Minneapolis House for Sale

*Updated November 2, 2010*

It's finally time. Time to bite the bullet and realize I cannot put it off any longer – I have to put my house on the market. Even in tough times, there comes a moment of truth when you know that holding onto an extra house and waiting for the market to turn around just doesn't make sense. In fact, at this point I'm willing to GIVE it away – for real.

I'm certainly no green thumb, so while the little Russell Avenue property doesn't have what most would consider to be curbside charm, that's easily fixed and it's really "what's on the inside that counts." Right?

It's a 1927 story-and-a-half house with ~1,100 square feet (finished) plus a basement with laundry, 3 bedrooms and 2 full baths. Hardwood floors dominate the main floor – except for the kitchen (linoleum) and bathroom (tile) – and the upstairs consists of linoleum (made to look like wood), tile, and carpet in the bedroom.

A nicely-sized front porch sits on the East side of the house, while on the West (in the back yard) there's a smaller "mud porch" with carpeting which is excellent for coming in when it's raining, leaving boots, coats, etc.

The kitchen is an eat-in kitchen with stainless steel appliances (gas stove, refrigerator), space for a small dishwasher, and plenty of cabinet storage.

Along with the kitchen and living room, the main floor also houses two bedrooms and a bathroom. I always used the West bedroom – which is the smaller of the two – as my actual bedroom; using the other as a combined office/study. The bathroom on this floor has a built-in cabinet and drawers which accommodate towels, sheets, bathroom toiletries and more easily.

The roof is new; new windows were installed before I bought it in 2005; updated electrical and plumbing; central air; drain tile and sump pump; entirely fenced yard.

Upstairs there is a space large enough for a home office – easily accommodates computer desk, bookcase, chair, etc – along with a small bathroom and nicely-sized bedroom.

I actually used the upstairs bedroom as a TV room, since it was cozier and then the large TV wasn't taking up space in my cute, "formal" living room downstairs.

The yard is a standard, city-sized lot and the garage is a one-car, detached garage. I haven't priced it yet – though of course it'll be much lower than what I paid for it 5 years ago...sadly in this market there's not much else I can do. In fact, if someone would be willing to take it off my hands I'd make it happen. Just need to get out from under the mortgage.

Click, Flash

I just finished watching the movie Sex and the City...for the 2nd time. Tsk, tsk, I know. Clint's out with his cousin and I treated myself to a girly night. So shoot me.

Realizing I've neglected to blog for almost a month, I decided to snap to it and throw up some more Puerto Vallarta pictures. This post is saved for those images captured by my trusty little point-and-shoot Canon camera, which in a pinch treats me just as well as my SLR. In a different manner, but since I can - and do - carry it with me everywhere due to the small stature, I find it's much more reliable in "quick, get the camera" situations. Yet it still performs just as well under the posed shots :)

It got so I didn't even carry my DSLR down to the beach - my P&S is just so much easier to haul around. Whether taking self-portraits or asking someone else to do the honors, the ease of use and small size wins out in my opinion.







This is especially true for nighttime, when I didn't have a big beach bag to accommodate a larger camera - in fact, the entire 2 weeks I ventured out at night with nothing more than a teeny khaki purse for essentials. Which included, of course, the point-and-shoot camera!

I was glad of a compact picture-taking device the few times we happened to run across something which needed to be documented - if only for future laughs (and this blog). Such as finding a random Blue Heeler on the beach...in Mexico. My sister confessed later she'd seen the same one, but still. Or, speaking of dogs, I had to capture a couple shots of Dani's humongous friend one night...biggest dog I've ever seen in my life, bar none. *Click*

And since my Canon point-and-shoot focuses with much more ease than my Canon 30D, it came in handy to get some cool "swirly" shots of the Mexican bailarinas we happened across one night...I just might blow up one of my myriad shots of this sequence because they turned out pretty well!



It would seem this little contraption is easily pawned off on others to take pictures in one's absence, too...I gave it to Clint to capture the moments when he and the boys were "at sea" on the fishing boat, and although some sunblock or other greasy substance was swiped across the lens, he delivered!

Whale Watching in Puerto Vallarta

Mostly because these are the photos I have done - to date - I've decided to outline a fun day Clint and I had post-wedding in PV: whale watching!

While I've been heading down to Vallarta since I was 11, I've never gone officially whale watching down there. I've only been twice in my life, actually - once in Boston when I was 16 and then last May when Clint and I were on the Oregon Coast.

Each winter there are approximately 300 humpback whales which hang around in Banderas Bay while stopping off on their journey to mate and reproduce. According to some whale watching information I found, these whales are "Californian." Must mean they say "duuuuude" a lot.

We DID see several humpbacks on our 4-hour tour, and although none of them decided to breach, we got the pleasure of seeing that at breakfast one morning, so I consider it a wash :)

Not only did we get fed breakfast, lunch, and all the Coronas and margaritas we could guzzle; the crew was extremely passionate about whales as well as knowledgeable - we found them immediately after we got into deep water and kept seeing them.

The crew also took us closer to a couple of sea turtles resting. Bobbing on the surface of the water like coconuts, it's difficult to tell if they are, indeed, turtles until you're extremely close. They showed off their shells and flippers for us quite nicely.

Later, we tooled across the bay to Los Arcos to see the Blue-Footed Boobies, gulls and pelicans. The water was crystal clear that day - we could see all the way to the bottom just from the boat! Too bad those in the wedding group who went snorkeling didn't have such a great experience :) You know, so they'd have been able to better see killer fish coming out of the depths...

We even ran into a mother humpback and her calf extremely close into shore near Los Arcos - evidently they were recuperating from each getting hit by a boat the week before. We weren't told if it was a whaling boat or not, but either way, both seemed healthy and were taking advantage of the peaceful, warm waters to rest up and do a little feeding.

On our way back to the marina, we saw a couple more whales as a bonus, along with some mating mantarays! Of course, we couldn't really see those - even though they, too, were very close to the boat - because their black bodies made it hard to discern body parts from waves. Still a very cool day!