House Hunters round 2

Saw some beauties today. All had garages, but evidently people in Minneapolis don't always use their garages. 2 had roofs so ragged and so many siding problems that we were afraid to even touch the door to open them.

2 houses had beautiful back decks and screened in porches, with fully fenced yards.

I guess my favorite one was a 2 car garage, huge screened porch, huge back deck with built-in fire pit, giant kitchen, finished basement, 3 tiers of front  porch flower beds, all brick and a second floor kitchen suite. IT also had an outdoor bar. It was my favorite, by far, but the downside is that it is only close to the light rail and very few of the other urban amenities that we crave. The good news is that there are SO MANY HOUSES for sale in Minneapolis that we could look forever and ever.  The second house we saw had tons of beautiful built-in bars, hutches, cabinets and original woodwork, with leaded glass windows.

Should post some links to the houses. Here's the one that I really liked:

Door to nowhere

Also, the door to nowhere is now gone. Sided over. Boarded up. Gone. Finito.
Ironic that we just removed a vestige of the rental property  it used to be now that it's officially rental property again.

oh well. I can't wait to see the completed deal!

Did I mention this new doggie?

We've been talking for awhile about adding a new dog to our house now that Skye has passed away. I really can't talk about my White Dragon very much because I miss her and we all cry about it when we talk about her death and leaving us. I loved our White Beast and I'd get another white German Shepherd in a heart beat if I could handle it.

But we live in an apartment and we probably shouldn't get another big dog right now. Somehow, we found the next best thing: a Corgi.

There have been many candidates for dog 2 in our lives, dachshunds,  dobermans and for awhile we had two dogs, a BEAGLE being one of them, until Chris came along to rescue her. But the corgi won out, in the end. As luck would have it, a former coworker has bread some corgis and one that looks just like a mini-Nitro will soon be coming our way. We just have to drive down to KC to pick it up.  The corgi's sire is named Harry Potter, and he's some super duper awesome champion award winning corgi.

Our corgi is not a champion elite wonderbreed, he's just  a regular dog that has a "fluff' coat, which makes him ineligible for breeding of any kind. I just hope that it all works out.  Will post photos once I know for a100% fact that he's ours (though I am pretty sure right now he is ours)

House Hunters

"How do you keep finding these ghetto places?" My friend queried, after I mentioned that the water was turned off in our apartment (again) because there's only one primary water shut-off in the building.

Something in that comment shook me. Kansas City house definitely tarnished our reputation, but we realized we liked it. It kept us humble, it kept life real. We knew what the really important things in life were, and stopped bitching about the small stuff that other people seem to think Ruin Their Lives. But certainly, I don't want the reputation of being ghetto.

So we called a realtor, a friend of a friend up here and we started looking at houses in the Supreme Apple Valley suburb. Dan and I had convulsions. We promised we'd keep an open mind, but it went something like this. "Beige....big yards for mowing....uniform grass.....giant swing set...head explode!" Our Realtor wanted to show us what we could get for  the cost in the suburbs and we wanted to be sure that we knew that we saw "everything" there is to offer in all parts of the metro. She took us to a little enclave in the suburbs that I liked, though. Brand new construction, which we thought we'd never imagine ourselves in, but it's a little community built on smaller lots, like the city, and it has a lovely 4 acre lake with a big set of trails all around it. It has an association, and the houses inside of it actually had some character. And the kitchen was huge. It was pretty affordable, which in Minnesota terms means that it was under 300K.

But next weekend we're going to look at houses in the real city, near the good side of Nokomis and Calhoun and other random parts of the city that we don't know about yet.

House requirements:
Tons of cabinet space in the kitchen
1 car garage or better
3 bedrooms
2 bathrooms
minimal repairs needed???
Well-insulated
Near light rail/bus
close to interstate 35/w or 35/E

Easter in Review

Today I'm making banana bread with chocolate chips, couscous with chicken and tomatoes and curry, bananas dipped in chocolate and the bestest creamed potatoes.
Today I'm basically wishing that I was in Cedar Rapids, with my family. In 2009, we had a huge Easter gathering and all of us played baseball, including my 80 year old grandfather. He still has a full head of dark black hair as he raced around the bases. We even tried to  run the bases  Babe Ruth style for him, but he wouldn't let us. We took a long hike to the river and played iwth the dogs, it was a beautiful and warm day.

Today I'm also wishing that I was in Kansas City for the big Easter Egg hunt this year. If I hadn't left, I would have been the Easter Bunny. For real. Thousands (literally) of kids would have sat on my lap while I smiled and talked about being the Easter Bunny.


Today I am also trying really hard to be OK. My friend who has been quarreling with her dad received a call from him today, and they apologized and were very sweet to her. Their argument was less severe, and I'm glad for her. But I can't stop thinking about our last Easter together as a family, when we knew things were surely going to hell in a handbasket as fast as they could, but we were going to pretend anyway.

Today,  I'm wishing you the very best, because that's all that anyone can ask for. Jesus Christ, Superstar.

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

When the stock market crashes on the Thursday before Easter, you—an ambitious, although ineffectual and not entirely ethical young broker—are convinced that you’re facing the Weekend from Hell. Before the market reopens on Monday, you’re going to have to scramble and scheme to cover your butt, but there’s no way you can anticipate the baffling disappearance of a 300-pound psychic, the fall from grace of a born-again monkey, or the intrusion in your life of a tattooed stranger intent on blowing your mind and most of your fuses. Over these fateful three days, you will be forced to confront everything from mysterious African rituals to legendary amphibians, from tarot-card bombshells to street violence, from your own sexuality to outer space. This is, after all, a Tom Robbins novel—and the author has never been in finer form.(

The Boxer

In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev'ry glove that layed him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving"
But the fighter still remains

More lyrics: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/s/simon+and+garfunkel/#share