Month: March 2016

I apologize for the break in the action (no recent post) which was due, in part, to a self-induced computer failure.

I ran a disk clean-up utility twice; the first time everything went OK but the second time I did not let the utility finish and, as a result, my Mac would not boot. I was able to start up in Utility mode and restore the disk from a back up system but the last full backup was from late January. I lost a few photos and documents that had been created since then, including updates to my blog pages. No great loss but it could have been prevented had my impatience not gotten the best of me. I downloaded my complete web site from the hosting service and now have all those files on my Mac. I plan to run another full backup tonight!

Picking up the thread of conversation from my last post…we finally viewed the insides of a few houses on our retirement house search. Alas, my favorite, the Trading Post, received an offer the day we looked at the house. Before we were done with our day the current owners had accepted the offer. That rules us out and, considering the price, it would have been a long shot anyway. Here are just a couple photos I during the viewing:

Trading Post kitchen – Professional AGA stove

Approach to Trading Post

Moving on, we visited a few other places (all in Montrose) Pam had identified as in-town “potentials.” One was tenant-occupied and represented a low-priced option that would need renovation, a path we have considered. Nope – not impressed with this one.

Renovation House – Not a Keeper

A third place we were scheduled to look at, one of the nicer places in town, canceled due to family members coming down with the flu.

Our final visit was a place still undergoing renovation. While very cute, it was also very small and had steep steps to get to the upstairs bedrooms. (But, we met the renovation team, good people to know if future renovations present themselves.) We then drove by a couple of properties; one was a center-of-the lot small house that we eliminated right away (no outdoor parking/storage), and the other was not available for visiting that day until after 5:00 pm (as the family was still moving out). We opted not to stay in town that long.

We are finally working with a realtor — she really seems to know her stuff. Since our visit she has sent us a few other listings (including bank-owned and for sale by owner). Tomorrow we plan a drive-by trip to view an area suggested by this realtor, still close to town and with slightly larger lots.

While house hunting has been a positive occupation recently, there have been other developments that are downright depressing. My high school best friend died of a heart attack last week. Just a year older than me, Ed and I spent a lot of time together in our high school days. Later he joined the military and I went off to college and we didn’t keep up very well after that. Still, the news was not welcome.

Pam’s life-long best friend from grade school/high school [now living in Florida] received some bad news…cancer was detected on a vein going from the stomach to the pancreas. There will be an attempt to shrink the tumor by means of chemo and radiation, then surgery to remove the remaining bits. We fervently hope this approach is successful.

Pam’s mother developed cancer when Mom was 63 (she died 16 months later) so this development hits Pam pretty hard. It reminds us, once again, that while we get caught up in things being important, people and relationships are more important over the long haul. And, also, don’t put off everything for the future, none of us can predict how many days each of us has to live life to the fullest.

Finally, tomorrow is Easter so I will close with this Easter electronic card:

Easter 2016

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

Apologies in advance to Tabitha for the dark turn in our thoughts (again).  Fields and I are of an age where death seems to have started “lurking.”  Cancer, in particular, propels the person with the diagnosis, and those who care deeply for that person, into a nightmare world of doctor speak and percentages. (But heck, just look at the news feed, even the “rockers” from the 60s and 70s are dropping like flies.)

Regarding the ongoing retirement search, I feel we are starting to qualify specific areas for house viewings. The down payment monies increase monthly. A realtor is on board. The “home stretch” may be in sight.

Happy Trails.

Spring yard work has commenced. Friday Pam removed the mulch from our back-yard flower bed; yesterday we did the three front-yard beds and raked the lawn. The old mulch and leaves were hauled down to the “organic material” drop off area supplied by the city. I have a large plastic bin that I strap down to the front rack on the ATV and use that set up to haul the old mulch; this gives the job a combination of work and play. The yard does look better, neater at least, and opens the beds to the upcoming rain that is in the forecast. Iris plants, as well as tulips, are up and the white lilac is budding out. I may have to mow some lawn within the next two weeks. I guess spring has arrived!

At Pam’s request I dug out the chain saw and removed a dying low-hanging branch from our cottonwood tree. Cottonwood trees are not long-lived and this one is showing signs of age. A few branches here and there should be removed but it would take a man-lift or cherry picker to get to them; we haven’t elected to spend the money to get this work done. Most of the tree is still green and we’re betting on no major branches deciding to fall off in any upcoming storms.

I added a couple more shelves to the garage stereo cabinet and tried mounting the larger 10.5 inch tape reels to see if they would fit. (The smaller 7 inch reels were no problem.) The larger tapes fit with just a bit of room to spare.

10.5 inch reels just fit in cabinet

It is nice to have tunes while working in the garage and I do enjoy renovating this “old-school” stuff.

We’re looking forward to our road trip (Wednesday) to look at the insides of a few houses we have identified as potential retirement homes. The houses range from small fixer-uppers to move-in ready places. It will be some months before we’re ready to choose a house (still putting together a down payment), but it’s important to look at a variety of places so we can help define just what we are looking for. There are always intangibles such as the “flow” of a house, neighborhood, updates needed, maintenance requirements, and yard condition. Photos from a listing will only take you so far. My next post will have more details of these visits and, I hope, several photos along with our reactions to the various properties.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

How boring is it to have to house hunt while factoring in main floor bedroom/bath/laundry to accommodate aging? Very boring, but, an excess of steps could make a person captive in one’s own home.  Lately I’ve also been following the line of thought, if Fields pre-deceases me, can I physically maintain a big and complicated yard? Or even afford a more sizable house payment on a reduced one-person retirement income? Not to mention looking at proximity to services (grocery and medical mainly). Felicity agrees she would be happy not to think of me having to haul an inert Fields on a tarp down to somewhere I could access a vehicle and haul him to hospital. (I think she’s probably thinking about the Sanderling set-up.) These are the insidious ways aging creeps into one’s lifestyle.  Hate it. Have to pay attention to it.

Happy Trails.

Today’s post will be about “stuff” that has gone on over the last week. Some of it is interesting, some less so, but here is what has occupied our non-working hours this past week.

Weather: It is getting warmer. Much of our yard ice (but not all) has melted and tulips are up. So are a couple of dandelions. Unless these events are harbingers of an early spring, the good weather will be interrupted with more snow and storms. All last week the daytime temps were well above average, sometimes by as much as 17 degrees. While appreciating the improved conditions, we are waiting for the other shoe to drop; March is notorious for bad storms in this part of Colorado.

Garage: I spent several hours revamping my garage storage to make room for an equipment rack to house my garage stereo components. This project entailed moving a lot of stuff around – I had pretty well gotten used to the  existing  layout. However, I wanted to add some protection from dust and dirt for the stereo system.

Here is the cabinet installed but with the door closed:

Equipment rack – door closed

Open the door and – voila! – my stereo system.

Stereo components in cabinet

The rack was a surplus item that received no bids when my business  tried to auction it off – it’s not a standard rack for network gear. It had originally housed a video recording system. I offered to take it home and was given permission to do so. Putting in the shelves involved some alterations to the shelves, time consuming but eventually successful. I can now close the door to help keep dust, dirt, and cat hair off the components.

House Hunt: We took a drive to Montrose and viewed a few more houses. One in particular looked like a possibility; no trees but a 3-car garage, 4 bedrooms, a basement, brick exterior, and a view over a valley and down to the San Juan mountains.

Shavano Valley home

Not quite what we expected; cactus around the place and access through what appeared to be the neighbor’s yard. Literally. The yard had a hog pen (with hogs in it) and equipment on one side of the drive and the house and more junk on the other. The drive was not in real good shape either, with mud and potholes a-plenty. While the house might have been OK, the “unusual” access put this one off our list.

We drove by a couple other houses during this trip, including an in-town four square from 1904 that still has all the original woodwork. Nice place on a corner lot with trees and a 2-car garage behind, but we’re not sure we want to be that close to the neighbors and traffic. Being a block away from the local hospital would have some advantages, but also result in a lot of noise. If we could just find one of these historic homes on acreage with trees!

In about 10 days we will be taking some time off during the week to meet a realtor and arrange to see the inside of a couple of Montrose houses including the Trading Post and the Tulip Circle homes I mentioned in a previous post.  And…an offshoot… there is an old potato warehouse for sale that we may investigate. A warehouse could provide storage and a work area for all my toys if we can’t find anything that has a detached garage or a place to put one. It would be kind of funky (and possibly too expensive) but I’m considering whatever options may present themselves.

So…weekends are busy for us between looking at homes and working at projects. Not terribly exciting, though. But of course there is always the presidential race to provide a range of emotional reactions. While I try to stay away from most political talk in this blog, it it clear that there will be two radically different people up for election this fall regardless of who the parties choose as their candidate.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

Does anybody else have a problem with driving through a low-life ramshackle neighbor’s yard to access a $300,000 house? Why would we pay taxes on acreage covered with cacti when we intend to have dogs and cats roaming the property? And these important items are not mentioned in the listing – marketing, ha!

Sometimes house hunting is a drag.

Happy Trails.