Hell - eminently freezing over.

Have you been missing me yet?

I'm just going to give a general update to keep you up with what's going on.

First - I'm pretty much exhausted. I'm about 90% done with painting at the crap shack. Yeah.. it did take a long time. Never underestimate the power of how much a smoker can fuck a place up.

I didn't think it was a big deal. But, I've now learned that you must go with the most expensive stain blocker primer to handle that shit. So, the whole painting thing took me a lot longer than I thought. I'm still confident I saved money. Or, at least being pissed at the contractor for cheaping out and not using block out the sun style primer. I'm waiting for other elements in the house anyway. So the time setback wasn't a big deal.

Second - there are many things I hate about the weather. But cold is one of them. Well, I hate wind too. It pretty much pisses me off. Yeah - I don't even feel bad admitting the wind makes me grumpy. I know a couple of people who absolute hate the wind as much as I do. So - I feel completely normal.

Anyway.. cold is still pretty much at the top. Put wind and cold together. I might decide not to leave the house that day. The past few days however, in some places of the Bay Area - there has been snow. Really!

I've been sure it was going to snow here for two days. Which made me super excited. Now its been cold for so long - I'm just hating life. I think today might be the day though. Place bets now! Right now it is 1:00, and 43 degrees.

Lastly - Today I went over to a new crap shack. Really, I was just keeping an eye on my competition. This house was one street over and listed as a fixer. It actually is the same model as our current crap shack.

It was suppose to be vacant, but when we got there a gal was working on the place. She was desperately trying to get all the old people wall paper off the walls. So someone would want to buy the place. She was having various degrees of success. Taking wall paper off - is a suck ass job.

There was a single mattress in the living room. So I guess she had been sleeping there too. My agent/friend and the woman were talking as I checked out the place. Apparently, she was the daughter of the owner who had died like a year ago. We genuinely gave her our sympathies.

But - this of course gave my agent an open to start poking me. Because she knows I feel a little guilt about buying these sorts of houses. Once we get to the back bedroom she turns to me and asks "so - are you just going to start capitalising solely on dead people houses"? As if I even knew that was why it was a fixer upper. I just saw the for sale sign. But, that doesn't stop her from ribbing me. She even made a slogan. One foot out the door? Call Ms. Snarkolepsy.

At any rate. I'm learning that if a house on the market is in complete disrepair - chances are someone has recently died.

It's too bad I'm not further along with the other crap shack - because I really felt bad for the woman. She obviously didn't have money to fix the place. Or she would have hired someone. Most buyers won't buy a house like that. So she is stuck trying to make some nominal improvements to get someone interested.

Anyway.. I should be posting pictures soon of our crap shack progress. It's been rainy and dark, so as soon as the sun breaks I'll get to taking some pictures. I'm really happy with the way things are shaping up. The other day, as Mr S. was cleaning the pain sprayer out - I got a chance just to hang out for a minute and appreciate how cute the place was going to look. And imagine how happy some new family would be living there.