avablog

I’m a believer in buying locally, but I don’t think that local businesses should take advantage of my predisposition by not competing at all in the market.  For example: Leah and I like the sink we now have at our house.  We’re talking about getting one just like it to put in at our new […]

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We’re talking about closing on our house deal toward the end of May.  That means Leah and I will probably move all our stuff out of the house over the May 19th weekend.  Whew.  That’s awfully close.  Because we’ll have some work done on the new place before we move in, we’ll live at my […]

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It’s not because they cost me money every time they walk through the door, though that’s certainly an endearing quality.  No, the best thing about contractors is that they have an authority I don’t.  So when they tell Leah something that I’ve told her before and been dismissed for, she listens to them.  Thank God […]

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Leah has some painters coming by today to give estimates on painting the new (to us) house.  I always forget how big a deal it is to pick out interior paint colors.  I’m a big believer in color’s ability to influence mood.  I’ve been happy with the colors we used in the house we occupy […]

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Leah has designs to change many of the interior colors, but as you can see, the house is already pretty darn nice (I don’t mind the existing colors, but what mama wants, mama gets!). Clicking on the mosaic will take you to the flickr set for the house pictures, which contains a couple shots not […]

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Our neighbor stopped by yesterday to tell us that she’s comfortable with the price we proposed to her for her house, so it looks like we’re going to move in May.  Only three months away. There’s lots to do.  Leah wants to have some painting done and to get the wood floors upstairs refinished, too.  […]

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With all this talk lately of possibly moving to a new house, I’ve been thinking occasionally of the house in which I grew up. It’d be great if Leah and I could give Ava the kind of experience I had, but, then, maybe Ava wouldn’t have any interest in playing in the mud every day. […]

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This upgrade to the latest version of WordPress was the easiest yet. It’s especially nice to be able to do the update remotely using FTP and have it all work so smoothly. I only use a couple plugins, and as far as I know, they’re all working OK. And I love the fact that this […]

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This is a shot of me with my grandfather (mom’s dad) many years ago at Christmas. Here I am with the quintessential gift, a big red hook-and-ladder truck. It was great. If memory serves, it even had a working hose that squirted water! I wonder what ever happened to it. Today’s the kind of day […]

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Here’s a peek at our Christmas tree this year. As we were piling on the ornaments, Leah and I concluded that either we’ll need a bigger house for a bigger tree (in process), or we’ll need to cull our ornament collection. Maybe we’ll do both.

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So, Leah and I were talking about the situation one day, and I reminded her that we’d once half-joked with one of our neighbors — who lives in a bigger house — that we should exchange houses. Ha ha. Good one. But was she serious? I e-mailed her, and it turns out she is. To the tune of doing the exchange as early as this spring.(!)

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We met with a banker last evening about a house loan for the renovation/addition we’re thinking about.  I’ll cut to the chase:  The bank will be happy to lend us an amount that is much past our ability to pay back.  Even using conservative numbers, the payment on our loan would consume my monthly pay.  […]

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Here’s a link to a photoset with all the pictures we have so far of our addition plans. Meeting with the builder yesterday really made it seem like this is going to happen. I’m not sure how much that feeling will get quashed when we meet with the banker again. In any case, I’ve made […]

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I was home this morning to meet with the architect and the builder for the addition we’re talking about for our house. They’re both great guys, and, fortunately, they seemed to get along well. So far, everyone is on the same page, literally and figuratively, when looking at the proposed plans. We have a preliminary, […]

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