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brick mansion ours
Thursday, June 23 2016
Gretchen had tried to schedule today's closing on the brick mansion for the morning so I wouldn't have to take off work, but her needs apparently weren't considered, and so the closing was set at 2:00 this afternoon. That said, it happened in record time due to the fact that it was an all-cash transaction (thanks to a bridge loan from Gretchen's parents). Our real estate agent's attorney noted the time that had passed at its conclusion: only eight minutes. And I'd missed the first two of those minutes finding a shady spot to park the car (because I'd brought the dogs).
After the closing, Gretchen and I immediately went to the brick mansion to begin whipping it into shape for our tenants. While Gretchen focused on changing light fixtures and painting, I mowed the grass with a weed wacker, lugged heavy objects up to the topmost loft apartment, and installed knobs on cabinets in two different kitchens. Most of those knobs had come from the Tibetan Center thrift store, though Gretchen had bought some at Lowes. Though they'd cost probably less than a nickel each, the knobs from the thrift store were much easier to work with than the brand new ones from the store. Not only was each of the store-bought knobs sealed in its own private plastic envelope, each of those also included a separate little envelope containing the screw that secures the knob to a cabinet door. Having to tear into the envelopes and then process all that unnecessary trash nearly doubled the amount of work that went into installing those.
The dogs were initially in the backyard, but eventually they entered the house through a back door and then escaped into the neighborhood through the open front door. Neville came back quickly, but Ramona proceeded to prowl the neighborhood, ending up at the corner house where one of the neighbors had told us a serious pothead lived. Ramona and that serious pothead showed up together, and I talked to that serious pothead, allowing him to believe that Gretchen and I are actually moving into the brick mansion. He felt it important to befriend my dogs and give them a standing invitation to come over and visit him and his dog. He said the neighborhood was in the process of turning around (that is, gentrifying), though he didn't say anything about marijuana. Still, if I visit him, I'll be sure to bring some to break the ice. (Gretchen later took me to task for allowing him to believe we were moving into the house, characterizing the content of what I'd said as "a lie.")
Despite the several-hour chunk of my workday removed for that real estate transaction, today ended up being surprisingly-rich in telephone calls, mostly related to the position of an assistant that The Organization wants to hire for me. My boss Da had set out an unrealistically-ambitious experience requirement for this assistant, but since the hire would actually belong to a different department (fundraising), I didn't think Da should have that much say-so in the requirements. Still, he's my boss, and the woman from fundraising is sort of annoying, so it introduced an uncomforrably-heightened level of office politics into my life working at this particular job.
By this evening, I wanted a drink, but the only way to get one was to buy the right under my personal drinking rules. So I painted this portrait of Ramona on a small piece of cardboard (because I'd run out of canvases):
The original.
The Photoshop fun I like to have with my paintings.
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