She's so mean, but I don't care; I love her eyes and her wild wild hair

[rolanni]

We've got some catching up to do here, so let's get to it!

First!  Quicksliver Chapter Five is now on the web, for your perusal.  Here's your link.

Second! The Science Fiction Romance Brigade Summer Blog Hop is on!  Talk about your favorite Science Fiction Romance, get suggestions for lots of great reading, and maybe win an Amazon gift card.  Here's your link.

Third! AsyouknowBob, Steve and I are looking to move out of our house here in the country (which is harder to contemplate in this season than in, oh, Deep Winter), and Into Town. Which town is still up in the air.  We have to seriously consider Waterville which is, after all, where our doctors and the vets and most of the people we know are.  On the other hand, I'm still trying to finagle, if not a $400,000 condo oceanfront, at least a move that gets us closer to Old Orchard Beach, Portland, the train outta town &c.  So, it's being a dance.

We have been talking to a real estate agent, who kind of ran us through how this was going to go, from the buyer side and the seller side.  One of the things she went over was putting down earnest money, when we found the House of our Dreams (which, honestly, we're not likely to do, but give her a break; she's never been to Liad).  And she said something like, "So, you'll put down a couple hundred dollars in earnest. . ."  At which point I looked at Steve and Steve looked at me and we did not laugh, even though we were recalling that when we found this house, we put down two dollars in earnest money.  Steve put down his silver dollar that he always carried, and I put down mine.  Our agent at that time had been a social worker.  He took the coins, and wrote us out a receipt as it it were perfectly unexceptional.  Shame he's long retired.

One of the things this agent said to us, when she came out to look at our house was something to the effect of how much STUFF we had.  A couple weeks later, the contractor echoed that.  Now, I don't disagree that we have stuff -- books and papers, mostly -- but I didn't think we were out of line for writers, really.  I said something to the effect that creativity is messy, and kind of got a Look.  Today, however, Trulia search service sent me this house as possibly of interest.  It's in Rockland, which isn't actually near Portland, or OOB, or the train, but does abut the Atlantic Ocean, and is home to several museums, and has a robust summer music program.  Here's the link.

By golly, creativity is messy.

Let's see, what else?

Oh!  I bought some socks (don't judge me! I had a coupon), which have, so Socks Addict tells me, shipped.  They have shipped via the United States Post Office second-day priority, with insurance, and will require an adult's signature when they arrive.  I mean, I knew they were stripe-y socks, but I didn't know they were as racy as that.

. . .I think that may be all the news that's fit to print at the moment.  Which is good, because I need to get to work.

L8R.

Today's blog title is brought to you by Escape Club, "Wild, Wild West."  Here's your link.

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Progress on One of Five
70,000/100,000 OR 70% complete

"Our Rys bids fair to become a poet."

He laughed again, feeling his cheeks warm.

"I fear I am eloquent only on subjects dear to me."

"Well, that's as should be, isn't it? But tell me now, Rys Silvertongue, are these grapes jam or are they supper?"

Comments

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Oooooh, assessors database. Thank you!

I've noticed that a lot of the old houses don't have closets. I, on the other hand, don't have a wardrobe, or a china closet, either.

Particular to this one, it also looks like she's been cooking a wood stove. I don't think I've cooked on a woodstove. . .ever. Unless you count soup on the basement woodstove, during the Great Ice Storm.

I also worry about insulation. Some of the old houses were insulated with newspapers. Which is fine for clement places, and better'n nothing, but I can't afford to heat the Great Outdoors -- and it looks like she didn't/doesn't either. I'm betting Winter is passed in the kitchen (woodstove) and the living room (woodstove), with the electric heat coming on only in the Direst Emergencies.

Our Unbreakable Rule of Thumb in re Places to Live: We must be able to move into it, set up, and work comfortably. We do not have the income for extensive ongoing repairs, and, being as we're writers, we already have a time-consuming occupation, so we don't need to renovate the house in order to fill our empty hours. Also, neither one of us is particularly handy. We can scrape and we can paint, and re-affix hinges and things, but that's about it.

All of that pretty much means that we're seriously looking at an old house only if the previous owners did bring it up to spec, which means that the price is immediately above our touch. This house, the house of a fellow artist -- she put up with stuff, did stop-gaps, and fixed what Absolutely Broke. We did a little better with this house -- gave it a new roof, and new windows all around, blew extra insulation in under the eaves, gave it (some) new rugs, and (were compelled by Circumstances to give it) a new bathroom -- but we didn't do nearly as much as we honestly thought we would when we bought it, and it's newer by about a hundred years.