Relative Something

This weekend, we are taking a short break from packing, and visiting our lake paradise with Cyndie’s parents. On the way up, Cyndie and I took a little detour, by way of the property we will be purchasing. I tried to capture some photos of the drive.

Here is one of the views from the lovely back road route we favor, shortly after crossing into Wisconsin:

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This is a view of the street the driveway is on, looking from the north:

To the south, our street intersects with County Highway N.

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This is a view up the driveway. Welcome home, John and Cyndie! (Soon!)

We are making progress…

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There is no denying the sense of a change of season around here. The hours of daylight are noticeably shrinking. The dew point temperature has dropped, adding a fresh feeling to the decline of summer’s heat. It is my favorite time of year. It ushers in my favorite season: winter. I am obviously excited about the prospect of spending it on our new farm.

I’m dashing off to spend this beautiful Saturday morning toiling away at the day-job. I loath the overtime that requires my precious weekend hours, but that job has new significance for us right now, in that it is what qualified us for the loan to purchase the farm. I am grateful for the employment. That doesn’t mean I have to like working Saturdays, though.

Did I point out that there are a lot of maple trees on the farm? The sellers mentioned that they used to be tapped for syrup. Would we? You never know.

We ran into a couple obstructions yesterday that are keeping our starry-eyed dreaming mired in reality. Cyndie got a copy of her credit report to find out what was up with the phantom $13K charge to Chase bank that the mortgage lender listed. The day before she had exhausted all options of asking people at every possible loan department what the line item might be. Then, with report in hand, she called a second time to see if the account numbers would help them identify it. After several denials, the person on the phone came to the realization that the account number referred to a loan that had been sold to someone else, and that it happened at the same time Cyndie paid it off, in full.

They had record that it was paid in full years ago, but somehow it didn’t get cleared off the reports. They said someone would look into it and that it would eventually get taken care of. Cyndie insisted that they provide a letter immediately to confirm it was paid in full and explain their error, and then look into it and get it taken care of after that.

Then we got the results from the Radon test. The reading from the short test was over double the legal limit of 4 pCi/L. The EPA recommends that when using the short test, a reading be taken of the average of two tests. When you are in a race to close on the sale of a house, apparently one test is good enough to immediately call a more than willing contractor to come swooping in for a wad of money to throw some PVC pipe and a fan to make everything all safe and sound. Color me cynical about the whole Radon threat.

There is a threat of death by automobile crash every day, but that doesn’t keep us from driving. I guess the PVC pipe and fan is like wearing a seat belt. Once I get used to it, I’ll hardly even notice it’s there. At least I don’t have sleazy contractors eager to sell me after-market seat belts that will make me even safer in my car from the ever-present threat of a crash. Blech. Knocks me out of my dazzled visions of our new paradise in Beldenville.

Luckily, we were able to join friends Barb and Mike for a luxurious evening on their boat in Lake Minnetonka last night. The sunset put on a nice show that helped to sooth our bumps from the day.