Bubble Wrap

Well friends, our closing is quickly approaching. Hard to believe that in three short days, we will be homeowners.   Lucky for me, I get to spend my last two weekdays as a renter in beautiful Temperance, Michigan.  And what will I be doing in beautiful Temperance? Why, checking out an alloys plant of course! (yes, this is serious).

Packing your house is a weird thing. At the onset, it is all about cleaning things out, being thoughtful when you stumble across a sentimental item (with me, that's about every third thing I pick up. I sometimes worry you will see me in 20 years on those hoarder TV shows or in the paper: "woman found dead in house among six feet of trash"....) I digress.

Packing is a bit of an art, a joy of carefully packing your beloved possessions. Then it starts. You become tired of packing - holy cow, I own a lot of stuff! No, I NEED that for my hobby, granted it hasn't seen the light of day in 2 years but I NEED it! - and the boxes start looming. You start sensing the impending doom of becoming so desperate to finish packing that you become careless or more apt to trash items because you don't know what to do with them. Or, horrors of horrors, you find a box from Dallas that was never unpacked. Oops. But I swear I NEED all those old cooking magazines. Cooking library, anyone?

Sadly, on the flip side, the  "where do I put this" drama will unwind in the new house. This will be the first time that RJB and I enter a space that neither of us have lived in or moderately set up. (RJB lived in our currently place for 2 months before I moved in.) This will be interesting.

Sylvester's short term memory is saving him a lot of pain. He has yet to start to act as the stressed kitty even though there are boxes everywhere. He did wake up us last night but jumping into a half-filled box. Somehow he got under the box flaps and was literally packed up!  His little cat brain will perk up, though, when his carrier reappears. Sigh.

Running of the Gals

I'm not sure about yall, but when July rolls around there is a lot of excitement in the B household for le Tour de France. Dedicated watchers. Provides me with more mental gusto to think "viva le tour!" when I see an idiot on the bike path in a sponsor jersey (sky or saxo bank, anyone?) speeding past so fast you feel the whoosh! Sadly neither Lance nor Schleck won. :(

Nonetheless, I finally ran my first "race" of 2010. For me, not so much racing as an organized run since I am in no way actually racing.  I once again did the women's run and it was the best organized run I've completed. Ever. And to celebrate, I then took a week off of running. Sabotage! However RJB and I are heading up to Madison next month for a race (5K for me, half for him) so at least I have some motivation to keep in shape. And yes, August - in the throes of busy season! See, trying to live that work-life balance. No pictures to share of the women's run which is probably a good thing. Promise I will start posting more photos soon - those are what make blogs fun after all!

Lets get on the big yellow dog

If you are anything like me, you have ventured into the world of Facebook and stumbled upon old friends and acquaintances. From the comfort of your home, you have had the good ole slide show (fortunately sans a slide projector and having to listen to a monologue about how wonderful a particular outlook point was) and discovered that all these kiddos from high school are, some 13-14 years later, still friends. Like good friends, not Facebook voyeurism  friends.

This strikes me as odd. My mom is BFF with one of her high school friends. Otherwise, my folks are not chummy with all those kiddos from the "fun-filled" days of high school.  I am not sure about my brother, but I'd guess he is the same.  I maintained one "solid" friendship for a whopping 7 years after graduation only to lose contact once I moved BACK to Texas and was finally in the same state as this friend.

Perhaps had my folks stayed in Texas things would have been different. Though let's be honest. I likely would have never moved back to Houston had my parents stayed. Nonetheless, I'm sure I will continue to be surprised to stumble upon who is still friends with whom. 

PS - I was going to scan a high school photo for this post but alas, all my high school photos are at my parents home...ha ha, how poetic. Instead, I'll pay tribute to Big Al. 

There's a song for everything

Well, who knew buying a home is the most boring big event of your adult life. Our attorney is still pushing on the brick sealant and we are just ready to move on. So hopefully next week it will be a done deal and we can move on to finalizing the mortgage.

We spent our father's day away from our fathers (well, RJB went to see his yesterday), but poetically we spent the day doing what my dad does best - cleaning out/throwing out/clearing clutter. Tribute to father's day, perhaps? We are working very hard to not bring a bunch of junk to the new crib. After about 6 full trash bags of garbage and 5 grocery bags of charity donations, we are making good headway. RJB found a place that destroys old computers and reuses or does something with old cell phones (a place = Best Buy). Check out this old fella from circa 1997.   Hard to believe this laptop was small back in the day. It had a super cool CD-ROM drive and an external floppy drive (2 drives were state of the art!).  Compared to my nerdy mac, this guy was a fat daddy!!

 

RJB and I had a happenin' week in the city - saw Adam Carolla on Thursday (I look way crazy in the photo with me...no need to share that with the hoi polloi) and went to the CSO on Friday. Look at us getting out of the house, eh? Of course we will now do nothing until next month but that's okay. Ahh...old married life....

I hope all you fathers and fathers-to-be had a nice and relaxing weekend! 

Happy Father's Day, Dad!

I'm Singing in the Rain

Holy rain! I think it has rained about 3 times a week every week of June (though apparently per weather.com, we've only had 4.48 inches of rain, right about average...really?). I'm getting a little tired of it, plus I can't sport my open toe shoes when it is raining. Woe is me, right?

On Friday, we had quite the storm blow in from Iowa. Apparently Iowa saw hurricane force winds, some tornados spun out, and the storm was due to hit Chicago during rush hour. For the first time since I arrived to the city, the building sent a notice to the tenants warning of impending doom. Well, the storm came and went. It was cool, quick, and didn't seem quite as bad as our Corn Belt friends to the west had it. However, I did see on my Saturday run downed trees near Major Daley's house. Good thing Johnny who sits in his car outside the Mayor's home all day didn't break a sweat moving branches off the sidewalk.

Since I slacked and took Friday off, I was able to take these pictures from our apartment. Pretty dark for 4:30pm.

Bonfire on South Quad

Good news! The inspection went really well. There are some handyman things to take care of - leaky faucet, dimmer switch repair, and general annual maintenance on the HV/AC make up the main "concerns". There is a bigger issue around sealing the the exterior half-block (probably saying this completely wrong).  Half the building has already been sealed, half hasn't. So the attorney is going to work on this.  Interestingly enough, IL requires the buyer or proxy to attend the inspection - the RE agent cannot do so on your behalf. Good ole Illinois.

We did not get any pictures unfortunately, mainly because it would have been a little awkward and we were poking around the house quite a bit. I mean, the home.  But here are a few photos from the listing. Good news is that RJB and I really do like the place quite a bit, especially after spending more time. It is so nice having windows on three sides, though we are very lucky now to have windows on two sides of our current place (yay corner unit!). I think Sylvester will really enjoy having the french door open that looks out on the Juliet balcony.  There is a screen door there so he can lay around there all day.

  

Next steps: get the financing going. We are meeting with the broker again on Monday to move ahead with valuation and all the paper work. The joys of PA require us to put a right of first refusal on the sale of the mortgage. I'm sure this will somehow be a pain to work in. Then we have a big check to write on Wednesday (yes, IL requires a preeeeettty pretty big good- faith deposit right away.) No worries, we get the cash back if the deal falls through and we filled out a W-9 so interest is being earned on the money.

Tomorrow we are taking RJB's car to carmax hopefully to sell it. If we only get a few hundred for it, we may sell it on our own (ugg). Then we just need to pack, figure out what we want to move and what we don't (extra bed, furniture, TVs), and basically get our shit in order. Part of me can't believe I have to pack again. I think we all remember how much I drag my feet with that type of task.  Time to clean out again!

Happy Friday!

Forging Ahead

Well, we have a verbal on our potential new crib. We have scheduled an inspection on Friday and have an attorney all lined up. Money is moving among accounts and packing plans are being discussed. Like I said, a Big Decision that will happen quickly.  Kinda hard to believe and a little unsettling in a way.  I am trying to keep my excitement in check since I know this can still fall through. I'll take pictures at the inspection.