Getting Away From It All

Have I mentioned that the J-Dog and I are going on vacation this week? Well, if I haven't, we are. We're going to Oregon on Thursday, to visit our good friends the Schluetermetz', formerly of Ohio. Jesus H. Christo I am looking forward to this trip. Visits with the Schluetermetz' have, in the past, acted as psychic enemas of a sort, cleaning out a lot of the mental bullshit and recharging my emotional batteries. And thus, I am very much looking forward to this visit, as the ol' mental bowels seem to be experiencing some blockage. And the emotional batteries are in desperate need of recharging. And, after eavesdropping on a public conversation on Facebook today, I have learned that there is an outside chance that Uncle Rico Riley might show up, which would put a smile on my face that would last all week long.

I haven't been to Oregon since I think around 2000 or 2001, and am looking forward to getting back and seeing a little bit of that beautiful area, although I'm sure it'll probably be raining the whole time. It's ok. Rain I can handle.

So for the past week, we've been looking at houses, and thinking about houses, and there was this one particular place that Jeannie and I had been thinking about, and Jeannie had been drawing up some ideas for floorplans and stuff (this is what she does), and we went over on Wednesday night and walked around the neighborhood, and we've seriously been putting A LOT of thought in about this place. Cause it's not perfect, but it had some good things going for it. And then on Friday we found out that there had been a fire on the back porch and part of the house, well, burned up a little bit. Which doesn't take the house out of the running, because the part that burned was a part that we probably would've wanted to change anyway, but it does add a definite "What the F@#$?" aspect to our house hunting experience, thus far.

Seriously cant wait to get out of here.

Jeannie and I both had trouble sleeping last night. Could've been the falafel (we made a bunch and I'm having some leftovers right now - it's delicious!) we had for dinner, or the beer I had, and I'm guessing that Jeannie was kept awake by thoughts of houses, because when I got up at 5:45 this morning, she was in the living room working with floorplans on the computer. I ended up having at some point some weird dreams about people from high school.

House hunting is strange. It's not easy, and it has definitely taken effort to try to remember to enjoy the process. I'm thankful that we're looking at a time that's a relatively low-stress time for buyers, and I'm thankful that I'm looking with someone who cares very much about houses, and cares very much about how they work, and is able to see the potential (or lack thereof) in things.