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Almost Autumnal

The past few days have felt a lot like fall around here, especially in the mornings. Average high/low for this date is 84/62 and it was 81/55, 82/50, 86/57 on Thursday, Friday & today. But next week we are supposed be back to the low 90s/mid 60s.

We took advantage of today’s cool morning to take a walk in Hitchcock Woods for the first time since February. Yesterday and today is the Foundations “Festival of the Woods” where they have guest speakers and organized educational walking tours. We have gone a couple times in the past, but today we were intentionally about two hours early and just walked in to the Horse Show Ring (where the event is centered) and turned around and came back.

We didn’t bring the GPSr with us, so I quick like downloaded an app for the phone called Sportactive that can GPS track a loop. It is good for running, cycling and anything that includes motion that you would like to time. According to this we went 3.549 miles in an hour and a half (you can pause the timer when you stop, but I never did.)

Moving In?

Make AT&T Your First Home Improvement. Maybe they heard our realtor say, “I’ll sell this house in a week,” and figured the new home owners would be moved in by now. Sorry folks, I think the arrival timing of this piece of junk mail was JUST OK.

This is not the first bit of junk mail that has graced our mailbox since the house was listed for sale either. Within three days of the sign being planted in the front lawn, and for about the following week, we were inundated with postcards and short letters for other local realtors (even some from the same agency as ours was from) asking if we needed help selling our home. The only reason I can think of for this is that they were planting a seed in case the place didn’t sell during the duration of our current contract.

My Kingdom For A Potentiometer

Instead of some arbitrary digital step.

Both in the quiet living room with the Visio soundbar or on the screened porch using Anker SoundCore Mini there is no right volume level. Pushing the volume button up or down on either remote moves the volume one level. One is too soft and the next is too loud, there is no in between. Because we are older usually the louder wins out, so in our living room it is not a problem. On the back porch it is different, we share a property line with four others and no one has said anything. Probably because they are hardly ever outside at all, just their dogs for a few minutes at a time.

34,000 Pounds of Thrust

This Friday and Saturday was the 43rd Annual Aiken’s Makin’ Arts and Craft Show. Two rows of tents along three blocks of downtown full of hand made knickknacks, gewgaws, bric-a-brac, trinkets, trifle, baubles, gimcrack, whatnots, thingamajigs, tchotchkes, doodahes and whim-wham. Also about a dozen purveyors of fair food for your dining pleasure.

Because we are people of leisure, we thought a good idea would be to beat some of the crowds and go on Friday, but by the time we did the usual morning stuff it was too hot outside to deal with it. So today we went with Plan B, we walked the 2-1/2 miles up to it, timing our arrival for the official 9:00 AM start. After walking the whole thing and finding absolutely nothing we wanted to buy, except a “fresh” lemonade and an ice cream, we checked out all the food vendors and decided that we would drive back later to get lunch.

Halfway home Donna said, “Oh, I forgot, we were supposed to go to the Indie Arts Vintage Market.” I said, “We’ll do that at lunch. We can even park there and walk the 2 blocks back to Aiken’s Makin to eat.” The vintage market is every other weekend and this one coincided with the big one. After seeing literally 6 blocks full of crafts in the morning we breezed through the market, right until we got near the other exit. Both of us stopped and went, “Cooool!” There was one guy1 there with these vintage cameras turned into lamps. They were sitting on old wooden tripods with an LED bulb in the metal flash reflector.

But the cameras weren’t what we were looking at, it was a couple of Flash Gordon spaceship looking lamps made from explosion-proof light housings and other found metal objects. We just had to have one.


On Monday the Ladybug passed through the 34,000 mile mark.

Hey, Ho, Saint Joe

A person we had met at the Spring Steeplechase wanted to see it the weekend before it went on the market. She was looking for a place in this neighborhood and wanted to get in it because every time she noticed a house for sale around here it sold before she could get in it.

Our realtor said that it would sell in a week.

Our across the street neighbor said, “You’ll have no trouble selling it.

A random neighbor we really don’t know well, saw us outside a couple weeks ago and said, “I’m surprised. I expected a Under Contract sign by now.”

As of last Thursday the house has been for sale for a month. In that month we have had less than 10 people come through to look at it. Our realtor held a Realtor Only open house and maybe 10 folks showed up (all from her company…) and no one has of yet stepped forward big sacks of cash.

While having dinner with some friends, who coincidentally have their house for sale too, they mentioned that they had ordered a statue of Saint Joseph from Amazon to help them sell their house. Donna and my response was, “Huh?” Turns out this is a whole thing.

St. Joseph and Home Sales

Of course their house has been for sale for 3 months and they have reduced the price a couple of times, so they might be getting a more anxious than we are. I’ll let you know in late October if we buy our own statue of Saint Joe.