Day 912

The hailstorm last night was even worse than I thought. In the light of  day, Janet's Land Rover looked pretty well demolished. The hood looked like someone had spent ten minutes banging on it as hard as they could with a hammer. The windshield was broken. Some of the taillights were broken. There were even some serious dents in the doors. I'll bet that the insurance adjusters are going to be very busy today. There are probably thousands of cars like this all over town. It's weird. Janet and I will probably both have loaner cars at the same time. My own car is still a long way from having its own extensive list of repairs completed.

Luckily, there's one thing that does appear to have reached its conclusion. The buyer of my rent property got their loan approval this morning. We are scheduled to close tomorrow. I never dreamed that buying and selling property would become so complicated. The last time I did this, the whole process seemed much, much simpler. Oh, well. At least selling a house is safe. If you sell something to a stranger on Craig's List, you have to worry about getting abducted or killed.

Can you believe that it's the middle of June already?  I've got to remember to pay my quarterly estimated taxes tomorrow. Next week, it's going to be my birthday again. Seems like we just did this not too long ago. Jeez, where does the time go.  I've still got a few Christmas thank-you letters that I haven't written yet.

I hope the buyers enjoy my rent house. I still have a lot of fond memories about that place. I guess it would be hard not to have good memories. I was younger, healthier, and had a glamorous ad agency job when I lived there. I didn't have Dalmatians though. I didn't have a dog at all. On balance, life now is much better.

Daisy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 859

The Casino Party went well last night. Sometimes we get a crowd that seems very reticent about gambling. They'll bet one chip at a time and seem to forget that they're gambling with play money. Last night's crowd wasn't like this. They bet with wild abandon, filling the entire board with huge piles of chips. Everybody seemed to be having fun. We didn't get home until well after midnight, but the time goes quickly with a good crowd like this.

I can't say that today was all that fun. The weather was beautiful, but I spent most of the day working. After taking Dot and Dash to the dog park this morning, I went down to the rent property and spent the afternoon trying to get the place cleaned up enough to put it on the market. The inside was clean already, but the windows needed washing and the patio area was full of leaves from last Winter.

The place looks pretty nice now. To get things looking even better, I would have to start spending some serious money for things that might not mean much to a potential buyer anyway. With any luck, I'll sign a contract with the real estate agent and have the place on the market next week.  I guess I am what you would call a motivated seller. I really don't want to be a landlord anymore.

Big sections of the park where I walk the dogs are native prairie. In the Spring these grasslands are filled with wildflowers. In the Winter, I'm the only photographer in the park, but this time of year I share the space with hundreds of other shutterbugs. We saw a ton of people with cameras today wading through the tall grass to take macro shots of flowers. I felt like telling these people that they were walking through areas filled with snakes and poison ivy, but I guess they'll figure things out for themselves soon enough.

I saw lots of people lounging around today. Several people hung hammocks between trees in the park. When I went downtown to clean the rent house, I saw tons of people having cocktails at sidewalk cafes. I wish my clients would do a little more lounging. They tend to send me work on Sundays. The last thing I wanted today was more work. I'm tired. I'd like to do a little lounging myself.

Mindy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 854

When I met with the real estate agent this afternoon, I got a dose of reality that I wasn't expecting. I've known for some time that real estate prices are falling in Dallas, but I had no idea how far they had actually dropped. When the agent showed me a comp list of what similar properties in the area were selling for these days, I was shocked. I had actually been inside a few of the houses on the comp list and never dreamed that they would ever be priced so low. Let's just say that if I sold my house just before the market peaked, I could have made 40% more than I would probably make today. I've owned the rent property so long that I'll probably still make a small profit if I decide to sell. I understand now why there is so much talk these days about people being underwater on their mortgages. If you bought in 2005 you'd be selling at a loss today.

Hindsight is always 20/20. I would have been much better off selling the rent property years ago, rather than convincing myself that I could always sell the place later, after a succession of renters provided me with an income for a while. Like many others, I used to think that real estate would never actually fall in value. I never planned on modern houses coming back in fashion either. My place use to be a very desirable rarity for people who liked such things. Now modern houses are so commonplace in Dallas that the rent property is just another modern house without all the amenities of the newer ones.

I liked the agent though and will probably use him to list the place. I wasn't even insulted by how little he thought my place was worth. Hey, how can you not like a guy who loves Citroen automobiles and wears a vintage Hamilton Ventura watch? The guy had an encyclopedic knowledge of Dallas architects too, and said he had enough mid-century modern furniture stored away that he could stage the place without charging me anything extra.

If I haven't learned the perils of hanging on to things too long by now, I probably never will. The house isn't the only thing I should have sold a long time ago. I had a beautiful vintage Vox Mark VI guitar in the storage warehouse that got totally ruined when water leaked into the room one Summer. Some of my favorite Bulova Accutron tuning fork watches are no longer repairable because I waited too long to restore them. Now most of the Accutron repairmen are dead and the supply of spare parts is gone. Nothing lasts forever. Apparently nothing is valuable forever either. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, or so the saying goes.

Bella is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day