The seller made a counter-offer last week, which we signed. She didn’t want any more money, just wanted to move the closing up from 60 days to 30 days. That makes the closing date February 9th. I checked with the bank to make sure that was enough time for all the paperwork to be done, and we signed last Thursday. Yesterday (Monday) we met the house inspector at the place and spent two hours walking through the place. He looked at everything, inside and out, top to bottom. The results were surprisingly good.

There are some things that need to be done. The back half of the roof is due for re-roofing, but the type of roof that’s on there is fairly inexpensive. The inspector was guessing in the neighborhood of a couple thousand to have it done. All the roof trusses and floor joists are solid, with no signs of water or bug damage. We get termites here, so it’s good news that there’s no sign of them. The inspector said that this was probably the driest house he’s been under in the last year. We were worreid about the rust on the appliances in the kitchen, but he said that things just rust here really fast. Especially since the heat has been off for a month in really cold temperatures. Also, they shampooed the carpets after the heat was off, so that moisture had a chance to attack the little scratches on the appliances. There was no sign of water damage at all anywhere else in the kitchen or underneath the kitchen floor. Even the bathroom floor, which we know is a little mooshy passed the inspection with flying colors. We told him that we were planning to re-do it, so it only needed to stay standing until next summer. He said it would stay standing for years, even after getting underneath and looking at the floor from below. He didn’t even seem too worried about the back deck.

There’s still one big hitch in the forward motion of our plan. When the inspector got there and we started walking through the house, we discovered that the pipes were all frozen solid. The water was on, but even the toilet was filled with solid ice. That doesn’t happen around here often, and I’m sure the seller (currently living in Mexico) didn’t even think about it, but those of us from colder climes know that bad things can happen when you freeze all your pipes.

The real estate agent is going to get in touch with the seller and once the pipes are thawed, the inspector will come back and check out the plumbing situation. He will inspect the water heater too, to make sure it’s working. But even if they do have a burst pipe, it would have to be pretty darn catastrophic to do something irrepairable. The seller has a local handyman, so hopefully he will take care of the situation promptly.

We’ll be getting the official inspection report from the inspector in the next day or so, so I’ll have a better grasp on all the little details that would need to be updated over time. After that, we’ll probably re-offer based on reducing the offer by however much it will cost to re-do the roof, and to fix any problems there might be from the burst pipes. If she agrees, then it’s just a matter of signing the paperwork for the loan, and we’re in. We have until February 9th to do that. it still feels kinda stressful, but we feel really good after the positive inspection.

Just wanted to point out a new link in the Blogroll at the left. It’s called Nature Journal, and it’s to one of the blogs of a woman named Mary Taitt, who is what I want to be when I grow up. Except for maybe not so much with the fibromyalgia, which sounds unpleasant. Once you’re done perusing her Naturalist Journal blog, click on her profile and you’ll see a long list of other blogs she keeps. She’s an artist, naturalist, activist, and generally nifty person.

She also took possibly the most amazingly coolest picture I have ever seen. Can you tell what it is? If you click on her main blog (from the link over there on the left of this screen) and scroll down, you’ll see her explanation.

I’ve been working through the process of creating yarn from sheep hair. I had done all the other steps, but hadn’t tried my hand at carding yet. This week I gave it a go, and let me tell you, it’s not as easy as you might think. I thought my shoulders would fall off after the first night. I was very glad to find this really helpful set of online videos showing the process with handcarders. That’s not how I was doing it, and her way is a *lot* easier. So here’s the wool that I’ve carded in the last couple nights, and it’s the last of the wool I have to prepare for spinning.

Now I get to do just the spinning (which is my favorite part), or I can start cleaning and processing the big bag of llama hair that Kathy brought me last year. I suspect that wool is a lot easier to spin than llama hair, so I think I’ll stick with wool as long as I have supplies.

Go outside!

I’m not much of a Resolution sort, but the Challenge for this month over at the Self Portrait Challenge is to document your resolutions with self portraits. This has me thinking about what sort of things I’d like to do more or less of in the next year, and this is a picture of me this morning looking for interesting tracks in the fresh snow on the golf course down the road from our current apartment. No such thing as spending too much time outside, so I think I’ll stick with this for a resolution.

While I was out there, I found this interesting convergence of tracks in the snow. It looks like a raccoon playground.

Not sure if it comes through in the small picture, but all those roughly in-line dark spots all through the center of the picture are raccoon tracks. They wander fairly aimlessly, sometimes a few different sets come together and create interesting spiral patterns. Were they playing? Was there something interesting to eat there? Are they doing crazy raccoon moon ritual dances by the light of the moon? You can click on this one for a closer view of the spiral pattern.

On my way back, I came across this fascinating creature looking for a place to hide from the snow.

It’s a Northwestern Salamander, and this one is about 8 inches long, a hefty little guy. I don’t know what he was doing out in the snow. They’re cold-blooded, and this fellow was moving pretty slowly. After I took a few pictures, I picked him up with a stick (those glands behind his eyes secrete an irritating chemical that I didn’t want on my hands) and put him near the edge of a long rock overhang so that he could crawl under it for a while. His big dark body crawling across a huge meadow of snow was going to get him snatched up by a predator pretty quick. I thought that they hibernated under leaf litter for the winter, but when I just looked them up, it turns out that they are active year-round. I must have been thinking of ensatinas. I watched him for a while before I moved him and he was either looking for a place to curl up and rest or he was looking for food (or, of course, he could have been doing something that a non-amphibian mind can’t even conceive of). They eat little animals–bugs and stuff–and he was pocking his nose under every exposed rock that he came to. Watching him walk was extraordinary. I’ve seen them before, but never been able to watch them walk for so long or so slowly. With each step, the curl and uncurl of his long, graceful toes was one of those tiny beautiful amazing things that makes you believe in God.

As I left the golf course, I passed a group of 10 or 12 kids and a dog, all (except the dog) carrying various implements to be used for sliding down snow-covered hills. Most of the kids veered off when they saw me, heading for a different slope, but one of the older girls walked towards me.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Umm, sooooo. Is it, like, okay for us to sled here? I’ve never been here before, but it’s just that it’s snowing, and there are these hills, and…” And she gestured in such a way that I could see she realized the hopelessness of explaining to an adult just how it is that the amazing conjuction of snow and hills just made it necessary that they sled here.

“Yes, it’s fine,” I told her. And I hope that they got to sled a whole bunch before anyone who actually has any authority over the golf course told them that they had to stop.

Well, we took the plunge and made an offer on the yellow house. Here are some pictures of the place. (You can click on any of the pictures for a bigger version.) The seller has until the 10th to respond to our offer. The seller’s name is Buffi Bloom, how cool is that?

Just a quick update: I talked to the Bank Lady. It should be no problem to get a home improvement loan concurrent with the home financing loan since the purchase price of this one is so low. It’s a different department that pre-approves that one, so we should know in a day or two how much we would be able to spend on a garage. We’re meeting with the real estate agent tomorrow at lunchtime to make an offer, contingent upon being able to get financing on the house and financing on building a garage. I’m sure we’ll talk about it more tonight to be sure that we feel good about that decision before we actually sign any papers tomorrow. More updates to follow, I’m sure.

One more item: We didn’t like the agent we were using. We looked for a new agent. We met with the listing agent for this house that we like, and we really like her. If we were going to continue looking at other houses, we would have her be our agent. But since she’s the listing agent for this particular house, should we go out and find another one? Anyone who knows anything about this sort of thing, feel free to leave advice about having the seller’s agent double as our agent also.

Yep, that’s right, we’re buying a house. It’s a confusing process so far, but I think we’re starting to get a handle on it. Our agent wasn’t very helpful, so we decided to stop working with her and just have the listing agents show us houses until we came across an agent that we wanted to work with exclusively. This led to an odd, Seinfeld-esque conversation last night when we met with David, the listing agent for this property. After determining that we didn’t already have an agent, he said several times that he would be happy to help us make an offer on this place, or show us any other places we would be interested in. We politely avoided his come-ons, just saying thank you. I suspect that he thought we just weren’t getting it, because just before we left, he came right out and said it.

David: What I’m saying is that I would like to be your agent.

Preston: Well, we appreciate that, but we really feel like we should keep seeing other people for a while.

DeAnna: It’s not you, it’s us. We just aren’t ready to commit to exclusivity right now.

Preston: Exactly, you know, we don’t feel like we’re completely recovered from the last agent. We’re just not ready to commit to that level of trust with a new agent yet.

DeAnna: But you shouldn’t take it personally. You’re really doing a good job, I’m sure you’re a great agent. We just aren’t ready for that level of commitment. We’ll call you if we change our minds.

Not really. Preston and I didn’t have our parts of the conversation until we were in the car driving away. But David did really say that, and it totally felt like a proposition. In reality, we just smiled and nodded politely and thanked him again for the offer without answering his question. Which, now that I think of it, is pretty much how Preston and I both respond to most kinds of propositions.

Also, we pretty much decided against the house. It’s a really cute house, and I liked it a lot. But for the price, we could get something less cute, but in the city of Olympia, which we would prefer. We are seriously considering this house though. It’s a low enough price that it’s worth living 30 minutes from Olympia. It doesn’t have a garage, so we have to do some research about how much it would cost to build our own, and if there’s room for it on the property, before we make an offer.