Sunday, August 21, 2011

Overheard...

S: "I'm going to miss our deck. I like how it surrounds the house. It feels like we're floating in the canopy of the trees."

J: "A second-story bedroom will do that too."

Chincoteague

After we camped for two days we drove a bit south into Virginia's Eastern Shore and ended up in Chincoteague. Gorgeous! It's a cute beach town with beautiful sunsets and the wildlife refuge is amazing - it has endangered squirrels (ha) and wild ponies. They were beautiful.

This is taken from Main Street in Chincoteague...



The inside of the lighthouse. I think it's neat.
The outside of the light house - it's neat too.
This is taken from the beach on Assateague- the ocean's to my back and below the sun is the wildlife refuge and the marsh. The town of Chincoteague is straight ahead, but you can't see it.
OK, so, this is supposed to be a picture of wild horses, and they're there - they're the tiny little white dots near the trees. Ah well.

An oak toad. Isn't he cute?

no way...

The 2nd lender approved our offer!

Home inspection scheduled for Tuesday morning...

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Aaaak!


A Cyclops Rudolph is hiding in the backseat! RUN!


Notes:
a. Jim wants me to say it was a bike seat. I think he's wrong.
b. This was at a Dunkin' Donuts. Not quite sure what that means.


Janes Island

Six miles of empty, undisturbed beach on an uninhabited island only accessible by boat.

A variety of calm and more exciting waters to explore by kayak.

More seabirds (and more kinds of seabirds!) than you can shake a stick at.

(Also, chiggers, blackflies, poison ivy and stinging jellies, but you know, they're kind of interesting too).

We went to Janes Island State Park in Maryland for a couple days last week, and spent the time kayaking, watching the mama osprey feed her baby, and sitting by the canal watching the sunset over the bay. It was lovely.



To get to the beach, you kayak across the canal, and follow the trails through the marsh till you get to a narrow spit of beach - about 10 feet of sand wide - that divides the marshy side of the Chesapeake from the bay side. Either way, the water is basically the Atlantic at this point, and you can't see across the bay. Lovely, quiet, undisturbed beaches...

This picture and the one above were taken from the same spot. That's the narrow beach we landed at, and then there's a bit of sand, and then there's the Atlantic.
The post is supporting a large osprey nest, and you can see the nearly-full-grown baby leaning out over the side, crying pitifully for his mother to come back and feed him. He was also testing his wings pretty frequently- flapping, and taking off for a few inches before crashing back into the nest. Poor guy, he must be frustrated up there.
That would be the stinging jellies that got both of us - Jim's ankle and my thighs. I swelled up pretty nicely, but it wasn't too bad, all things considered.

We found this unfortunately deceased blue crab (a male) near the swamp - pretty colors, though! Lots of people were crabbing and fishing at the state park.


We also found turtle eggs! They were right on the side of the beach, it looks like the waves may have washed away the top layer of sand.



This laughing gull was very bothered by our presence... makes me wish we had a better camera for pics like this. One day! I love the pattern of the water and the sand.

Right as we were getting ready to leave, we came across another lady who was kind enough to take a picture for us!

We also saw a fox and lots of fiddler crabs - it was a pretty awesome place.


I miss the beach already...

Vacation bugs!

There were lots of cool bugs (and unfortunately some not so cool ones-ugh, chiggers!) on our vacation this year.

This luna moth was in the eaves of the camp office building, evidently hiding from the nuclear powered black flies that were at the campground. Gorgeous, though!




I've always wanted to see ant lion nests in the wild, and the forest floor in the campground was littered with them! Antlions are totally cool-think sarlaac monster from Return of the Jedi, but instead of henchmen falling to their doom it's ants.
This is a little hard to see, but if you look close at the tips of all the stalks of the bushes there are dragonflies hanging out on them-they were really pretty with gold spots all along their abdomens. It was a mix of males and females, though, so there was a lot of jockeying for the "good" twings to impress the ladies :)

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Insecurities/housing update

It's been a while since we posted about the house we made an offer on. That's because we really don't know what's going on. Short sales require waiting. That's cool, we're good at waiting (positive affirmations help, right?). It's only been a couple of months, after all (...).

Since we put the offer in, we've:
a) had to prove that we can pay the down payment
b) had to set up an inspection just-in-case (fortunately, we don't have to pay for it until we know we can get the house)
c) had to prove that we can get a loan
d) been approved by lender #1
e) been informed that lender #2 wants lender #1 to pay them money (ha, unlikely)
f) been informed that lender #2 wants to do their own appraisal of the property

so that's where we are now. Apparently it's pretty normal for lenders to want to do their own appraisal. I'm a bit concerned because we don't want to pay anything more than we've offered. But what if it's only a little bit? Do we compromise that?

The house should appraise for more than the asking price- we're aware of that. But the market is terrible and the comparable houses in the area haven't sold. There are no other offers on this house, and it's likely to remain that way.

Other insecurities: buying now means low mortgage rates. But it seems as though this country is heading downhill fast - maybe it's because we're young and haven't seen too many crises, but I can see things getting much worse, much faster. And I don't have a promise of a steady full-time job in the future- I have several applications in the works and relatively steady part-time work, but it'd be great to have the security of a full time job. It almost seems like what we should have done was buy land or buy a house with a lot land that we can use to our own profit- chickens, big gardens.... or maybe I'm just totally paranoid and have seen too many zombie movies lately.

I guess I just need to keep reminding myself why we want to buy in the first place:
a) renting is more expensive than mortgages here
b) we'd LOVE to have our own place.
c) pet friendly options are scarce
d) we're going to be here for probably at least a few more years
e) we want to meet people and become part of a community (not easy as renters, here- it's not a college town after all)

I guess where I'm going with this is that if this house falls though (still about a 50/50 chance we'll get approved by the 2nd lender, I'd say, combined with the fact that we haven't done the inspection yet and we kept that as an escape clause - no dangerous houses for me!), I think I'm going to be ok with it.

(And I say that now, while all the stinkbugs are busy destroying crops and hanging out in places that are not the house I live in now- this house seems totally fine in summer....) ha.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Florida wildlife

Before July my experience in the great flat state of Florida was limited to ports (some nice, some less so) and interstates- not the best way to see an area! But after three weeks in Gainesville, I have a new appreciation for Florida, and now I get why someone would want to live there!

I had a great trip visiting a lab down there - wonderful people, interesting work, and the promise of future collaborations! Pretty sweet.

Plus, it's pretty. Still flat, but also pretty.

At the Natural History museum, there is a butterfly room where you can go in and see thousands of butterflies flying around beautiful gardens. It's really something special. This one is a relative of a monarch, and I think it's my favorite.


We went to the beach at St. Augustine! It was really nice - palm trees, warm water (especially considering what I'm used to!) and yummy mexican food. It's a pretty town, too.

The spanish fort at St. Augustine has this oven for heating up coals to put into cannon balls that they'd fire at wooden ships to set them on fire. Glad to see human barbarism is nothing new...

Mangroves on the University of Florida's campus! The 'knees' are to help the tree respire in wet and salty water.

Gators!! I was really excited to see these. Where we went to college, students would swim and boat in the pond. I guess that's not happening so much at UF. They're just hanging out near the road.

This is where I go jogging in the morning- sandy paths, cool plants, spanish moss...


I just think spanish moss is so romantic! Even if it does have lots of chiggers.

That's one big gator! It was probably about 6 feet long!