I just love that six, eight weeks after we bought our house, the Fed lowered interest rates by half a percent…
around the house
The Hard Way
Yellowjackets like to build nests where they won't be disturbed, I read somewhere on the internet. That's a perfect description of our backyard -- a place a yellow jacket wouldn't be disturbed. Until the new owner goes out with a $40 monster rake he bought for the express purpose of dealing with the four to six inches of leaves in the backyard.
Last weekend, I was raking leaves in our backyard, a sizable space that hasn't been properly maintained for years. It's a wilderness -- in more ways than one, I found out. While raking, I felt a sudden burning sensation on my left wrist. I looked down to find a yellow jacket squirming around, getting ready to hit a second time. Of course, at the moment I didn't realize it was a yellow jacket. I stood there looking at it, thinking, "How odd. And how painful." Suddenly, in my left shoulder I felt another, then another sting. The fascination quickly subsided and I began walking away, then running when a swarm began forming around me.
Fortunately, I only got hit four times. One almost got me above the eye, but somehow I managed to evade him.
Yesterday, I decided to seek revenge. But first some precautions:
Armed with Ortho Hornet and Wasp Killer (because yellow jackets are really just wasps, and so are hornets for that matter), I approached the nest carefully, fired a test shot to the side, then attacked.
Then they attacked.
"This stuff is supposed to kill them on contact," I thought, running up the hill toward the house.
Breakfast
Coffee on the deck.
After such a hectic week, one of the most calming experiences of my life thus far was finally to be able to sit with wife and child on our own deck, with a forested background we own, sipping coffee.
Details
When looking for a house, there are certain things you look for and think about and many details that just seem to disappear. Then, when you go to paint the house, you notice the details.
You notice, for instance, that a door was poorly hung and instead of fixing the problem, the installer just modified the placement of the strike plate; that all the door hardware has been painted, and that paint is now peeling; and that someone was once so lazy with painting that he didn't bother opening a window before painting it:
And all the things you want to correct (to put it mildly) grows daily. Hourly. By the second, sometimes.
Top Painting Music
I’ve been painting. Lots of it. A house of it. And it’s not done.
But I have determined what music works best with painting — that’s always critical.
Topping the list, without a doubt, was Bach’s Mass in B-minor. Bach just exudes linear symmetry and exactness — just what you need when painting.
Next: Grateful Dead’s classic American Beauty. It’s a great travel album, and maybe that has something to do with it — traveling from one corner of the room to another and back again, from one room to another and back again, from one end of the house and back again … there’s a lot of walking to painting.
For jazz, Coltrane’s A Love Supreme seemed like a good choice, but it was too intellectual (read: tiring) when painting. I found Ellington’s Piano in the Foreground to be about perfect: not too stimulating, but not overly mellow.
Bad choices:
- Mahler’s second — I love it, but I swear, too manic-depressive for work.
- Beck’s Mellow Gold — like Love Supreme it’s too busy. Odelay was better, but not much.
- Springsteen’s Ghost of Tom Joad — holy cow! You can’t be depressed while painting!
In the end, silence was actually fairly acceptable.
First Realization as a Homeowner
I hate painting.
Homeowners
As of Thursday afternoon, K and I are homeowners.
And it was surprisingly easy. We’d heard so many horror stories about people buying houses — troubles with financing, troubles with closing, troubles with the realtor, troubles with everything. We literally had no issues at all. We found the house, made an offer, waited for the counter offer, accepted the counter offer, set a date for closing, then closed the house.
I suppose it helped that the owner now lives in Nashville and was simply interested in getting rid of the house and not terribly worried about how much money he was making. He was just losing money, I guess, paying double mortgages.
So now we’re slowly moving in, and the real work begins.
Survey Says…
Over the weekend, we made a survey of the property we’re in the process of buying.
And of course, I made a video.
Our House
is a very, very fine house, though without the two cats in the yard…
Perhaps it’s a bit premature, for we haven’t closed yet, but people have asked about what “our house” (though, again, it’s still technically still not ours) looks like…
From the street, it looks a little like a mini-Brady Bunch house. But that’s only an illusion, for this is a coveted “tri-level” home, whereas the Brady’s house was conceptually a bit more confusing…
The back of the house includes a fairly spiffy bi-level deck. There are doors to the deck from both the dining room and master bedroom, making the Friday night cigar tradition a little more convenient.
The back also also includes a fairly un-spiffy outdoor parrot cage (?!?) that will quickly be converted into something. Ideas? Nah, I didn’t think so. It will be one of the first improvements completed on the house…
Yesterday, we spent the day surveying. We learned a few things.
First, it’s hot in Greenville.
Second, the rear property stakes are all but impossible to find. One is at a fence, making a metal detector fairly useless. The other is God-knows-where in the back left corner. Half an hour with a metal detector only turned up the metal eyelets of my boots…
Third, doing surveying with an inexperienced “surveyor” (i.e., me) makes the process a fair bit more labor- and time-intensive.
Fourth, it’s really incredibly hot in Greenville.
And the final thing we learned: working on your own (though, technically, not really) home makes otherwise-unpleasant tasks almost enjoyable.
Color Blinded
Now that we have a house under contract, K has joyfully jumped into the wide world of paints. We have swatches and brochures and booklets lying all over the place.
Since I’m colorblind, I can’t really offer that much constructive input. After all, I did once buy a dark blue fleece jacket that turned out to be mockingly purple. And I did think for years that my friends’ parents had a gray car, only to learn, after I’d confused everyone by suggesting we take said gray car, that they didn’t own a gray car — it was light green.
Still, I’m glad someone in the family is interested in it.
Even L was taking part in the discussion.