, my team should have won, why give that other team any credit?

I’ve softened in that view as I’ve grown older. If the other team was legitimately better, I’ve learned to give credit. And Monday night Villanova proved they were the best team in the country, by far, this year. There was zero shame in KU losing to them in the Final Four. I think the only team this decade that is better than them is the 2012 Kentucky team that had Anthony Davis. He’s probably the one guy this decade that Nova couldn’t guard. And that Kentucky team would give them fits because of their height. But Nova shoots the ball well enough that they would still have a chance in that mythical game.

KU and Villanova play the next two years in the regular season. Those could be decent games.

By the way, Bill Self has won three straight games against Coach K. He’s won three straight games vs. John Calipari. And he’s won three straight games vs. Roy Williams. But he’s also lost three straight games vs. Jay Wright. Interesting.

As I was eating my lunch today the news broke that Lagerald Vick has declared for the draft. That came a day after Malik Newman announced he was leaving school. And now suddenly KU has an open scholarship! They just happen to be one of three schools in the running for the best un-signed recruit, a shooting guard from southern Indiana. I would approve of KU finally signing a blue chip recruit from Indiana.

Oh, and I finally finished season one of Stranger Things last night. I started watching it in late January and went 2–3 weeks between episodes until this week when I knocked the last four out in two nights. That was some high quality television programming. And the final episode was about as good as TV gets. Pretty much every note of that episode was perfect. Looking forward to starting season two after we get back.

That will pretty much do it for posts here until our return. If we have a rainy day and I’m stuck inside I might post something, but do not expect any new content for awhile.

Weekend Notes

October 17, 2017 /

A quick (and late) rundown on our weekend. Which had a little cray-cray in it.

Saturday was a freaking perfect day. Low 80s, breezy. One of those mid-October days that you wish you could hang onto for the next five months. So of course we spent it blowing leaves at the lake house and then hauling the boat out for the winter.

There was a wrinkle to our winter boat plans this year. The place where our boat was originally purchased, and where we’ve stored it the four winters we’ve had it, went out of business at the end of the summer. We used it not just because it was where the boat came from and because they were an authorized dealer for our brand, but because it was about the easiest major boat place to get to. Once we got it off the rickety, country roads near the lake, it was a straight shot up a county highway. Only two lanes until you hit the city, top speed limit 55. As long as I kept it straight, I was good. And things got much easier two years ago when we upped the size of our vehicle that pulled it.

But now I would have to get on the interstate for at least part of the jaunt to the boat place. I don’t know why, but hauling a trailer and a 3000 pound boat at 65–70 miles per hour stressed me out way more than driving those curving, hilly roads that have nowhere to bail out if you get into trouble. I guess it was because I don’t really know much about trailers and was concerned maybe something was wrong with either our trailer itself, or how we hook it up, that would present itself at 65 on a four-lane interstate but not at 35 on a rural, two-land road.

Everything turned out just fine. Those 10–12 minutes on I–465 were a little white-knuckley, but we made it to the shop without losing the trailer or boat or causing any accidents. She’ll sit there for six months before we get to make the trip back south for the summer of ’18.

BTW, it was in the mid–30s down near the lake this morning, so we got it out right in time.

Sunday was supposed to be L’s last soccer game of the year. The weather turned cold, blustery, and rainy that day, though, so we rescheduled it for tonight.

Our wackiness kicked in Sunday night. Or Monday morning, rather. I heard something kind of bang around that was loud enough to wake me up. Moments later I heard a car door slam and pull away. I glanced at the clock and saw that it was just after 2:00.

We have a Nest camera at our front door, but at night I silence the notifications so I don’t get woken by every moth that flies by. Or spider that builds a web right on the lens, which happened a couple weeks ago.[1] I picked up my phone and there were two new notifications from the camera. I swiped, watched the clips, and ran downstairs. The video showed a couple kids running up to our front door, grabbing some of our Halloween stake lights and the pumpkin L had carved the night before, and then running back to a car parked in front of the house. The banging around I heard was because the dumbass who was harvesting our lights didn’t unplug them from the extension they were on, and a large, plastic pumpkin “chased” him until the cords finally decoupled.

When I got downstairs, they were already gone. I looked around and made sure there was no damage or graffiti or other nonsense, and all appeared fine. I watched the video again. One kid had a hoodie on, but the other kid’s face was partially visible. Unfortunately the headlights from their vehicle kept me from being able to identify the make/model.

I tried to go back to bed but I was a little wound up. It was close to 4:00 before I was out again.

After I got the kids to school I checked with my neighbor, who also has a Nest cam, to see if his video showed anything. On his we could see a couple more kids walking around, that they were driving a Jeep, and that there appeared to be other pumpkins thrown in the back.[2] But the taillights blinded the night vision camera and we couldn’t grab a license number.

Since there was no damage and we were only out about $10, I didn’t file a police report. I just let our HOA know and then sent the videos over to the police in case there were other reports of theft/vandalism at the same general time.

Now what the hell were teenagers doing out at 2-something AM on a Monday morning? Because it was freaking fall break in the district we live in.

I loathe fall break. I think it’s a useless interruption in the academic calendar for schools that remain on the traditional August-May school year. Why the hell do we need two days (or more) off this time of year? It’s not like spring break, when we’ve been suffering through 2–5 months of brutal weather. And it totally screws up youth sports, as different schools being on different break schedules means you go through a three-week period where at least one kid is going to be gone.

You’d think with our kids going to Catholic schools things would be regulated, but they’re not. A few schools in the Archdiocese had their break two weeks ago. Ours is this Thursday and Friday. So while we’re not in any CYO sports right now, plenty of our friends have had to deal with reschedulings because St. Whoever is on break and none of their girls can play basketball on a given weekend.

Garbage.

I have two ideas to fix fall break:

1) As most schools give 2–3 days for fall break, let’s move those to November and give everyone the entire week of Thanksgiving off. That’s when kids need a break, and every year it seems like more families duck out a day or two early anyway.

2) Or even better, GET RID OF THE FUCKING BREAK. It’s useless. Take those added days to bump the beginning of the school year back. Our girls have been starting on a Wednesday or Thursday for several years. Push that back to the following Monday and we have one more weekend of true summer.

I think I’ve found a new cause…

  1. No shit, I had 60 notifications the next morning. In each one you could see the spider slowly moving back-and-forth across the face of the camera and its slowly building web.  ↩
  2. My first thought was that these were all going to be placed in one person’s yard, likely a friend or rival from school. Not that I did anything like that with election signs back in the fall of 1988.  ↩
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