Maybe putting an offer in today

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

Probably won’t be accepted, since Denverites have found it, but it’s worth a try. So dealing with that.

Again you guys, kindly, don’t burn down my blog. Thanks muchly.

180 thoughts on “Maybe putting an offer in today”

    1. I hate the idea of plumbing problems, but darn if I don’t like the way you think… 😉

    2. We’ve run out of rubber seals.
      Will silicone take that kind of pressure?
      How about Silly Putty?

      2. There’s the — stuff in the cabinet under the red stairs. Very reliable as long as you get it on straight.

        1. “get it on straight”
          Are we talking a keen eye and a steady hand?
          Or does this stuff require a laser micrometer?

          1. If you need to ask the question, the laser micrometer might be advisable.

            That’s behind the GREEN stairs.

      1. And DON’T make the sea serpent in the minion pool engage in life-saving. It makes her cranky when she has to do it for fools.

  3. Probably won’t be accepted, since Denverites have found it, but it’s worth a try. So dealing with that.

    Tautological, since you are from Denver….

    Again you guys, kindly, don’t burn down my blog. Thanks muchly.

    Of course, would never do that.

        1. Eh, fires outside the BBQ tend to attract the attention of the flamingos, which is not that bad, but does limit your ability to burn things DOWN.

          1. >> “limit your ability to burn things DOWN.”

            Technically, she didn’t say we couldn’t burn the blog UP…

        2. Correction, she asked that we not burn down *her* blog.

          Other blogs were not mentioned. Anyone out there need application of a flamethrower??

          1. I am pretty sure that burning down the blog is not a significant threat (at least as long as the formula for Greek Fire remains unrecovered) but she didn’t say anything about not flooding …
            ~

            1. You do realize that if you upset the balance of the minion pool, you have to explain it to the sea serpent? And then to Fluffy, since they’re dating?

          2. “Other blogs were not mentioned. Anyone out there need application of a flamethrower??”

            I suspect those are already protected under pacts with their infernal sponsors.
            ~

    1. No, but I think there might be one or two of us who have worked for/with/against the Bureau of Land Management (“burn it, but only after filling out three trailers of paperwork and getting the signatures of all the endangered critters in the area. By yesterday. In blue ink.”)

      2. The Bureau is one of those wonderful (sarc) organizations whose member’s incompetence is only matched by their arrogance.

        IIRC, they single-handedly eliminated the phrase “Controled Burn” from fire lexicon, after way too many out-of-control burns.

      1. It still cracks me up that the old couple down the street used some kind of mini flamethrower to get rid of the weeds growing in the cracks in their driveway, when they moved in. “Kill it with fire!”

        2. The city comes around every few years and does the same thing to the street in front of my house. Wish they’d do it more often. Maybe I should just buy one.

          2. They’re pretty easy to use. I had my sixteen year old burning the weeds along the fence.
            And it’s the only way to get rid of thistles.

  5. The don’t burn down the house request is simply to great a set up to pass on this 🙂

    1. Oh, for the Love of Life Orchestra! You beat me to it. So here’s the runner-up:

        1. Taking it up a notch with some real “electric funeral” fire, courtesy of Black Sabbath:

        2. Gotta love how he got all political enough to get in Office and is responsible for burning down several beds houses with a poorly thought out attic insulation program

    2. You know that it would be untrue
      You know that I would be a liar
      If I were to say to you
      The carp pile couldn’t get much higher

      Try to set the blog on fire
      Try to set the blog on fire
      Try to set the blog on fire…

      1. Meh – got to go with the original burning man …

        What, you were expecting Arthur Brown?
        ~

            1. This is NOT about what athletes suffer …

              … if they adjust themselves after applying the Atomic Balm to their hamstrings and glutes.
              ~

              1. I wondered if anyone was going to get to Jerry Lee Lewis. Although Johnny cash kind of trumped it…

            3. I see your Cash, and raise (lower?) you a Trammp.

              (caution: it’s the long version)

      2. This inspired a Dancing in the Dark Springsteen parody, but I couldn’t quite make “blog” and “carp” rhyme.

    3. I was just thinking yesterday I should re-watch that. I don’t think I’ve seen it since it was in the theater.

      But still: why a big suit?

      1. Because everything onstage should be larger than life! So there. (It was explained in the liner notes, IIRC.)

      3. Apparently it started out as a joke on the audience. Every time he’d go back stage they’d make it a little bigger before he came back out.

        2. Still on a Nightwish kick and a Vasc kick at the same time, I see?

          Be careful not to OD on that stuff, young lady. 🙂

          1. I’ve been doing two to three times as long of runs because of his more up beat metal stuff, you bet I’m on a kick.

    5. OK, have some more:

      Bad Company — Burnin’ Sky
      Bon Jovi — Burning For Love
      Emerson, Lake and Palmer — Burning Bridges
      Dokken — Burning Like A Flame
      Journey — Castles Burning
      Heart — City’s Burning
      Don Dokken — Crash ’N Burn
      Judas Priest — Freewheel Burning
      REO Speedwagon — Keep The Fire Burnin’
      Dokken — Paris Is Burning
      Stevie Nicks — Fire Burning
      Yumi Matsuzawa — You Get To Burning

      Jimi Hendrix — Fire
      Bad Company — Wild Fire Woman
      Def Leppard — Comin’ Under Fire
      Pat Benatar — Fire And Ice
      Bob Seger — Fire Down Below
      Ozzy Osbourne — Fire In The Sky
      Blue Oyster Cult — Fire Of Unknown Origin
      Alice Cooper — House Of Fire
      The Moody Blues — It May Be A Fire
      Journey — Line Of Fire
      Stevie Nicks — Rooms On FIre
      Lita Ford — Playin’ With Fire

  8. If you like the place, make the offer. The “Denverites”, even if they make a higher offer, may not be able to get financing or have the real wherewithal to actually close on their offer.

    1. Or they may not even like it enough to make an offer of their own. Have faith!

    1. “Hi Charlie, anything going on?”
      “Naw, not much. Just smoking some salmon.”
      “Smoking salmon? How’d you get it lit?!”

      1. Likely the same way that you lit a pope. 😉

        In a story I’m helping edit, the author had a guard smoking a pope. Obviously, the author meant “smoking a pipe”. 😆

        1. How’s that old bit go—”in the center of the room was an ominous, black burning tapir.”

          1. Yep, if That’s Burning you got some problems (see below).

          2. In 8th grade we were reading Poe and for some reason I was paraphrasing “The Masque of the Red Death” to my parents. I described the scene as a series of rooms each with a stained glass window lit by a burning brassiere. They both laughed for a solid minute.

            (Hey, I’d never heard the word “brazier” pronounced out loud.)

            2. When I was in 8th grade, my parents would have blinked for a bit before realizing “Oh, ‘z’, not ‘s’.”

              That was right when “liberation” was somehow equated with burning your undergarments. In a three bedroom, two bath home where every room except for the kitchen and baths had somewhere between 500 and 1,500 books lining the walls or in free standing shelves – I don’t recall ever seeing anything by EAP.

              1. Yeah, this would have been 1977, so not all that removed from the “burn your bra” era, not that my mom would have done so.

                My parents were literate people so they knew the story; after they stopped laughing they told me how to pronounce it correctly.

                1. A couple of years before, when I was 10, somebody gave me an aluminum plant (Pilea cadierei) for my birthday. That was right when “read to your plant” was a thing, and I was a curious and voracious reader and I had heard of Poe, so I checked an anthology out of the city library and read it to my plant.

                  It promptly keeled over and died.

                  1. clears throat

                    That’s true.

                    It’s neither the carbon dioxide nor the words used. A tape recording of someone reading Poe would work just fine. It’s the vibrations, they think.

                  2. >> “It promptly keeled over and died.”

                    Man, when they say EVERYONE’S a critic…

                2. Four years earlier for me – so right in the middle of “The Crazy Years.” (Version 987348.2 or something like that. When you really study history…)

                  1. I think we’re gonna have to bring you in for reeducation. Everyone Knows that $CURRENT_YEAR is always the most uniquely bad time in all of history.

                    1. I had a professor in grad school who warned undergrads that if anyone came up with a time machine, avoid the early 1300s and first half of 1600s. “The Fourteenth Century just sucked.” Which coming from someone who specialized in 17th century history was a high (low?) compliment.

                    2. I would send through drones and then plant bugs in interesting locations.

                      For instance, original cast recordings of the plays of Shakespeare.

        2. I’m having trouble coming up with an anecdote worthy of that punchline.
          That’s going to bug me.

          2. In Medieval Europe they once had a problem of multiple popes – obviously, smoking a pope was how they got the false pope to renounce his claim.
            ~

          3. I swiped it out of my memory of someone who was discussing…something which mostly eludes me, but it involved fiction writing.

        4. I get the idea that there are a good many would like to smoke the current Pope. Or smoke out the current Pope. Something like that.

        5. Well, if he was a Swiss Guard then smoking the Pope is not outside the realm of possibility.

      2. “Apple wood chips man. Apple wood chips!”

        Now I really do want to smoke a salmon. Need to get a smoker first, and a salmon, and some food grade pliers.

        The it’s a beautiful day out today, and I’ve got a short work schedule too…

        Will need to talk with the SO about getting a smoker. My folks made a budget one out of a hot plate and a pair of large flower pots, but I’d rather just get a purpose built one, instead of kludging something together.

        1. Alton Brown has excellent instructions on making a large-flower-pots smoker. It’s probably as good as a Big Green Egg.

          1. Yeah. That’s what my folks did. It works too, but does require a lot of effort to get it set up and keep it going, so we only used it on special occasions.

            Thinking an electric one would be nice, especially since I’m starting back up on keto/low carb.

            And the SO would like a grill too, so going to be a research weekend…

            1. We have a small Weber smoker which works very well indeed. Spouse is smoking butt (Boston), chicken and ribs tomorrow for the team. It’s a charcoal smoker, but we have a source of kiln-dried hickory for flavor and he usually doesn’t have too much trouble getting things lit.

              Given its size and shape, we keep talking about painting the dome yellow and adding blue overalls. It’s our minion.

            2. From sad experience – get a smoker AND a grill. One place that I disagree with Alton – a multitasker just does not work as well as two things optimized for a particular purpose.

              1. That depends on the velocity with which they were hurled at you. Atmospheric friction’s a bitch.

        3. I just picked up a Masterbuilt Sportsman and I love it. I’ve had a big charcoal/wood fired sidebox for years but it was such a hassle that I never used it unless I was having 50 people over (now also known as “never”). The MB is propane power, is designed for wood chips but pellets actually work better. Cost me under $200 on sale. Quick story at the link about how I got it, along with a picture of the smoker.

          https://heresolong-voices.blogspot.com/2021/05/customer-service.html

        4. Funny you should mention salmon. That is what I am smoking for Sunday dinner. I use a Traeger — definitely one of my better investments.

  12. Sometimes – sometimes – homeowners tur down higher offers and instead seel their home to somebody who will love it, as they did.

    1) In Hallmark Channel movies*
    2) But that’s not the way the smart money bets
    3) Go ahead – what’ve you got to lose?

    *At least, so I am told, as I have watched perhaps five Hallmark Chanel movies, total — and one of those because it starred Clark “Phil Coulson” Gregg and his (then?) wife, Jennifer Grey.
    ~

    1. Oddly enough it happened to us a while back. A park model in a summer campground where my FIL and some of my wife’s cousins go every weekend during the summer (up close to Canadian border – closed in winter) came up for sale. We made a bid, there was a slightly higher one from someone who wanted to move the home somewhere else. We got the place because we would keep it there and had family ties. We’re now snowbirds.
      So behave like you love what they’ve done with the place and can’t wait to move in – it can’t hurt.

    2. Indeed, there is a whole strategy about writing a beseeching letter to go along with the offer: your dog just died, all your children are orphans, you promise to love and protect the 1970s flocked wallpaper, etc., etc.

      1. Got word the seller’s Lab had just died. So matched the competing offer and added “two Lab puppies”. THAT was what tipped the deal in my favor, even tho at the time he wasn’t ready for another dog.

        About ten years later I heard from him… remember me? is it time for a puppy? As happens I have one ready for you, come and get it. He was amazed.

        1. Dude, send that in to one of those Word Of Good sites, that is wonderful.

          I don’t do dogs, but I’m tearing up.

      2. And in local real estate circles word is going around that such letters open one up to discrimination lawsuits since they could give information on possible protected status, like marriage status or child count or race or offworld alien status, upon which a seller deciding to sell to one and not another would be mucho illegal.

          2. I thought it made good sense from a “get what you can for your house” but as soon as they started going on about systemic racism I turned it off. What BS.

            1. You have to tune that crap out of pretty much all media here.

              The main takeaway is sellers who read those letters open themselves up to being accused of discriminatory selling practices and paying lawyers to try and beat that rap, and sellers agents who pass on those letters to their seller clients are guilty of malpractice.

              If you’re a seller don’t read them, and if you’re a buyer make sure your agent tells their agent that as a potential buyer you value them not being in prison, so you’re not going to be giving them a love letter for the property.

              1. Seller can always declare the buyer a “Person of Color” and declare a discount as compensation for Systemic Racism.

                Any inconvenient facts can be easily discarded as unimportant and irrelevant.
                ~

    3. Happens often enough that there are attempts to make it illegal.

      Usually settled via “We wanted someone who’d love it as much as we do.”

      It’s also why your realtor will try to keep you from meeting folks who are buying. 😀

      1. Yeah, that’s why you have your OWN realtor, who has a contract to represent only you.

    4. That’s how my family got our first house. The seller had put in lovely oak floors, and Mom complimented them and reacted with horror to the idea of putting carpet over them, which is what all the other potential buyers had talked about doing.

    5. I know someone who got a screaming deal on a house that looks boring from the front, but the backyard is AMAZING—with koi. Turns out the person I know was marrying a guy who used to keep koi, so the owner was delighted to sell under market value to someone who would keep her koi alive.

      They had a cast party there, and have since been nominated to host all future cast parties. That backyard is awesome (and it has a pool!) (Not with the koi.)

    6. My dad did that. Took a lower price and sold it to a couple who wanted to live in it and raise their new family because everyone else in on the bidding was representing a developer. Six months later they knocked it down and built a new house there. Cost him a couple hundred thousand or more. He always told me to remember that once you sell something it isn’t yours anymore, so don’t get upset when the new owners do what they want with it. Then he ignored his own good advice.

    1. Indeed as did I. Although perhaps these Denverites are a case of rats leaving a sinking ship

    3. An when did Denverites displace Californicators as the looming horribly corrupting out of towners with too much money, idiotic politics, and suspect moral character? The masses of Gavin’s Glorious Bear Flag People’s Republic refugees have a reputation to uphold, after all.

      1. Denverites haven’t replaced Californicators so much as become the Ranking Contender — just as the Red Sox haven’t replaced the Yankees as most hated franchise yet are nearly as despised.

        Assuming I may be permitted to mix sports metaphors from Boxing and Baseball …
        ~

    4. There is no place beyond them. HOWEVER I’ll point out they are mostly the conservatives who REALLY don’t like a communist in power. These two were about our age and had the same refugee look….

  17. Burning down the blog? Isn’t that Fluffy’s job? Routine weed and pest control?

  18. There’s a heartwarming video of “Tribal People Try to Follow a Bob Ross Tutorial” which proves to be pretty fun for all. (It’s a followup to an episode where they watched a Bob Ross episode.)

    The interesting thing is that the best results came from the guy who seemed to have tried the hardest to imitate the brush and palette knife technique, rather than trying to make it look the same.

    1. Sounds like TPTB in Oregon is going to do that to the restaurants with the governor’s [3000 words deleted] vaccine passport. Puts all the burden on the business (either force everybody to mask, or check each person for a mask or the shotcard). Sounds like the small business people are pretty pissed.

      (And to add insult to injury, there’s no exemption for those who already had Kung Flu and have natural immunity.)

      1. Destroying small businesses is the entire point. The fascist model of socialism requires a small number of mega-businesses that are de facto instruments of The State. Democrats seek to achieve identity group communism, but are willing to use fascist economic structures to achieve it. Call it oligarchical collectivism.

        1. Takes skill for a dragon to breathe that little fire and not overdo it, I take it?

  22. Good luck. Right now, the housing market is very competitive for home buyers.

    The housing market is pretty tight these days. I’ve been surveying housing in AZ and the pickings are a little slim compared to previous years. Existing home sales are down and houses that do go up for sale are selling quicker. The so-called “millennials” entering the market over the next few years is not going to help relieve demand.

    —

    Family life in the early AOCene.

    “Tell us a story, Grandfather.”

    “OK, children. What would you like to hear?”

    “Tell us one about when people lived in houses, had electricity, clean water, and plenty to eat.”

    1. I heard on the local newts that houses are selling in three weeks on average out here. Apartments go faster than you can say “boo.” That said, if you price your house $200,000 over the neighborhood average, don’t be surprised if it doesn’t get snapped up.

      1. In the Seattle market, if a house took three weeks to sell I would wonder what was wrong with it. Houses are selling in two or three days with multiple competitive offers around here.

    2. I started looking at relatively remote property for retirement about two years ago. Not ready to buy quite yet unless the deal was too good to pass up, but rather scouting. Last year, the market went crazy. 140 acres I was looking at listed for $375k, all the locals said that was a crazy price and if I really wanted it I should go talk to the owner and mention significantly less money. Next month it sold for $375k.

      1. Yeah, rural property in the Seattle hinterlands basically tripled in price per acre over the last two years. It was already starting to ramp up and then the pandemic hit and everybody made plans to flee the city at the same time. Two years ago I was seeing 5 acre lots going for $40K, now they’re all $120K+.

      2. We looked at bare land for a while, but nothing seemed reasonable. Lots of “Exclusive Farm Use” lots and some with absurdly deep water tables. None of them are cheap, so long as they’re buidable.

        We’re getting the Californians who don’t want to live in the coastal and west-of-the-Cascades region of Oregon. OTOH, Despicable Kate Brown is trying to make the California lockdowns look mild, so she might just “fix” the real estate price issue.

        Somewhat related, I need to take a look for Greater Idaho news for our county. Haven’t had a vote yet.

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