Category: Virginia

Posted on

But soon the sun with milder rays descends

Everyone says planning a wedding is hard work, but it has not really caught up with us until this summer.
Our wedding is in three weeks. We have our cocktail napkins. The moms, the flower girls, and I all have our dresses. Our flowers, cake, and cake topper are set, and we are looking forward to a wedding at the Milwaukee Public Museum.
We’ve even got more music than we know what to do with ready for instant DJ-ing loaded onto our computers. I’m really excited about all of that. But there are a few stumbling blocks. For one, we found out that our rings are really late! We ordered custom rings from Absolute Titanium. We had pretty rough luck with them for my engagement ring, so we figured we’d have to be proactive about making sure the wedding rings got to us on time. Lets just say that it was a good thing that we’ve been aggressively in touch with them. Apparently, the canceled our order by accident. They confused us with another “Owens” that ordered the same style.


We’ve hardly had time, this summer, to take any fun pictures. Of course, we have the obligatory puppy shots, because that is what dotting dog owners do. The puppies have been enjoying a bit more outdoor freedom now that we have installed a short fence. It is tall enough to keep our little guys in line, but still short enough to maintain our view of the woods. They still bark at everyone that walks by. Why don’t dogs understand property lines?


The summer highlight for sure has been the wedding of our friends Ben and Amanda. The wedding was at an amazing vineyard outside of Amanda’s hometown of Staunton, VA. A gorgeous little old town that deepend my appreciatiuon for my new home state. Take a look. The bride, groom, friends, and scenerly were all picture perfect:

The wedding was a rare confluence of great friends, great booze, great food, and amazing scenery. Utterly unforgettable. The best part was that it was the puppies’ first hotel stay, and they did smashing-ly well.

Posted on

House Hunting


Trevor and I have been busy house hunting the last few weeks. Well, we’ve been busy with a bunch of stuff: we’ve both been traveling a lot for work, we’ve had several visitors come hang out/ stay with us, and educating ourselves about housing in DC and Northern VA.
Our initial plan was to find a fixer-upper in DC. I really wanted to live near the city and public transportation and the homes in Washington DC have amazing character.
After lots of seraching, and trying and number crunching we began to realize that this was not going to happen. Even though the real estate bubble is bursting, and people are coming to their senses in pricing their homes, the cost is still prohibitive. Lots are tiny, street parking is usually the only option, and the cost of rehabilitating some of these homes would be astronomical. Many are 100+ years old and we could not afford a rehabbed home.
Condos are not an option. They are so overpriced it is kind of a joke, and I hope the developers are going to be bit in the butt soon for the evil they have wrought. The market is totally flooded and unreasonable. A condo seems to be a more permanent purchase than a single-family home because they are getting to be impossible to resell.
We turned our thoughts back to the suburbs of Northern Virgina. At first, I was mortified because we thought we would have to settle for some way, way out there suburbs that were pretty desolate and lonely, in my opinion.
This was not the case, however, as we hooked up with a very knowledgeable realtor. He’s been great to work with and has shown us that we can afford something in dreamy Fairfax county. Fairfax is the second fastest growing county in the US and is known to have an outstanding school system. It encompases what I have heard refered to as the “Silicon Valley” of the east, and I buy it, there are tons of tech jobs around here.
Anyway- that is that. It has been like a second job trying to learn about a) all that goes into buying a house and b) what to do in this crazy, crazy, ugly market.