Bon Voyage

I hate it when the situation deteriorates before I even finish the blog post.

Because I had one, right, and it was a good one.  I was going to call it "And This Just Keeps Getting Better And Better," and it was going to be all about the further adventures of Ernie in the dark realm known as The Crawlspace.  Simply replacing all of the water pipes, you see, was not going to do the job.  Nor was the final bill from ServPro (which still hasn't shown up; they said it would be $250 just to come out to the house, but absolutely not a thing more than that except "We'll bill your insurance company," which they can do all day long, but our insurance company isn't gonna pay them).  No, we needed Ernie to locate the main sewer pipe and announce to us that We Had Another Problem.  We needed him to run a little camera down said sewer pipe so we could see what the problem was.  (I got the honor; Joan was at work.)  Uponst seeing said problem, I was going to have apoplexy, or something, and upon hearing how much the problem was going to be to fix, I was going to have apoplexy again.  Or maybe a stroke.  But forget all that. Just never mind, sweep it all back under the rug (or into the Crawlspace), and we'll just start from right this very moment.

We're selling the house.

Yes, Problem and all.  The Problem is going to set our price back a ways, and it's not worth what we paid for it back in '04 when we first ambled into Texas, and the odds of us getting any kind of profit out of it are just about zero, but that's okay.  We're fine with it.  We never set out to be real-estate magnates; we were just looking for a place to live.  And now that our place to live is looking like a used car that's requiring half again of its value every year just to keep it running, it's time to find another place to live. (It's not really that bad.  But it is a headache that I don't want.  Nor does Joan.  So:) Condo, subdivided house, apartment, whatever.

So we called up the realtor that helped us buy this place a little less than eight years ago,  Her name is Sondra Patton and that is her real name.  If you are ever of a mind to buy or sell property in the DFW area, most particularly Lakewood, you could do a lot worse than giving Ms. Patton a call.  In addition to being really smart, knowledgeable and honest, she's also very nice.  And, she can put up with, uh, me.  I was not the easiest person to put up with during the Great House Hunt of 2004, no matter what anybody says.  She came over with reams of paperwork and we started signing stuff.  The listing goes "live" on January 1.  Despite the ho-hum state of the Dallas house market, she thinks it'll sell pretty fast.  So we have to find a place to live in a hurry.

After our vacation, that is.  We're on an imaginary cruise on the S.S. Flamingo, with ports of call in Dallas, Fort Worth, Corsicana, Waxahatchie and maybe Austin.  It's the last cruise for this ship before she's decommissioned, so it's become kind of historical.  Ahoy, mateys, it's time for "It's a Wonderful Life," being broadcast on the widescreen on the Lido Deck.  Merry Christmas, everybody.