Picked A Hell of a Time . . .

(Note: I do not condone any of the activities Lloyd Bridges is trying to quit in this clip. Those who use drugs or jump out of control tower windows or pick their noses in church end up you-know-where.)

Even years tend to be pretty good for us, given our past track record, so I’m hoping that despite the whole Mayan calendar thing, 2012 turns out to be a pretty good year for us as well. Though it’s too early to tell, 2012 has all the auspices of being such a year, even with the employment turmoil I’m facing at the moment.

First: the turmoil. Still tumultuous, though we are now making steps to open up and dig in the new waste retrieval tent we finished late last year. That’s a bright spot in that it means not everyone will lose their jobs, just more than what was originally expected. I still have no idea whether or not I’ll be employed in two weeks or not. I am making inroads (I hope) with another local employer, though it appears if that pans out I’ll have to take a pay cut in order to get the job. I guess that’s better than not having a job at all. Right? RIGHT?!

On to the better news: After barely two months on the market, we’ve sold our house. The intention is to get one that’s slightly bigger – and by bigger we don’t mean ginormous, but one with an extra bedroom or two and a bit of property around it. We’ve been looking at homes in the 3,000 square foot range, with an acre or more. There seem to be plenty available, some at some pretty good prices that look relatively affordable. Bad news there is that there appear to be a lot of people out there looking at homes in this price range and configuration, so they’re going fast. We looked at one just before we listed our home in November, and it sold a day or two after that. So we’ll see what happens. We’re looking at everything from an art deco-themed fixer-upper in rural Bonneville County to one that’s way in the heck out in the boonies in Jefferson County, near Menan (OK, I’m the only one looking that that one, but it’s got possibilities, I think.) There’s also one in Ammon that I think we did some brick repair on many moons ago.

We looked at a few over the weekend, and are struggling to deal with real estate speak, or at least a general overselling of what’s out there. We looked at a remodeled farmhouse that had possibilities for rooms in the attic and basement until we got there and saw that there was no attic access and the basement is accessed through a trap door that leads to a room still occupied by a huge coal furnace. Another house in Idaho Falls inspired me to utter that famous Ghostbusters quote:

Oh, it wasn’t that bad. But it was filthy, owned by hoarders and home to a leaky water heater turning the basement to mush. And outside were a feedlot and a gravel pit. Yuck. Tawna, our agent, didn’t even ask us what we thought of that one – she just said as we left, “Okay, I’ve got more houses for you to look at.” Funny, that.

We’ll have to get serious over the next week or so and find something, because the lady who’s buying our house wants to close mid-February. We’ll see if that date sticks, and see how things go from here.