A Pox on You and Your Geology Degree

On day two of The Week of Pain, we also managed to find a really nice house up on the hillside. It had a wonderful view of Fort Collins, and it was in a small development surrounded by open space preserve about 1/4 mile from the entrance to Horsetooth Reservoir's boat launch and beach. That house was nearly perfect, and it had 6 or 7 bunnies sunning themselves in the front yard when we pulled in. The Childrens liked that a lot. These were of the rabbit variety, not the Playboy variety.

But could we buy that? Noooo... We kept thinking about how my brother DougyC, who seems to be an expert on all things involving freshwater (not snow and not sea water, mind you, as there are different experts on those topic in the fambly), always complains about the earthen damn used to create that reservoir, and how it's toast in an earthquake, and how their seismic retrofit over the last few years was mere false security, and how the whole mountainside will wash away one day. I'm paraphrasing there a bit, but you get the gist of it. So, we eliminated one of the best houses based on that. That, and it was an awfully long commute.

[This next part expands on some comments I made here. I wrote all this, then I said to myself, "Self, I think you already wrote about this." So I checked. Yup. I covered some of it in not much detail. And I'm not deleting all this great work.]

We also found a decent almost-complete house in Windsor that was quite pricey and did not include any landscaping or window coverings. It also included a big loft area where they had put a built-in bench right up against the railing. That made the ~4ft high railing more like 2.5ft high, and we were pretty sure we'd lose one if not both of The Childrens over that. I bet if we called the housing inspector to ask about that, it'd be a code violation. Plus, we got a copy of the CC&R's, and they were, shall we say, punishing. They specified things such as how many birdfeeders you could have (only one) and if you could have a basketball hoop (yes, but only a portable one, not one affixed to the house or garage, and it had to be put away out of sight whenever it was not being used). All lighting must be aimed down at the ground or up at the house. No light shall be aimed such that any part of the beam leaves the owner's property. Motion-detecting lights are not permitted except for limited use as security lighting with the written approval of the lighting plan from the architectural review board.

Scah-rew that.

So, after the second Day of Pain, we were left with basically nothing we wanted, and there were only about five properties left to see. Our dear realtor was pressing us to pick properties for a second visit the following evening, since we'd finish seeing everything for the first time in the morning.

That is what led to the beer-averting depression.

Day three of The Week of Pain turned out to be much better, though. More on that to follow, eventually.

I'm back out in FC tomorrow night and Thursday to go to the home inspection. Probably blog a little tomorrow night, since beer is not on sale at Old Chicago, and that is the venue that CJ decided to book.