11:06 – It was 70.0F (21C) when I took Colin out at 0720, sunny and cloudless.
Frances and Al came up Friday morning, stayed the night, and attended yesterday’s auction of Bonnie’s house and its contents. There were a lot of people at the auction, with cars parked up and down Macedonia Church Road, including along the front edge of our property.
The house and 0.6 acre it sits on sold for $67,000, which was more than I expected. (It’s tiny; more a cottage than a house.) Barbara called as they were auctioning the house itself. As I headed out our front door, I heard the auctioneer calling $67,000 for the final time. I walked on up to the house and greeted several of our neighbors and other local folks we know.
We’d been very concerned that the house would be bought by someone undesirable or, just as bad, someone who was buying it to rent out. We were hoping for a nice young couple, a nice retired couple, or perhaps weekenders from down in the Triad.
As it turned out, we couldn’t have hoped for better. It was bought by a couple who owns a cattle farm across US21 from us. They’re going to rent it, but that’s fine with us. The renter will be their niece (or daughter; Barbara heard daughter and I heard niece). She’ll probably be there indefinitely, and the new owners assured us that they’d never rent it to anyone undesirable. They no more want trash living in the neighborhood than we do. And Kim, the wife, assured us that the house would always look as good as it does now, if not better.
Our new neighbor is their daughter (or niece), Grace. She’s about 22 and just graduated from UNC/ECU in Greenville, where she’s kept her college apartment while looking for a job. She found a job, here, as a teacher at Sparta Elementary, and will be moving in in the next couple of weeks.
So now instead of referring to it as “Bonnie’s house” we’re training ourselves to refer to it as “Grace’s house”.
Email from Kathy overnight. While Mike was building shelves yesterday, she got started on repackaging the 400 pounds of flour they bought. The LDS foil-laminate bags and oxygen absorbers hadn’t arrived yet, so she decided to do a first-pass repackaging using her Foodsaver vacuum sealer. Once the LDS stuff arrives, she’ll enclose each of those inner bags in a Mylar bag with oxygen absorber. That’ll make the Mylar bagging go much, much faster, although flour will still make a mess with the vacuum sealer. Just less of a mess than trying to bag it directly into the Mylar bags.