March 03, 2005
How Far Is It To Sarasota?
Shimmering reflections of palmtrees in the waters of the ponds of Lilioukalani Gardens Hilo Hawaii
"How far is it to Sarasota from Houston? We could take the cats and drive right?...1033 miles.... well its a push... then Id better go and check it out..."Woody is in love....
He is in love with
this little manufactured home he saw on eBay thats located in Sarasota FL... For any of you just joining us we went through this with a home in Conroe Texas that was adroable but was built with no permits and no clear idea of where it was situated on the land and if it was even the land we were buying... I had to twist his arm to let go and appologize to my relatives that went to look at it...
He says that this is different... Isnt that always the way? But I see his point. It meets a lot of our needs and is a few miles from waters edge. The community is 55+, with security and swimming pools, tennis courts,golf courses, walking paths and activities. I was raised in the "pot luck social" sort of get together and like that sort of thing. John is in his element at such functions and would be very much wanting to go and do. All maintainace would be done on the outside area as part of the association fees, and they supply cable water trash...(oh to have trash pick up again!) and the inside has been compleatly redone, (comes fully furnished including the linens and pots and pans...bring a toothbrush, she says...) The lady selling it has used it for vacations and rented it to snowbirds for a number of years. She is no longer able to manage it and needs to sell. She seems to be very nice and straightforward.
The price? an unbelievable 39,000. Yes its older, but she wants to be done with it and is pricing to sell...
Woody is flying out next week on a fact finding mission, and will be meeting with the sales office and the association director. The places is cute but looks like a hotel room so I may be changing some of the things (like re painting those gold walls with a soft shade of blue or green something less bright) and when I said that Woody said well hed look at others as well and send me pictures.
Friends in the past few days... in the midst of the whirlwind I realized that we really cant afford a lot of what we have been looking at in the way of housing. Not the opening prices Hey I am from LA where you cant get a decent place for under 400K now, but Woody will never make more than 25-35K a year and likely I wont either. I plugged that into the mortgage calculation thingy and figured that wed better try to find a 50K house... Well, Woody did...
The Grand tour of Texas and Arkansas is on though. We are still open to these places as we feel that God showed us to look there. Im glad that Florida came back on the radar so at least we know whats out there. I am staying here in Hawaii this time so we dont have to board the cats and if another escrow disaster happens I can be here to deal with it ( yes there is trouble with Ms Buyer and her demanding demands... we nearly fell out of escrow as she wants a new house for an old house price) I also have tons of paperwork to deal with from the store and friends to have dinner with and say good by to. Most of whats left of the packing is my crap anyway a lot of which I need to say good by to.
On the home front, we are "Pau" "done" with the store front and the landlord gave me the whole of my deposit back which I didnot expect I am so glad. We sold so much stuff that its hard to believe...
We test drove cars last night Woody wanted me to try the
Toyota Scion XB When really
I want a Chrysler 300M We shall see. I like a good car.. Its in the blood, too many wrench turning car snobs in my family. I hate like heck to be giving my car away so its bound to be hard to replace it...
I still cant send or recieve email on my phone. 5 hours total with Cingular and we still dont have it resolved makes me mad... I want to be able to blog by phone soon...
