There was a neat article on using Science in Virtual Worlds in last weeks Science
Best part though comes in the citations….
How cool is that!! Now if you go to Sciencemag.org and search for Chmiel the 4th hit is Marjee! That is really awesome.
Remodeling, cleaning, etc.,
It seems like forever since our last post. Trevor and I have been really busy settling into the new house. I had two work-related trips right before and after our closing. My mom came up for a week to help us clean the house and later Trevor’s mom and Todd came to help us move. It has been exhausting, but the place is really starting to feel like home.
We recently had our hardwood floors installed and renovated the 1/2 bath on the main floor. As the dust settles, we’ll post some before and after shots on this blog, so stay tuned!
Better Floor Plans
So yesterday we closed on the house. We can start moving things over on Tuesday!!
As part of closing we got a better set of floor plays which we have avaliable here.
Engaged
So last Friday I supprised Marjee with a trip to Baltimore and at dinner I gave her an engagement ring. We spent the weekend and had a blast. Here are some pictures.
This is the resturant I proposed at.
Here is the view from our hotel room
And here are some pictures from the rest of our trip
up_stairs_photos
As promised, here are pictures of the upstairs.
Master Bedroom: 11×17 (you can sort of see into the master bath on the first picture.)
Here is the second bedroom 11×13
Third bedroom 9×9
And here is the other full bath on the second floor.
Oh I thought I would throw in some other photos of the ‘hood. You can see the pool that is just down the road and some of the other roadside trees and such.
Do you have stairs in your house?
As I promised, here is a more extensive walkthrough of our house. We wernt able to get photos of the second floor, ran out of time. But we do have a pile of other neat stuff!! (Click on the images to see the bigger pictures and then click “all sizes” to see the really big versions) and if you have any questions on what something is feel free to ask in the comments part.
(our house is the second to last one)
This is the floor plan.
Pictures of the first floor.
And some shots of the basement.
As I mentioned, we do not have pictures of the second floor, but those will follow soon.
We Got the House!!
Pictures to follow!!
3 levels
3 bedrooms
2.5 bathroms
1428 sq feet (about 2000 if you include the walk-out basement)
You can see it here, it is the one with the chimny and the solar panals.
Another bid…
So we have put in another bid, on this charming fellow.
I will say that I already am more optomistic, I think this is our most solid offer yet, and its our first offer on a home that is not a forclosure. (There is something comforting about knowing the previous resident left happily, that the home brought them good luck, and that they did not place some kind of curse on the future residents… but thats just me)
Marjee and I are looking forward to our vacation next week, and there is a good chance we will hear somethign about the house before then. That would be fantastic. This will be our first vacation in a while, while we travel a lot it is always with alterior motives, conferences to atend etc… but this time it is a trip out to my fathers, with nothing schedualed. It will be fun to see the pasific northwest agian, we should be able to make time to vist our good friend John in Seatle and enjoy an actual vacation. Thats pretty neat. So cross your fingers, third time just might be the charm!
…more offers to come
….so we lost the lovely lake house 🙁
Trevor and I went through the most hilarious red tape making offers on this guy. The books we studied about first-time home buyers all warned us, or rather reminded us that there is no “one perfect house” and to persevere in our home buying experience. Probably because they are mostly written by real estate agents. The tricky thing about this warning, of course, is that in order to be serious enough to put an offer on a house, you have to picture yourself living there for more years than you have lived anywhere (outside of the house you grew up in). In fact, you have to picture starting a family in that house. So you find a house, you like it, you see your future there, you bid on it, and its lost. And you have to pick things up and move on.
…and it can be an emotional process, even when you don’t want it to be.
…but in the case of our last offer, they put us through so much red tape and stalled so badly, I think I’m just overjoyed to know something. And now that we know, we are ready to move on.
On this same day, I had an interview with a new graduate program I have been considering. This is a huge, intimidating commitment, but the interview went very well and the faculty of the program were just great people. I’m still waiting to hear more details about my acceptance, but in the mean time, it is a little piece of exciting news.
Offer #2
…so Trevor and I did not get the last house we posted about. No biggie. It was a neat place, but after about 2 hours of disappointment our Realtor has about 5 more foreclosures to show us. We looked at three and got really, really excited about 2 of them. In fact, we think these two beat the first one we bid on, hands down. We went ahead and put another bid on a house today. You can see a picture of the front yard here. No joke! The house is on a private lake. We should not be able to afford this, but again, because it is a foreclosure and needs a little bit of love (not too much) we’re able to make an offer.