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a little post about stuff
Jun. 29th, 2013 10:44 pmI can't believe it is nearly 7pm.
I couldn't believe it was 6pm, back when I first glanced at my netbook's clock. The first thing I thought was is the clock confused & do I have to worry about fixing it? Then I remembered that it is only the wall-clock that has that problem.
(I bought this wall clock because I liked the rectangular shape, and I needed large digits. The feature of syncing to some national clock radio-signal was completely gratuitous. Now I actively dislike that feature. It would be fine if the syncing were request-driven -- a nice easy way to set your clocks twice a year. But no, this rectangular, large-display digital clock re-syncs itself to the USNO-or-whatever *whenever it feels like*. Which wouldn't be a problem, either, except that it *often* gets the wrong time. We assume the receiver drops a bit or something. The display will often be 1 hour, or 10 minutes, or 1 week-and-10-minutes, off. It's always a whole unit. When we notice, we give the clock a "time out" on the windowsill until it picks up the right time again. When we're feeling silly, we may also give the clock a calm but disappointed talking-to about what expectations we have for it and why accuracy is important.)
Anyway, 7pm and the sun is still out. I love this!
Weather is lovely. Inside the house is probably still kinda unpleasant. I'm on the porch, and have been since we came home around 4pm. Making good use of a wedding-present picnic-blanket.
So, prior to 4pm, what were we doing? Jonathon & I went to three open houses. Two with our real estate buyers agent, and one beforehand on our own. I have nothing much to say about the houses themselves right now; they were not that interesting. One, Jonathon had liked quite a bit on paper --- intensely --- but in person it did not please. The one we saw without the agent was a mix of good & not as good, but far enough out (by the Winchester line) than neither of us were seriously considering it regardless.
It's kind of fun to walk around a house without disliking it, yet still knowing you don't want to bid on it. There's where the promised "fun!" of open houses comes in, because I can relax in that case.
In general, I like seeing other people's homes. I love seeing how they live in them, what they've stored where, what clever use was found for an otherwise-awkward bit of the space, and even the habits & tool to deal with inevitable limitations & annoyances. --- There's none of that in an Open House. it seems that the "well-managed" open houses *remove* as much as possible the current owner from the dwelling.
Anyway, the last of the three Open Houses we went to today was run by the owners. Usually an open house is run by an agent, although in one that we went to the agent was the sister-in-law of the seller and had grown up in the house. The house had changed a lot since, though, and she was pretty good at "keeping it professional" so you'd barely know.
But this house was shown by the owners, and they clearly still lived there. The small office had an *actual* computer set up (at which a daughter quietly worked, and offered to clear out of at a word). Contrast this to the obvious demonstration desk+Aeron which sits diagonally in the corner of small bedrooms, an unreliable suggestion. Or worse: the staged attic-room I recall from another house, in which the power cable for a reading-lamp trails off behind the loveseat to coil unconnected (as there was no power outlet anywhere on that wall).
... And sketched on the wall of that office/sitting room was an exquisite line drawing of a tree.
I wondered in how many other houses the pros might have insisted on re-painting that room to depersonalize the doodle? Not all of them, I'm sure --- but probably some.
There were also penciled height-markings for growing kids on the door-frame in the master bedroom. Now, those, I might erase myself (I'd've kept them if they were on the *inside* of the doorway), but that's not the point. The point is that I thought about a recent trip to VT, in which we stopped by to look at my grandparents' old house. And the new owners recognized my dad, brought us in, and showed us where their closet still bore the height-lines of my uncles & aunts. They were happy for the encounter and so were we --- surprised, flattered, and happy!
Anyway, these owners showed us around, and talked about things they'd done to the house --- and even some things they planned or hoped still to do --- and I enjoyed it, and our agent nearly tore his hair out.
...
One other small note: at the 1st open house, the relaxing one where the home was in a location we didn't want, there was a potential-buyer whom we kept running in to. He & his agent walked into the house literally steps behind us (I held the screen for them), and seemed to be following the same path thru the place as we were. We joked about it a few times, because I didn't feel competitive at all.
Then, at the second home, one we went to with our agent and which was shown by the owners, I saw him again. The owners tried to guide us visitors separately, so our paths needn't cross, but they timed it a little wrong and he was in the yard while we stepped out to an overlooking porch.
I waved and I think he smiled.
I couldn't believe it was 6pm, back when I first glanced at my netbook's clock. The first thing I thought was is the clock confused & do I have to worry about fixing it? Then I remembered that it is only the wall-clock that has that problem.
(I bought this wall clock because I liked the rectangular shape, and I needed large digits. The feature of syncing to some national clock radio-signal was completely gratuitous. Now I actively dislike that feature. It would be fine if the syncing were request-driven -- a nice easy way to set your clocks twice a year. But no, this rectangular, large-display digital clock re-syncs itself to the USNO-or-whatever *whenever it feels like*. Which wouldn't be a problem, either, except that it *often* gets the wrong time. We assume the receiver drops a bit or something. The display will often be 1 hour, or 10 minutes, or 1 week-and-10-minutes, off. It's always a whole unit. When we notice, we give the clock a "time out" on the windowsill until it picks up the right time again. When we're feeling silly, we may also give the clock a calm but disappointed talking-to about what expectations we have for it and why accuracy is important.)
Anyway, 7pm and the sun is still out. I love this!
Weather is lovely. Inside the house is probably still kinda unpleasant. I'm on the porch, and have been since we came home around 4pm. Making good use of a wedding-present picnic-blanket.
So, prior to 4pm, what were we doing? Jonathon & I went to three open houses. Two with our real estate buyers agent, and one beforehand on our own. I have nothing much to say about the houses themselves right now; they were not that interesting. One, Jonathon had liked quite a bit on paper --- intensely --- but in person it did not please. The one we saw without the agent was a mix of good & not as good, but far enough out (by the Winchester line) than neither of us were seriously considering it regardless.
It's kind of fun to walk around a house without disliking it, yet still knowing you don't want to bid on it. There's where the promised "fun!" of open houses comes in, because I can relax in that case.
In general, I like seeing other people's homes. I love seeing how they live in them, what they've stored where, what clever use was found for an otherwise-awkward bit of the space, and even the habits & tool to deal with inevitable limitations & annoyances. --- There's none of that in an Open House. it seems that the "well-managed" open houses *remove* as much as possible the current owner from the dwelling.
Anyway, the last of the three Open Houses we went to today was run by the owners. Usually an open house is run by an agent, although in one that we went to the agent was the sister-in-law of the seller and had grown up in the house. The house had changed a lot since, though, and she was pretty good at "keeping it professional" so you'd barely know.
But this house was shown by the owners, and they clearly still lived there. The small office had an *actual* computer set up (at which a daughter quietly worked, and offered to clear out of at a word). Contrast this to the obvious demonstration desk+Aeron which sits diagonally in the corner of small bedrooms, an unreliable suggestion. Or worse: the staged attic-room I recall from another house, in which the power cable for a reading-lamp trails off behind the loveseat to coil unconnected (as there was no power outlet anywhere on that wall).
... And sketched on the wall of that office/sitting room was an exquisite line drawing of a tree.
I wondered in how many other houses the pros might have insisted on re-painting that room to depersonalize the doodle? Not all of them, I'm sure --- but probably some.
There were also penciled height-markings for growing kids on the door-frame in the master bedroom. Now, those, I might erase myself (I'd've kept them if they were on the *inside* of the doorway), but that's not the point. The point is that I thought about a recent trip to VT, in which we stopped by to look at my grandparents' old house. And the new owners recognized my dad, brought us in, and showed us where their closet still bore the height-lines of my uncles & aunts. They were happy for the encounter and so were we --- surprised, flattered, and happy!
Anyway, these owners showed us around, and talked about things they'd done to the house --- and even some things they planned or hoped still to do --- and I enjoyed it, and our agent nearly tore his hair out.
...
One other small note: at the 1st open house, the relaxing one where the home was in a location we didn't want, there was a potential-buyer whom we kept running in to. He & his agent walked into the house literally steps behind us (I held the screen for them), and seemed to be following the same path thru the place as we were. We joked about it a few times, because I didn't feel competitive at all.
Then, at the second home, one we went to with our agent and which was shown by the owners, I saw him again. The owners tried to guide us visitors separately, so our paths needn't cross, but they timed it a little wrong and he was in the yard while we stepped out to an overlooking porch.
I waved and I think he smiled.
