There was good traffic today at the open house. My realtor said she had at least 30 people go through. My gut feeling is that since this is the very last week-end in July, those who have been waiting to see how the market goes this summer are now hot to buy, since it takes at least a month for a sale to be settled and for a variety of reasons most people would want to be in a new place by Sepetember (school starts, weather starts turning, etc.). So, I am hoping this will work to help the beastie get sold soon.

Nonetheless, the Hope Diamond gets 10s of 1000s of visitors to it a year and no one makes the Smithsonian an offer. But then again, it's not listed on the MLS, either. :)

So now it's all about... waiting...

I can't help but thinking that what I did earlier today was impious in its own way. Yes, I went ahead and visited a Catholic religious supplies store (yo, a big shout out to the Pauline Sisters and their wee Catholic supplies store in Old Town Alexandria - you know, the nun who worked the check-out must have been no older than 25. Wow, I thought, I didn't know there were nuns that young left in North America!) in Alexandria and found a $3.00 St. Joseph plastic dashboard "statue" (in quotes because I must ask myself: is it a statue made of cheap plastic or is it more or less just a cheap plastic figurine?). I then proceeded to my house and buried it head-down, facing the house, next to the shrubs. It is maybe all of one inch below the surface.

Now if I were a devout fellow I would if anything be open to accusations of superstitious beliefs or perhaps just plain ignorance regarding Catholic doctrine. That is forgivable. But come on, everyone who knows me knows I am far from religiously observant. Yes, I have my interests in the deeper questions of life, the nature of the divine, etc., and spend far too much time pondering such unanswerables as "Why are we here, after all?", showing a decided leaning toward pantheism, etc. But no one can ever accuse me of holding a simple faith or being inclined in general to reverence. So I must ask... is giving in to the impulse to engage in iconographic burials of religious figures in some bizarre effort to speed up a financially-inspired process one of the most impious things a heathen fellow like myself can do? I mean, really, is it a bad thing to be doing?

Now wait... if I was so impious, I wouldn't even be asking this question.

OK, so maybe it's not so bad. But what of that plastic statue, huh? What of it?

Well at least it's not a statue of Lazarus. Now that would be utterly tasteless as well as impious.

Swung by the place to check on it this afternoon and wasn't I pleasantly surprised to find it being toured by prospects. I spotted the scene and left without introducing myself, figuring that the last two such folks I spoke to didn't put an offer down on the place, so maybe, just maybe, I should avoid direct contact with them. There is, after all, a reason that one hires an agent to do the selling!

Speaking of which, I found out today from my agent in New York that supposedly, if you bury a statue of St. Joseph in your yard, your house will sell. I went a-Googling and predictably, found these:
http://www.stjosephstatue.com/trad.htm
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/real-estate/20040831a1.asp

I see no reason why this is so much different from indulgences, except that the sellers of the statues are not clergymen. It comes down to this: do something (pay, do, etc.) in exchange for favors from the divine, which you may or may not get. What fundamentally is the difference between that and the ancient Roman approach to this kind of relationship between the gods and men, except in that the Romans waited until after their prayers were answered (or not) before opening the big wallet?

But just to be safe, I am going to head for the nearest Catholic supplies store tomorrow and get a-diggin' so St. Joseph will be all nice and settled in five inches down into my yard for the open house on Sunday. I mean, if it works, it works, and that's good enough for me. I'm nothing if not eminently practical. :)

Good news: the new place in Rochester passed the engineer's inspection and no monkey-business occurred with the contract or anything. Now I just need the loan commitment letter which I should have by the end of the week.

Now if I could just get my place down here sold! I'm having an open house this Sunday and since the heat wave has finally broken down here in DC, at least there's a solid fighting chance for it to get sold this week-end. Fingers crossed...

Well now there are three cats in the basement in the name of keeping the peace. Good thing this is not a permanent situation or else there'd be BIG trouble to deal with. =) I haven't yet heard back from my vet re getting these cats on Prozac.

Other than that, no problems. I am on my way to dual home-ownership real soon unless this beastie gets sold soon! The good news is, we're getting inquiries and I have high hopes for this or next week-end seeing a sell. Pray for me, brethren!

An eventful day indeed. I made the offer on house #2 and they accepted, so it looks like, Lord willin' and the crik don't rise, I am back in bidness. They will settle, too, by 8/15 which was an important issue for me, too, since classes up here start in Sept. Speaking of which I decided in the end to register with my old alma mater, so now I have a UR student ID badge once again and will be taking two classes in the Fall. It's all so weird, walking through the various hallways and in some cases seeing the same pictures and stuff that have been there since I first went there. Well at least the ID badges are sexier than they used to be. But that picture of that guy on this new one I have-- it's not the same one as the one I had on my ID of 15 years ago, that's for sure. We all get a wee older...

Anyway, by popular demand, here's the place: my new place.

Curses, foiled again! What is it with my luck up here and the Neverending Battle for Houses? I'll bet people h ad largely the same experiences 10,000 years ago when going to sell their huts and stuff to each other. Suppose they had real estate agents back in Sumeria?

It's funny, but in the DC area, people don't carry on or try to outprice themselves; they know there's this thing called a market price and there's no fighting it. But Rochester is much more of a buyer's market than the DC area yet you wouldn't think it based on the way my recent potential sellers have been acting. After these past two days I found three nice places, and ranked them. I put an offer on #1 today, but $8k less than list (the most recent sale in their street was $10k less than what they had their place listed for, and it was a real nice place, too), and they countered with a $2k reduction and, get this-- they were going to take the washer and dryer, too!

Just when do they expect to sell this house I wonder? Next year some time?

Anyway, I will be heading out to my realtor's again tomorrow to put an offer on #2. That one is more worth the money they have it listed at, and so I doubt I will need to play the bargainer as much with this one. Sheesh.

As for my pre-med classes, I think I will be going (back) to the U of R for them. RIT has a good reputation for solid pre-med classes but alas doesn't have the class size to accomodate; most of their Fall quarter classes are already closed out! So I guess I will be heading back to my undergraduate alma mater for this, the next stage of my own version of the "Strange and Awesome Journey of Life". Not unlike an eagle returning to his natal nest or a salmon heading back up stream, yada yada yada. Well, maybe not that poetic an act, but still, it has some kick to it. :) I will be seeing UR's ac ad folks tomorrow and sign up for classes.

Oh yeah, I'm dropping $10k off my place in Alexandria. It seems the peak for this season was met in June and now prices heading into the Fall are declining; my realtor there is reporting price reductions all over the place. You can't fight city hall (or the market), that's for sure. So down comes the price. Que serah serah...

My first day of house-hunting yielded one good candidate. I will spend tomorrow looking at some other places, since I have learned my lesson: have two places in mind before declaring victory and going home. Last time I left with only one house in mind, I got burned, as you all know.

Oh, and Todd and Sandy-- great dinner! Thanks!

Cat trouble. One of my cats just seems not to be able to keep from chasing the smallest cat in the house, who also happens to be one of my friend's cats (whose house, if you will recall, is where I am living). It doesn't seem the usual behavioral modifications (spray bottle, etc.) seem to have any effect. So now I am thinking of putting the kitty on Prozac. Yes, it has come to this. Well, I guess it's better than the prospect of seeing him live in the basement more or less for the next month or so, until I am back in Rochester.

Speaking of moving, I discovered a couple things messed up in my house-for-sale. Very minor, but the kind of things that should be addressed for show-- lawn overgrown, leaky external faucet (requiring some internal water-damage repair too, alas), but all easily fixed. However I went to a local large housing supply place and they gave me a reference to a contractor who, after looking at the stuff I wanted done, contacted me today with an estimate, which included $100 for lawn mowing my postage-stamp of a lawn and $400 for a simple gutter-cleaning (we're talking a total of maybe 15' of gutter here).

We didn't get very far into the conversation.

I called the painter who did my new paint job and hopefully he will be able to address these general issues for more reasonable compensation.

Lesson to be Learned (this will be particularly funny to those of you reading this who who live down here):
"Egads! Not even northern Virginia is safe from outrageous prices and those who think they can charge them!!"

Har, har, har....

Can you believe that my old lawn-mowing people won't even consider coming out once to mow my now-overgrown lawn? A contract for weeklies, sure, they'll do that. But they didn't even want to get to price for coming out once and blasting that sucker.

Sigh... what's a spoiled suburbanite to do? Well, read this, for one thing, and have a good solid laugh!

Already had some traffic at the place; realtors left a couple cards. That's to be welcomed, but I really wasn't expecting the empty beer cars and cigarette butts right there in the middle of the living room, and all over my brand-new carpeting no less! I mean, at least use a trash can and some ashtrays!! Geez! =)

Like many of you, I awoke this morning to the news of the attacks in London. Geez, when's it gonna end? My less optimistic side says it's just going to go on and on until something really bad happens. Ugh. OK, time to lighten up and go back to my mundane and pedantic dribblings on the difficulties of, egad, selling a house in norther Virginia (things like the news help me to keep any "problems" I may have well in perspective).

The new carpeting and painting is done, and the house listed on MLS tonight. My realtor expects people to be swinging by tomorrow and all week-end. The place is empty, and a bright white-- paint and carpeting. White makes the place look bigger and gives it a "clean" feel. Also, and this is weird, but my realtor said to go get some "Hawaiian Breeze" scented stuff and put it in the house. Well, she has been right about everything else so far, so I went to the store and lo and behond there is such an animal. I got some kind of auto-puffer and according to her, the stuff has a sort of pleasing and positive affect on people's minds, making them want to return, thereby speeding up the sale. So there it sits, puffing away in solitude all night. I must admit, it is sure to beat the freshly-painted and -carpeted smell, as nice as that is in its own way.

So it has come to this. Subversive olfactory-oriented, non-conventional means of persuasion. Isn't there something in the Geneva Convention against this sort of thing? =)

Anyway, between that and the advice she gave me regarding putting the brightest kinds of lights I can find in the place, I hope to have this sucker sold soon.

Things are pushed up a day; painting took one day longer than expected. It shouldn't affect the listing though; house should be on the MLS system by this Friday.

My flight to Rochester is booked; some time between July 18-22, with any luck I'll have located my new digs up there -- something in hardwood floors and lots of rooms to hold the many cats and their various cat-toys. Without carpeting, too, it makes keeping the place up sooo much easier, as well as making it a lot more fun to watch the cats try to get up to speed as they dart from one end of the house to another! =).

My aim if to settle on the place by mid-August and be moved in by no later than Aug. 20. Wish me luck in this, the latest incarnation of my "best-laid plans"...

Signed the posting papers today and the sucker hits the market late next week. In the mean time, hope y'all have a great 4th!

Newsflash: DC plans to test its latest evacuation plan on July 4 by changing the traffic lights on all major downtown routes on Monday night, 15 mins. after the downtown fireworks have ended.

Let's just say that I don't plan on being there.

Which leads me to another topic: "Beltway Mystique". Perhaps one day in the past it was fashionable, sexy, mystique-like to live in or near "The Beltway". While it's true this is the capital of the single most powerful country in the world, it's also true that everything you have ever heard about getting around in this area as being something like life in Hell has probably been understated. But hey, if you want a powerful regional economy, you have to expect nasty traffic and population issues. There ain't no free lunch.