06/27/2012

1.  I woke up this morning to discover my phone had not charged overnight.  This was bad because the appraiser had asked me specifically to stay available via cell phone so we could arrange a time for him to come over.  So I plugged it into my computer, but it wouldn't charge!  Just showed a white light.  So I tried using the "call phone" function on gmail, only to discover that our microphone is malfunctioning.  And then I accidentally shut down the computer while I was trying to fix the microphone.  And that computer (not mine) takes FOREVER to boot up.  It was a comedy of errors-- everything I did to try and get hold of the guy failed.  Finally I emailed Ben and he called the guy.  Meanwhile, Mosey, my tech-support kid, came downstairs to help me out.  He is so interested in all things technical.  We figured out how to reset the phone, and then he did some internet research to figure out what the white light meant.  I need to find a better way to capitalize on this interest that he has.  

2.  So after we finally arranged a time, the appraiser came by this morning.  It was a bit anticlimactic because after ALL the work we've done (and had done) over the past two weeks, he spent about 2 minutes total in the house.  Went into the kitchen and bathrooms, snapped a picture of each, and then he was done.  But we were pretty happy about the number he came up with.  This area is rising in value, so with that and the improvements we made on our house and yard over the years, it's worth about 22% more than when we bought it 5 years ago.  I think this makes Ben both more and less inclined to add on (is that possible?).  More, because our house is worth more than he thought, and we could pay for almost all of it with the equity in our house.  Less, because now he knows how much we could "make" if we sold our house and bought something for less than what the added cost of the addition would be.  So I guess it doesn't really change his position too much.  :-)

3.  The boys spent the afternoon making shields out of duct tape and the lids to some big plastic storage bins we have.  They've been listening to a lot (a lot) of Percy Jackson recently, and they had sword-fighting on the brain.  Afterward they had some pretty good battles in the backyard.  And no one ended up in tears, either.  Bonus!