Why? I need to get away from the stress of owning a big home and yard that I can’t take care of by myself, with my work and travel schedule. And I really need to be closer to my office than the current exhausting 1.5 hr one way commute, now that my kids are done with school. And finally, it really is time for those kids to fly the nest, perhaps with a little help, but definitely find their wings.

My wish list isn’t really huge, but it’s not simple either. Close-to-downtown Seattle real estate in good neighborhoods can be ridiculously expensive.

• 2-3 bdrm, 2 bath condo/townhouse/cottage w/ full groundskeeping

• Sunny, well lit, open, prefer architecturally interesting to apartment-bland
• Usable kitchen for cooking/entertaining
• Hardwood or other non-carpet material floors
• Fireplace
• Deck or patio
• Covered parking or garage
• Laundry room on same floor as bedrooms
• Reasonably quiet location – not end of runway or on major highway
• Within 30 min of downtown

A townhouse is a plus, as is a soaking or jetted tub, a garage, and a view of a slice of green, mountains, or sound. High HOA fees are a minus, as are huge hive-like facilities with long hallways – not very dog-friendly.

I’ve found two I’ve loved but haven’t worked out:

The Bainbridge Condo is lovely. Totally lovely. It’s my gold standard. But, in the recession, not a single unit has sold and they’re all being rented out. This puts any single buyer at significant legal risk both from a underlying land perspective (owned by the developer) and from a HOA/assessment perspective.

The Ballard condo/cottage is a tiny, light, bright jewel. I also loved it. Apparently, though, contravening all customs re: condo ownership, there will be no community maintenance of grounds or building exteriors. Groundskeeping and the relative lack of headache is precisely why I’m looking at condos, so that is strike 2.

I’ve also found many I’ve really disliked, some for rather comical reasons.

The Capitol Hill condo had fabulous photography – and was, indeed, light and bright. It also had amateurishly installed Ikea cabinetry and closets, horrible kludged together bathrooms, and in a supreme triumph of idiocy, no *refrigerator* in the kitchen. Check the photo. There is no space for a fridge. Apparently the previous owner installed 18′ of cabinets and made do w/ under-counter wine chiller units in lieu of a fridge.

The Lake Union condo was in a style I really like – sort of the Dwell design/style, dark bamboo floors, re-engineered stone countertops, window seat, lots of light. Still, it was four stories. Count them. And the first bathroom was on the third floor. The shared kitchen/living room was about 12′x14′, and had about five cabinets; apparently residents have to choose between storing dishes or food.

Then there was the Fremont condo, which was also new and modern, but the copious back windows all overlooked a really seedy 7-11 and its filthy parking lot, and beyond that a head shop.

The inexpensive Normandy park townhouse condos were new and pretty and spacious, and conveniently positioned at the end of one of the SeaTac runways. How thoughtful for my travel schedule! And sleep schedule.

Anyway, I think I’ll take a break for a while, and only look when I see something stellar, avoiding any further emotional investment.

Note: I have a real estate agent. One on each side of the Sound, actually. I am perfectly happy with them, thank you.

Note 2: I am being heavily comment spammed lately. While I do review my comment moderation queue, if your comment disappears into the spam queue, I probably won’t see it to retrieve it, sorry – email me!

It was the Poulsbo police.

My boys – including my sorta-kinda-adopted extra boy – were all home, watching tv, so while I flashed on the police delivering horrific news to me this spring, my brain didn’t dwell there long.

These gentlemen were looking for a runaway girl with a warrant out for her arrest. At this point, all three boys in the teen boy squad were behind me at the door, so it was pretty funny. “Sorry, officer, we’re kind of an all-boys household here.” I say boys, but they’re 17, 18 and 20 and all over 6′ tall, so really, they’re men.

The officer asked, “Are you sure that there’s no girl upstairs in a bedroom or anything?” I obligingly went and checked – no stray girl in any room or closet. My guys have done stupid things but concealing a girl in their room has not yet made the list.

The teen boy squad had never heard of the girl. Apparently she’s a couple of years younger.

The police indicated they’d received a report that she’d been at our address a couple of hours ago. Huh? The guys had been at youth group at church and I’d been home alone. (Ah, peace!)

After some back and forth, we determined that she’d made a call from a cell phone, and the cell number she called from was Zach’s over a year ago. Somewhere there’s an old billing record still tying it to our house.

News flash! Cell phone billing data is not useful (except for billing), just like it isn’t useful for E911 purposes. Cell phone locator data or GPS data would have been great for detective work, but the police didn’t have that information.

The police thanked us, and we them, and they headed off about their business. I hope they find the girl, and that she’s safe.

I was proud of the teen boy squad; they were uniformly respectful, helpful and positive with the police. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; it’s one of the benefits of living with a clear conscience and a good attitude.

• Monday: Work all day, fly to Anchorage in the evening

• Tuesday: Get up at oh-dark-thirty for a project deployment, spend the morning providing customer support onsite, then the afternoon prepping for the next one.
• Wednesday: Get up at even earlier oh-dark-thirty for a second project deployment, then go back to bed. (Yeah!) Go in late, coffee in hand.
• Thursday: Work on budgets for next year’s projects. Fly from Anchorage, to Fairbanks, to Anchorage, where my flight to snowy, icy, Seattle is delayed. Make it to Seattle by midnight, and crash on my kind sister’s couch.
• Friday: Creep home slowly on icy roads, work a couple of hours, then take boys back over to Seattle to train station. Wander through awesome indie bookstore Elliott Bay Books, navigate skating rink roads to dinner date at Etta’s Seafood. (Mmm, crab cakes!)

This morning, after coffee and green chile omelets, I’m being lazy. If I could go *nowhere*, I would, but we’re expecting Snowpocalypse v.2, this time with 2 feet of snow and then freezing rain. I need to get groceries today if I’m going to get them at all. All in all, we’re supposed to be socked in with snow and freezing rain for the next week.

I can think of worse things than to be snowed in with my husband while my children are out of town.

Happy stormy solstice, all!

I confess, I had three hardworking guys on that task who will be very sore tomorrow, so my job ended up being more coordination and less back muscle. I spent part of the day pruning and tying up tomatoes and roses and weeding garden beds.

I actually have lots of help from our teens on yard upkeep – they mow, weed, and do bigger projects for extra money. When they leave home it’s going to hit us hard.

I think our empty nest home needs to be a condo, one much closer to Bryan’s office. I’d like plenty of room, a garage, a housekeeping service and a nice deck or patio. We can have a ‘garden’ of 4 or 5 containers of flowers and tomatoes, a comfy patio table and a grill, and hopefully a bonus great view.

I’m not quite sure how this will work with dog ownership, but other folks do it. I would prefer to spend my weekends relaxing, rather than working on the DIY and home/yard upkeep projects.

I don’t even want to think about how hot my second story, southwest facing bedroom is this afternoon!

Bryan and I have been looking for a portable air conditioner for several days, and everywhere we go, they’re sold out. I don’t want a window air conditioner because then I’d lose my window functionality. I can’t see spending $3500 on whole house A/C when we only need it 10-12 days a year here, and then only in a couple rooms of our house, upstairs facing southwest. The cost per use equation just does not make sense.

On top of the heat issue, my allergies are miserable this summer. Having the windows wide open and all fans on high means I’m constantly sneezing, sniffling and sinusy. My HEPA filter does me absolutely no good.

After some creative research, we finally found this portable room air conditioner in stock at Circuit City. We’re going to grab a salad for dinner tonight and then pick it up

Hopefully we’ll sleep in a cool, allergen free room tonight!

Bryan was stuck inside teaching a class today, but Zach and I spent the day on yardwork.

First we went and picked up stone from a local landscape supply place to edge Zach’s pond & waterfall project – his “personal swampland”. We chose about a half ton of mica-spangled slate, plus some additional chunky sandstone for building the waterfall. My back will not be speaking to me again for some time.

Then he mowed, and I worked on getting our in-ground irrigation system ready for the season. I moved a sprinkler head, installed some new higher power sprinklers where the standard ones weren’t reaching well enough, and capped one sprinkler off where we’re getting too much water.

The dogs were fascinated by my digging – if they could figure out how to use a shovel without opposable thumbs, they would! They ate dirt, chased worms, bugs and shadows, and had a great time supervising.

I planted tomatoes and pansies (one of my favorite flowers) in containers – and liberally sprinkled edges and shady areas with Slug-go. We should have beautiful iris and hostas this year if I can keep the slugs out of them. I weeded a couple of garden beds, a never-ending battle.

Then I helped Zach with his pond. I started by making him clean up his jobsite! What is it about teens and projects? They don’t seem to mind working among chaos, and making more as they go. I started setting up his waterfall, building a low retaining wall to back it and aligning the weir with the pond. Our pond liner should arrive Monday and we want to be completely ready to lay it.

At that point, my back went on strike, protesting every time I bent or lifted, so I called it a day. Middle age sucks.

I got a hunk o’ meat ready for the grill along with some fresh asparagus, and we fixed a great barbecue dinner when Bryan got home.

I’m so glad it’s spring!

This is my home office – where I telecommute, write, make jewelry, etc. (Although hammering and soldering take place in the garage, which is NOT photo ready!) It’s a worthy home for the new Mac.

Jewelry Workstation	Telecommuting central!
Zach’s workstation	My new closet storage.

First, I had to organize and clear out the existing clutter around our workbench. We have a fairly clean, organized home – not the same story in our garage. Pile management would be a kind term for it. Then I had to come up with an organized way to store and set up my jeweler’s tools – I love the little translucent Rubbermaid three tier drawer units, in small and medium sized, plus the traditional garage pegboard tool storage. And, I had to come up with a heat source for the workspace – our double garage is high ceilinged, uninsulated and unheated. We are in the middle of one of the colder Puget Sound winters in recent history, and the oil radiator space heater I toted down barely made a dent in the chill. Finally, lighting was an issue. Did you know that fluorescent lights don’t work properly in the cold – they flicker badly – and that cold butane (in a soldering torch) doesn’t burn nearly as hot?

The second challenge was getting some of the tools set up properly. We like sturdy steel gorilla shelves, and have them lining the garage and set up as workbenches. Gorilla shelves don’t work well with a bench vise or jeweler’s bench block/pin vise, though, because of the depth and curved z-ledge shape of the steel shelf facing. I finally managed to set up the bench vise with creative wood bracing – but had to give up on the block vise and just C-clamp the bench pin (right) to the top of the workbench.

I set up a soldering workstation, a sawing, drilling and fabrication workstation, and a forming/finishing workstation, plus fairly organized storage of all my metalsmithing stuff. I found a little tiny crockpot for soldering pickle and a safe container for etching acid – and I can make up antiquing solution on an as-needed basis. By the time I got through with all of those machinations, it was pretty late in the afternoon.

I’d still like to get a stool for the workbench, and a better heat source if I find a good buy, but I’m happy with my new workspace. I can’t wait to spend more time working on projects out there!

After all that, in a fit of impatience, I dove right into the first project I had in mind – with no sketching, preparation or model making. Mistake! I should have taken the time. After rough cutting the pieces with a piercing saw, I’m unhappy with the proportions. I’m going to have to redo the larger piece, starting fresh with a new piece of metal. It’s not a lot of wasted metal or rework, only 2″ x 3″, just annoying. Next time I’ll sketch first, make a paper model, and measure and mark carefully before putting saw to metal.

I’m a big believer in lots of rest, plus taking echinacea, zinc and vit C, to help lessen the severity and duration of colds and flu. I really like Odwalla’s C Monster fruit smoothies, and EmergenC Vit C fizzy drink packets, as mid-day vitamin pick-me-ups. I also drink enough peppermint tea to float a boat.

So, finally, this evening I got out of the house for a few minutes – I needed Robitussin DM, cough drops and more C Monster, so we went to the grocery store. It was pathetic how nice a diversion it was just to have that little outing. Hopefully I didn’t pass the plague along.

Honda-powered generators are the go-to-name in portable generators, and usually cost three times that much. They are reputed to be quiet, reliable, long lasting and easy to pull-start. All the research I’ve done indicates that we got a tremendous deal and that others who have picked up this generator are quite pleased with it.

Now we need to build a little “doghouse” shelter for it in the side yard, behind a locked gate but away from the house so there’s no danger from carbon monoxide gas emissions. We’ll need to look closely at the generator configuration before building the shelter to ensure we give it plenty of ventilation, as well as access for gas refills, pull starts and maintenance.

It’ll be great to have that standby power source in place and no longer be reliant on our not-so-consistent city power!