What A Day!

Well, we've officially joined the ranks of homeowners and closed on our house this morning at 9am with one day to spare before ringing in the new year. Below is a recap of the crazy day - only in Bloomington!

9am - Went to closing. Lots of paper signing and a little writers cramp. We met the owner of the home and she was nice and normal; we felt good about the karma of the house.

9:25am - The realtor for the seller gives us a picture frame and folder of amazing information on the original owners of our 1923 bungalow. It turns out, the original family, the Goodalls, owned the home from 1923 until 2000. We have lots of cool information about them but haven't looked at it yet, more to come.

10:30am - We celebrate the new house with a trip to another house - the Waffle House. My first visit there but I was starving and it hit the spot.

11:00am - We go to the new house and ponder room configurations in our minds. There's no furniture but we try to imagine how to arrange everything. This takes a while and we don't come up with anything really.

12:30pm - Take a trip to the town's cheapest copy shop - White Rabbit Copy and Rug Store. And rug store - you must be thinking this is an error. It's not. And for the one day in my entire life I actually had need for cheap Xerox and fine rugs so we got both. A new rug for the living room and it looks great. It's the only thing in the house.

1pm - Eat Mexican for lunch - better than usual.

2:30pm - Go back to the house. Rug looks great. We contemplate furniture a little more - still nothing really.

4pm - We take a trip to Lowes and buy some paint and a rug for the dining room.

6pm - The rug for the dining room is too small - roll it up to return.

7pm - Trip to Big Red Liquors to buy some champagne.

8pm - My favorite thing all day - we order pizza and have it delivered! I haven't lived in a house where I could order pizza in almost 3 years. When I called Dominos I learn that 3 pizzas are cheaper than 2 (hence the USA's weight problem) so of course I get 3 - we have one in the fridge for tomorrow.

8:30 - In opening the fridge I find on top the original owners manual for the GE-K95 fridge - this thing is O.L.D.! I believe it's a 1950s fridge, the manual includes lots of great tips on wrapping food items, using a fridge and the sketched model in all photos is wearing a dress and heels. I'm going to buy new clothes and quit my job to live this life.

9pm - I dig out the folder from earlier in the day and learn great things about the Goodalls. The husband was a limestone cutter and there are pictures of the family with their children and the house from the 30s all the way through the 90s - it's amazing. I hate to leave the house but it's 9pm and we only have a rug so we head home to the farm. It feels strangely comforting to be back at this home and I feel so lucky to have two places that I love.

The Warm Embrace of Kith and Kin

Nine months of working on the campaign website for Matt and I felt lost without an Internet project. It took me just over three weeks to realize that I could create a blog and write about other things in life and so the Warm Embrace of Kith and Kin was born. At this point, I hope to use the blog to chronicle the excitement of buying a house. We settled on a house in Bloomington last week and today had the home inspection.

I've found that in the whole process of buying a home I'm a little out of my element as I've never made such a big decision or purchase. In turn, Matt and I make jokes - all the time - as a result of our nervousness and to make everything a little easier. It's an interesting type of person who makes inspecting homes their livelihood, but all went well. All I wanted to do today was make jokes about Inspector Gadget (not all that out of line because he did have a lot of equipment) but it's the only thing remotely funny I could conjure up about the situation. I refrained except for one during lunch just before the whole ordeal.

As of now the dishwasher leaks into the basement and there is a small gas leak down there as well. However, the man that we paid several hundred dollars to tear apart the home felt reassured that these were the only major problems. The home was built in 1923; but anyone or anything that's 85 and just has a few small leaks is doing all right in my book. We plan to get them fixed right up.

And now, we are on the eve of Thanksgiving. Our very first one we've done just the two of us at home. I've actually cooked full turkey dinners for the past three years just as a prequel to the real Thanksgiving so I'm confident about my ability to pull the whole thing off. There are enough no-fail items (Stovetop Stuffing, frozen Pillsbury Dinner Rolls, etc) built in that at the very least we won't go hungry.

Like any good first entry, I'll let this one be like a self titled first album and share my inspiration:

"The most enduring traditions of the season are best enjoyed in the warm embrace of kith and kin. Thith tree is a thymbol of the the thspirit of the Griswold family Chrithmath."
-Clark W. Griswold, National Lampoons Christmas Vacation