The House Search Continues

So I know I promised Clemson pictures, but those are going to have to wait because I have a Lost episode calling me from my DVR.

First, though, I wanted to express some excitement, and some frustration. As some of you may, or may not know, I've been looking for a house for about the last month or so. Florida was one of the worst hit areas in the housing crash, and there are some great deals to be had. However, with my scant few months of full time employment and a correspondingly scant amount of savings, the houses that I can pick from are still relatively limited. Hey, a $500,000 house can only drop so far, right?

The excitement is because I have been able to find several areas near the center of town that satisfy my quite picky tastes. You see, most houses in Florida, especially new houses, are built in huge subdivisions with approximately 3.5 inches of space between them. Most of them also have no character, and if you replaced all the pictures in the housing magazine with a picture of the same stucco house, I'm not sure anyone would notice. I want something much different. I'm willing to put in the work on an older, unique house with a lot of potential.

The frustration is because the houses that I've found so far fall into two categories: houses where I love the design, love the lot, love the area, and it's just slightly too expensive, or houses where I can afford it, but the house is just alright, the area might be a bit hillbilly, and the lot is fair. That, or the house backs up to the interstate. Or the house that was perfect, but was also still listed in spite of being closed on tomorrow (anger!).

Anyway, that's the long and short of it. The search continues and with any luck I will be in the house of my dreams (or at least what will become the house of my dreams) in the next 6 months or so. $8,000 federal tax credit here I come!

Another Trip to Clemson

Hello again. I'm back after not too long away, with more fun stuff to report! Last weekend I flew back to Clemson again for the long weekend. However this time was less for friends and more for family. My brother, who has been down in Mexico for the last several months managing a plant there, was back in the States for his birthday and to see his new baby girl, Kirklyn. Thankfully his time off managed to coincide with a long weekend for both me and my parents, so we all met in the beautiful upstate to have a family weekend.

It must be a Dunkel trait to have kids 20 years apart. My brother, who is about 17 years older than I am, has an 18-year-old son who is attending his first year of college, and now he has a 3-month-old daughter too. It will definitely be interesting to see how the upbringing of the two differs. No matter what, though, she is very cute (I would say "what baby isn't?", but I have seen some not-cute babies, haha), and her brother takes very good care of her. Brad (my brother) also seems to be having a good time. I never thought that I would see him wearing a babybjorn around his shoulders.

As with the last time I traveled up there I flew in on Thursday afternoon. I missed almost an entire day of work, but it was worth it to be able to spend an extra day with the family. Even with the extra time, though, it was a mad dash. Thursday night I managed to meet up with Dan and Daniel and we, along with the rest of the family, went down to downtown Anderson for some live music and good food. I'm surprised by how much Anderson has improved since I was last down there. I would never have wanted to walk around after dark, but now it's almost fancy! After some good homemade pizza and way too much 80's music we headed back to Clemson. The parents hit the sack and Dan, Daniel, and I drove back to Clemson with the idea that we would watch a movie. Daniel chose "Erik the Viking", which I would have enjoyed much more if I weren't freaking tired. So we got through about 90% of it before giving up and heading back to the hotel for bed.

As far as the rest of the weekend goes, it was an interesting mix. We spent some time looking at houses, since mom and dad are always on the lookout for a good reason to leave the frigid north and move to Clemson, and I managed to connect up with Jason and Lisa. The three of us are traveling to Portland, OR, this July for a wedding and a week tour around the area. I had bought a guidebook and we all wanted to do some planning as far as places to go and things to see. I've wanted to explore that part of the country for the last 10 years, so to finally be going is very exciting! If only I had a month to just tour around and see the sights. Of course, I would be out of cash well before then, haha. Silly money.

My one regret was that I didn't get a chance to see Dana and Diana. Of course, as per my law of the universe, Dana's sister was getting married that Saturday, so they were off to Greenville for a large chunk of the time. As I told them, now they'll just have to come down and visit me in Florida ;). Plus, I have real beaches!

To top off the weekend we did have some great food. Saturday night we ended up at a place called the T-60 Grille. It's way back on Lake Hartwell where you'd never find the place. In fact Jason and I impressed my parents with the iPhone's ability to guide us on some crazy back roads and still make it there in one piece (unfortunately we hit a washed-out road on the way back, and I don't think the rental Focus would have survived). The food and the view was awesome. The specialty of the house is a seafood boil, and that was some of the best crab I've ever had. Corn on the cob is also included, and it soaked up so much of the juices that it was the juiciest, and spiciest, corn I've ever had. The guy who runs the place is quite the business man. Apparently his wings, spices, and a bunch of other concoctions are being sold at Bi-Lo and on QVC.

Sunday morning we ended up at another great restaurant out on the lake for Easter brunch. It was an excellent buffet, with everything from prime rib, to grits, to squid salad, and sushi. Of course, my favorite part was the deserts ;). I just have one thing to say: 4 food chocolate fountain.

After brunch it was time to go do a little more touring. We got to see Stacy's parent's awesome log home that they're building on 30 ancestral acres near Anderson. The house overlooks a lake and a large field, and I would love to come and take a vacation there sometime. Then it was back to the airport and back to the real world. Definitely a great weekend!

For those of you more visually inclined, I did take pictures, and I will try to get them posted here in the next day or so. Until then, goodnight!

Working in the Sun

So what I didn't get around to talking about yesterday was the fun we had on Sunday. Now after you hear what we did you're going to think that I was being sarcastic when I said "fun", but I really did have fun. After all, if you know me then you know that I'm one of those strange people that likes doing things like installing ceiling fans, so this was right up my alley.

First, some background. Kristi, and integral member of the Florida group, or the Florida family as it's usually called, had her birthday this past weekend. Since there are so many of us, we can usually pitch in $10 or so on everyone's birthday and get something pretty substantial (I got $100 worth of Barnes & Nobel gift cards, which was insane). Kristi has made it pretty well know that she hated the bushes sitting out in front of her house, so for her birthday some of the group decided that the best gift would be to let her pick out new plants and then the male half of the group would re-do the garden while the female half did fun birthday stuff with Kristi. As it turned out this was a great idea.

The fun started at 1:30 on Sunday. Kristi had already chosen her plants and where she wanted them, so all we had to do was bring her vision to life. The old bushes ended up coming out so quickly that we ended up cleaning up part of the yard we weren't supposed to! Four short sweaty hours later and the new plants were in, a new boarder was installed, and there was fresh mulch everywhere. 110% better, no question. And, best of all, Kristi was happy. We were all rewarded with showers, cold beer, and excellent BBQ chicken on the grill, courtesy of Grant. Follow all that up with a (somewhat shortened) game of Risk, and it was a pretty awesome day.

For those of you who would like more detail, and some great pictures, I direct you to Grant and Kristi's own blog over at The Florida Gatchel Daily. The little guy is Noah, their 10-month-old son. He's about the cutest baby I've seen, and very well behaved. However, the picture of him about half way down is priceless. Arthur was spraying water on the window as Noah watched, and apparently that was a bad move. Haha, I feel bad about laughing at a crying baby, but it's still funny :). I'm sure there was no lasting trauma.

The Law of the Universe

While there are, of course, many real laws of the universe, there is one in particular that always seems to bite me in the ass. That is the law that if there is something you really want to do, there will always be at least one other thing you really want to do on the exact same day. Usually this happens with things like having two good friends invite you to come to their lake houses on the exact same weekend. Both trips would be awesome, but since no one that I know can split into multiple copies of themselves (yet), you have to pick. This time the law is showing up in the form of a wedding.

For any of you that have not been through this yet, there is a time around the end of college when everyone you know will decide that they need to get married. In the span of about six months you will have to remember that all the women your friends spend time with are now "wives" not "girlfriends". I'm now on the tail end of this marriage spree. Everyone I know is now either married or hopelessly single. Well, hopefully not hopelessly single, at least for my sake. But, of course, of all the dates that could be chosen for weddings, two of the as yet un-joined couples I know have decided to get married on the same day on opposite sides of the country. One is getting married in Vermont, the other in Oregon.

Thankfully, this one was pretty easy. First, I am not in either wedding, which is nice for a change (yay, no tux rental!). Second, I've been planning to go to the Oregon wedding since long before I heard about the Vermont wedding. I like both couples a lot, and both trips would be fun, but I'm happy with my decision. This is especially because I have wanted to go see the pacific northwest for about the last 10 years! The plan, as it stands, is for Jason, Lisa, and myself to attend the wedding on Saturday and then spend the next week touring around Oregon and Washington on our own. To start the week off right, the couple couldn't have chosen a better wedding location! The wedding is taking place at the Timberline Lodge, near the top of Mt.Hood, just east of Portland! You really have to see the lodge to understand what I'm talking about. For anyone who loves mountains (and I have been going through serious mountain withdrawal here in flat Florida), this is about as good as it gets. If the lodge looks at all familiar to you, that's because it was used as the exterior for the Overlook Hotel in "The Shining" (the one with Jack Nicholson, not the miniseries). Even more fun!

I'm not sure where we're going to go after that. I picked up a pacific northwest guidebook with the remains of my birthday Barnes & Nobel money, so I can spend a few weekends finding interesting nooks and crannies to check out. I'm going to be meeting up with Jason and Lisa in Clemson this weekend, so we can do some planning then. Hopefully we'll all find interesting things to do without a horrendous amount of driving. And even if we do spend a large amount of time in the car, the scenery is going to be so awesome that I'm sure I won't mind. If nothing else, I can daydream about the trip while getting through a long Monday morning.