"I just wanted a fire for 5 seconds" (Part the first)

I'm even more sad because I had gotten to the point where I actually loved the Hickory Cluster house. It's not that I didn't love the Barrel Cooper house...but...OK, I didn't love the Barrel Cooper house. That house was a marriage of convenience for us, and it was a damn good investment in hindsight, so I'm not complaining, but the layout of that house is just plain stupid. Stairs, constantly stairs. The good thing about this house is that the layout fits our lives perfectly. There's no wasted space, and the work we put in made it a very nice place to live. You must understand that I was actually sorry we'd bought this house almost as soon as it was inspected. I thought over and over "I should bail on this. I should just say no to this contract change and run away while I can." I kept talking about how neat it was because I was trying to convince myself to fall in love. I didn't fall in love until this week. I guess arranged marriages can work after all.

Back to the other house. The tavern in town has homemade ice tea and cole slaw, &diety bless them. They also have a gardenburger on the menu, and their nachos are veggie without special ordering, which is more than I can say for TGI Friday's. And Tipsy McStaggers isn't in an actual old mill with massive timber beams either. The grocery stores are better out there too -- even the low-brow grocery store beats the pants off Safeway. And things are open 24 hours too, which is very different from Reston and a welcome change.

We loved the place so much that we stayed overnight on Friday even though we hadn't planned to and had to wash our socks and underwear overnight. I christened the jacuzzi bath (which kicks as much ass as you think), but we couldn't really unpack much because the kitchen is still all fucked up and we were too tired to deal with the storage area. Our monthly expenses are now $200 lower because of that storage area, so that might tell you just how much junk we had sitting at Storage USA. And we have a garage! The floors are as shiny as glass, and the propane fueled fireplace provides so much heat that it will actually save us some money on the electric bill. The water is a little hard, but it tastes good.

I looked downstairs last night and saw Tino flip the fireplace switch for about 10 seconds. I asked "What was that?" and he said "I just wanted a fire for 5 seconds." Having a switch for the fireplace *sounds* cold and souless until you have one. It's so much easier to deal with than a woodburning fireplace. I though I would feel gypped with the propane fireplace and ceramic logs, but I actually like it. It looks good, and it works perfectly. There's no muss and no fuss. If you've had a woodburning fireplace, you may be aware that it seems to actually make the room colder. That's because unless you're getting the radiant part of the heat by sitting up next to it, it actually *does* make the room colder by sucking air past you from the rest of the house.

The only thing missing is the smell outside. I truly love that smell, but I suppose I can burn the pinion incense I like which smells just like a campfire and dispense with the idea of ashes, splitting logs and bringing all manner of bugs in the house with the wood.

We did a lot of drudgery today. The BC house needed a bunch of mouldings painted and a few of them actually cut and attached. There were a lot of nail pops in the ceiling to be repaired and that necessitated more spackle and more touch up painting. The walls also needed spackling and touch up painting. There's still more to do tomorrow, mostly painting mouldings downstairs.

I can't even believe how much better the other place looks with everything touched up and the mouldings all white. I hope to hell someone wants to buy it, because at this point, I'd prefer to take my money and run instead of being a landlord.