House Hunting and Such

First of all, we are not buying a house. But for certain reasons that I don’t feel like explaining right now, we are hunting for a house that we will rent. We’re still not sure if it will all work out, but we went out with a Realtor* to check out some homes. Here is just one little experience we wanted to share:

This is a cute little house that was built in the 1930s but has been updated.

Here is the living room.

Here is the kitchen.

Then you go down the stairs to the family room.

Here is one end of the family room.

And here is the downstairs bathroom.

“Hey, that seems pretty nice,” you think. “That bathroom especially is so spacious!”

Yes, the bathroom is spacious. In fact, you’ll probably want to put a TV in there. Because it is the other end of the family room; pictures 5 and 6 are two ends of the same room. You could literally watch TV while you went to the bathroom because there is no door, no wall, not even a curtain. We laughed forever about it. And the previous owners just added that bathroom. Come on! Is no bathroom really worse than a bathroom that is open to your family room?

Also, if you look carefully in picture 4, you can see a box looking thing around the wall behind the stairs. That is a big ledge thing that is part of the wall, and the ceiling slopes down to it. The owners or Realtors or whoever put blankets on it with a copy of The Purpose Driven Life, like they were saying, “Here’s a great place to curl up with a mediocre inspirational book and maybe take a nap.” Sure. Why sleep in a bed when I could sleep on some plaster?

Needless to say, that house did not make the cut.

In other news, we planted a little salsa garden in a pot. It doesn’t have all the ingredients for salsa, and it has a couple extra herbs that you wouldn’t necessarily put in salsa, but it is pretty, and I am excited about it.

If you go in a circle from the top, you will see Serrano peppers, tomatoes (romas and heirloom rutgers), chives, and purple basil. And then scattered throughout are Celosia flowers. I saw on TV that they are a natural bug repellant, and they give the pot bright, fiesta colors. I am really happy with it because we found the pot for free on the side of the road and then put the plants in and soon we’ll have a little portable garden! I know it’s kind of late to plant tomatoes, but they assured us that we could still have a good fall harvest. And I can use the other herbs now! It makes me really happy to have fresh basil at my disposal. And you can see some Serranos already growing. Hooray! Dane and I have fun going to water it every morning.

Speaking of Dane, he chews on everything. I know that most babies put a lot of things in their mouths, but I think Dane might have an extra talent. He has chewed on the corner of the coffee table, cardboard boxes, all of his toys, shoes, and this book:

Those of you who took Econ 110 may recognize this book as New Ideas from Dead Economists. Dane thought it was yummy.

Here he is feeling the immense weight of keeping his superhero alter ego a secret:

And here he is perfecting his circus act of spinning cups:

And here he is trying to eat the camera:

Also, we watched Kenji compete in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament in Park City last weekend. Check out the action:

Finally, here is Dane enjoying watching his Uncle Kenji play:



*Note: Realtor is a proper noun for a real estate agent who is part of the National Association of Realtors. Yeah. I lost to Joel in a game of Speed Scrabble over that.