Almost done!

Well, we're battered and bruised... literally. But we've almost finished clearing out and cleaning the rental house.

Of course, now our new house is FULL of boxes and giant trash bags which need to be unpacked. I can't stand to live out of boxes. So, once we don't have to work at the old house anymore, I intend to make fast work out of the unpacking process.

There are a few other things we'd like to handle at the new house as well. The water pressure needs work. My van keeled over and is taking up half the garage at this point as Stephen waits to have time to fix it! We're working on setting up sufficient internet and TV services. As with our Virginia house, this one is surrounded by trees and not real close to cable-ized civilization. Apparently we're not able to get satellite. We can get our old cable service, but we're so far from a substation, or something, that we can only have one TV. Hmmmm.

On the plus side, we purchased a new (used), giant, widescreen TV for the family room (with the hot tub) to accentuate our party throwing ability. If we only get one tv, it'll be a big one!

Well, we're headed back to the rental this morning for the last packing and cleaning session. We haven't even had a chance to fill the hot tub yet. But I sure wish we had! This moving business is full of aches and pains...

It's raining, it's pouring...

Well, at least someone was pleased to see the rain. Alicia's been aching for a chance to use her pink parasol which we recently found in a closet.

But the rain did little to boost our yard sale revenues. We closed about an hour after opening this morning due to over-saturated rainclouds. But, at least Stephen was home to help me load everything back into the garage (or the back of the van headed for the thrift store!).

He headed off to the Alaska H.O.G. Rally at the fairgrounds in Palmer around 10am or so. He's trying hard not to be a fair-weather-biker. And the weather is trying hard to provide him with plenty of opportunities to test his mettle.

Move Progress Report

Alicia is obsessed with picking multitudes of those beautiful yellow flowers that seem to exist EVERYWHERE.

We have a new bouquet almost daily. Luckily, the supply is plentiful.

We're having our Moving Sale this weekend. Sales around here are generally Friday and Saturday. So, now that I'm back on my alternate work week, with every other Friday off, I figured I'd do the sale today and tomorrow. Probably not one of my wiser decisions. I was basically on my own today for the complete setup and "manning" of the sale. Now I'm completely bushed.

I had the bedroom drapes from the new house dry-cleaned. And I reinstalled them this evening while Stephen changed the oil in the vehicles and Alicia played "dance recital" with her stuffed pink pony.

We're hoping to move the bedroom furniture over on Sunday and spend our first night at the new house Sunday night. The carpets in the rental are scheduled to be professionally cleaned on Monday, so we need to have all the furniture out.

Well, like I said... I'm whooped. So I'm off to bed. Oh, I should mention that we've reached the summer solstice. Longest day of the year. That means, it's all downhill from here as far as daylight hours go!

Hard Rock Alaska

We were busy at the new house this weekend.

Initially, Alicia May was calling it the “Spider House” since she saw a spider there at some point. But we’ve since renamed it the Hard Rock House (as it’s on Hardrock Drive). We figure we might open our own Hard Rock Café there some day. :o)

Anyway, we finished painting the two bedrooms. Alicia’s is a lovely pale pink. The master bedroom is a pastel green, which isn’t exactly the shade I was hoping it would be. Stephen said if we put some brown specks on it, it would look like mint chocolate chip ice cream. Hmmmm. Oh well, I’m not repainting it, so we’ll just have to live with the mint color for now!

We also replaced the ugly brown carpet in Alicia’s room with a nice cream color carpet. We just need to replace the kickboards around the edge and her room is complete.

In other news, Tess has begun her month of travels “Outside”. She flew from Anchorage to Ohio, via a 4 hour layover in Atlanta, last Friday. She’s spending a week or so with her cousins then off to Nana’s house.

They went to Cedar Point (amusement park) yesterday and apparently had a great time. Tess is all about the roller coaster and was very happy to realize her cousins are equally enamored with them. She was slightly concerned that it was going to be almost 90 degrees there. We don’t ever see that sort of temperature here… maybe once a year. We’re currently in the 50s with highs in the low 60s at best.

We are reaching our peak of sunlight hours with the solstice fast approaching. Sunrise is around 4:20 and sunset around 11:40 in our area of Alaska. We’re handling bedtime a little better this year. Last year, I couldn’t figure out how to tell my body it needed sleep. My routine is better this year. I try to ignore the daylight and work with a clock. Plus we have decent dark curtains in the bedrooms…

Saga Conclusion

As I mentioned, I figured out that the woman sitting in front of me in the class I took was, in fact, the same woman from whom I was attempting to buy the house. This revelation came about as we were dismissed for lunch on day 1 and I happened to glance at her screen which had her name displayed there in Graphic Art glory.

I returned from lunch a little early (after calling my realtor to clue her in on the discovery). I hoped to find my classmate there alone, which I did. I told her who I was and we spoke some about the house. It was clear she loves the property. It was going to be her dream home that she lived in for the rest of her life. But the divorce changed those plans and she’s having a rough time with the whole thing.

Later that evening, I received an email from my realtor saying the seller (wife) would not sign the amendment regarding the garage door repair. Her stand was that we were getting a good enough deal as it was. So she refused to sign.

I went back to class the second day feeling like I was going to battle. This was also the day we were supposed to sign papers. I had responded to my realtor to tell the wife we wouldn’t close till she signed the amendment. Our realtor had offered to just give us $500 for the garage door repair, which in the end, she did. [Note: It had been revealed that the garage door repair had been prepaid for $500 and had not been done, so the contractor was supposed to reimburse the sellers that amount.]

On the phone, just before class started, my realtor informed me that she’d just gotten off the phone with the selling agent. She advised me to tread lightly with the woman as she is not holding up well emotionally and we’d be lucky to get her to sign the closing papers at all. She was scheduled to sign at lunch and we were going in later in the afternoon. The husband had apparently already signed all the papers back in May and wasn’t even in the state.

I spoke with the woman again as we broke for lunch, just before she was supposed to drive over to the title company’s office. Each time I interacted with her, I really felt that she was in a lot of emotional pain. She’s my age. And I really wish we’d have met under better circumstances. I told her that. I wanted her to understand that I knew it was hard on her to sell this beautiful house where she had built her life.

In the end, we decided that neither a secretary desk nor a garage door was worth losing the property over.

We’ve bought and sold houses in the past. The process is usually a pleasant one for all parties involved. So this situation was different. We are ecstatic to be the new owners of this beautiful property. But I, at least, can’t help feeling a little bad that our joy comes at such great expense for someone else.

So there you have it…. The rest of the story.

House Purchase and Picnic

We are now the proud new owners of the house on the bluff.

We closed Tuesday afternoon. The situation was mildly bizarre, but it's a done deal. We're now working on moving our things to the new home by the end of the month.

I've put the first coat of pale pink paint on Alicia's bedroom walls. I'll be painting the master bedroom a light green shade. Other than that, we're not doing any major changes at this point.

I baked my first chocolate cake in the new oven (brand new!) last night. Came out super! I brought it to work for the June birthdays.

Speaking of work, we had our 2008 Picnic in the Park Strip today. I'm in charge of both the December and June Section Meetings. So the December one is the holiday party and the June one is the Picnic. We invite other neighboring work units to join us during these "team building" events. Today's picnic went really well.

Stinky Otter Lab

Tess participated in her first sea otter necropsy yesterday. Necropsy = autopsy.

The lab group performed a necropsy on 2 and a half otters. Half? One of the otters had been scavenged extensively by eagles.

Three guesses as to which body part she's measuring in the photo... Makes a mama proud, I tell ya.

When I picked her up after work, she smelled like dead otter. For those with no experience with such aromas, it won't be making it into a Glade Plug-In bottle any time soon.

In other news, we're scheduled to close on our house this afternoon. There is still some drama over the garage door repair. So the closing may be delayed. Once we do close, I'm ready to remove a little wallpaper and repaint two of the bedrooms before we move in furniture.

I'm taking a 2-day Adobe InDesign class yesterday and today. I'm enjoying it and can't wait to get back to the office and try some stuff out. One interesting coincidence I learned yesterday is that the woman sitting in front of me in the class is the wife of the couple selling us the house. What are the chances of that???

Morning Exercise

When we lived in Virginia, there was a big black furry dog living near us that used to accompany us on walks around the neighborhood. His name was Bear.

My first thought this morning as I watched Little Bit bolt across the street and then back again in hot pursuit was: "Where did that big black furry dog come from? It reminds me of our old friend Bear."

My second thought was: "Oh crap, that's not Bear, that's bear!"

Bit chased the black bear from one neighbor's yard to the other and then, thankfully, returned home. She seemed a little stunned. I couldn't see her when she passed into the neighbor's yard. But I suspect what she thought was an intruder dog decided to climb a tree and that kind of threw her off her game.

Secretarial Dispute

We've yet to close on the house purchase. Various things keep coming up to delay the closing. We were originally scheduled to close last Friday (5/30). But issues with the VA appraisal, just getting it done, caused that date to come and go.

Then we signed an amendment extending the closing until this Friday (6/6). But now it turns out both the sellers, who are getting divorced, will not be available tomorrow to sign. So it's been pushed back again till next Tuesday (6/10). The ordeal is getting tiresome.

In addition, when the original inspection was done, we discovered that there were a couple things about the property that we'd prefer were addressed, the main one being a screwed shut, non-functioning garage door missing it's bottom panel. However, we signed the inspection stating that we would not ask the sellers to deal with anything if they would leave all remaining items on the property except the high-end washer and dryer set which they'd already stated they wanted to keep. Basically, this included a carport awning and an antique secretary desk. Both sellers signed the agreement.

I learned later that the soon to be ex-wife actually wanted the secretary desk. However, she had signed the agreement.

I drove by the property today and guess what's missing? One antique secretary desk is no longer sitting in the dining area. That really irritated me.

I've told our realtor to convey to the listing agent that we expect $700 cash at closing to repair the garage door. We'll see how that goes. I'm just really not in the mood to play games like this.

Nancy Lake Public Use Cabin #4

Tess won't let me post a full blog, so here are a few pics...


A pair of red-necked grebes were caring for an egg on a nest near the cabin.