On the 4th of July, we could see the fireworks from our guest room window.



Yes, we got unpacked - mostly! I conquered the mountain of kitchen boxes that took up most of the dining room, and got the kitchen sorted first. I found a good-enough china cabinet on Craigslist, with immediately delivery being its most attractive feature. The home-done carving is...interesting, either charming or hideous, depending the mood I'm in when I look at it. Then we moved the art to the space where the kitchen boxes were, and that freed up the living room to be set up. Then I assembled a bajillion bookcases and we unpacked books and cds all over the place. Then I got some spacesaver bags and started trying to compress all the bed linens for storage. Then it was time to start hanging art!


( Read more... )

Just when things seemed they couldn't get any crazier, they did. The seller kindly let us move into the house on Wednesday, conditioned on us closing Friday.

Yeah, you see that coming a mile off. ( Read more... )

We're not wild about our temporary accommodations, but they'll do. We got moved out of the house, got the stuff into storage, and got ourselves set up in our short-stay apartment.

Meanwhile, I totaled DreamGuy's car in a rather spectacular accident last Thursday. It was weird and fast and I'm still not totally sure what happened. Except the FedUps truck won. That much we can say for sure. So on Memorial Day weekend we were car-shopping. DreamGuy found a decent ride, and now we have a pair of CR-Vs out front.

I'm signed up to drive at Barber this weekend. Finally, some fun!

Hopefully we'll have a closing date by the end of this week and we can make plans to be reunited with our stuff and our critters. Man, I miss my babies! We've been to see them twice and it's been hard to leave them each time. They are being spoiled and no longer show much concern about coming with us when we go. Sniff!

Well this is just a quickie to catch us up. I'm off to BitchypooLand today. If I had the means to cook right now, I'd slide on over there and pick up some aigs! Next time....

Today was as wild and crazy as I predicted it would be. Thank God for my dear friend who came over for a last blitz of packing. I don't know what I was thinking when I left myself on the schedule for work today. Doh! Lucky for me, work is at a very low simmer right now. So it was a blur of a day. But I don't think I'll have to stay up all night. I have a few odds and ends in my office to get together, and a big box in the kitchen with some awkwardly sized things, and one more box in the living room to fill up, tape and mark. Pack, pack, and pack! ( Read more... )

What a weekend. I am bone-tired, but too wired to sleep, so here I am. Yesterday, the garage sale went pretty well, considering we had torrential rain starting at 10:00 in the morning, and continuing for the afternoon. We had lots of people come, some having seen a mention of DreamGuy's former store in the ad, where we noted we were liquidating the last of the store's vintage Playboys and memorabilia. DreamGuy really enjoyed seeing some old friends. ( Read more... )

Later today, we will be engaging in the Great American Pastime - the Garage Sale! I just wrote down a few notes for first thing tomorrow:

• Sign on mailbox
• Take down the swing & move to garage
• Change box
• "Make an Offer" Banner
• Move entertainment center to the front porch
• Move big stuff from garage to driveway
• Price signs for pornos

That last one? I think it would make a great name for a rock band. Price Signs for Pornos. Woo!( Read more... )

I can't believe this song is out on YouTube. I never knew the name of the band was "Living in a Box," though I did suspect that was the name of the song. The chorus has been rattling around in my head for over 20 years. "I'm a-livin in a box. I'm a-livin in a cardboard box." Dig it:


( Read more... )

The low-level panic is sticking around. Whee! Today was a work day, but my technology did not cooperate, so I took my leave after lunch and focused on home stuff. I had a helper here, and once again, it looks like a different place now. Big spaces are cleared. Things are getting organized. The garage is filling up.( Read more... )

While my immediate surroundings are not much different from the last time I posted here - my desk is piled higher than ever with crap - we made enough progress today that I am not in freak-out mode as I wind down for the evening. We got tons of stuff out to the garage for the garage sale, and I got the ads out on craigslist and the local paper. I listed a few big items separately on craigslist, and lo and behold, the treadmill is already gone, and I have a nice check in my pocket. Yay for that! ( Read more... )

Wow. What a week. I seem to say that a lot lately, but even for me, this one was a doozie. The house stuff finally got over one hump last week, and now we are praying for a closing date that's really really soon. It was a nail-bitey roller-coastery bit of business, but I think we are almost there. We really are unlikely to close soon enough, so we're packing up our stuff so that we will have a few things in temp housing. ( Read more... )

Yes, we're back to this one. Our new house. Really!

Well that was a surprise! The deal on house #2 went all to hell. The story we got was that the seller didn't have an accurate payoff, and suddenly he was upside down in his house debt-wise. Short sale, bla bla bla. He basically refused to sign anything about any of it at one point, so we had to get him to sign a release letting us out of the deal, which thank god he did sign. Because we took that and went back to house #1! ( Read more... )

Yeah, well The Crazy (tm Nance) continues. Nobody should be surprised! We have a contract on a new old house. We love this place more than we loved the last one, though we are compromising many of our former "musts" in this place. The good things about it far outweigh the bad, and the things we've compromised to get in are things we can remedy over time. Like a garage. At least here, there is room. Click on the picture (or on the flickr link to the left) to see a bunch of photos of the new old place.( Read more... )

Our new staircase?

While I still hesitate to get too excited, it appears that we have deals in both directions. We close on the sale of our Tuscaloosa house on April 20, and we just reached a deal on our new place in Birmingham. So awesome! We LOVE this house. 108 years old, and all the updates are very well done. The price is scary good - we will have a nice chunk of instant equity. I am so freaking excited! But not too excited. But really excited!

If you click on the photo above or below, you can look through all the house photos.

This is the awesomest birthday ever. We are so excited about getting to Birmingham! Now we just have to survive the next few weeks of roller-coastery back and forth, inspection and appraisal and paper shuffling and packing and moving. Good Gawd, yall. MOVING. Assuming everything goes off as we hope it will, in a few weeks, I'll be typing to you from my new home office. Woohoo!


Our new house?

First we had a deal on the house, then we didn't. First we had pre-approval for a mortgage, then we didn't. Back and forth, round and round, total roller coaster. I stopped talking about it completely over the past week, because it seemed everything turned on its head approximately every two hours.

That said, we seem to have gotten pre-approved with a new lender (old one folded) and we seem to have found a great house where we want to go, and the guy who wants our house is still hanging out there waiting for us to get it together. I should probably not even write about it - don't want to jinx it! But it's been a while since I wrote here at all and I figured it was time.( Read more... )

The listing agreement with the agent selling our house is due to expire next week. When the flyer-holder out by the sign was mangled by the neighborhood kids last week, I brought it all inside. I'd not seen the new flyer. I immediately puzzled over this:


( Read more... )