Category: Uncategorized (Page 12 of 89)

We painted the small half bath by the living room a color called “barn door red.” It was a perfect match to the border we wanted to put over the border that was there. We also got new flooring to replace the badly stained white vinyl. So the room looks a lot different. The really cool thing is that the picture of the blue jays that Krista painted the frame on matches the walls perfectly. I think it looks so much more contemporary this color than it did white! I’m very glad I did it.

Dad has either 6 or 7 weeks left at Marshfield Clinic (he will decide once he sees how it plays out with insurance costs, etc.). He is so ready to be done with that place. I’m glad he got to work in a hospital setting for a while, but I don’t think it was as great as he thought it would be. And I know it didn’t use his best skills. I hope he can find something way more enjoyable in Tennessee!

Just one example: he thought he was on call this past week, because that was what the schedule he accessed said. Then the boss today said, “Woops, it wasn’t you that was on call; it was so-and-so.” So he spent the entire week glued to his cell phone and didn’t get paid for it and now this week he is actually on call. It is stuff like that…

We have a lot to do before he can leave, but he got quite a bit done this past weekend. He needed to open up the wall in the recording room and take out a window and an exhaust fan, because lots of air was getting in there. Then he insulated it and closed it up. Then he also had to move the pipes to the front bathroom that keep freezing. He put them under the floor – essentially in the basement, though only about a foot from where they were. He still has to do the final hookup. But those were two “big” projects that needed doing and it only took the one weekend. He is also working just about every day on emptying out The Garage. Another HUGE project!

Pray for him, if you think of it. He is both excited and conflicted about leaving his job and often overwhelmed with what all needs doing.

Prepare to be unimpressed. We did, after all, only pay a little for it. But imagine…

First, from the back. Look at that view!!

Then, the dining room/ kitchen opened up. Needs a lot of work, I know!

How about a picture of the backyard?  Ours just goes from the fence to the end of the rock walls – it is triangular in shape.

Then a shot looking toward the front from the same place. A couple of those trees will go.

A few from the inside, but remember it is a complete gut-job!

We are home safe and exhausted. But back to work today. My day was great. I was training the new gal and she is going to be so good for the place. I’m excited to see what new things she will bring in. I will be teaching one more exercise class – tai chi tomorrow, then I’ll be done with that and only doing music things. Plus getting ready for the move.  Should be fun.

Looking forward to warmer temperatures later this week, but it is beautiful out today, if you are inside looking out!

Last night was the final night for The Garage and it certainly went out with a bang! Jeff ran a thank-you in the Alert and mentioned we were having free pizza and pop, plus they did a front page article with big picture, so people turned out. At one point, Dad counted 65 kids, plus over 10 adults. It was noisy!  We got the pizza from Walmart for $5.00 a piece – 20 of them, and heated them up, one after the other, all night! 35 liters of pop, too, plus a bunch of cookies. And we gave away candy bars as Bingo prizes. We also had over 30 door prizes, so we drew names and gave away things like basketballs, Kwik Trip gift cards, etc. It was quite the bash. The paper came a took a picture of all the kids in a group, and it was quite the crowd.

We didn’t get packed for our trip, because we didn’t know until yesterday if we were going to be able to close on the house, because of some sort of a glitch with the sellers and the estate the house had been part of. It was inherited by two brothers… Anyway, they got it cleared up, so now we know what tools to bring, so we will finish packing this a.m. My packing didn’t get done because I had an accompaniment that was given me yesterday for an audition right after we get back, so I spent a while getting that put together into a booklet and practicing it some, then she emailed and said they wouldn’t need me after all. But it had already made a big hole in my already busy day, which also included lessons, then the party. But we aren’t on any sort of a schedule, and it is now 6:15, so we’ll get off by 9:00, I would say.

We’ll keep you posted via phone texts!

We’ll be heading down to Bristol again on Saturday morning. We’ll probably drive to about Indianapolis on Saturday, then finish the trip on Sunday. We have an appointment at 1800 Windsor Ave at 9:00 on Monday morning to do a walk through with the home inspection guy and the realtor.  We already know a lot about what we are going to find, both from pictures and from emails from the owner to his realtor that are forwarded to us. The water and electric are off at the boxes, because work has been started and not finished, so turning either on could be catastrophic at this point. Hopefully we will be able to tell if things are fixable, although I have no reason to doubt that they will be. The seller seems to be pretty straightforward about things, and he does have a bible verse at the end of his emails. (Of course, we are talking “down south” and maybe everyone does that! We know we have a lot to learn about Tennessee culture.)

We are excited to be moving forward again on this anticipated relocation.

We spent New Year’s Eve the same as we have for the past 6, 7, I don’t remember, years. We had a party at the senior center. I called Bingo, then stumped them with my Wheel of Fortune puzzles – a quote from Dr. Suess, anyone? (“A person’s a person, no matter how small.” Just in case you were wondering.)  Dad’s team creamed the others, but it wasn’t because I gave him a look at the puzzles ahead of time, as some were beginning to wonder. He had another couple with him, who happen to be brilliant, and could pull the large amounts of money out of the pot (we don’t have a wheel to spin, so we draw out of a pot.)

We ate fudge and pistachio salad and mixed nuts and drank that sparkling grape juice they make for such occasions. All in all, it was a great time, but I was exhausted when we got home around 8:30. Then we watched “Drum Line” together before heading to bed well before midnight.

We started the year with waffles for breakfast, then have spent the day getting things organized and such. Nothing too special. Dad is opening The Garage tonight. It is the 3rd to last night it will be open, so he didn’t want to be closed because of the holiday. Next Friday is the last day we will be open. We are having a big party that night.  Then heading to Bristol the next morning. I can’t wait to see this house that we have an accepted offer on. I sure hope it is all we expect it to be. We’ve been poring over the pictures on line and planning what we are going to do to improve the layout. It is small (no way 940 square feet can’t be small), but has potential to be a comfortable 2 bedroom with plenty of storage if we do some creative things with the 3rd bedroom. More later (after we see it in person!)

To sum it up, it was more than we expected. We hoped we would like everything, but we didn’t expect to love it so much. I’m so glad we chose Bristol over Johnson City, because it is a much better size community and has a more small town feel, while still being very big, compared to what we are used to.

We really like the banker that we are working with, now that we have met her. Same for the realtor that is in charge – not our agent, but the person that was actually recommended by Dave Ramsey. And we even met the seller of the house, quite by accident, and we really like her.  We were there in the morning, just taking exterior pictures, because the sun was shining on it so nice, and she just happened to show up, intending to check out the inside and make sure everything was ready for us to see it. But she offered to show us around and it was so nice to hear her tell about it, rather than just the realtor. So we got into the house twice – once with the owner and once with the realtor. Basically it is a lot nicer in person than it appeared in pictures. The floors are beautiful, the rooms are large. Yes, the appliances are older, but we could see that before. The whole feel of it is so right.

And we spent time in the community and liked what we saw. We even went to a dance recital at the Paramount Center for the performing arts – a very old, nicely restored theater in the downtown area. It was very well done and we totally enjoyed ourselves. Then we went over to the Blackbird Bakery, another restored building that is more like a cafe/bakery. They had a jazz duo playing and we had a chocolate cheesecake that was divine. Then we drove around enjoying the town at night a bit.

The only bad part was the church we decided to go to. We won’t be going there again, but we did get a nice Christmas goodie bag with apples and snacks we ate for lunch and on the trip home!

Pictures of the house and town. The last one is a view from the mountain not far from our house.  You don’t quite get the feel of it in a picture, but it is quite beautiful!

Now it looks like we won’t be able to close on the house this Friday. We’ll still be going down, since we have the tickets purchased. And we do need to see the house before we buy it. But we may have to just do it electronically later in the month, once the bank gets everything together. It all started to fall apart when they turned it over to a certain gal at the bank who does the paperwork. She never knows what she needs. And she said it was because of the appraisal not being done, but we paid for that (i.e. the money for it was drawn out of our bank account) over the Thanksgiving holiday. So why didn’t they get it done until last Thursday? And why, if they did indeed get it done last Thursday, have we not heard the results?

When we changed the closing date to December 18th, they seemed to indicate that would be plenty of time. We have been getting everything they asked for to them as quickly as possible. But they keep needing one more thing. And it never ends.

AHHHHGGGGHHH!

Maybe I should have known this, but after paying $800 and some for the tickets, I had to pay another $110 today for seats. Yes, our tickets on two of the flights did not come with seats. But at least I got to choose seats that will allow Dad to stretch out his bad knee, so he can (hopefully) be more comfortable. On another flight, we had inside seats, so I changed our seats so we could be on the aisle. I expected to have to pay extra for that, but not to have to pay extra just to have seats. Weird.