Friend or Foe?

Spent a great weekend skiing with friends in Tahoe. The skiing was great but unfortunately we came home with this.

Hot Tub Folliculitis, or "the plague" as my friends now call it, is a common and benign skin infection caused by the otherwise nefarious bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In postoperative patients, that bacteria is responsible for mousey-smelling wounds full of greenish discharge, death, and long ICU stays. In party-going skiiers staying in rented houses with inadequately treated hot tubs, it causes a red itchy rash in the bathing-suit covered areas followed by pustules and general embarrassment. Thanks to cipro, hydrocortisone cream, and chlorine, no long term harm is done.

All I can say about the hot tub is that it seemed like a good idea at the time...

Soundtrack of Life

It's been a whirlwind 3 days of virtually no sleep and lots of paperwork as I lock down my home loan, insurance, appraisal, and all the other legalities of real estate ownership. And with my closing date less than 3 weeks away, there is a very real and intense sense of urgency to all of it.

Which is why I had to laugh out loud at the song on the radio when I jumped in my car to race over to my mortgage broker appointment this morning. The Ramones said it all:

"I wanna be sedated..."

The Dream Realized!!!

I am a HOMEOWNER!!!! Or I will be, if the bank says it's ok, on March 27!!! (Wow, that seems fast...)

After my first failed attempt, I really thought I didn't have the stomach for this market. Then driving home from church just YESTERDAY (less than 24 hours from my offer) I saw this darling house, a "jewel box", as my good friend Dick Peery puts it, in College Terrace, right across from Stanford University. It is tiny (about 1000 square feet) but absolutely darling inside, and as you can see, is dripping with "curb appeal". It had been on the market for 4 days and was having its first showing.

I called my agent immediately...unfortunately, so did eight other potential buyers. Thus ensued another diet Coke and generic Excedrin Migraine-fueled day of number crunching in Excel, crippling anxiety, and waves of nausea looking at the number of zeroes in my offer. Call it the "Bay Area Real Estate Diet". Then about 6:30 pm my agent called with the good news. I cycle through the full range of human emotion about every 2 minutes. I also realized I have slept for the last time in about, oh, 5 years.

Hooray!!!! I think I will go throw up now.