WDM, IA - I Snoozed and I Loozed

Tax time again. This year I thought I’d be sitting under a palm tree in Galveston with warm winds wafting over me. But I’ve substituted sitting in our lower lever, looking out at the pond with geese gliding gracefully over it and the sun streaming in the window. Not a bad trade. But, hey, if I’m gazing absent-mindedly at the geese, I must not be doing our taxes.

I did get them done. I do them on Turbo Tax and am able to download all of our pertinent investment information directly from Wells into the tax program. Pretty slick and certainly a time saver. When I e-filed, I got this message back:

‘Tax triumph?’ Now, with whom would I share? Who would ever want to get a tweet from me saying that I’ve triumphed over our taxes? I can’t imagine that my tax triumph over taxes would make anyone’s day. Oh, well, I don’t live in the social networking space.

Now about that snoozing and loozing. Last June I booked an 11-day trip for January 2013 to Hawaii for $2200 - flight and hotel. And, the hotel was more a condo with a kitchenette in it. So, we could save money on meals. Or, at least, save a lot of time in restaurants. Breakfast in the room, sandwiches as we travel about and dinner out. Well, that trip went up in smoke so I went online Friday to see what I could come up with for this coming January but decided that we wanted to spend 14 days rather than 11 since I found more things to do than we could manage in 11. I found a great price:

        $2200 for 14 days

        a non-stop flight rather than one stop in LA

        boarding at 10:00 am rather than 6:45

        returning at 7:30 pm rather than 10:45.

Whoo - eee. How much better could it get?

And, then I snoozed - and lost that great deal. I wanted to wait until Gary got home from Fort Dodge to talk it over along with our schedule for the winter. And, today, I went online to book that great deal. Big mistake - Expensive mistake.

Now, the price is $1500 each for a total close to $3000. Ouch. Well, I was stunned. Shucky darn. And, I was so bummed out that I didn’t book the trip. I’ll probably lose that price too. Of course, $3000 for 14 days is quite reasonable and almost comparable to $2200 for 11. But - shucks - I wanted a GREAT deal not just a GOOD deal.

I also checked on a 3 week trip to China which would cost about $3000. Maybe I’ll go for that - and get that hike on the Great Wall that I’ve always wanted to do.

FD, IA - Before and After

Gary and I have been doing a lot up at Lug’s home to ensure that the systems work right, that it has good curb appeal and that it is clean inside. We are highly motivated to sell that house. I’ve mentioned the gutter work, the window well work and the sump pump work that Gary has been doing and I thought a picture is worth a thousand words. So, TA DA, here are some before and after picrures.

THE WINDOW WELL, THE SUMP PUMP AND THE VENT

First is the side entrance to the house. Obviously, we want to have great ‘curb appeal’ and, since this is what buyers would see when they walked up to the front door, Gary wanted to improve this. In the first picture, the 'before' picture, the black pipe is from a sump pump in the basement laundry room which comes up out of the room, through a window, through the window well, and alongside the house. Well, it was supposed to be a window but Lug took the window out long ago and put in 2 wooden frames with plastic stretched across them, plastic which had ripped. I find it so ironic that Lug, who was so concerned about security that he always locked both locks on every door even when he was in the yard and then shook the doors to ensure that they were locked, had 2 sheets of plastic over this window, rather than a real window.

Gary rerouted the sump hose so it came out right next to the dryer vent, replaced this old, torn dryer vent, replaced the plastic covered window frames with the actual window which he found in a back storage room, and then installed a new, fitting window well cover and nailed it to the house rather than putting bricks around its base to hold it in place.

THE GUTTERS

Lug’s lot is higher than the lot of the neighbor so to prevent water flowing into their lot and giving them a shore line, he’s always had several gutters along his garage so the water would drain out on his driveway rather than their yard. Over time these gutters have gotten knocked around and were a bit rusty to boot. Gary not only replaced them, he attached them to the side of the house rather than letting them float, and finally he took out the stakes since the gutters were now firmly attached.

CLEANING UP

Gary’s been a busy boy and unfortunately, he’s had to work outside a bit. Me, I got to stay inside - I’m such a delicate female - and clean. Below, you can see me posing, pretending that I am cleaning some windows in the family room. I only looked busy when Gary was inside.

Finally, my brother came over to do some steam cleaning in the family room. It looked pretty clean with just some spots and some areas beween doors where you could tell that people had walked. However, it was amazing how much dirt and dust and those pesky dust bunnies Jack pulled out of the carpet. He went over that carpet for at least 1 1/2 hours and finally it looked pretty good. Here we are in the kitchen cleaning the steam cleaner. Nothing like ‘bonding’ over a steam cleaner.

And, finally, the house looks good for a sale. The insde is clean and the outside has nice curb appeal. Of course, there is still the matter of the quarter round in the rooms with the wooden floors but Gary and Tom, Cathy’s husband are going up on Saturday to do that. And the matter of painting the first floor rooms. We’ve got a bid for that but he won’t be back from vacation until the first week of April. So, we’ve got to hold off on that - BUT, if someone wants to buy before then and paint themselves, no one in the family would stop them.