Winter’s log, earthdate 201506.04

I’m starting quite early today – himself is just heading out for a second viewing of a house we saw the other day – the one that Carmen had waxed lyrical about. I’m not going with him because it’s raining, and there’s a long path, with rail-less steps that one has to negotiate before getting to the front door – and I don’t walk fast enough in shoes to avoid getting drowned, even with an umbrella. And besides… we went and looked at our new house today!! (says she, bouncing up and down in the chair with excitement) Wel-l-l, it’s not ours yet, but I hope it will be soon! It’s absolutely my dream home! It’s to die for! I want to move in tomorrow! (bounce, bounce, bounce!) We’ve actually seen two houses today – the one this morning wasn’t too bad, really, and had a lot going for it – but once again, it was an “older” house (you could tell by the layout of the rooms, and the *sigh* number of ‘exposed brick feature walls’) it would have needed a lot of work. As I said to Julian as we got back in the car – “there’s no way I’d pay their approximate asking price – it’s not too bad, all things considered, but our place is much, much nicer, and really only needs re-painting, and perhaps re-carpeting, if whoever bought it didn’t want tiles. That place needs loads of work, on top of their almost ridiculous asking price – and we know that at least one Agent has been honest enough to tell us that we wouldn’t get what they’re asking for theirs!” Then we went on to Acuity to get the replacement lenses – which had finally arrived – put in my glasses. They look much more betterer now, without the chipped lens staring you in the face! 🙂 The second house we were going to look at today – the “C” shaped house (and hopefully, our new home!) wasn’t for another hour and a half, so we came home and had our lunch and a cup of coffee before heading out again. It was raining, so I made sure that himself picked up an umbrella before we walked out the front door. It’s a corner block, with about half a dozen steps or so up to the front porch, but they were reasonably shallow steps, and had a nice sturdy hand rail all the way to the porch. Once again, we had to remove our shoes, and we padded through the big double front doors into a small slate tiled foyer with a tastefully small pebbled garden on each side of it. In front of us was a miniature (only about a dozen steps) “Grand Staircase” (that is: wider at the bottom than at the top, with sweeping, curved bannisters on each side) At the top of this mini Grand Staircase, the house curved around to each side – one side, the right hand side, curved away to the bedrooms and bathrooms. The bedrooms were quite large, and so were the bathrooms – which was a change, as most of the bathrooms in the houses we’ve seen so far were grudgingly small and pokey! So, back to the mini G.S. again – the whole of that curved section at the top of the G.S. is glass walled, and looks out onto a beautiful, slate tiled, almost octagonal court-yard, which opened up at its far end into a nicely small and petite garden. Moving on to our left was a so-called third bedroom, but would be used better as a study or office. It has a beautifully large laundry, a spacious kitchen and meals area. a separate dining room or lounge, and another sitting room as well (from memory) It’s quite “split-level”, with a couple of three or four step stairs in a couple of places, but all steps have very nice hand rails, and there was nothing in the way of stairs that I wasn’t easily able to manage. It’s carpeted, which might irritate my feet, depending on the type of carpet it is, but it was OK today, and usually I know as soon as I step onto a piece of carpet if it’s going to cause me grief, and this one didn’t (not yet, anyway!) There’d be a minimum of work in the bathrooms, it needs proper, ducted, refrigerated air conditioning. The kitchen would need a new stove top and a bigger fridge alcove, but other than those little things, the place is absolutely perfect! 🙂 Ah, himself has just come back from his second viewing of “Carmen’s Choice” property – he’s just making us a cup of coffee, then no doubt he’ll come down and tell me all about it. We have another couple of houses to see this weekend, but for some strange reason, I find that I’m not particularly enthusiastic any more! 😉

I finished off my new Desktop-Wallpapery-thingy today – I reckon it doesn’t look too bad – what do you all reckon? 🙂 It took me ages to find just the right font for the header (“Winter Home” – I used a font called Filibuster NF in 75pt ) and even more ages to line everything up properly and get everything spaced correctly – but it’ll do until I get bored with it and want to change it again… 😉

After some lengthy discussions with himself about “Carmen’s Choice”, we’ve decided that it’s …. actually too small! Now, it’s not a small house, by any stretch of the imagination – it’s actually very big, and has oodles of storage space (which, unfortunately, the “C” house doesn’t have 😦 ) but the bulk of the house is “entertainment” area – and we… simply don’t entertain! It’s not even that we don’t entertain enough to justify such a large amount of space, it’s that we don’t entertain, at all! Now, as I pointed out to Julian, I think it’s only the way that they’ve arranged and decorated the area – we’d arrange it differently, and I think we’d find that the area wasn’t, or wouldn’t be, as wasted as he thinks it would (be) Upstairs there’s the Main Bedroom, walk-in-wardrobe and en-suite, a small study, and another bedroom (also with a walk-in-wardrobe and en-suite) Downstairs, there’s a third bedroom, with the same walk-in-wardrobe and en-suite arrangement (plus a small kitchenette!) So, if we used the small study as Julian’s Office, where would we put the computer room/Den? In the second bedroom upstairs? Or the third, “guest” bedroom downstairs? As I spend nearly all day in the Den here, it means that if we used the downstairs “guest” bedroom, I’d be cut off from the rest of the house for most of the day. If we used the second, smaller bedroom upstairs, I don’t think it would be big enough for two desks and all our equipment. Forget about the small study/Office – it’s even smaller than the second upstairs bedroom! So… big as it is, it’s too small, plus if we’re going to be spending the sort of money they’re looking at, I’d rather spend it on the “C” house! 🙂

So that’s where we stand on the Huge House Hunt, at the moment.

Weigh-in this morning. I went down another two points today – from 88.4kg to 88.2kg. Boy, am I going to pay the price for that, tomorrow, or the next day! I’m not looking forward to the massive upward spike that’s on my horizon! 😦

We’ve not been told anything more about Jamie’s very sudden passing – Julian is talking to his mother at the moment, so she might have some more news.. I’ll keep you all posted as to whether he has to fly off for a funeral or not. As you can probably gather, I’ve not had much of a chance to do any more writing today – we’ve been out for most of it, and I’ve also been racing to get my Desktop-Wallpapery-thingy finished. Trying to fit in all the places we had to go and see this afternoon meant that I had to re-schedule my hairdressing appointment – so now I’m going tomorrow afternoon, instead. And there’ll be more houses to look at on the weekend – why do we have to be so busy, just when I decide that I want to do some serious writing? *pout* And I’m not even going to get this finished before dinner, as I have to go off for my evening Stair Walk… in about… five minutes! That is something I’d get in the “C” House though – inside exercise via the mini G.S.! It’d take me a while – I’d have to work out how many times I’d have to go up and down the mini G.S. to get in my 64 stairs down, and 64 stairs up. Twelve? 12×12 is 144, and I do a total of 128, so yeah – twelve times down, plus 12 times up would be good! That is, if there are twelve steps, which unfortunately I didn’t count today. It might be less… Anyway…

+————————–+ * Dinner & Television Break * +————————–+

Back again. I asked Julian if his mother had said anything about funeral plans, but there’s been no news yet. I’m not quite sure what’s happening tomorrow, apart from a visit to the Hairdresser in the afternoon, so, who knows? I might even get a bit of Rifting, or some writing in! On the other hand, maybe I’ll just go down to the lounge room and read… or sleep! I could do with some of that… But that’s about all from me for tonight – call in again tomorrow night and I’ll fill you all in on what happened during the day, whether or not my weight has decided to go ballistic yet, and what our plans for the weekend are (F’rinstance, I can’t see us having our day in The Plane of Water on Sunday, though we might have time to fit an hour or two in, if we’re lucky!) and if we’ve decided to make a move on the “C” House yet (Winter crosses all her fingers… and decides that it’s too hard to type with just the tips of two nails, and uncrosses them again) So until tomorrow night, please bee good, remember that laughter is like a windshield wiper, it doesn’t stop the rain, but it allows us to keep going, but most importantly, remember to drive carefully, and above all, stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂