Remember that job Matthew and I both applied for back in December? Well, less than 24-hours after the initial interview, they notified me that I was not in the running. While being notified of your application status in a timely manner is nice, this was almost so fast as to be insulting. I was pretty sure I cleaned all the chia seeds out of my teeth before going in to the interview. Had I made a some other glaring mistake?
I guess I’ll never know, but fortunately, over the last month-and-a-half, Matthew made it to the second round interview, then jumped through some additional hoops, and then waited. His efforts culminated in a [full-time] job offer this week, which he accepted.
This is good. It makes our in-progress purchase of a bicycle that will be worth more than our car seem not quite so insane. We’ve ordered the bike and made a down payment at the bike shop. The frame color and style we want is back-ordered until sometime in March, but we should have our Xtracycle Edgerunner cargo bike by spring!
In case that wasn’t enough excitement to end January / begin February, we looked at a house on Friday afternoon. We’ve had various realtors sending us online listings for about a hundred years now. Between the listings and looking at satellite images of the property, we rule most of these out, based on factors including being too close to something unfavorable (e.g., a highway or railroad) or not the right size and/or sunlight for a very large garden. Every now and then, there’s one we deign to see in person. Usually we go, take a relatively quick look inside and out, shrug, thank the realtor for his/her time, and walk away unimpressed. Many realtors don’t have the patience to stick with us.
Friday afternoon was different. I won’t say it’s our dream house, but given how long we’ve been looking, this might be our “good enough:” decent house that we can make our own over time, decent space and layout for gardening (after we remove some trees), inner-ring suburb, decent/good public schools, and not much further than Matthew’s current bike commute. Its downsides are mostly things we can fix, with some time and money, though the location is not as walkable as I would prefer.
Anyhow, we’re planning to make an offer this week. What will happen after that is anyone’s guess. It’s a foreclosure, and the bank is accepting owner-occupant bids for the first 10 days. We won’t know how our bid stacks up to other bids, so once we make the offer, it will just be a waiting game. At the end of which, we will either be making the largest purchase / investment of our lives and becoming home-owners rather than renters, or not. Not nerve wracking at all.
Her Green Life 
Exciting! We are planning some tree removal soon to make room for a much larger garden this year. We will be removing quite a few large sweet gum trees. I’m not a big fan of cutting down trees, but I can’t say I’ll be sad to see these go. Not only will we be making room for LOTS more produce to be grown this year, I am sick and tired of picking up (and stepping on, Ouch!) sweet gum balls. Good luck with the offer. Can’t wait to see how this plays out!
Yeah, cutting down big, healthy trees will be hard, though I completely understand not being too upset about losing some sweet gums! We would likely plant fruit trees elsewhere in the yard, so the total number of trees might not change all that much, just size and location. Did read recently that big, old trees remove significantly more CO2 from the air than small, young ones, though 😦