YET ANOTHER UPDATE

Well here I am in Florida and it's very nice here.

We were scheduled to move into an apartment a week and a half ago, but that fell through.  That was probably a good thing because the apartment wasn't that good and the location was pretty poor (about forty miles from Christina, not a good distance if we were to watch the kids on a regular basis).  So we've extended our stay in Christina's spare bedroom and will there for at least a month.  Walt went back to Maryland while their house there is for sale.  They've had a number of showings and a few nibbles but nothing concrete yet.  He skypes a lot but Christina and the kids miss him.  Today, the Kangaroo asked if Walt could send him a picture because he missed Daddy so much; Walt immediately texted a copy of his passport and photo.  Kitty and Christina are boggled by the Y chromosome mind.  I'm not.

While we are here we have tried to be useful.  The house has three bathrooms and the Kangaroo has flushed strange things down all of them, the last item being his pants.  Kitty, Christina, and myself are boggled how a three-year-old mind works.  I have become an expert with the bathroom plunger.  We also assembled a lawnmower for Christina and I repaired her weed wacker.

We have spent the last week driving around looking at neighborhoods.   We found one that we really liked and went out this morning with Real Estate Amy (who was Christina and Walt's real estate agent) and viewed several homes.  We put a bid on one -- a three-bedroom, two-bath home a little bit larger than the one we had in Southern Maryland.  The house has good bones and can be made into something we would enjoy.  It was built in 2003 and has a few problems.  One bathroom is filthy, the inside of the refrigerator is also filthy, ditto the microwave and the stove.  The back yard slopes toward the house, which could cause flooding problems, but there's absolutely no indication of that happening at any time in the past thirteen years.  (The back yard is very sandy; heavy rains could hae been easily absorbed; if we get the house, we'll keep and eye on things and may have to install drains in the back yard.)  At one time, there were lot of bushes in the back and side yards; someone recently chopped them down to ground level without removing the roots -- something else for the to-do list if we get the place.

In the meantime, we have all our ducks in a row for passing papers on our Southern Maryland home.  Everything is scheduled for this coming Wednesday at noon.  We spent yesterday signing all the paperwork needed for passing papers, getting the signatures notarized, and Fed-Ex-ing the papers back to the title company.  Today we found out that there was another paper that needed to be signed.  The paper was e-mailed to us but there is no working printer here at the moment.  (Actually it was e-mailed to us twice; the first time had the wrong date on it.)  So we headed to the local public library (about fifteen miles away) to use their equipmentment.  Three attempts later (and with the assistance of three other people) we managed to get the document printed -- the equipment at the library has a problem printing documents from Word, it seems.  Then, because the library did not have a scanner, we headed to Office Depot to have the signed document scanned and e-mailed.  Again, it took a few false starts. but the document was e-mailed.  We thought.  When we got back to Christina's there was a panicked call from Gail, our Maryland real estate agent (who has started to call herself "Anal Gail" because of her finicky attention to detail) -- she received the cover page but not the document.  So I
called Office Depot and they once again sent the e-mail.  A few minutes later Anal Gail called -- the e-mail was received and all was right in her world.  Just as well.  It cost me a whole twenty-six cents at Office Depot and I wanted to be sure I got my money's worth.

And so it goes here on the Florida Panhandle.  Next week, we'll be going to Pensacola Beach (Christina says it's beautiful there, but it's beautiful here too) and maybe to the local zoo (they have a new baby hippo) and probably to many other interesting places.