Pins and Needles

The whole house-buying thing has seemed so far away and hypothetical until yesterday, and now the anxiety is setting in. The option period expires tonight at midnight, so we have to resolve all outstanding issues or cancel the contract and start over from scratch, possibly losing the house if the sellers have a back-up offer.

On Thursday evening we had the home inspection, and considering that this house is almost 50 years old it's in remarkable condition. However, there are a couple of things that need to addressed. The second bathroom, which hadn't been updated like the master bath, is full of leaky pipes and loose fixtures. This isn't a huge deal, and we're fortunate that the whole house isn't full of plumbing like this. Also, the air conditioner isn't cooling as well as it should. It probably just needs some more freon or whatever environmentally correct coolant is being used these days.

The other thing, however, is potentially a big deal. They installed the water heater too close to the floor, which could be a serious fire hazard. Evidently, flammable fumes tend to accumulate not more than 12 inches off the floor, so a gas water heater has to be installed with the flame at least 18 inches high. The home inspector claimed that he knew of a child who was killed in a flash fire because of this exact problem. I feel very strongly that any house I live in should not have a high likelihood of burning me alive.

There is a sticker on the water heater that specifically states that it must be installed 18 inches off the floor. Another one of the minor issues that the inspector found is that the garage door opener switch is also too close to the ground. It also features a sticker explaining that it has to be at least 5 feet high. I'm wondering if the homeowner had a midget contractor make the updates.

We submitted a request to the sellers that they get the AC checked and fix the bad pipes and the lethal water heater, so now we are just waiting for their response. If they tell us they won't make the repairs, we'll have to decide if we're willing to take the house at the current price anyway. At this point I'm almost ready to put up with anything so we can just get this wrapped up. Anything but a fiery death, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Re: FW: A Love Story in 4 Pictures

You may remember the inappropriate-email-sending lady. I'm going to have to forgive her a little bit for forwarding this along.

A Love Story in 4 Pictures

Jinxing It

A couple of weeks ago The Husband and I started house-hunting. I thought this would be great blog-fodder. However, the story has worked out something like this:

We looked at houses.
We picked a house.
We made an offer on a house.
The owners of the house accepted our offer to buy their house.

This house to be exact.



Everything has gone bewilderingly smoothly. Of course now we have a month of suspense to live through, waiting on inspections and financing and whatnot. Let me throw caution to the wind and take you on a tour of our chickens before they hatch.

Here's our soon-to-be front porch.


The front room and formal dining


The den


Also the den


The kitchen


The master bedroom


The best part: the party porch


That brown thing in the lower right? That's the corner of the 8-person hot tub.

In the interest of full disclosure, none of this is our furniture or decor, of course. We don't have nearly enough belongings to furnish this place. The first thing I intend to purchase is a bar for the party porch, unless you count the fancy ice bucket I acquired this weekend in anticipation. It came with a tong caddy!

May you all have many happy hours enjoying the party porch and the tong caddy. (Keep your fingers crossed.)

What the Hell, Liver?

Last night I went to a pub with the lovely Sealegs Sophie and that charming curmudgeon Traivor. I admit I was fully intending to push my blood alcohol level up past the legal driving limit, but somehow things got out of control. After about a bottle of wine I had to get Sealegs to fill out my credit card receipt for me because I had lost the ability to write the number 5.

Once I got home, I lost consciousness fell asleep on the bathroom floor - the downstairs bathroom. I couldn't make it upstairs. Even on the Night of the Handlebar Mustache I managed to go upstairs and get in bed, and there was a lot of tequila involved that time.

Now, I know a whole bottle is quite a bit to drink in one sitting, but I've had an entire bottle of wine before while just waiting for people to show up to a party. There was no reason for the sloppiness of last night over 5 glasses of wine.

Liver, you let me down.

Operation Hat: Mission Accomplished

I cast on a hattish number of stitches with a super bulky yarn on size 11 20-inch circular needles. Then I knit a tube in K1, P1 ribbing about 20 inches around and 7 inches long and sewed up one end. Voilà! (Which is French for hat.)

Tiny Fists of Fuzzy Rage

I just spent half an hour poorly executing an idea that is probably only amusing to me.



This was the best I could do with Paint. Also, I'm not sure I like the caption any more. I'm leaning more towards, "You want a piece of me?" I am open to suggestions.

I hope Cute Overload doesn't mind that I stole this belligerent little hammy from them.