Well, wasn’t I a silly sausage for thinking that I might get some Rifting, or graphic-ing in today! 🙂 For behold! The Estate Agent cometh at around 11 o’clock this morning, and I needed to be at my bright, enthusiastic, and well groomed best to greet him. He came… we talked… pardon me, I mean he and Julian talked – I found it a trifle difficult to get a word in edgewise, and when I did, he made it more than obvious that he wasn’t even vaguely interested in what I had to contribute to the conversation. And then they talked a bit more, and a bit more… I was keeping my eye on the time, because I was hoping (vain hope!) to be able to get my midday Stair Walk in before we had to leave to have a second look at Flowerdrum Close. Ye ghods, I thought he’d never leave! He really didn’t have anything constructive to offer us, apart from his assurances that he’d do well at selling this place for a goodly price. Except for one small detail. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give us a valuation – or even a ballpark figure, as to what this place was worth – which is why we asked him over in the first place! A professional valuation so that we’d have an idea of how much this place is really worth! The first Estate Agent who came here to “value” our home, quoted us a ridiculously low estimate. Yes, we understand that there are a great many tiny, cramped, but bright, shiny, brand new apartments springing up all over Doncaster Hill – which is why we’re getting out while we can still, hopefully, get a reasonable price for this place… but the price he quoted us was ludicrously low. Carmen dithered around and talked a lot, but didn’t really add anything truly constructive to our, as yet incomplete, data base of real estate values in the Doncaster/Templestowe areas – other than that it depended on who was looking for large apartments, and how much they were willing to pay to get one. This guy today, Craig something-or-other, was even worse than Carmen, because he just wouldn’t shut up! He arrived at 11.00am… he finally left at around 1.15pm! Give me strength! (*rolls eyes*) I don’t know about Julian, but I rate his visit this morning as a truly gross waste of not only our time, but his as well! In the end, I didn’t have time for my Stair Walk before we left, I had to do it as soon as we got home again, Julian didn’t have time to make himself a proper lunch – he had one of my Optifast Bars instead, and we didn’t even have time for a cup of coffee! So, anyway, that was the end of our “morning” 
We went off to have another look at Flowerdrum Close. It is very nice, and it’s positively seething with possibilities – but it’s built on a concrete slab (which fact I hadn’t known before) meaning that it would be next to impossible to “re-arrange” wet areas, like bathrooms, the laundry, and the kitchen – and that was where most of the “alterations” needed to be done. Most of the plumbing – in fact just about all of the plumbing, is buried in the concrete – so not only do you not know where the plumbing you want to change is, it’s also very hard to connect any new plumbing to it. Then there are all the other things that would have to be changed, as well… So I’m afraid that Flowerdrum Close’s prospects of become our future home are rapidly receding into the mists of “could have beens” 😦 When we got home again, I immediately charged off on my – rather late – midday Stair Walk. Then, sitting down with a very welcome cup of tea, the two of us started sifting though Domain, to see what else we could find. Julian and I both use Chrome as our browser, and we both use the handy little utility, Speed Dial, which allows you to organise, and keep, all your tabs in neat little groups without having to have hundreds of Tabs open on your browser all the time. So I entered all our requirements into Domain’s search engine (4+ bedrooms, 2+ bathrooms, etc.) and went looking. I’ve looked at ten pages worth of houses for sale so far, and come up with thirteen possible houses, the majority of which have swimming pools! This surprised us more than somewhat – I mean, if this had been Surfer’s Paradise, sure – you’d more-or-less expect every second house to have a swimming pool – but this is cold, wet, miserable Melbourne! Why are there so many private swimming pools here?! Of course, they’re of no real interest to us, and we’d probably fill them in and grow our veggies there… (though… I am starting to find myself strangely drawn to the idea of having a swimming pool in the back yard… and besides, growing veggies is such back-breaking work…) So out of the thirteen places that I managed to find in my search, Julian has short-listed about four of them for further investigation. They’re all mostly in the Kew, Balwyn North, Camberwell, and/or Malvern areas, from memory… We’ll do some more research tomorrow…
Weigh-in this morning. down one point, from 89.7kg to 89.6kg. Which is good! I’d much rather go down in increments of one, or even two points, than go down a whole four, five, or even six points at once! All you do is bounce massively back, which is horribly depressing, even though your intellect tells you that “this is normal – the only thing that really matters is the general trend!”, it’s an emotional blow to the psyche! *pout*
Tomorrow, our cleaning lady will be here. At the moment, we’d much rather she didn’t know that we are looking for a home elsewhere, so we’ve put all our house-hunting equipment “in a safe place” (my “safe place” is Julian! 😉 I’ve given all of my papers, etc., to him… if he loses them, it’s not my fault, OK?! 😉 ) and we’ll get on with the hunt again once she’s gone… That means (I hope!) that tomorrow I might get a chance to get a bit of Rifting done, or a bit more graphic-work, depending on how I feel at the time… On Saturday, there’s another of Carmen’s houses to go and see in Doncaster East. It backs onto the Currawong Bush Park and Mullum Mullum Trail, has the requisite 4+ bedrooms and 2+ bathrooms (in fact, it has 4 bathrooms!) and the provided photos look stunning! Unfortunately, she made the silly mistake of telling us that a lot of people were very interested in buying it, which instead of spurring us on to get there, and have a look with a view to buying it early (it’s going to Auction on June 20th) it’s made us almost reluctant to go and see it, in case we do like it, because with all the interest this house has apparently generated, it’s probably going to be pushed quite a lot out of our price range! Still, we will go and have a look – hopefully we’ll hate it! (or even more hopefully, we’ll love it, and everyone else will hate it! 😉 ) So that’ll be our Friday and Saturday – spent puttering about, looking at houses. We haven’t done this sort of things for about fifteen years! But it’s like riding a bicycle – you never totally forget how the game’s played! 🙂 (I can’t ride bicycles – I fall off. I even fall off exercise bikes attached firmly to the floor! I can ride horses, though!) So come visit me here again tomorrow night! Hopefully my weight will still be behaving itself, and hopefully we’ll have another two or three places to look at on Saturday – but you’ll have to wait for those write-ups until Saturday night – sorry! 🙂 But there’ll be lots of other things to tell you, so until then, bee good, remember that your bank account can be overdrawn, but it can never be overfilled (but don’t you wish, eh? 😉 ) and… above all, please… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 