Thursday, March 6, 2008

Sorry for being away so long

I keep apologizing.

When I thought I was too busy, I found myself posting at all three of my blogs on a fairly regular basis. Now that I have a lot more free time, I don't seem to be able to bring myself to write.

That doesn't bode particularly well for my retirement, either planned in 2010 or sort of thrust upon me this winter. It also makes it a lot easier to understand what I once thought was kind of a dumb statement:

If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.

It isn't that I'm not doing anything right now. First and foremost, we are in the process of trying to sell our house. It's something we were going to do later this year anyway, but circumstances sort of pushed it up. We go on the market Saturday and have our first open house on Sunday.

Of course we have a Realtor. (If you don't capitalize that word, they get mad.) She is the one doing most of the word, although we had to clean our house almost to the point where it looks like no one lives in it. Our garage, on the other hand, now contains almost every one of my personal possessions.

Usually I have to make my wife angry for that to happen.

The whole thing is ridiculous, but in a good way. My parents bought their first home in 1956 for $12,000 and the one in which they still live in 1963 for $25,500. That second home has significantly more square footage than the house we're selling, but for the difference in price, it might as well be in Rwanda.

If you look in the dictionary under "ridiculous," you'll see "California housing market." The median price of a home in the state is $430,000, and that's down 22 percent from a year ago. Since we live in a wonderful neighborhood, we're selling for a little more than twice that amount and we'll probably get it.

No offense intended to anyone, but living in La Canada Flintridge is more than a little nicer than living in San Bernardino or Fresno.

So I'm working hard on the house thing.

But that doesn't mean I can't write. I haven't written anything for pay for nearly six weeks, so I need to keep in practice.

Anyway, I'm back.

We'll see what happens.

1 comment:

Dale Morgan said...

Welcome back, Mike. I think we all zoned out there for a while. I chuckled when I read your quote on if you want something done, ask a busy person. I have found that to be true, also. Now that I am retired, I have no earthly idea how I had time to work. I am busy every day and can't account for my time--more sleep, of course, but still don't find the time to read like I used to. What's up with that?

Anyhow, glad to see some activity. And, of course, good luck with the Open House!