Houses & Running

We continue to view houses.  So many houses...  The good news is that we've found another house that we both like.  It is nearby, is in good shape, has a large yard, and is in a good location.  We're trying to figure out the best way to proceed, either by doing the contract writing without a buyers agent, or negotiating a kick-back from an agent.

It's newly on the market, and we'd offer substantially less than what they're asking, so it's not a sure thing by any means.  Even if we managed to arrive at a deal on this house, we'll probably have to move in to temporary housing for a bit.  We've been spending time each evening packing up more belongings, and taking them to storage.

I had a bunch of guys lined up to help move the heavy equipment out of the garage, but the weather didn't cooperate.  It's been a very rainy/snowy spring here, it doesn't much feel like spring.

We did manage to make it to Grand Junction last weekend to meet up with Katie and Jordan for a race.  Kristen, Katie, and myself ran the 10k variation, while Jordan manned-up and ran the half marathon.  I think we were all happy our times, it definitely inspired me to get more serious about running.

This Saturday we headed down to Denver since Kristen and I had long ago signed up for a half marathon.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, and only cost $20.  We both weren't in half marathon shape, but spurred on by my experience last weekend, I decided to give it a try anyway.  Our friends Mike & Sharon had signed up too.  We met them for dinner on Saturday night, then got up bright and early today to run.

It was fun, although by mile 10 I really wanted to walk the rest of the way.  I made it across the finish line with my worse 1/2 marathon time ever, but was still happy I did it.  This race is about five months earlier than our typical 1/2 marathons, so I have some time yet this season to whittle that down.

Kristen headed to Dallas tonight for a work thing.  She'll be gone until Wednesday.  Will I just lay around in my underwear for three days, or get stuff done around the house?   Only time will tell...

A lot of stuff

It's been an exhausting whirlwind of activity around here.  We're looking at houses a lot, but haven't found the right one yet.  We're continuing to move stuff out of the house.  I can fondly remember packing everything I owned into the '78 Pontiac, hauling everything back and forth from Rapid to Cody.  That seems like forever ago, and apparently we've accumulated additional belongings since then.

Zack was diagnosed with Feline Diabetes on Saturday.  We're going to change up his diet and hope that improves things a bit.  He's fairly normal healthy so far, but we expect that won't last forever.

Under Contract

We have a signed contract to buy our place for the full asking price!  Only two days on the market, can't complain about that.


Kristen and I (and the cats) need to be out of there by June 14th, so we need to find a place soon.

House for Sale!

The house was listed on Tuesday.  We've had 5 showings today, and have a fairly attractive offer.  Things are moving along!

http://www.coloproperty.com/Reports/index.cfm?&Action=DetailReport&MLSNumber=626462

Rapid trip w/ Jacoby!

Kristen and I just made it back from a quick Rapid City trip.  Becky, Jason, Jacoby, and Ma were planning on seeing Nono, so we figured it was a good excuse to make the trip again.

Everyone enjoyed Jacoby at West Hills Village.  A baby in a retirement center is like catnip for the elderly, or something.

Saturday afternoon five of us headed up to Dinosaur Park, where a quick-footed juvenile Tyrannosaurus nearly made off with Jack.  Luckily Jason was fast on his feet, and snatched Jack away before disaster struck.

Later in the day we tried to imagine what Jack will look like once he grows his hair out.

We returned to two lonely cats, and a spruced up house.  The "stagers" had worked their magic, leaving us with a place we don't feel very comfortable in.  We now have to do things like "pick up", "stay organized", and "use the trash can".

Hopefully the place will sell quickly so we can relax again.

Not much spare time

It seems like it's getting harder to update this thing. 

Two weeks ago was Easter weekend.  I headed in to work on Saturday for a bit, while Kristen headed to Denver to make some Easter eggs with Maddock and Allison.  Later we continued to pack up the house, trying to un-clutter things as much as possible.

Kristen and I saw a movie on Sunday, and took a load or two of boxes to the storage place.  It's starting to fill up, we don't have a lot more room in there.


We've started talking to a Realtor, and had a "Stager" come over on Monday to give us some feedback on how to organize and clean up the place.  Too many browns and too much white, was the conclusion.  They're promising to add "some color", so we'll see how that goes.

We had a few visitors at work for the second half of the week, meaning several nights out with a larger group. Lots of rich food.  Kristen and I need to get our running regimen back into action!

Friday we headed to Denver for the Rockies season opener at Coors Field.  Jordan had tirelessly watched online for a decent set of tickets, and eventually bought 4 consecutive seats in the lower section.  Shortly afterward Katie got 4 free tickets from her office.  That saved us some serious cash, and introduced Jordan to fine art of scalping.  Luckily no one got stabbed and things turned out OK.

Downtown Denver was crazy.  Lots of people out enjoying the 70 degree weather and opening day.  We all got a little sunburnt, and had a good time.

The next afternoon we headed to Allison's for Maddock's birthday celebration.  I can't say I've seen a more excited four-year-old in a long time.

We're continuing to move stuff out of the house at an alarming rate.  We did notice today that the house we were interested in is under contract.  Oh well, we'll find another, I'm sure.  We have cleaners, furnace people, window people, and the stagers coming back this week, so it ought to be exciting.

House Hunting & More

Saturday morning Kristen and I herded up Ada, and took her to the vet.  She wasn't too happy about it, but eventually survived the ordeal.  We'd noticed that she'd been losing hair on the back of her feet.  The vet's theory is that she was nervous about all the packing up and changes going on around the house, and was a bit neurotic about things.  She's now on kitty Prozac, at least until we get into another house, or her hair grows back.

We then headed off to look at four different houses.  Two of the houses we wanted to look at went under contract in the last week, so our day was a bit shorter than we expected.  We looked at one place "way" out in the country.  It looked good on paper, but was an absolute wreck.  It was at the very top of our budget, and would have required a few 100s of thousands of dollars to make decent.

Our theory was that the "Always Plenty" sign referred to the amount of work required to make the place nice.

We saw two cookie-cutter houses that were large, but pretty beat up, and just not overly interesting.  We did look at one place in Boulder that we liked a lot more than we expected.  It reeks of the 1960s, but in a good way.  It's in a good neighborhood, and is about the right size.  It does have a fair share of pink tile, some shag carpeting, and a few other issues, but overall we thought it might work well, if the seller was flexible with the price.

We met up with a friend for Sushi later in the day.  He'd just seen "Hot Tub Time Machine", and seemed to enjoy it.

The next morning I headed off to help a few friends work on their vehicles.  We also did a bit of packing up around the house, and made one trip to the storage unit.  The weather was amazing, and we took advantage of it by going on a good walk around the nearby lakes.  We then drove into town to walk around the potential house, in order to feel what the neighborhood was like.  We liked what we saw.

Another week of work looms.