Progress at 88 miles per hour; looking back to move ahead

Nastalgia sneaks up on you, or if not you, then certainly me. But i've never been one for sneaking, despite my love of new balance sneakers and Spoon's ambrosial "Series of sneaks" album. So i'm in favor of direct confrontation - of staring eye to eye with the past and establishing some bench-marks on this, the eave of our two year aniversary. We're three years married, four years dog owners but the aniversary that indeed carries the most water 'round here is the second year of home ownership. so with that, stroke with me your flux capacitors and climb into the time machine.

October 26 2006...

We honestly looked at this place and got excited - we had fully embraced our middle class fears that somehow we were to be left behind if we didn't grow up now and try to own a house. My realtor assured me "Real estate was going nowhere but up" and with lots of unique financing available we couldn't afford NOT to buy a house. These were heady times and with my almost zero understanding of finance and percentage rates it was win-win no mattter how you read the numbers.




Actually, this was the nicest place we looked at over a series of months - and by nice i mean working toilet and electrical hook-up. The city is ripe with low hanging fruit for those in the fixer-upper market, but that exterior ripeness hides mostly rotten when you actually walk inside most places labled 'handy-man special".






Pictures

I can offer one life lesson and i'll likely offer more, but today that lesson is this: You can learn to fix everything by owning an italian motorcycle. I mean everything - wires, pipes, relationships, anything. All references to high-maintenance women notwithstanding the lesson is that everything gets fixed the same way - you take it apart and put it back together. in that order. along the way you will find the offending item, or the missing part, and you will know alot more about what to do next time when you're done.

Today:

Yes that is furniture, and white paint on the walls, and what this crap photo alludes to is the impending close of Phase 1. time to sweep the floor, clean the windows and wash the dog. it's gravy from here on out.