Alas, no house.

Well, my mom decided that in the end she didn't want to spend the money it would take to get the house moved out to the land. She had decided to go for it based on an estimate that turned out to be a 50% less than what it turned out to actually be, so it's certainly an understandable decision. Disappointing, though :-(

Purchase the best of my Kyrgyzstan photos!

I finally finished my coffee-table book of photographs from Kyrgyzstan. You can get it in either soft-cover ($39.95) or hard-cover ($49.95) - and believe me, the hardcover is a MUCH better deal. Simply click here or on the picture above. You can see the first fifteen pages of the book on the website... but that doesn't even get you out of the capital city! The book is 114 pages long and contains 188 color photographs, each with a detailed description and/or explanation. Enjoy!

House-Moving Woes

Mom just spoke to the other house mover in the area. His price is all-inclusive (roof removal, foundation pouring, permit/escort acquiring, etc) but it would come to $25,000! He seems to be a lot more competent than the other guy as well. (The other guy didn't think that we would need to pour any sort of foundation under the pilings, whereas this guy says that would be a definite requirement, which was what I had thought.) While that's a hell of a house for $25k (there's no way we could get something like that built out there for that price), we don't have that kind of cash on hand. And while normal people would just go get a loan, my mom is very Ayn Randish in a paying cash for items kind of way. Mom is going to think on it for a day or two before making her final decision. What do you guys think?

House moving decisions and dilemmas

So initially, we'd spoken with a local house-mover who had quoted us a price of $1500/day to move the house. He also said he "didn't think it would take too long to move." At that point in time, he had already seen the house and had told us that it was definitely moveable. After getting the go ahead at the end of last week from the current owners of this house, we called him back, and agreed to meet Saturday morning to look at our land (and the "road" to our land) to make sure it was somewhere he would physically be able to move the house to. We also planned to then go with him to take a closer look at the house. He checked out the land and the road, and didn't think that there would be any problems there whatsoever. Then we drove out to Blackshear to take a look at the house. We got there, and the first thing he told us was that we would have to get a carpenter to remove the roof. (I don't mean a roofer taking the roofing off, I mean a carpenter/contractor/construction worker with a crane who could separate the attic space, rafters and all, from the rest of the house, and place it on the ground, and who could then reattach it to the house once it was moved.) Now, we had assumed that since the house mover had already seen the house when he gave us his quote of $1500/day, that would be all-inclusive. This having-to-hire-a-contractor thing came as rather a shock. It was also somewhat bizarre that the house mover could not (or would not) recommend anyone to do the roof removal. He told us to just go through the yellow pages and select whoever gave the best rate. Now, surely, as house moving is his business, he has encountered tall houses before, and therefore should (in theory) be able to recommend a contractor. Right? This just seemed a little odd to us. There is one other house-mover in the area, and we are going to call him and get an estimate and see whether or not he does the roof removal himself. Right now we are trying to get recommendations for decent contractor who has the necessary equipment (like a crane...) needed to hoist a roof off and then back on to a house. No idea how much that part of the whole experience will cost, although chances are, it will double the costs. BOOOOOO! Suddenly the entire project is looking a lot more expensive than it did just a few days ago, and looks very well like it might drain all of my mom's savings in one fell swoop. That being said, even if it ended up running $20,000 to move it, there is no way that we could get a house of that size and quality built out at the land for $20k, so it still seems like a good deal. Thoughts? Also, for those of you who wanted interior pictures, here they are. Keep in mind, the current owners are using the place for storage right now, so it's somewhat full of junk at the moment.

Front porch


Living room, looking straight back from the front door


Livingroom, full view from front door - the ceilings are something like 12ft high!


front bedroom (just back from the living room)


This is the only room in the entire house with water damage.
(Located in roof and wall and furniture underneath leak)


bathroom behind front bedroom


The diningroom (to the left of the front door when you walk in) also has incredibly high ceilings.



The ceiling in the kitchen, however, has been lowered.

first rear bedroom

second rear bedroom


rear bathroom


laundry room

House Moving!

A couple of weeks ago, and ad appeared in the local paper, offering a free house to be moved off someone's land. This is what my mother and I have been on the lookout for, although previous such offers have turned out to be for houses so far gone that they would have disintegrated on transport. One such house was in great structural condition, but was filled with bats. And bat guano. When we saw this house, however, we thought that we must simply be in the wrong place. It looked to be in too good of condition to be offered for free... but nope, it was the one. The owned warned us of "really bad water damage" - and after seeing some of the other houses that have been offered for free, we were prepared for disastrous conditions inside - but it turned out that the water damage was minimal and easily repairable. The house itself was huge: 3 bedrooms, a huge kitchen/dining area (bigger than mine, for those of you who've seen my house), a huge living room, two bathrooms, laundry room, and a screened in front porch. The owners told us they were going to wait until the following Tuesday, and that they would be in their business at 9am on that day... and that the house would go to the first person to make a commitment. This gave those of us interested enough time to track down a house mover and to make an estimate. We found a house mover and got a reasonable sounding rate, and waited for Tuesday at 9am. I called them at 8:50am that Tuesday... only to find that someone had just beaten me to it. My mom and I were second in line for the house. We expected that meant that there was no chance whatsoever that we'd be getting it. Then, this afternoon, the phone rang while I was napping. It was my mother, calling to tell me that we'd gotten the house. The people who had beaten us to making the offer had apparently fallen through on how they were going to finance the move. I was really excited, although promptly fell back asleep. I awoke an hour later and had to actually call my mom to confirm whether or not it had been a dream, or if we were actually getting the house - and we are! (Well, it's not 100% definite; the house mover has seen the house, but still needs to check out our land and our "road" - but it seems as though we'll be getting it!

Taxes, money, and (sadly) rethinking Nicaragua

Property tax bills have just come in the mail. As you might know, between me and my mother, we have four properties, so this isn’t exactly a fun time of the year. Additionally, my house is in the city of Waycross, which has absurdly high property taxes, considering. My first year of home ownership, my property taxes were nearly $500. Now, I pay a monthly fee for water/sewer/trash, so what is it my tax dollars are paying for? The non-existent police presence? The fact that the defaced street signs which say I live on the corner of Ass and Ass have been there since before I bought my house? Anyway, after I had to pay my first outrageous property tax bill, I applied for homestead exemption. This greatly reduced my property taxes; last year they were something like $60.

This year, there was a yellow notice attached to the tax bill which reads:

The state homestead tax relief grant that funded an increased homestead exemption for homeowners for the last several years will not be available this year. Declining state revenues during the current recession means there is no money for the state to give tax relief to homeowners. This will mean a property tax increase of $200 to $300 on the 2009 tax bills for many Georgia homeowners. The grant appropriated by the General Assembly and the Governor for the past several years to counties, cities and schools had given tax relief to homeowners in the form of a credit on their tax bills. According to legislation passed this year, the grant will only be made available in the future if state revenues grow at least 3% plus the rate of inflation.

I owe $416 on my property taxes this year. I should at least get some new street signs.

Meanwhile, as much as I do very much want to go to Nicaragua as part of the WorldVets.org spay/neuter program, my mother pointed out to me that for the amount of money I’d be paying to take part in that program, I could pay for all of the kittens we got this spring to get fixed, now that they’re getting old enough. After thinking about that, it is kind of hard for me to justify going, despite the fact that I really would love to make an overseas trip to pretty much anywhere right about now. So, that being said, I’ve decided not to go to Nicaragua :-(

To Rob B and Diana E, it turns out that I entered the wrong email address in ChipIn... it’s still *my* email address, but in ChipIn sends money to PayPal based on the email address provided, and to receive money through PayPal, one’s email address must be confirmed. In order to confirm your email address, you must provide PayPal with your bank account number. I have only one bank account, and it is linked to my pre-existing PayPal account, and therefore can't be linked to any other. As a result, I can’t “confirm” my account or receive your donation anyway – must be a sign that I’m not meant to go. No worries; PayPal will refund your money if I can’t confirm my account (and I can’t).

So much death...

Starting this past weekend, my mom's dogs had been digging out of her backyard. She keeps Brin (the brindle pit bull) inside anyway, but I ended up with Brin and Bitsy (the rat terrier) over at my house, while she did everything she could to keep Blackie (Brin's brother) and Hope (a doberman mix) from getting out. Tuesday, one of her cats, Annette, was supposed to go to the vet to get spayed, but she was nowhere to be found; we have yet to see any sign of her. Wednesday morning, one of the kittes, Silvie, was lying dead in her yard. There were no visible marks on her, so we didn't know if one of the dogs had gotten to her or if something else had happened. Wednesday afternoon, mom returned home to find another cat, Jessie, lying dead in nearly the same place as she had found Silvie that morning. The body did look as though it had been disturbed by dogs (saliva all over his side), but there were no visible bite marks, and we all know that any dog that finds an animal corpse is going to play with it. We didn't want to jump to any conclusions... especially since it seemed so weird for there to be two dead cats in the same place in such a short space of time. And especially since when Blackie and Hope were around cats in the presence of either me or my mother, they showed no signs of aggression. We took the two bodies of the cats to the vet to be necropsied, so we could learn if it had been a dog, or if perhaps one of the neighbors was putting out poison. The necropsy was scheduled for this morning. We ended up cancelling it, as Blackie got ahold of and killed another cat, Stormy, this morning. We cannot have a cat killer on the premises, no matter how sweet of a dog he is to us, so sadly, we had him euthanized this morning.

Please Vote!

I haven't posted about JPG in ages, but here's a submission I have to Issue 23 under the theme of Decay. Please either click here to vote, or click on the picture below. Thank you, thank you! (BTW, this photo was taken on in the village of Khuzhir on Olkhon Island, Lake Baikal, Siberia.)

Chip-in counter isn't working....

...but thank you to Diana E. and Rob B. for the donations!!! :-)

Combining my favorite thing with what I want to become...

My friend Linda pointed out to me that WorldVets.org is taking a spay/neuter trip to Nicaragua during the exact same time that Waycross College has its spring break. The trip is open to vets, vet students, pre-vet students, vet techs and vet assistants. Now, how could I possibly pass up the opportunity to do my very favorite thing (travel to a foreign country) while assisting with something I care a lot about (spaying and neutering dogs and cats) which could help get me into vet school? Well, there is the problem that I am completely broke, as my ten hours a week at minimum wage doesn't even cover all my bills, much less allow me to put money into savings for a trip to Nicaragua. I have several different ideas for how to come up with the funds. One of these ideas will involve completely refurbishing my online store - but I can't start on that until after this week of exams is over. In the meanwhile, I am simply asking for your help. And as my birthday is September 25, you could also think of it as a birthday present :-)

:-(

I’d never met a dog like Dewey before. Don’t get me wrong – I love Koala and Duke, but they aren’t anything like my little Dewdrop. I knew he was sick when I brought him home from the shelter... but I thought I would be able to save him, or at least that my vet would be able to do so. My little guy got a month of love and affection and attention, but despite the best efforts of both myself and my vet, he died in my arms Tuesday night.