Open house Sunday? hmmm…probably not.
To stand in my living room, you would be hard pressed to imagine that we are having an open house on Sunday. Where there used to be a ceiling, there is now nothing more than studs from the floor above. Remeber that crack in the plaster ceiling that I had repaired in the fall? The one that they said was nothing more than a ’settling crack’? Well, it turns out that the crack was really caused by 200lbs of sheetrock getting ready to fall on my head. It is a good thing my gardian angel likes reality TV, otherwise he/she may not have been sitting with us all the times that ceiling wanted to come down.
So, the Open House is now postponed a week while the ceiling gets replaced. Hugo (my contractor) had intended to pull the ceiling down in 2ft x 2ft square chunks. This was OK for about 4 chunks. Chunk #5 was the one that did it. I was sitting in the basement working when suddenly it sounded like the entire ceiling had come down. Well….the entire ceiling had come down. All of the plastic that Hugo had so carefully put up to control dust was now sitting under a pile of rubble, while a dust storm blew through the main level of the house.
It was not 10 minutes later that a prospective buyer came by to see the place. She was on a short timeline to see houses, so I let her tour the place. I did explain that the living room ceiling will convey…as soon as we put one in place.
Preparing to sell the house
It was hard working up the energy last fall to clean the house, touch up paint, hire lawn scapers, and do everything else necessary to get ready to put the house on the market. I can tell you, it is so much harder the second time around. The house goes on the market next Sunday and I could not have less energy to put towards getting it ready. Today I cleaned up most of the basement and took some stuff over to George’s to store during the showing. Over the next week, I will slowly get a few things done here and there…and then I’m sure I’ll be up all night on Friday trying to get holes patched, doors hung, roofs replaced…all the while wofting that fresh-baked bread smell through the main level.
If things work out right, we’ll be in Colorado by July. Right now we are planning to stay with Nat’s friends in Colorado Springs this summer while we further explore our possibilities. The top choices right now are ’somewhere’ in Colorado, Sun Valley Idaho, Portland Oregon and Spearfish South Dakota (Nat’s idea). There may be a place or two that we’ve considered that I’ve not listed, but will later find myself considering again.
The main goal is to get somewhere with ski mountains, valley lakes, trails and roads for biking, and hopefully a tiny downtown with a bar, coffee shop, and place to buy Playstation 2 games when the new Winning Eleven comes out next year.
Spring Flowers bring May showers
Who in the world doesn’t love Spring? Ok, maybe the terrorist, but since they are evil, we can’t expect much from them. I for one love Spring! I’m not sure about where you live, but around these parts, there are flowers everywhere you look….on the ground, in the trees….even in Whole Foods…they’re everywhere. Here are a few pics of Spring 2006 in and around DC.
The Georgia Aquarium
If you haven’t been to the Georgia Aquarium, you should make a reservation, book your ticket to Atlanta and go. It is amazing! For Christmas, my brother bought each of my family members a scale on the ‘Wall of Scales’. So, I flew down to Atlanta this past weekend so that we could go check out the aquarium and see our scales.
The Wall of Scales is a huge wall in the aquaium with glass scales that could be inscribed with names and messages to raise money for the aqarium. You type your name into the computer and a series of colored lights dance across the wall and land behind your fish scale. Not being the tallest person at the aquarium, it was fortunate that our scales were low on the wall.
If you go to the aquarium, make your reservation for 9am and get there at 9am. You will be among the first to enter and won’t have to push through children and old people in order to see the fish. Each hour they let another group of people in, so by 11am, the whole place is full of screaming kids and stale breath. Also, go to the Ocean Explorer first. The tunnel which runs under the main tank is probably the coolest place I’ve ever been. I literally could have spent an entire hour in there. This leads out to the world’s (second) largest aquarium viewing window.
With 4,574 sq. ft. of viewing windows, a 100 ft. long underwater tunnel, 185 tons of acrylic windows and the second largest viewing window in the world at 23 ft. tall by 61 ft. wide and 2 ft. thick, visitors will have multiple opportunities to view all of these magnificent animals.
