Happy New Year!
Well, 2018 was an interesting year.
Let's get the bad out of the way first, Venture died (not surprising since she was so old), but sadly, Murphy was killed crossing the road.
There were a lot of positives though. We got Miss T's dog, Sanni, from The Old Country which has been very good for all of us, not least Sanni. Amazingly I see that I was talking of selling the old house back in February. Well, we sold it eventually, though we had to fight with customs to get them to release the paperwork that we had to send through. The buyer was annoying as well in that she kept coming up with novel ways of making me part with more of my money, including asking me to install an intercom system. Bloody cheek. I obviously have a different way of looking at buying and selling houses to other people. In my view, when you buy a house, you look at it, choose it, and buy it, then it's yours (or the bank's I suppose) and you change it the way you want it. Other people seem to think that it's the perfect opportunity to try and screw the other person out of as much cash as possible. Eventually she backed down when I demanded occupational rent (which she didn't pay).
With the money from the sale of the house, we decided to buy a house here. 5 years ago I was in the process of buying the house in The Old Country and had just started gliding, now I've had to sadly put gliding on hold, but have taken up figure skating and was looking to buy a house here. Funny where life takes you. We have this terrible habit of not looking at many houses, and then buying the first house that we see. So this time the wife and I decided to be real proper adults and look at lots of houses before making a choice. It made it slightly more difficult because the chief advantage of the house we were renting was that it was cheap. So, pretty much every house we looked at was a significant step up. We put in an offer for one house but were out bid. So we put in an offer for another house, which happened to be the first house that we had looked at, and we got it! Things moved pretty quickly and we were able to move in on the 7th December, which meant that we could be in for Christmas and New Year!
It is so nice having a house again, and it's much warmer than the old house (having double-glazed windows). After moving in we kept finding little bonuses that we didn't expect, like the attic is actually quite nice (well, could be better if we could get some insulation up there). Also, it had computer desks up there which I was able to bring down so now all of us have our own computer desks (I don't have to move my laptop every time we have supper now). It also has a thermostat in the lounge which means we can have the heat on for longer without it costing too much. They sold us a massive TV and stand, and we threw out the old couch we'd found on the side of the road and bought some new ones at the local 2nd-hand shop. It's so nice having comfortable couches again! The shower has actual pressure! There's a garage (a rarity over here) which is convenient for keeping the bikes and tools in. We're hoping to have a house-warming towards the end of January, and to that end we've been working to get everything ready. I've been getting to use my drill quite a bit, I mounted our old TV on our bedroom wall. I even got an angle grinder and used it to take the railing down that was blocking access to our front garden.
The only thing was, while being in our own house was wonderful, I really wanted a cat. I miss having cats. In the lead up to Christmas I dropped heavy hints about wanting a cat, but sadly it wasn't to be. Then a few days later Cat found a kitten advertised (she obviously had an alert set up). We contacted them immediately, and then Miss T and I took 2 buses to get to the guy (who very kindly gave us a lift back) and we got a kitten! His name's Ash and he's been settling in wonderfully. The last time we had a kitten was when we were living in Primrose, so it's really nice to have one again.
Now it feels like home.
Let's get the bad out of the way first, Venture died (not surprising since she was so old), but sadly, Murphy was killed crossing the road.
There were a lot of positives though. We got Miss T's dog, Sanni, from The Old Country which has been very good for all of us, not least Sanni. Amazingly I see that I was talking of selling the old house back in February. Well, we sold it eventually, though we had to fight with customs to get them to release the paperwork that we had to send through. The buyer was annoying as well in that she kept coming up with novel ways of making me part with more of my money, including asking me to install an intercom system. Bloody cheek. I obviously have a different way of looking at buying and selling houses to other people. In my view, when you buy a house, you look at it, choose it, and buy it, then it's yours (or the bank's I suppose) and you change it the way you want it. Other people seem to think that it's the perfect opportunity to try and screw the other person out of as much cash as possible. Eventually she backed down when I demanded occupational rent (which she didn't pay).
With the money from the sale of the house, we decided to buy a house here. 5 years ago I was in the process of buying the house in The Old Country and had just started gliding, now I've had to sadly put gliding on hold, but have taken up figure skating and was looking to buy a house here. Funny where life takes you. We have this terrible habit of not looking at many houses, and then buying the first house that we see. So this time the wife and I decided to be real proper adults and look at lots of houses before making a choice. It made it slightly more difficult because the chief advantage of the house we were renting was that it was cheap. So, pretty much every house we looked at was a significant step up. We put in an offer for one house but were out bid. So we put in an offer for another house, which happened to be the first house that we had looked at, and we got it! Things moved pretty quickly and we were able to move in on the 7th December, which meant that we could be in for Christmas and New Year!
It is so nice having a house again, and it's much warmer than the old house (having double-glazed windows). After moving in we kept finding little bonuses that we didn't expect, like the attic is actually quite nice (well, could be better if we could get some insulation up there). Also, it had computer desks up there which I was able to bring down so now all of us have our own computer desks (I don't have to move my laptop every time we have supper now). It also has a thermostat in the lounge which means we can have the heat on for longer without it costing too much. They sold us a massive TV and stand, and we threw out the old couch we'd found on the side of the road and bought some new ones at the local 2nd-hand shop. It's so nice having comfortable couches again! The shower has actual pressure! There's a garage (a rarity over here) which is convenient for keeping the bikes and tools in. We're hoping to have a house-warming towards the end of January, and to that end we've been working to get everything ready. I've been getting to use my drill quite a bit, I mounted our old TV on our bedroom wall. I even got an angle grinder and used it to take the railing down that was blocking access to our front garden.
The only thing was, while being in our own house was wonderful, I really wanted a cat. I miss having cats. In the lead up to Christmas I dropped heavy hints about wanting a cat, but sadly it wasn't to be. Then a few days later Cat found a kitten advertised (she obviously had an alert set up). We contacted them immediately, and then Miss T and I took 2 buses to get to the guy (who very kindly gave us a lift back) and we got a kitten! His name's Ash and he's been settling in wonderfully. The last time we had a kitten was when we were living in Primrose, so it's really nice to have one again.
Now it feels like home.