I feel a little weird here ... (posted by Lani)

As of midnight Friday night I'm an ex-flight attendant, and let me tell you that they got every last MINUTE of work out of me; my last flight landed at 11:50 on my last day, and I walked down the jetway and away from the plane at exactly midnight. Steve is ecstatic about me leaving the job; I'm not. I mean, I'm fine with it for right now, I really need the time to be home packing and organizing stuff and getting ready to move, but I want to keep flying. Steve, on the other hand, was all but setting off fireworks and popping open a bottle of champagne about me not doing it any more. *sigh*

So we're now 11 days and counting from closing on our house. So far so good; we had a few issues come up on the home inspection but only two that were really worrisome, and both of those seem to be resolved (we'll know for sure by Tuesday). I was amused; 24 bullet points on the inspection report, and 19 of them are things like 'we recommend installing doorstops' and 'the lightbulb in the master closet is burned out' and 'the screens have been removed from the doors and are stored away'. The really comforting thing for us was the cover letter from the inspector, though, which read in part "I had the pleasure of looking at the home during the big snow fall. It is obviously very well built!" Those words are music to my ears.

The sale of our Norfolk house goes slowly. This is such a bad time of year, and on top of that the weather has been bad. We've only had one showing thus far; we had hoped to have more this weekend but had terrible terrible weather. We're pretty much resigned to it being a while before the house sells, and are trying to decide how to proceed with the move given that. Our options are (1) We both go out to Colorado with the bare minimum to camp out there for a while, leave this house furnished for one month for showing purposes, and then I'll fly back to meet the movers at the end of January and get our stuff moved. (2) Steve goes to Colorado and camps out and I stay here until the end of January, at which time the movers come. (3) We just say screw it and pack up and go, and the house gets shown empty. Bleh. We have to make a decision soon, obviously, but we're waffling. Any input from the peanut gallery? What would you do?

The Story of Our New House (posted by Lani)

Sit back and relax, I'm writing a novel here.

As of my last post we were done househunting for now; we had resigned ourselves to renting something and looking for a house once we got to Colorado, and that was just how it had to be. But then a miracle happened ...

Remember Nancy, the Wonder Realtor? My phone rang, and it was Nancy. She said Lani, I was talking to a realtor who's a friend of mine, and he's got this house listed. I want you to take a look at the website; I know it's out of your price range, but he says take a look and if you like what you see come out and see it in person and make an offer. He says he'll make it work.

We looked. We liked. We liked a lot. We were very, very skeptical that this could possibly work, because the price wasn't just out of our comfort zone, it was ridiculously so. Still, he said he could make it work ... so why not give it a shot, right? And we needed to find a place to rent anyway. So since I had two whole whopping days off, on Friday morning I stuck some clothes in a bag, Pricelined myself a hotel and a car, called Nancy and said "Let's do it! Tomorrow morning, 8:30, be there or be square!" and Friday afternoon I was winging my way to the snowy west (I am a freaking lunatic, obviously).

Saturday morning I was at Nancy's office early, and so was she (there's a reason we get along so well, obviously). By our scheduled 8:30 meeting time we were actually pulling into the driveway at the house; by a quarter to 10 we were back in her office writing up an offer. I was still highly skeptical, but I was also in love with this house. IN LOVE. If Steve didn't like it he can lump it. (Just kidding; he'd seen the video tour and gobs of pictures, plus he'd heard my verbal description of it, and he was as gung-ho as I was. And I was pretty gung-ho. You see, the house has this kitchen ... this biiig kitchen. With commercial-grade appliances. And more drawers, cupboards, and cabinets than your average Home Depot. MY KITCHEN. MINE.)



Well, to make a long story short, the sellers scoffed at us. They said no way in hell. We said ... BUT! They said well, maybe. We said WHAT IF?? They said damnit, FINE then. And last Wednesday afternoon, at 5 pm, we had a signed contract on our house. Which, as the song goes, is a very very very fine house.

All those solar panels on the roof aren't just for show; the house gets about 70% of its power from solar energy. It has hydronic floor heating (warm floors! I could kiss whoever invented that idea) and hardwood floors through most of the house, slate where it isn't hardwood. A steam shower in the master bath! And heated sidewalks with a snow-melt system, we're all high-tech and stuff (Steve loves the idea of No Shoveling Snow). The entire back of the house is windows, and the view out (as you can see in the picture above, taken from inside the living room) is down over a large, beautiful lake. There's a great deck that runs the length of the upper story along the back, and a patio on the ground floor. And best of all from our perspective, all of the land behind the house is US Forest Service land, so nobody's ever going to build back there.

We're scheduled to close on the 28th, which is just in time since Steve starts his new job January 7th. He's heading out to Colorado the first week of January; I may or may not go then. Our Virginia realtor feels that our house here shows very well furnished and won't show so well empty, so if it hasn't sold by the first of January (unlikely, this is a bad bad time of year for home sales) I'll stick around here for an extra month before heading to Colorado myself. Er, myself and Pip and the kitties and Jesse. It should be a fun drive. Wanna come? You can look at this when you get there ...


PS - I'm so sorry about Kitty Bad Girl. She was indeed a huge presence for such a dainty little kitty, and she may have been a bad-tempered diva but she loved you and I know you loved her. It hurts to lose someone you love.

Finally. (posted by Ann)

I've been in a bit of a blogging funk, because we've had a traumatic thing happen to us.


Kitty Bad Girl is gone.


She was sick earlier this year, and they told us her prognosis was "guarded", which I managed to really not hear or think about, until around the beginning of November when she started to get sick again. We took her to the vet once, and he gave us some medicine that allowed me to once again think everything was going to be fine for about a week (denial is a powerful thing).


A week ago today, she died, and I am a basket case. Mom said she was a "big presence in the house for such a small kitty", and she was. Her last act was pure Kitty Bad Girl - she hissed at the vet, and when I tried to soothe her she growled at me.


Okay, enough.


In other news, I have some interesting things going on at work that I can't blog about yet, but I will say that things are never boring. Hopefully I can fill you in within a week.

And our biggest news by far - we put down the deposit for the Velocity. It's official now, we've purchased our second airplane. Crazy or not, here it comes! Don is getting everything ready, including a web site where you can watch his progress building the plane. He's even got cameras in the workshop so you can see the work going on in realtime. Once the site is ready, I'll give you a link.

Needless to say, he's pumped. I'm happy, but also a little worried about never seeing him again since the shop seems to have a pretty strong gravitational pull these days. At least until mealtime, that is!

I'm trying to finalize lots of travel plans - college trips for Steve, to help him decide what he thinks he wants to do, spring break vacation, Christmas, and Don's exodus to Florida for his first four weeks of work on the airplane at the factory. He has timed this very well to get to spend January and February in Florida while Steve and I are up here freezing. I think we'll have to spend at least one weekend with him, don't you?

And my Christmas shopping, of course, which is close to done but not completely. Today is Christmas Tree Day and Decorate The House Day. Don made a valiant attempt to convince me not to get a tree this year, but nothing doing. Must. Have. Tree.

I am really excited about you moving, and want to hear more about the house search. Tell me more, and I promise not to wait so long before I post again! I do have more to share, I just need to get it organized.