A sad thing

Well, I typed out a whole long message about the cold wind that's blowing through town and how it reminded me of this day when I was a freshman in college and I sat outside in the cold waiting for my ex-boyfriend to arrive (he was visiting from college in Boston) and what a nice day we had, etc. And then it got swallowed up into the cyber-vaccuum.

As I often say under my breath at work, f%#$ing computers! OH WELL.

I will re-recap, for those interested, that my house (contract pending) was inspected Saturday afternoon, and the inspector actually pronounced it "a gem." For a 50-year-old house, it's nearly pristine. There's some electrical work to be done, but nothing out of the ordinary for a house of this age. Had a good time hanging out with the sellers. Got to learn about all the plants in the garden (important because I plan to keep up their work and continue adding to it), and they even hinted they were glad I was buying the house b/c they knew I would take care of it.

A big point of agreement is that most additions to houses are abominations. One of the many bright points with this house is it's all original structure. None of what my friend Shawn calls the sunken den. (I'll bet James Lileks has something on these, but I'm too lazy to look right now.) In the neighborhood I've been looking, the sunken den is ubiquitous, as people enclosed their carports to create the charming, brick-on-the-inside den/lounge/wet bar. Common features of this type of room are brittle wood paneling, side-to-side sliding trailer-type windows, and climate control from hell--either a rattling window unit or an exposed-coil heater that makes your hair crackle--or both, since you are basically sitting in the garage, which was never meant to be warm/cool when it's cold/hot outside.

Oh, the houses I could tell you about. I come from staunch Modernist stock, so I'm a fan of 1950s design. I've looked at approximately, what--20 houses in the past few months? I have seen every color combination for bathroom fixtures from the 50s that one could imagine. My recent favorite was maroon and cream, with maroon toothbrush holders. I also saw a fabulous sink in that was aqua and kind of skewed in its angles. I got lucky--my bathroom is redone, and the half-bath is green and white. At some point I'll post a photo of the beautiful, unusual tile work in the floor.

Time is ticking down to my Utah trip, and I am wasting it. I leave Thursday, and people in the office are coming out of the woodwork with bizarre "priority" requests. Obviously, our priorities are not aligned at the moment. So, I leave you with the question, "to ski...or not to ski?"