![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Happy May Day! Happy Beltane!
May. 1st, 2023 05:33 pmDouse your fires and relight them or whatever it is you do today. Maybe have sex in the woods.
Today in mail: Spectrum is now arriving addressed to both of us, except that my name is cartoonishly misspelled. There are cca’s and there are kah’s, and there are some poor chickadees out there with a cka or a ka. But what there are _not_ are Rab*. No. That is not a thing. At least they didn’t double the b’s and only have one c — I get that a lot, too.
Also! We got mail from “Land For Heroes” which is one side of Mohegan Real Estate LLC, run by Michael and Katherine Aillon. The other side of Mohegan Real Estate is LandWish.net. Basically, they find parcels of land in public records that are not yet developed, lowball offer the current owner and promise to donate 10% of the purchase price to veterans adjacent charities. Then they go sell it as an investment to people who want to Own Land, over on the LandWish side.
They are exactly the toothy white person smiling grimly at the camera type of people you are imagining, but don’t take my word for it. I’ve given you more than enough to find them online and view their pictures for yourselves.
Also! In email, we got our first detailed bid packet for the house we are planning to build on the aforementioned land (the Aillon’s offered us slightly under a third of what we paid for the land, and let’s just say we’ve spent a lot more making plans, removing vegetation and assorted other land-adjacent activities since then). We’re now in the middle of “Value Engineering”, which is pretty fun, because I’m finally getting rid of a few more of the things that I didn’t ask for and that seemed more than a little screwball to me, but which R. and the architect seemed to think were cool.
Things that went away _before_ this point: the pyramid / big skylight thing over the pool. The green roof (it’s now a deck with planters. Way, way, way, less terrifying in New England).
Things that went away at this point already: the home theater (wooooohoooooo!!!), and other things next to it along that hallway. When the person bidding says, no one can do those concrete forms; we were going to bring in a bridge builder, you know you drew something that should not ever be built. Also, no one _wanted_ the home theater for themselves. R. was concerned we were going to do noisy group activities in the great room adjacent to the main kitchen and that would interfere with … something. I’m like, have you been paying attention on any of these vacations? Our nieces go hide in their space. I can’t get _anyone_ on their side to even think about going to a movie. _I_ can barely sit through an hour of TV. Will there be a big screen of some sort in the great room? Of course! Will it ever be a noisy crowd of people watching TV? Doubt it. And if it is, well, he’s got the music room AND his own room to hide in. I have a new rule: if you want a house feature that costs more than … $5 … and you want it _for someone else to use_ who _they don’t want it_, then it is not going to happen.
The nature of the opening of the wall next to the pool is also being revised, which, yay, because huge hydraulic doors kinda frighten me. I mean, sure, garage door. But also, garage is unheated. Unlike the house.
Architect is going to produce a full list of “Value Engineering” options, and there’s a decent chance I’ll say yes, excitedly, to every single one of them.
Today in mail: Spectrum is now arriving addressed to both of us, except that my name is cartoonishly misspelled. There are cca’s and there are kah’s, and there are some poor chickadees out there with a cka or a ka. But what there are _not_ are Rab*. No. That is not a thing. At least they didn’t double the b’s and only have one c — I get that a lot, too.
Also! We got mail from “Land For Heroes” which is one side of Mohegan Real Estate LLC, run by Michael and Katherine Aillon. The other side of Mohegan Real Estate is LandWish.net. Basically, they find parcels of land in public records that are not yet developed, lowball offer the current owner and promise to donate 10% of the purchase price to veterans adjacent charities. Then they go sell it as an investment to people who want to Own Land, over on the LandWish side.
They are exactly the toothy white person smiling grimly at the camera type of people you are imagining, but don’t take my word for it. I’ve given you more than enough to find them online and view their pictures for yourselves.
Also! In email, we got our first detailed bid packet for the house we are planning to build on the aforementioned land (the Aillon’s offered us slightly under a third of what we paid for the land, and let’s just say we’ve spent a lot more making plans, removing vegetation and assorted other land-adjacent activities since then). We’re now in the middle of “Value Engineering”, which is pretty fun, because I’m finally getting rid of a few more of the things that I didn’t ask for and that seemed more than a little screwball to me, but which R. and the architect seemed to think were cool.
Things that went away _before_ this point: the pyramid / big skylight thing over the pool. The green roof (it’s now a deck with planters. Way, way, way, less terrifying in New England).
Things that went away at this point already: the home theater (wooooohoooooo!!!), and other things next to it along that hallway. When the person bidding says, no one can do those concrete forms; we were going to bring in a bridge builder, you know you drew something that should not ever be built. Also, no one _wanted_ the home theater for themselves. R. was concerned we were going to do noisy group activities in the great room adjacent to the main kitchen and that would interfere with … something. I’m like, have you been paying attention on any of these vacations? Our nieces go hide in their space. I can’t get _anyone_ on their side to even think about going to a movie. _I_ can barely sit through an hour of TV. Will there be a big screen of some sort in the great room? Of course! Will it ever be a noisy crowd of people watching TV? Doubt it. And if it is, well, he’s got the music room AND his own room to hide in. I have a new rule: if you want a house feature that costs more than … $5 … and you want it _for someone else to use_ who _they don’t want it_, then it is not going to happen.
The nature of the opening of the wall next to the pool is also being revised, which, yay, because huge hydraulic doors kinda frighten me. I mean, sure, garage door. But also, garage is unheated. Unlike the house.
Architect is going to produce a full list of “Value Engineering” options, and there’s a decent chance I’ll say yes, excitedly, to every single one of them.