Time for an end-of-the-week update, as it has been an interesting few days.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll share the good first: we actually have some movement in getting our house connected to the internet and world of cable television! Thursday morning L came and found me and asked, \u201cWho is that creepy guy in the backyard?\u201d I looked out and, sure enough, there was a creepy guy pushing one of those bicycle-wheel measuring things across our backyard.(fn) I went outside, greeted him, and asked what he was measuring. He was difficult to understand, but I gathered he was there to run a cable line.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreat, we\u2019ve been waiting on you!\u201d I said. I asked how long after he was done it would take to get the house hooked up. His response, as best as I could make it out, was that as soon as he was done, he would call it in as completed and connecting the house should happen pretty soon after that. Of course he, or someone else, was supposed to have done his job three weeks ago, so I took his \u201cpretty soon\u201d with a big ol\u2019 grain of salt.<\/p>\n
I went back inside and the girls and I watched him and his partner run the line from the street to the power line behind our house. I thought it was very interesting the cable service is above ground. That\u2019s what you get for moving into an old neighborhood, I guess.<\/p>\n
Anyway, progress and there is a line about 100 feet from our house now. If we can just get it extended from there to our house, and then someone inside the house to get us hooked up, we\u2019ll finally be cooking with the gas of the sweet, sweet internet.<\/p>\n
Now for the not-so-good news: the deal to sell our home here fell apart this week. Although I think this site is pretty locked down in terms of privacy, I still don\u2019t want to reveal too much yet since the house is officially back on the market. For now I\u2019ll just share that we had a major disagreement regarding the results of the inspection – our realtor and we believe the inspector made an inappropriate observation in his report that caused the potential buyers to make an unreasonable request – so we gave them an F-you response and they walked away.<\/p>\n
So, starting over. We have painters going in today and are doing some other repairs we wanted to hold off on to use as a bargaining tool. Between those improvements and the fact that our neighbors\u2019 house has now closed at higher than their asking price, we\u2019re hopeful that we can get a better selling price the second time around. We\u2019ll see; we\u2019re a little disillusioned and cynical after round one. And we\u2019re bummed we missed two weeks of potential showings dealing with those dickwads.<\/p>\n
What else has been going on?<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve arranged to have our lawn mowed. This was hard for me to do. I\u2019ve taken care of our yard for 15 years. We don\u2019t always have the nicest yard on the block, but I kind of liked the 30–40 minutes it took to knock out the old yard. But we agreed that even if I got a riding mower, the new lawn would just require too much of a time investment to take care of. Luckily we had some friends who suggested some guys who ended up being affordable, so they\u2019re going to start taking care of it next week.<\/p>\n
Thursday, on the lawn guys\u2019 suggestion, I bought a tripod sprinkler. Yes, our yard is so big I have to use implements often found on football or baseball fields. Naturally it rained for three hours the day I bought it.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve also been making daily purchases from hardware stores. We\u2019ve literally made at least on purchase from Lowe\u2019s, Menard\u2019s, Home Depot, or a local hardware store every day the past week. And we keep ordering stuff from Home Depot online that, for some reason, causes our credit card company to freak out. I have to text a confirmation to the card company that, yes, the purchase was legit, and then call Home Depot and have them crank my order through again. That\u2019s happened two nights in a row. But when I dropped four times as much on the card for a deposit for some house repairs it went straight through. I guess my card company has something against Home Depot.<\/p>\n
The other big thing right now is just getting used to where things are and how they operate. Fifteen years of turning right to get a utensil for the stove is hard to forget when the utensils are now on the left. The thing that has really thrown us is having the door to our basement beverage fridge open on the opposite side. Every single time S or I go down to grab a beer, we grab the left side of the handle instead of the right. I imagine we\u2019ll start getting this stuff figured out sometime in the next 2–17 weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Time for an end-of-the-week update, as it has been an interesting few days. I\u2019ll share the good first: we actually have some movement in getting our house connected to the internet and world of cable television! Thursday morning L came and found me and asked, \u201cWho is that creepy guy in the backyard?\u201d I looked out and, sure enough, there was a creepy guy pushing one of those bicycle-wheel measuring things across our backyard.(fn) I went outside, greeted him, and asked what he was measuring. He was difficult to understand, but I gathered he was there to run a cable line. \u201cGreat, we\u2019ve been waiting on you!\u201d I said. I asked how long after he was done it would take to get the house hooked up. His response, as best as I could make it out, was that as soon as he was done, he would call it in as completed and connecting the house should happen pretty soon after that. Of course he, or someone else, was supposed to have done his job three weeks ago, so I took his \u201cpretty soon\u201d with a big ol\u2019 grain of salt. I went back inside and the girls and I watched him and his partner run the line from the street to the power line behind our house. I thought it was very interesting the cable service is above ground. That\u2019s what you get for moving into an old neighborhood, I guess. Anyway, progress and there is a line about 100 feet from our house now. If we can just get it extended from there to our house, and then someone inside the house to get us hooked up, we\u2019ll finally be cooking with the gas of the sweet, sweet internet. Now for the not-so-good news: the deal to sell our home here fell apart this week. Although I think this site is pretty locked down in terms of privacy, I still don\u2019t want to reveal too much yet since the house is officially back on the market. For now I\u2019ll just share that we had a major disagreement regarding the results of the inspection – our realtor and we believe the inspector made an inappropriate observation in his report that caused the potential buyers to make an unreasonable request – so we gave them an F-you response and they walked away. So, starting over. We have painters going in today and are doing some other repairs we wanted to hold off on to use as a bargaining tool. Between those improvements and the fact that our neighbors\u2019 house has now closed at higher than their asking price, we\u2019re hopeful that we can get a better selling price the second time around. We\u2019ll see; we\u2019re a little disillusioned and cynical after round one. And we\u2019re bummed we missed two weeks of potential showings dealing with those dickwads. What else has been going on? We\u2019ve arranged to have our lawn mowed. This was hard for me to do. I\u2019ve taken care of our yard for 15 years. We don\u2019t always have the nicest yard on the block, but I kind of liked the 30–40 minutes it took to knock out the old yard. But we agreed that even if I got a riding mower, the new lawn would just require too much of a time investment to take care of. Luckily we had some friends who suggested some guys who ended up being affordable, so they\u2019re going to start taking care of it next week. Thursday, on the lawn guys\u2019 suggestion, I bought a tripod sprinkler. Yes, our yard is so big I have to use implements often found on football or baseball fields. Naturally it rained for three hours the day I bought it. We\u2019ve also been making daily purchases from hardware stores. We\u2019ve literally made at least on purchase from Lowe\u2019s, Menard\u2019s, Home Depot, or a local hardware store every day the past week. And we keep ordering stuff from Home Depot online that, for some reason, causes our credit card company to freak out. I have to text a confirmation to the card company that, yes, the purchase was legit, and then call Home Depot and have them crank my order through again. That\u2019s happened two nights in a row. But when I dropped four times as much on the card for a deposit for some house repairs it went straight through. I guess my card company has something against Home Depot. The other big thing right now is just getting used to where things are and how they operate. Fifteen years of turning right to get a utensil for the stove is hard to forget when the utensils are now on the left. The thing that has really thrown us is having the door to our basement beverage fridge open on the opposite side. Every single time S or I go down to grab a beer, we grab the left side of the handle instead of the right. I imagine we\u2019ll start getting this stuff figured out sometime in the next 2–17 weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[135,82],"class_list":["post-7022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-house","tag-tech"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7022"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13384,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7022\/revisions\/13384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}