Seeking the Rainbow

Gawds, more drama.  We went to the storage place to try and find our passports (no luck, BTW), but managed to find some other things we needed, and to clear a path into the netherlands of that storage purgatory.  After that, we ran over to Bremerton to see the new house again, and we had a chance to visit with our soon-to-be new neighbors.  One couple is both lawyers, he in private practice, she with the county.  Now, I pride myself on being able to hold my own in almost any conversation, but when you get into the esoterics of law or medicine, I can usually follow the conversation, but I can’t contribute anything.  That’s not usually a problem for me, because I tend to like to sit back and observe, but when I’m expected to contribute!?!  Give me a break!

We decided to have lunch in our soon-to-be new hometown, but by the time we finished it was already after 1 PM.  With no passports handy, and the f*cked border crossing system since Bush took office, we decided to give Vancouver a pass.  After all, we have been driving cross-country, working full time, spending evenings and weekends house hunting, and generally killing ourselves trying to get re-established.  We needed a break, so we decided to take one.

[Read more →]

Nothing big planned for today, except our usual Happy Hour visit to Changes, and maybe dinner afterward.  Tomorrow is another story.

Tomorrow morning we’re heading down to the storage place to try and find our passports.  Vancouver Pride is this weekend, and we have been invited by a friend to spend it with him.  Technically, we don’t need our passports (yet), but they certainly make the border crossing easier.  So, sometime tomorrow afternoon we’ll be in Vancouver, BC, and ready to party for the weekend, stick around for the parade Sunday, and then head back.  I’ll post the details (at least those permissible for a family audience) sometime Sunday.  I just hope the weather cooperates.

As for the house situation, one minor setback.  Our realtor used the same template for the new offer as the old one, so the closing date was way too soon for the sellers.  We agreed to push it back to 9/3/08.  The inspection was also pushed back a week to 8/12/08.  We’re still not expecting anything to derail the deal.  We can almost look at the closing and moving in as a joint birthday gift for both Jeffrey and myself, since that date is about half-way between his birthday in August and mine in September.  Funny how things work our sometimes.

Here is a web page I knocked together with some pictures Jeffrey took of the house we’re buying.

New House

What a difference a day can make. 

This morning, I woke up, stumbled my way to the coffee pot, and Jeffrey stops me and says he’s had a change of heart on the Tacoma house after reading the crime statistics.  What a thing to drop on a person who hasn’t had their morning coffee yet.  He gives me time to have my coffee and read most of the morning paper.  The crime rate in Tacoma is three times the national average, he says.  Bremerton’s is less than the average (must be all those military and ex-milatry people around).  Taxes are less in Kitsap County than in Pierce County.  Insurance is less, too.

So we were back to our original choice between the two Bremerton houses I mentioned here and here.  We decided to counter the original counter-offer on the house we initally chose, and delete the additional items, but lower our original offer by the amount he tried to bump it up.  We were hoping to get some leeway, because while the house was excellent, we would need to redo all of the landscaping, and that isn’t cheap.  He came back with a counter-counter offer dropping his asking price by less than $1,000.  We were rather insulted, to say the least.  The house is gorgeous, but it’s not on the best street and some of the neighboring properties leave a lot to be desired, plus there was the landscaping issue.  The house was over-priced for its location, which is why we asked for the extra items in exchange for his full asking price in the first place.  Too bad, so sad.  We crossed him off the list and were left with one house. 

[Read more →]

Today we looked at 12 or so houses, and think we found the one.  It was actually the last one on our list to look at, and we almost gave it a miss because it was slightly outside the geographical area Jeffrey wanted to stay in.  Four bedroom/three bath, large lot with excellent landscaping, first and second floors either fully modernized or in excellent shape, partially finished basement, plenty of off-street parking, and it would be a good house for entertaining.

Then we went and looked at the remaining house in Bremerton that we really liked.  They’re very close in what we want in a house, but the Tacoma house won out.  We’re having our realtor get more info on taxes, how long it’s been on the market, price reductions, etc. so that we can make an informed offer.  We’re already pre-approved for the mortgage, but we don’t want to offer more than we should, considering the current economy and what’s going on in the mortgage and banking industry.  The house is vacant, so once we make that decision we can push for a quick closing and finally get into our own place again.  I miss my books, my piano, and everything else in storage.  Most of all, I miss our California king-sized bed.

Not much to add today, but it’s been a few days since I posted anything.  We let the first offer expire, for reasons mentioned before.  WIth the other house we were looking at, I guess they got some very positive feedback and the sellers are trying very hard to get us to buy, especially one of the neighbors.  She’s a self-proclaimed “fag hag” (gawds, I hate that term), and is really wanting to have some new male gay friends.  We’re biding our time, and are going to spend tomorrow looking in “Old Tacoma”.  Jeffrey has found some very nice looking houses there, and we’re taking our realtor around to show us all of them.

Frankly, as it stands, I’m leaning more towards Bremerton than Tacoma, but Jeffrey’s the one who has to deal with the commute.  I have to defer to his preference, at least in this regard.

Not much else to add, at this point.  Jeffrey is driving an hour each way to get to work, I’m working from home (in our generous friends’ home) and trying to keep us in clean laundry, good dinners, and healthy pets (3 dogs and a cat).

Gawds, I am so ready for a vacation away from all of this, and I’m sure Jeffrey is too.  Give me a cruise ship (with a luxury suite, by preference), no cooking or cleaning, and exotic ports of call.  I’m reminded of the old TV commercial:  “Calgon, take me away”.  I guess now it’s “Carnival (or Holland America), take me away!”

Well, we got a counter offer on our first offer.  As background, the house is in a good neighborhood, but not on a good street.  The seller had vacated the house but left some furniture there to help with the “showing” of it, I guess.  If you regularly watch HGTV or similar programs, you know what I’m talking about.  The house has been on the market over a year.  We love the house itself, but not so much the location.  We offered his asking price if he’d leave a few pieces of furniture behind.  Now be mindful, we didn’t NEED these items, but we liked the style and they fit in with the way the house had been re-done.  His counter offer was to let us have the 5 items we asked for, but pay an additional $15K.  No way in hell.  We could buy them brand new at less than half the price.  I was all for countering with a reduced offer without the furniture, but Jeffrey is leaning toward letting it expire and offering on the other house.  After work, he went back today to look at both houses and take pictures.  I’m really torn.  I like the house we made an offer on better, but I like the street and lot of the other house just as much.  It’s a real pity they can’t be transplanted.

We’re still discussing what we want to do.  One major factor is that the not-so-nice house with the great yard and street location has oil heating.  And it’s an OLD oil furnace.  The family living there reports that their heating bill comes to about $2K a year.  If we opt for this one, the first thing we have to do is convert it to natural gas.  Although, thanks to Bush and the current economy, that may not make much of a difference in a few years.

This weekend, we spent most of our time across the water on the Kitsap Peninsula (home of one of the only temperate rain forests in the world), and most of that time was in Bremerton.  They had their Gay Pride fest yesterday.  It was a rather small venue compared to what I’m used to, but apparently they had a very good turnout, with people drifting in and out all day, including us.  We drove around the area looking at neighborhoods and houses on the market.  We did most of this on our own because our realtor was manning a booth at the event.  I was glad to see that SLDN was represented.  Apparently, there is a vibrant gay community on the peninsula, and there are a lot of military people who are part of it.  Quietly, of course. 

Today, we had our realtor available and we looked at 10 or 12 houses in a couple of neighborhoods we liked, and found two houses we both felt would suit us nicely.  One edged out the other slightly, and we put in an offer on it.  Beautifully modernized 1920s house, but a very small lot and the landscaping needs some work.  The others house is almost the opposite in a slightly better part of the neighborhood, a wonderfully landscaped large lot, but the house needs a bit of work to get it up to where it meets our needs.  We put in a bid on the house that’s already modernized but needs some yard work, including privacy fencing.  I’ll have more follow-up on this as it progresses.

I suppose I should explain that we’re looking in that area due to our expectation on where Jeffrey will finally end up working, and the economics of the situation.  Transportation will not be that much of a factor.  If he winds up in Seattle, he will take the passenger ferry across the Sound and then a bus or walk.  If he winds up in Tacoma or Olympia, that’s a 30 to 45 minute drive south.  My biggest consideration is access to broadband, since I’m working from home for the foreseeable future.  The neighborhood the two houses we’re interested in is currently undergoing a sort of urban renewal, which we don’t mind being a part of.

[Read more →]

I’m going to have to start titling my posts differently. I’m starting to lose track of the days.

One of the great things about the northwest is the lack of light pollution. I can see the stars at night, again. In south Florida, the only places you could really see the stars were out in the Everglades, or a couple of miles off-shore in the ocean. We’ve had great weather ever since the day we arrived, and clear skies at night. I’m reacquainting myself with the constellations.

I’ve also rediscovered KIXI, a local AM station that plays 40s and 50s music, and the old serial radio shows (like The Shadow) at night. They have on-line streaming, so I used to listen to them occasionally back in Florida, but it’s nice to be able to listen to them live again.

Our agenda for tomorrow is Jeffrey and I do our work, then happy hour at our favorite hangout (Changes), dinner at Pasta Bella, possibly the best Italian restaurant in the nation, and then spending the weekend looking at more houses over in Bremerton.   About Pasta Bella, we recommended it to our friend Chris from the Flamingo Freedom Band, and he sent us a text message after he visited it saying “Thanks for sending me to Pasta Bella”.    That’s high praise, indeed.

Bill and Esther seem to enjoy my cooking. They have “loved” everything I’ve made since we arrived. I know how people will sometimes tell little white lies to spare one’s feelings, so I take it with a tiny grain of salt. It’s nice hearing, anyway. I’m just waiting until I have a chance to make my nationally famous enchiladas. I haven’t had a person yet who has tried them and not swooned in near ecstasy.

I think that’s enough for now. I may not post again until Sunday, so enjoy your weekend.

Today we entered the Bluetooth age.

We’ve been resisting for quite some time, not really seeing a need for it. Our requirements are simple, and email and/or a quick phone call are usually enough. We don’t use the internet browsing features on our cell phones, since we are almost always within easy reach of one of our desktop or laptop computers. Very rarely, we will text each other, usually when a phone call would be too intrusive or it might take a while to see and respond to email. Today we gave in and bought Bluetooth headsets for our cell phones. We haven’t had a land line for years, so cell phones and computers are our main lifeline for communications.

Actually, it was more of a necessity. Washington State recently enacted a law prohibiting talking on the phone while driving, unless it was “hands-free”.

(Sigh…) Now I have to learn the voice command functions on my cell phone, which I’ve avoided for years.
[Read more →]

Today was a slow, leisurely day. I got to sleep in until almost 8 AM and then enjoy my morning coffee and newspaper. Jeffrey started feeling a little antsy, so we decided to empty some more stuff out the cars and put it in storage, and then check out some neighborhoods for houses.

Gawds, I love seeing Mt. Rainier in the south dominating everything for hundreds of miles around.

That part was a little depressing. We saw some great houses, but they weren’t in the best of neighborhoods. One of the houses we were interested in was holding an open house, so we decided to check it out. It’s in a nice neighborhood, has a great yard, and we can make do with the room, though I thought it might be a bit small. The only real drawback we could see was that it was on a fairly busy street, but there is plenty of street parking.

I’m not too worried about where we choose to settle, since I’ll be working from home and my only requirement is the availability of a broadband connection. My preference would be to live a little closer to downtown Seattle since we like to attend the theater (we were regular season ticket holders before we moved to Florida), and most of our friends are either in the downtown area or north. Tacoma is to the south, so to entertain, as we like to, would make it more difficult.

But enough about that. When we find an area we can agree on, and then a house we can agree on, I’ll post more.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we’re staying with Bill and Esther. They have a nice 4 bedroom/2 bath house that they are kindly letting use a part of while we get things situated. The bathroom situation is working out surprisingly well, since we have three men sharing one bathroom and the sole woman getting the other one. The bed we are using is a bit small, but we’re getting used to it.

They have nice sized back yard, already fenced, so our dogs have some room to play in a secure area, though we spent part of yesterday putting chicken wire around the bottom of most of the fence to keep the dogs from slipping through gaps or digging next to the fence in their seemingly eternal quest to explore the neighboring environs.

[Read more →]

Yeah, yeah, I know I didn’t post the next day like I promised, but I had to set up a computer center and try to get situated to work remotely. That took most of the day. Anyway, it’s now Saturday, July 12, for at least 10 more minutes.

The drive from Elko was surprisingly smooth. Heading north out of Elko was a bit hairy — the first half-hour or so of driving was through VERY curvy mountain roads. Then it straightened out for a couple of hours until we hit Boise. No major problems with the radio. We were too busy trying to handle the road conditions to worry about intermittent radio signals. Stopped for gas somewhere outside Boise (I think it was in the area of $4.15 to $4.20 there), and headed north and west. Crossed a good deal of northern Oregon and crossed over into Washington on either I-82 or I-84. Stopped for more gas just past Pasco. Last gas stop before we hit the metro Seattle area. A few more hairy stretches, crossing the 45th parallel (half-way to the North Pole), and then some smooth sailing heading down out of the mountains into the (relative) sea level environs of Puget Sound.

As I noted before, we hit the western edge of Bellevue just after rush hour started to get going. About an hour or so later, we reach the storage facility we had chosen for the moving truck to unload our furniture until we find a permanent home.
[Read more →]

Another to short post with more to follow in the morning.  We made it!!

Hit the edge of Bellevue just as rush hour was starting.  Took over an hour to get to Edmonds.

More after I’ve had a few hours sleep.

Early post today.  Most of yesterday’s drive was like a trip down memory lane for me, but this time I was driving instead of mom or step-dad.  It was a trip seeing city names and historic markers that I hadn’t even thought about since I was a kid and we moved to Montana when I was 12.  Rawlins (the town where part of “Brokeback Mountain” takes place), Jim Bridger (who was very important in the early West and who I had to learn about in grade school), Medicine Bow, Salt Lake City (where I graduated high school and attended college) and Lagoon (an amusement park we went to every summer). 

The annoying parts of the day’s drive included cell phone service, witch we lost just outside of Laramie and didn’t get back until just before Park City, Utah.  We lost them again just after Toole, UT and didn’t get them back.  We had to switch over to roaming because apparently Sprint can’t be bothered with lesser populated areas of Wyoming, Utah and Nevada.  The other big change was gas prices.  When we left Ft. Lauderdale, the price was $4.05.  In Alabama, I don’t think we saw anything higher than $3.94, and it rose gradually after that on our westward journey,  culminating at $4.11 in Evanston, WY.  It’s not too bad here in Elko, but we saw one Chevron station this morning charging $4.47, much higher than anything else we’ve seen in the area.

Oh, and it was fun trying to explain The Tree of Utah to Jeffrey.  Frankly, I thought it might be gone by now, but it’s still out there.  It’s fenced off now.  I guess they were having problems with graffiti.  I also remember it being closer to Salt Lake City than the Utah-Nevada border.  So much for my excellent memory.

[Read more →]

This is another short and sweet post.  We arrived at mom’s a little before 6:30, PST, safe but exausted.  Mom made us a very nice dinner, we watched a little TV and are calling it a night.  I’ll write more about today’s escapades after I get some sleep.

One more thing to note.   We’re going to spend tomorrow here as well.  We need some recuperative downtime after logging almost 3,000 miles in 4 days.  Sleep well.

I know I will.