Lots on the mind

Lots on the mind these days.

First, we had a great vacation to Undisclosed Location. It’s pretty nice there this time of year, though rather warm. Was a really nice way to celebrate our tenth anniversary. TENTH? How’d a decade go by so fast?? In some ways, though, it seems like a long while ago.

Next, the house. Oy, the house. It’s all going OK. I’m still confused about how the closing of our present place is going to go, but hopefully Realtor Woman 1 will work that out for us. We inspected the new place, and Realtor Woman 2 helped us negotiate our way through that. We’re gathering some more information to respond by early next week. Hopefully both transactions will be finalized after this long holiday weekend. I am getting sick of having various provisions up in the air.

Oh yeah: while there were no deal breakers on the inspection, there was a funny thing that happened. First, keep in mind we’re about to buy a fairly substantial 1965 two-story + basement house from the original owner in her 80s. The place has been vacant since the wintertime. Low and behold, Inspector Man and I were crawling in and out of the attic, the crawlspace, the darkest corners of the place. Then we checked out the fireplace in the basement rec room area to find a LIVE RACCOON or ‘POSSUM or something in there! I ran halfway out of the room, and so did Inspector Man. It was still alive. The flue was part-way open. Sort of a comedy going on with the two of us saying, “Holy SHIT there’s something in there, it’s furry, and it’s MOVING!” We were laughing. The fireplace upstairs had a dead bird in it. Nice. Yeah, we need some chimney caps pretty darn quick! Ah, spring in the Midwest.

New subject. Yesterday, Wife and I attended the funeral of an eighteen-year-old young man we never met. We know his mother pretty well, as she works with the local schools as the preschool coordinator. Her son died in an auto accident last weekend. I’ve never been to a funeral of a young person before. The hardest thing to watch was the number of other young people there who had to learn about death way too soon. Another tough part was hearing about the potential this young man had: someone who wasn’t afraid to argue, had good sense of humor, worked with disabled children, and cared about issues of human rights and equality. He was supposed to be off to college to study political science in the fall. We need more intelligent people who give a shit about these good issues working amongst people in the real world, and unfortunately this guy will never get that chance. Sad stuff. The experience really sucked, and I don’t envy the mourning and recovery process that our friend has ahead of her.

Before I forget, on the dissertation data-collection front (oh yeah, this is a blog about my doctoral program, right?), I’ve been blown off twice this week, but fortunately they rescheduled for next week. So, if all interviews come through, then by this time next week I will have completed eight of the ten or so interviews I need to do. Yahoo! As long as I can get a few more done prior to June 15, I should be good to go for analyzing the data late summer/early fall and then writing up the results before or around Thanksgiving.

OK, it’s getting weekend out. Gotta go.