Ryan's Journal

"My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?" — David Mitchell

Tag: Homeownership

Late Recap

Posted from Culver City, California at 7:46 pm, May 1st, 2016

It’s May 1st, so I’m a day late on the three-entries-a-month goal. Let’s pretend that doesn’t bug me and move on with a recap of April…

  • Our rat relocation program is (unfortunately) continuing. We had a company out to give us an estimate on rat-proofing the house, but after they came to the conclusion that 3-4 hours of work would cost us $1700 we decided that the occasional rat in the attic might not be such a bad thing after all. I’m now on a mission to plug every hole in the exterior of the house, and after tearing up a wooden structure on the side of the house and blocking up a hole behind it we actually had a rat-free week. Alas, the cute little bastards apparently found a side entrance to their rat disco club, and they’ve been posing in front of the attic rat cam every night so far this week.
  • Work continues on the HEB.com project. While I would obviously rather be spending my days roaming the earth instead of sitting in front of computer screens, the fact that I have a forty foot commute, that there is a neighborhood sushi restaurant that delivers, and that four squirrels are slowly learning that if they stand in the backyard looking cute that someone will come out and give them treats, makes for about the best work environment you could hope for.
  • As Audrey reminds me, on my lone April trip to Texas I got a free first class upgrade, apparently as repayment by the karma gods for a previous flight where I was in the splatter zone when the passenger in the seat next to me threw up on himself. First class is great and I appreciate the upgrade, but if the karma gods are listening – I don’t mind flying coach if it means I never have to smell like vomit.
  • Finally, on April 8 SpaceX landed a rocket on a boat, because we live in the most awesome time ever.

Spaceship landing on a freaking boat. Mom, turn off the volume, they use some naughty words.

It Is What It Is

Posted from San Antonio, Texas at 11:08 pm, March 28th, 2016

Aside from wildflower trips to Death Valley the excitement has been limited over the past month, but here’s a recap of the non-happenings:

  • There are obviously lots of critters roaming our neighborhood, and so long as they stay outside all is well. However, a while back we started hearing what I can only assume was a 70s-themed rat disco party in our attic, so we put a Dropcam and a live trap up there, thus beginning what Audrey has dubbed the “Rat Relocation Program”. We’re still searching for whatever opening they’re using to get in, but over a period of almost two months the program has had five applicants, each of whom was captured, photographed, given a drink of water, and then transported to the Ballona Wetlands Rat Sanctuary. I’m hopeful that the program is either nearing its quota or that we’ll finally find the entry to the rat dance club and shutter its door.
  • After almost nine months the work Commerce Architects has done on the HEB.com website was finally ready to launch, and so about two weeks ago I found myself in San Antonio at 11PM in a room with 20-30 other people. In an unfortunate twist they decided to screen Interstellar while waiting for me to run critical upgrade scripts, so I performed my tasks while tense dramatic music blared throughout the room. Luckily things went fairly smoothly, and after a fourteen hour day I headed back to the hotel room at about 6:30 the following morning with bloodshot eyes but without having caused the site’s servers to burst into flame and burn down the data center.
  • On the same San Antonio trip I was tapped to provide onsite support through the weekend, but after slow days on Friday and Saturday they decided no one needed to be in the office on Sunday so I took off on a twenty mile bike ride along the San Antonio Mission Trail. The trail, the river corridor it follows, and the Missions are ridiculously great assets for San Antonio, although I underestimated the sun and had to duck into the first shop I could find to buy a hat. I then spent the rest of the day playing uber-tourist as I visited three of the Missions wearing a “San Antonio Missions” hat, but my head remained pinkish rather than going full-blown lobster red, so if looking like a dork is the price to pay for not dying of skin cancer then it may have been a reasonable trade-off. On a side note, based on regularly biking 16-17 miles on my stationary bike at home I assumed this trail would be a piece of cake, but I forgot to account for the fact that the San Antonio B Cycle rentals are built more like tanks than bikes, contain enough steel to survive an atomic blast, and (apparently) don’t always have working shifters; there was definitely no need for a workout in the hotel gym at the end of this day.

There isn’t a lot of excitement on the horizon, but hopefully a few journal-worthy adventures will come up in the near future. Aaron’s leg is back in one piece and he’s attempting to snowboard again, Ma & Pa are making the best of their retirement and traveling all over, and Audrey is either singing or playing bass with about three hundred different groups these days, so all seems to be well with the world.

Rat Relocation Project applicant #5

Rat Relocation Program applicant #5. The peanut butter is in the trap as bait, but after they run all over looking for an escape we end up sending peanut butter-coated rodents out into their new homes.

My House is not a Snack

Posted from Culver City, California at 8:21 pm, January 31st, 2015

Shockingly, Audrey and I have been homeowners for almost exactly three years now. Mostly because it’s interesting to me to go over the changes we’ve made to the house, here’s a list of the biggies, past, present and future:

  1. Shortly before moving in we had the asbestos in the ducts ripped out, on account of not wanting to get the cancer from our new home. While we planned on getting a new furnace and ducts installed shortly thereafter, we underestimated how long it would take and spent a couple of weeks in a house without heat braving record-low temperatures.
  2. The next big adventure was obviously getting a new furnace, ducts, and air conditioning installed. Today we have a magical touchscreen thermostat from the future that keeps our house very pleasant.
  3. Our backyard previously contained a star pine that was growing at an alarmingly non-vertical angle, and a giant ficus whose roots were almost certainly engaged in an underground battle with the foundations of the house. Luckily a man with a chainsaw from Forest Green Tree Service quickly disassembled the Leaning Star Pine of Neosho, and a team of men with ropes and shovels descended to resolve our other issues.
  4. Plumbing is fun for every homeowner, and our house hasn’t been an exception. A new hot water heater, snaking of pipes, and other adventures have made us friendly with the local plumber. He also ran a gas line to our garage so that our laundromat no longer needed to be in a closet inside the house that smelled a bit mildewy. Now we have an extra closet and a dryer that plays happy music when it finishes drying.
  5. The most recent escapade involved fixing termite damage and tenting the house to ensure that any remaining bugs would move their buffet to the neighbors’ houses.
  6. Future excitement involves a roofer coming to charge gobs of money to replace the office and patio roofs. In addition, Eduardo the gutter man will be visiting to ensure that the rain stops draining directly into our foundations and providing drinking water delivery for termites that might wish to re-colonize our house. Longer term, in an effort to make it less drafty and simultaneously dampen the sounds of the neighbor’s dog’s constant barking, the ancient windows on the house will be going to the giant home improvement store in the sky.

Homeownership clearly has its challenges – every time the contractors told us the price for the above items the involuntary response was inevitably “DOH!” – but unlike when we were renting, the expenditures kind of feel like putting money in the bank, with the added bonus that we get to live in a house without leaks or creepy bugs.

Termite tenting

Sometimes when your house is getting eaten by bugs the only thing to do is to let it go camping for a few days.

Squirrels

Posted from Culver City, California at 9:18 pm, May 27th, 2014

In addition to the birds we’ve got at least three squirrels that have made themselves at home in the backyard. One is recognizable for his acrobatics – if I ever get a video of him doing handsprings, twirls and rolls across the lawn I’m pretty sure it will be a Youtube sensation – while the other two are notable mainly for their spirited wrestling matches on the roof of Audrey’s office.

For Christmas my mom gave me a seed wreath that I’ve only just gotten around to hanging, and while the birds have ignored it completely, the little grey guys are the happiest they’ve ever been. I initially had it in a spot that they couldn’t quite get to (their attempts rivaled Wile E. Coyote for daring and creativity), but after it became clear that the birds weren’t interested I moved it to be slightly more accessible to the furry fellows, and now squirrels hanging vertically from their hind legs is a regular site in our backyard.

Grey squirrel

I made a deal with the squirrels that they could eat as much as they wanted from the wreath made of nuts, but only if they did Batman impersonations; they complied.

Grey squirrel

After eating insanely large quantities, the ability to move is apparently temporarily lost and the squirrel’s only option is the post-meal catatonic belly flop.

Who, What, When, Where

Posted from Culver City, California at 10:30 pm, June 27th, 2013

Here’s all that’s new since the last status update:

  • Proving that at age thirty-seven I am truly a grown up, I called a plumber and got a new water heater installed after the old one died. No nineteen year old is even thinking of hot water heaters, much less bugging the installer with stupid questions about efficiency and reliability as he’s installing it.
  • Audrey and I actually went out and saw TWO movies in one month, which may be a record. Reviews: Star Trek was excellent entertainment, and I even got to make a starfleet insignia and wear it so that Audrey could brag about how cool I was. Man of Steel was average. I wanted it to be great, and you could see how much potential there was in what they were going for with the whole “what is my place in the world” thing, but I never really felt like I cared that much about any of the characters, and as a result it didn’t really matter who was super-punching who at any given moment. Hopefully this series is like Batman, where a lackluster first film is merely setup for an amazing second film.
  • In another stunning example of grownup behavior Audrey and I joined some friends for a fancy dinner at the Getty Museum (side note: the Getty will be near the top of the eventual “great things in LA” list). Despite being a high-end restaurant, there was only one fork to deal with so the meal was completed without any truly embarrassing mistakes.
  • Our friend Greg, who was an early buyer of the Tesla Model-S, invited us to join him at Tesla’s recent announcement about battery swapping. The event was set up like a party, with lights, drinks, many hundreds of well-heeled attendees, and techo music blaring (comment from JB: “I keep telling Elon to let up on the techno but he loves that shit”). The main event was an Apple-style demonstration of a Tesla driving up on stage, the battery pack being automatically replaced from underneath, and the car driving off fully-charged ninety seconds later. I’ve posted about why I’m so impressed with Tesla’s engineering and strategy before, but it will be interesting to see what the next reason people come up with to disparage them will be now that the “no one wants to wait thirty minutes to charge the car during a roadtrip” issue has been addressed.
  • Finally, following the monthly pilgrimage to Boise, we met some friends for a birthday celebration at Mar Vista Lanes. The music and disco lights came on at ten, and while I may have scored the most points, the clear winner of the evening was Brett and his magical (and intoxicating) bowling dancing. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a man in a Green Lantern shirt perform a two minute routine to disco that culminates in a gutter ball. Hopefully a video will someday show up online.

Bouillabaisse at the Getty

A very fancy plate of bouillabaisse at the very fancy restaurant at the Getty, with my super fruity cocktail in the background.

Star Trek Into Darkness

Only the coolest movie-goers wear homemade Star Trek insignias to see the show.

April 2013, Part II

Posted from Culver City, California at 9:17 pm, April 30th, 2013

Continuing from Part I of the April 2013 recap…

Audrey’s favorite band in the whole wide world is Rush, and they were finally voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year. With the induction ceremony being held at the Nokia Theatre in downtown LA it was a matter of seconds from the time tickets went on sale until she had four in hand.

I don’t know a lot about Rush, but I have learned that they have extraordinarily passionate fans. The crowd milling about before the Nokia Theatre doors opened was evidence of this fact as at least half of those present were wearing Rush shirts, Rush jackets, Rush purses, Rush flags, etc, despite the fact that seven other groups or individuals were being inducted (Heart, Randy Newman, Public Enemy, Donna Summer, Albert King, Lou Adler, Quincy Jones). The point was driven home further when the ceremony started, and the chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame began reading the names of each inductee. There was applause and cheering for each individual until he said “And from Toronto”. What followed was two minutes of pandemonium as people screamed, cheered, chanted, clapped, and otherwise lost their damn minds, during which the guy at the podium could do nothing but stand and wait. As Dave Grohl of Nirvana later stated in an interview:

They didn’t even say the name and the place went fucking crazy… It was pretty awesome tonight to see Jann say, “And from Toronto,” and the fans just went, “FUCK YEAHHH.” Everyone at the tables were just like, Jesus! It was amazing. That’s what it’s all about.

John Mayer had similar thoughts:

As Mayer stepped into his Escalade, he was still blown away by Rush’s fans, who cheered the band for several minutes when Hall of Fame Chairman Jann S. Wenner’s mentioned a “band from Toronto.” “Man, I want Rush fans to come to my shows now, that is some fandom,” Mayer told Rolling Stone. “If you’re a Rush fan, you should get in any show free.”

Other highlights of the evening included being in the same room with Oprah, Jack Nicholson and Tom Petty, some pretty good music, and a hugely amusing speech from Cheech and Chong. The ceremony will be broadcast on HBO in late May, although hopefully they’ll trim most of Flavor Flav, whose rambling, incoherent induction speech seemed like it would never end, was frequently interrupted by other members of Public Enemy trying to get him to stop, and which Rolling Stone described as a “filibuster”.

The remainder of April was supposed to be uneventful, but Tuesday night Audrey came into the living room shaking, and said that she had gone out to the hot tub, reached into the control box, and barely escaped disaster when she found thousands of bees inside. This seemed clearly to be a job for the Bee Warrior, so I donned appropriate attire and went out to investigate. Citronella candles were ineffective against the swarm, so the next morning we called Bee Capture, which turned out to be a tiny lady in a truck who showed up in the evening. She donned her bee gear (which was lame compared to my own – no Mexican wrestling mask, nor a college letterman jacket) and proceeded to scoop 40,000 bees out of the hot tub controls and into a “bee box” that she had brought along to act as their new mobile home. The next day several hundred bees had returned, so the bee warrior re-emerged to spray them with vinegar, but with the bees still undeterred we called Ruth again and she came back to scoop away the stragglers.

Audrey and I at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony

Audrey wore a Rush shirt to the Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony because Rush was being inducted. I wore a Captain America shirt because Captain America is awesome.

Ryan Holliday, Bee Warrior

One member of the household was stung during the bee invasion; it was not Ryan Holliday, Bee Warrior.

‘Sup

Posted from Culver City, California at 9:01 pm, February 28th, 2013

There hasn’t been a generic status update in a while, and I’ve got less than three hours to meet my three-entry-a-month goal, so that’s as good of an excuse as any to write one:

  • The job at Bodybuilding.com is in its nineteenth month and is scheduled to run through the end of the year. Shockingly, after spending more than half of my days between July 2002 and August 2005 on one adventure after another, I’ve now been working more-or-less solidly for almost eight years.
  • In yet another sign that I’m becoming a grown-up (at age 37), last Friday we hired tree trimmers to take care of a ficus that was attempting to eat the back office, as well as a star pine that made the Leaning Tower of Pisa look straight. With significantly less vegetation now blocking the western edge of our yard Audrey and I stood outside on Friday night with the sound of sea lions barking a mile away in the marina clearly audible. Our house is awesome.
  • Younger Holliday is working again, this time selling houses in the Bay Area for Shea Homes. With the real-estate market heating up I may not be the only Holliday boy who owns the roof over his head much longer.
  • Audrey’s favorite band of all-time is getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so she scored tickets for us to go to the Nokia Theatre on April 16 to see Rush at the Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. There are some downsides to living in LA, but there aren’t a lot of cities that regularly host events that you can re-watch a few months later as an HBO special.
  • Speaking of the girl, our adventures have been mostly culinary lately. We accidentally hit a food truck extravaganza on Abbott Kinney a few weeks ago and enjoyed massive lobsta rolls for dinner. On Valentine’s Day lobsta was again on the menu as the girl cooked steak and lobster tails. The following night I took her to a fancy dinner at a restaurant that had lights made out of underpants ’cause I’m all about ambiance. The weekend prior to Valentine’s Day saw us making a pilgrimage to the ridiculously delicious Sadle Peak Lodge, which is now by far number one on my list for French toast – the homemade-bread-and-bananas-foster delight that was served to me at Saddle Peak puts them so far ahead of anyone else that the competition can probably be declared permanently over.
  • And that is all. Things have been slow, but with luck there will be baby bird videos to share soon.

Dante's View, Death Valley

Dante’s View in Death Valley. Sponsored by Nike. Just do it.

Status Update

Posted from Boise, Idaho at 10:17 pm, September 18th, 2012

It’s been a while since there’s been a boring old “here’s what’s going on” post…

  • Audrey and I headed off to the Hollywood Bowl last Wednesday to see the very talented Mr. Dave Matthews and his band. After spending an hour trying to drive (literally) two miles through sanity-testing traffic on Highland we finally arrived at the show, and despite missing the first couple of songs a good time was had by all.
  • Work for Bodybuilding.com is now in its fourteenth month, and things look like they may continue on into 2013. I’m enormously grateful to have avoided financial difficulties during the Great Recession, but it would be a huge lie to say I didn’t selfishly reminisce about the freedom from a daily job that was last experienced in December 2006.
  • The latest addition to the new house is a ridiculously awesome backyard fountain, which was procured from Luigi’s House of Fountains since the birds looked like they might be getting parched. Watching the neighborhood birds splashing around never ceases to be entertaining, and it’s a pretty huge thrill to occasionally look outside and see one of the local hawks perched on the edge getting a drink. Other unusual visitors have included a zebra finch, a native of Australia who obviously heard about our fountain and flew 7500 miles to see it.
  • In less personal news, a spaceship is coming to Los Angeles; expect this engineering nerd to make a field trip to welcome it.

Zebra Finch

Zebra finch, native to Australia, getting a drink from our backyard fountain in Culver City, California. A very similar scenario was chronicled in the movie Crocodile Dundee 3.

Status Update

Posted from Culver City, California at 10:00 pm, May 16th, 2012

The latest happenings:

  • A blue jay unfortunately brought an end to our baby bird odyssey. After the jay’s first visit only three of the five birds remained, all of them scattered in the backyard after jumping out of the nest to escape. Having gotten rather attached to our little friends, we decided to put them back in the nest, and then went on blue jay patrol for several days. During that time there was more shuttling of baby birds back into the nest, until finally the jay showed up and the birds were big enough to fly away.
  • In a move that proves I am finally a grown up, Audrey and I now get HBO and our movies no longer make a beeping noise when someone says a naughty word.
  • Holliday IT Services, Inc is now a licensed California corporation. I am hoping that my meteoric rise to the role of company president will one day be chronicled by Hollywood in a film written by Aaron Sorkin.
  • The house continues to come together. So far we’ve become proud owners of an area rug, a new couch, and some end tables. It is a truly disturbing experience to walk into Best Buy and be excited about looking at appliances.

Baby phoebe returning to the nest

It’s worth two in the bush.

The Birds

Posted from Culver City, California at 11:54 am, April 24th, 2012

The new house has proven to be a bit of an animal kingdom:

  • The two bird feeders are bringing in flocks of finches, sparrows, and doves, as well a variety of less-frequent visitors. It can be loud.
  • Proving the bird feeders support multiple levels of the food chain, a young sharp-shinned hawk has made the backyard his play area, and hangs out to terrorize the smaller birds on occasion. His attention isn’t only directed at birds: while I was doing some yard work he also took a shot at my head, apparently to ensure that I didn’t feel excluded.
  • There’s a crow who visits occasionally and has shown an irrational fear of salami.
  • The mammal situation consists of some wrestling baby squirrels, some very un-subtle neighborhood cats, and a family of tree-climbing rats that have made the area under the feeders their late night dining area.

It’s unclear what the future holds for the wildlife oasis that is our backyard, although some sort of water supply and potentially an owl house may be needed additions.

Our new roommates get lunch after the parent black phoebe checks out Audrey’s birdcam. Taken from the eave above our porch.

Our Little Grey Friends

Posted from Culver City, California at 3:07 pm, March 25th, 2012

New house, similar visitors. It took less than a day for the finches to find the feeder, and the squirrels followed shortly thereafter. Feeder #2 is currently en route from Amazon and will double the size of the bird buffet.

Squirrel on the bird feeder

The squirrels haven’t yet resigned themselves to the fact that this is a squirrel-proof feeder, so rodents flying through the air and slipping off of plastic tubes have been a common sight over the past days.

The End of Rent

Posted from Culver City, California at 7:48 pm, February 29th, 2012

A Leap Day 2012 status update:

  • The heavy items all got moved on Friday with the help of a U-Haul and two lovely gentlemen who happened to be hanging out in the Home Depot parking lot looking for work. They did the vast majority of the lifting, and two twenty-foot truckloads later nearly everything had magically transported four miles across town.
  • After a late night of cleaning, the old place was emptied and ready for inspection by the landlady; tomorrow will be the first day in my adult life where I am not paying rent. In a precursor to what could be future drama the landlady answered “I can’t tell you that” when asked if we would be getting our full security deposit back, so we may be exchanging letters that cite California renter law in the not-too-distant future.
  • In a poorly-conceived plan we had the asbestos removed prior to moving in, but haven’t yet been able to schedule the heating folks to put in replacement ducts. God noticed this oversight and thought it would be fun to send LA a week of temperatures in the forties, so the hats and scarves were some of the first items we unpacked.
  • In non-house news, due to tax law changes Holliday IT Services will soon become Holliday IT Services, Inc. Company president Holliday is looking forward to his reign of corporate terror.

Raintree

Posted from Boise, Idaho at 10:11 pm, February 20th, 2012

Just over six years ago Audrey and I moved to the West Side of LA to live in a townhome next to a pond full of ducks, surrounded by trees full of squirrels, and with a neighborhood full of ill-behaved dogs that bark incessantly; two out of three ain’t bad.

Today, the move to our new casa is ongoing. There has been some drama as the old owner needed extra time to move out, but at this point his stuff is nearly gone, we’ve done some initial work (changing locks, removing asbestos), have scrubbed until our hands went numb, and have moved about a dozen carloads of stuff, including some of Audrey’s giant rolling shelves that were transported on the roof of the Subaru Beverly Hillbillies-style. The dust plume resulting from all of this activity has reduced us both to walking sinus colds, but breathing is clearly overrated.

In the midst of all of this moving I somehow managed to end up out of town in Boise for three days. Luckily I’ll be back on Thursday night in time to complete a mad scramble culminating in a U-Haul rental and the end of Great Move of 2012, followed by the beginning of the Neosho era.

Red-shouldered hawk

One of the neighbors that we will sadly be leaving behind.

Mallard Ducklings

The annual “running of the ducklings” is another event that will be greatly missed in our new home.

Real Estate for Dummies

Posted from Culver City, California at 9:08 am, February 12th, 2012

Things I think I’ve learned while buying my first house:

  • Spend time looking. It took several months for us to get an understanding of what neighborhoods we liked and what prices were fair. Being able to know where to look, and knowing what kind of house you can get for a specific price in each neighborhood is a huge advantage.
  • Use the internet. We got on Redfin early on, but during the first few months would also occasionally just follow signs to open houses. The latter approach isn’t productive – filter the houses before you go out.
  • Know the budget. We set a range, and only considered houses that were at the top of the range when we were really excited about them. This approach helped us categorize our interest – we automatically eliminated anything too expensive, and had to justify pricier homes by asking what feature of the house made it worth the extra price.
  • Be ready to move fast. We put an offer on our new house the day after the open house, and even moving that quickly we were competing with two other offers. Get pre-qualified, and if you find something you like jump on it.
  • Follow up. Audrey did a lot of follow-up with the agents, the escrow company, and others once we’d put down an offer, and it made a big difference – with different companies involved and a million things to do there are going to be issues that get missed, and it’s far easier to fix a problem earlier than doing so after it becomes a crisis.
  • Expect problems. With many documents we’ve had to send them, and then re-send them, and then send them again. Apparently with so many files to keep track of things get lost, don’t go to the right person, or need clarification, so expect to do a lot of things twice.
  • Title insurance is a scam. Just sayin’. Any insurance that pays out just 4.3% in claims of what it takes in as premiums is bogus, but the mortgage company won’t let you buy a house without it.

Neosho

Posted from Culver City, California at 2:55 pm, January 28th, 2012
Lex Luthor: Miss Teschmacher, when I was six years old my father said to me…
Miss Teschmacher: “Get out.”
Lex Luthor: Ha ha. Before that. He said, “Son, stocks may rise and fall, utilities and transportation systems may collapse. People are no damn good, but they will always need land and they’ll pay through the nose to get it! Remember,” my father said…
Otis: “… land.”
Lex Luthor: Right.

After sitting out the real-estate boom of the 2000s Audrey and I started house hunting around March 2010. Twenty-two months and a ridiculous number of open houses later, we’re now seventeen days away from moving into our new place. Here are the gory details for those who are into such things:

  • We’re still in Culver City, although we’ll be four miles from our current location in the weird sliver of Culver City that juts west towards Marina del Rey.
  • 2 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, 2,100 square feet. The square footage includes a giant detached office that will be Audrey’s new shop and music space, but does not include a really cool screened-in back area.
  • There is room for at least 3-5 bird feeders, and I’m also planning on reading up on how to make the backyard attractive to owls, hawks, and other badass flying things.
  • The former owner took good care of the place, so aside from installation of a new furnace and air-conditioning unit we’re hoping not to be going too much deeper into debt after moving in.
  • We’ll be moved in by the end of February.
  • Our mortgage rate is awe-some. I don’t know from real estate, but buying when mortgage rates are at their lowest level since the 1950s seems like a winning bet.
  • Date and time of the inevitable housewarming party is still TBD; first the bird feeders, then the parties.


View Larger Map

The approximate location of the new casa (actual location hidden to prevent stalking by groupies). The new place is significantly closer to the water, which is great for going to the beach and bad for escaping tsunamis.