The cat is packed and ready to go. Go where you ask? Hmmmm? Oh did I not mention..? Did I neglect to tell you..? Sue and I now own a friggin house! If you can't believe it, I double dog can't believe it. I thought I'd be living upstairs or downstairs from total strangers my entire life but here we are, an entire dwelling to ourselves...crazy! I've posted a few pics on my Flickr page, but not many. Better to check out the virtual tour I put together of our new home above or here on my YouTube chan
nel.The house is located in College Hill one of the oldest and most desirable neighborhoods in Wichita. It's full of big beautiful old homes just a couple miles east of downtown and a short
five minute commute from Newman. We knew that old houses meant more repairs but we managed to find a place that's been pretty well taken care of. The biggest problem is that it needs a new paint job desperately and we're hoping we won't have to replace any of the siding once we've peeled away the old paint, but we will see and we brought the price down low enough that we think it will be worth it. It's a 1930's bungalow, two stories
and a half basement which isn't finished but is sealed and dry and contains the washer and
dryer that the sellers very nicely left for us! There are three bedrooms and two baths and a breakfast nook. The backyard is small, taken up mostly by the fairly new two car garage the sellers had built but it's good to have the garage too and Sue is already planning out her
extraordinary medieval herb garden and other landscaping projects. We've been told by several people how nice our neighbors on both sides are so we're looking forward to meeting them. A couple blocks away is a small but nice park and a public pool. We live on English St, a fitting address for the professor and it's a lovely red brick cobblestone street. The pics show the sellers furniture, so it's considerably more empty at this moment.
We've just started moving all our stuff over one car load at a time but luckily we still have the apartment for two more weeks so we don't have to move everything over at once. We don't have much furniture to fill it yet but hopefully that will change soon and then we are open for visitors! (Hint hint)
The house buying process went remarkably smooth and quick compared to most people's experiences on the coasts from what we've heard. The benefits of a relatively stable housing market. But it was still a stressful experience since neither of us had much experience with a purchase like this. But it all worked out alright.
What else has happened...the house buying experience has made me forget pretty much everything else going on in our lives. Oh yeah,
the semester has been going well. We're both busy but making it work. I won't mention any names but someone you know may in fact be getting straight A's in all his classes. I know, he must be, like, crazy smart. Anyway, a couple weeks ago we went back to KC to visit the greatest haunted houses ever with Sue's colleague in the English dept, Bryan, who organizes this trip for the students and anyone else
interested every Halloween season. Those boys (or girls) know how to put together a scary haunted house. I mentioned them last year but this year we went to two different places, one modeled after Poe, the other after classic horror movies. The setting, one of KC's derelict industrial districts full of big broken down warehouses, is half the fun and you get more boo for your buck then any haunted houses I've been to. The late night drive back, arriving in Wichita at 4 or 5 in morning, was brutal, but it was a good time.
Anyway, that really is pretty much all that has been going on for the last couple weeks, so I'll sign off now but we hope to see or hear from you all soon. I'm not posting the address on this blog but I have included it in the e-mail reminder to you all. Be well and talk to you soon!
