Finally...

...For Sale...and hopefully sold by the end of this holiday weekend...we've got better-than-asking-price offers, we really just need to choose the right one now and put this thing to bed.

It has been a ton of work, and much of it has fallen on Karen's shoulders.  Apparently I married Superwoman bc the transformation in our home has been amazing...not just over the last couple of months when an enormous amount of time and effort has been focused on decluttering...but over the last twelve years as she transformed our home from "what it was" to "what it is".

One example...the before and after of our backyard...here's what it was when we moved in:

...and here's what it is as I gaze out our kitchen window this morning:

All of that is Karen's doing...she designed each element, and labors over the freshening, maintenance, and caretaking of it constantly.

She even worked with the cement contractors when they were trying to figure the right angles for the slope of the cement to the drains to avoid puddles when it rains.

And that's just the outside...she repeated this same transformational magic throughout our home, picking the look, the decor, the materials, and rolling up her sleeves and getting it done for each room, whether she was functioning as the general contractor and overseeing the work or actually doing it herself.

So it's been rewarding to hear all the positive feedback from everyone walking through our home...all the superlatives bandied about by excited buyers about how beautifully and tastefully decorated every room is.

Thankfully the photographer did an excellent job capturing that and so ours has been listed as the hottest house on the market in our area right now.  Here are a few of what I think are the "money shots" that he took:

curb appeal...

love the hardwood and the "it's a wonderful life" staircase

this looks like a painting to me

he did a great job of capturing the cozy feel of the theater room

Karen's fingerprints are all over everything here, and it is really tough to move on...

But moving on we are, and in 5 years she'll have worked her same magic on the new place.  Should be exciting.

Took yesterday off from work and it was a very busy day...started it with the ancient Scottish ritual of self-humiliation via golf clubs...

looks like a water hazard...

...but unexpectedly hit a few decent shots along the way...and the owner of the course cruised by in his golf cart while I was flailing away on the 7th hole...said he loves my hickories and wants to get a picture sometime.  I said, "Well I'm Bobby Jones and that sounds wonderful.  Will there be royalties involved?"

Anyway, I was on the course all by my lonesome at 6:45 and back home by 8:30...just in time for Steve from Steve's Antique Auto to stop by and try to fix Mr. T in my garage.

Sadly, as the above picture shows, they ended up towing Mr. T back to Steve's garage and fixing him there...a distributor cap, points, condenser, plugs and $200 later, Mr. T is officially back on the road...stiff necked beast that he is.

Spent two hours getting ready for the open house, and the rest of the day we were out and about since our home was inundated by strangers after that.

We were exhausted by 10 pm and fell into bed before 11 for the first time in a thousand years.

Today we're headed out to Holland to check on our new digs...Chris starts work on that next week.

The rest of the day beckons, so...

later, mcm fans...

Ready...

...and Action!  Or in this case, no sale.

I took pictures of my Bolex Paillard P1 Zoom Reflex 8 mm movie camera with the idea I'd put it on ebay...I've been selling a number of things lately with some sucess, but this isn't going to join their ranks.

Checked around and for this high end 8 mm movie camera - Swiss made and much higher quality than anything that was made in the USA at that time - $50 is about the going rate on ebay.

And I get it...no one but the victims of "golden age thinking" syndrome - the fallacious idea that somehow days of yore were better than current times - would care a whit about the forgotten film format of 8 mm - or its primary tools - from 50 years ago.

Of course, I'm one of the leading voices of that particular victim demographic, so to me it has some actual value.

Give it away for $50?  Why they can kiss my big fat hairy fill in the blank however you want to before that happens.

So forget it...I'll hold onto it, if only for its sleek aesthetics, and hey, it still works...maybe I'll be inspired to create an 8 mm silent movie classic someday.

Act 1, Scene 1, Take 1...and...begin:  "it was a dark and stormy night...suddenly a shot rang out...meanwhile, back at the ranch...somewhere in the distance, the lonesome wail of a prairie coyote pining for his mate pierced the silence..."


So our unforgiving taskmaster - the need to list our house for sale - along with its merciless partner, the relentless forward march of time - continue to crack the whip on this seemingly unreachable goal.

Nothing on the walls!  Clear every flat surface!  Banish every lurking chunk of clutter to the outer darkness, or at least to a corner in the garage or a rented storage unit!

And why?  Because buyers are too unimaginative and stupid to see themselves living there unless every wall is a blank canvas, ready and waiting for them to splash the paint of their lives all over everything.

Any identifiable trace of your DNA must be wiped clean by the weary hand of decluttering.

And yet today I see listed for sale a home smaller than ours, and all they did was take pictures...oh, they might have passed a dust mop over a few articles, but this guy had as much of a museum in his finished basement as I did...memorabilia and vintage items galore...definitely has that lived in look...and their asking price?  $200,000

But I've already emptied the loft and basement...

...of every vintage toy, phone, radio, lighter, camera and TV...items ranging from the 1920's to the 1960's, with maybe just one or two slipped in from the 1970's, though that decade clearly owes the world an apology: Carter, disco, my first marriage...

On the plus side, Karen - with an assist from Mother Nature...has the backyard coming along very nicely...

Pictures happen this week with the house listed just before the holiday...

And since I feel the sting of the cat-o'-9-tails biting my backside, I must leave my winsome pastime and return to the heavy task at hand...

later, mcm fans...

Chaos...

...and confusion...currently reigning supreme 'round these parts.

Those are the remains of some shelving units in the foreground...they were lined up in the back of the garage, groaning under the accumulated weight of our forgotten possessions until we mercilessly attacked them, skeletonizing and strewing their remains across the driveway.

The stuff they so faithfully supported all those years?  About a third has gone the way of all flotsam and jetsam, now resting peacefully in a landfill...a third has been donated, and a third is now packed away in anticipation of moving day.  I do have a few items for sale on ebay as well, with more to come in days ahead.

I surmise there is progress, but it doesn't look like it at the moment.

Mother Nature is grudgingly inching toward spring, as our backyard is beginning to evidence...

...but Ol' Man Winter hasn't gone quietly into the night...it was 34 degrees this morning.  Enough already!  Let's have some warmth!

However, like pro wrestling and the democrat primaries (RIP Bernie), the eventual outcome has been pre-determined, with Spring declared the ultimate winner.

Why even Rory Calhoun made an appearance this weekend...

...so you know a sustained stretch of good weather must be right around the corner...hope so anyway, bc we're opening the pool this week...just in time for the start of "skinny dip Sundays" season...

In all the haying through years of pack rat behavior I came across the full size VHS tapes I took while my guys were growing up and competing in sports.  Some of these tapes are more than 20 years old now - somehow they aged while I remained just as youthful as ever, pardon my self-delusion - and I made the monumental decision they are not making the journey to our new home.

So I put the word out to 3 of my sons who were the primary subjects of all that oxide coated tape - if you want them, come and get them - and today one of them is stopping by...said he would take any / all of them.

He has no idea what he's in for...I think I told them there are a few dozen tapes...

...it's more like dozens of dozens...I kept finding boxes of originals...apparently my boys were pretty busy from about age 9 through their early twenties playing football, basketball, baseball and track...and I dutifully videotaped it all.

Guess that's about it for this edition of the Atomic Monster Cafe...

later, mcm fans...