turning to other news

[dragonlady7]

We may have a sweet sweet deal on housing in Buffalo.
Dave's mom owns a second house in Buffalo. She got it for like a dollar from her mother's sister when the old lady went into a nursing home, and she's been renting it to relatives for a couple years now, just charging them however much the taxes and fees on the property add up to. The aforementioned relatives just bought a real house of their own and are moving out with their expanding family.

Which means there's a 2 bedroom house with great amenities in a nice neighborhood sitting there, and his mom's either going to sell it or rent it to us for about half what our budget had called for.
It's just about perfectly what we were looking for. We'd decided to focus on the more urban areas of Buffalo, but it's in one of the neighborhoods we'd originally considered, and is far nicer than anything we could get at twice the price. (Off-street parking, laundry facilities, all appliances, well-maintained, small garden, front and back yard, membership to town gym and aquatic center, sidewalks plowed by town, sun porch, unfinished second floor, dry basement.)

So, we're going to consider that.

Only downside, besides not being in one of the trendy walk-to-everything neighborhoods, is that the relatives aren't moving out until mid-July or 1 August. So, Dave could stay with his mom and save a few hundred bucks on the summer's rent, but I am certainly not staying with his mom for that amount of time. I'm not even going to ask. It's just too long. I could visit for weekends and stuff, but I was there for 2 weeks over Xmas and it was just crazy-too-long to be there. I got under her feet, I was annoying, I felt awkward, I hid in closets, I was grumpy, I felt like I was just this mass of left feet, I said the most ridiculous things-- I am too intimidated by Dave's mother (who is a wonderful woman, but just imagine-- she's a 4th-grade teacher. Those are not pushovers, and if you think so you've forgotten elementary school completely) and besides which, it would simply be rude.

So, either I have to find someplace cheap to live in Rochester or Buffalo for the summer, or I have to suck it up and live at home.

Now, the thing is, my dad just found out he's not going to Iraq after all. (They could have told him that a year ago, but instead waited until nine days before mobilization to finally tell him that he simply wasn't eligible to go under regulations. Duh.) So he'll be around. I really wouldn't mind apprenticing myself to him and helping him do projects around the house and on the property-- I don't need to learn skilled stuff, I can just practice lifting heavy things. I don't mind. He has a ton of stuff to do. At my current skill level I can shift wheelbarrow-loads of bricks, I can paint things, I can put screws into things, I can saw things, and I can just about hammer a nail on the third try. I really wouldn't mind adding to that.
And I have no real plans or goals for right now-- they're all waiting until I'm in Buffalo. And if I do learn skilled stuff, well then I'd love to learn enough so that I could take on finishing the unfinished second storey of Dave's mom's spare house, so that when we're done renting it, she can sell it for more than she would have been able to otherwise. That's a tad farfetched, but I would love to learn a little bit about that kind of thing anyway. It's just a thought.

We may end up going with one of the trendier and more expensive apartments and just letting Dave's mom sell the house now. It's still a possibility. But it's an entertaining one to consider, certainly. And think of it-- off-street parking... laundry... mmmm....
Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, trudging from the overpass where I had to park the car tonight. Grumble.