08:34 – We’re still waiting to hear about the house we made an offer on. It’s a short sale, which complicates things, and the owners had also filed for bankruptcy back in 2013, which complicates things further. The bankruptcy court apparently cleared the bankruptcy in November 2014, but there are still two claims showing against the title. One of them is a pest control company, which is probably only for a few hundred dollars, but the other is by a mortgage company for $27,000. The owners claim that both of those claims were vacated during the bankruptcy, which makes sense, but they’re still showing on the official records. Our broker told me yesterday that it seems likely that the owners’ bankruptcy attorney didn’t do his job to get those liens cleared after the bankruptcy, so they’re currently waiting for him to correct matters. If they can get these issues cleared up, things may begin moving quickly and we may be able to close within the next 30 days or so.
Barbara got a junk mail solicitation yesterday from AAA. She walked into my office, handed me the application, and said she thought we should join. I agreed, so I called them and signed up. The basic membership was $49/year, but included only three free miles of towing. After that, it was $4/mile. The upgraded membership at $84/year included free towing up to 100 miles. Given what we’re likely to be doing over the next year, Barbara said and I agreed that the upgraded membership made sense for us, so I signed up for it. The only question they asked was whether we owned an RV, a motorcycle, or a dualie pickup truck. Presumably they charge more per year if someone owns any of those. We don’t.
I spent some time yesterday working on the instruction guide for the open-pollinated seed kit and will continue work on it today. All but two of the first batch of these kits are already spoken for, but we’ll continue to accept orders for now at the $100 price. If you want to order a kit or kits, see yesterday’s post.
14:34 – We have commenced work on the Augean Stables, AKA my office. The only real differences are that the Augean Stables had been cleaned more recently than my office, and that I have only three or four cattle in my office. Unless some are still staying hidden.
I remember 15 years or so ago, Barbara was complaining about how cluttered and dirty my office was. (That was back before she just gave up on it.) I downloaded and showed her photos of Anand’s office and Pournelle’s office, both of which looked pretty much identical to mine. Of course, Jerry cleaned up his office a bit shortly after that. Roberta had finally made good on her threat to do it herself. She was hauling boxes out of the Great Room and dropping them over the railing to plummet down into the trash cart she’d rolled into the foyer, one floor down. He finally got serious about cleaning up himself when he caught her about to drop a sealed full case of new hard drives over the edge and into the trash cart.
Once we get this place mostly cleaned out, I’ll have just what I need for immediate tasks–shipping kits, stuff I’m currently writing, and so on. When we finally get moved out of here, I’ll take my desk with me. It’s a 3-0 solid-core door, mounted in a corner to 2X6’s bolted into the studs, with the free corner sitting on a 2-drawer file cabinet. That, and removing my bookshelves, which are 1X10 pine boards supported by screw-in wall brackets, means we’ll have a lot of patching, spackling, and painting to do. In fact, we’ll probably paint most of the walls that are currently painted, and probably the ceilings as well. Flat white for the ceilings, gloss ivory for the woodwork and doors, and I’d guess eggshell for the walls throughout. Something nice and neutral that a new buyer can live with.