Now that it’s finally beginning to warm up, it’s wonderful to get out and examine the post-winter landscape. Congratulations! You made it through the dreary season, so now it’s time to daydream – consider changing everything by upgrading your abode! The economy is beginning to gain some momentum and attractive homes are flooding the market. On a walk yesterday, I saw several on display right here in my neighborhood!
Home #333
This warm and cozy split level built into a south facing hillside is surrounded by lush cooling grasses during the hottest part of summer, but in springtime its graceful rounded profile reaches out to capture the sun’s warming rays, providing a beautiful elevated view of the nearby shrubs as they come into bloom. Every family member will want to poke his or her head out the front door to welcome visitors and/or sound a warning about intruders. This earthy charmer is move-in ready!
Home #838
Fantastic curb appeal is just one of the attractions of this roomy single level home, and wait until you see the rooftop deck! Note the detailed craftsmanship of the tooth-carved entryway, which opens into an expansive wind-protected too-tight-for-the-dog-to-get-in living area. Generous upstairs neighbors occasionally have lavish food-dropping parties, providing a delicious rain delivered right to your main living area! This family home has sheltered 5 generations of hearty rabbits, and that’s just in the past year.
Home #83
This stunning penthouse apartment has been extensively remodeled to work more comfortably as a single level walk out. No more climbing with your arms (and cheeks) loaded full of groceries! Live close to the earth with an easily accessed garden and quick emergency egress. It’s the best possible combination of the breezy treetop lifestyle everyone wants with the solid grounded foundation that everyone needs!
Wow! All these places look better (and cheaper) than the place I’m in! Still, moving is a huge project, and I’m afraid I might suffer from buyer’s remorse (especially with home #83)! Maybe I wouldn’t be so interested in a change if I just vacuumed the space I’ve got and re-arranged the furniture I already have.
When has the grass only seemed greener on the other side?
Trail Baboon 
Morning all!
Funny photos today Dale – nice way to see the world in an alternate way!
I’m trying to think of any times that I’ve actually GOTTEN to the other side of a fence where I saw greener grass….. hmmmm.
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Rise and Shine Baboons:
My guess is that by the end of the day today, when snow is falling on April 19, 2011, most places South of here are going to look greener. I’ll start fantasizing about places to buy retirement property (buying prices are GOOD). Then I’ll start fantasizing about how bad the market is for selling (selling prices are BAD).
So maybe a rundown trailer in a small town in Iowa or Missouri or Oklahoma or Texas? It’s gonna snow here. In April. Anywhere has to be better than this.
Right?
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As Husband pointed out a few days ago, better to live here with snow in April than someplace with the threat of earthquakes and tsunamis (or other severe weather). At least here, the weather that could kill you is mostly just the cold – and that you can plan for in advance, and it’s easily taken care of by not leaving the house.
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I like to fantasize about having a larger house – maybe that big one on the corner across Minnehaha Creek from me, the nice arts and crafts style one that’s been getting a ton of work. Or the one on Fremont closer to my mom’s with the slate roof. I’d ponder Lands End – the “Gatsby house” – on Long Island, but that’s been demolished to make room for smaller homes (which will probably still be 4 times the size of my house). But then I start thinking about how much more cleaning would be involved, the extra upkeep, more places for ice dams to build up and leak in….but still – I could have a whole room or three for books, another just for writing and space for me, one for all of Daughter’s toys and projects (so they might not be all over the living room)…but the trade off is that pesky upkeep – and a mortgage I couldn’t begin to afford. Plus I’d have to pack and figure out how to move all my stuff…
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Good morning to all:
I can always use more money. Couldn’t one of those Wall Street bankers share part of their million dollar bonuses with me? I knew a guy who wrote to rich people asking them to share because he said he had some really good ideas that he could act on if he had some money. He said he told them that he thought he had better ideas than they did for making use of their money. I’m sure that I wouldn’t go around spending my money on hugh houses and other very expensive luxury items like some of the rich people do. Shouldn’t they just send me some of their money?
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No fair asking me now! I just got here!
Our cow pasture used to wrap about 7/8 of the way around the hayfield/oat field. The cows were stretch out the fence trying to get to grass on the field side of the fence. Then in the fall we would let them graze the fields, at which point they would stretch back the fences trying to get to grass on the pasture side of the fence.
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🙂
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Well, it is snowing here now, and it is greener most places than here. All the places that seem better theses days also have tornadoes and humidity. Places in the dry southwest have cheap housing, but have angry and mean politicians. Since I can’t take humidity or rampant nastiness, I would rather stay where I am.
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Renee, you make me wonder if we could all benefit from an attitudinal weather map. “There’s a large system of stationary nastiness churning over the northern part of Cass County, with isolated pockets of intense meanness trailing off to the southwest …”
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Yes! Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a cooling trough of tolerance and clear thinking sweep in, followed by an extended period of stable kindness and goodwill?
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You better hope, Renee, that the winds continue to blow from West to East. There is a real flurry of nastiness boiling up in Wisconsin, some of it ugly enough it might be at home in Arizona. Keep your head low.
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OHHH. You weather-speakers are brutal!
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The bad conditions that are being generated in Washington, DC, even on a good day, make the foul conditions in Wisconsin seem tame.
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When I was subbing in the county libraries and working in bookstores, I used to think how nice it would be to a) work at only one location and b) to have a normal 9-5, M-F schedule and a whole weekend off every week. Now that I have an office job, I think how boring it is working the same place with the same people, and how much I hate mornings. On the other hand, I have yet to regret moving across to Minneapolis, so sometimes the grass really is greener!
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about 11 years ago a management position opened up in my profession in Duluth. i was teaching at a small college, making almost nothing. i had done management before – hated it. but this was almost twice as much money and i’d be managing my friends. how bad could that be????
well, money doesn’t make a bad job better and friends are more fun when you are sitting around and drinking beer than when you are doing their yearly performance evaluation. if i had a penny for every time i thought “WHAT WAS I THINKING?????” i’d have $36.50. stayed 2.5 years and moved to a non-managerial job. heaven again.
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I guess those management jobs are often not so good. You are caught between the people you manage and management that is above you. There might be a positive side to it since you at least can control some things in your role as a manager and the people you manage may notice that you have done some good things to help them.
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I agree about management jobs — I did management earlier in life, during my retail career and hated it. In my current place of employment, I have resisted the siren call of management positions for 20+ years successfully. Any time something comes up or someone asks me if I’m applying for a job where I have to manage someone else, I remind myself of the day I had to send someone home because they smelled bad and were distracting all the other employees!
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Probably the best working situation I had was when I had a manager who pretty much let me manage myself and my projects. Then they decided that they should get rid of my manager, say there was no “manager” and give me the management responsibilities (along with my project work).
For those cheering me on in the garlic endeavor, it is now standing proud at 6″. My first line of lettuce is also up. I fear not the schnasty weather, these are all fine cold weather survivors. I just hope to goodness I don’t have to shovel snow to be able to plant potatoes on Good Friday.
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Good work getting the lettuce in early and having it up already, MID. I wouldn’t worry if the potatoes aren’t in by Good Friday. I think that date is a little on the early side for potato planting.
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and here I am thinking how LATE Easter is this year. I figure if the ground isn’t frozen, I will be ok. (and it is part of the “ritual” from earlier in the week)
the lettuce is saved seed and I have a lot of it, so I feel very free to take my chances.
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Yes, having plenty of seed to plant is often one of the advantages of saving seed. I knew a person who really liked to get their potatoes in early because they were wanted to have some new potatoes eat by the 4th of July.
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Morning–
All I have to say is that it’s considered good luck to have your oats snowed on. So I’m hoping for the best come August.
TTFN
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Is it good luck because of all the minerals in the snow?
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I hadn’t heard that snow on an oats seeding is good luck. There might be some truth to that saying because I think planting oats early is usually a good thing and usually you would need to have them in early to have the seeding covered by snow.
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Yeah Jim, that’s the way I always figured it…
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The grass always looks good elsewhere but heck if I get my job jar emptied it would look pretty good here too. I see places everywhere I go I’d like to spend time I. But how with people and other choices I have made? I once heard a decision is not so much deciding to do that but deciding not to do everything rlse
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Everything else
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OT, but it made me laugh . . .
INSTALLING SPRING…
███████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 44% DONE.
Install delayed….please wait.
Installation failed. Please try again. 404 error: Season not found. Season “Spring” cannot be located. The season you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please try again.
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wonderful!!!!
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I saw this on a friend’s facebook a couple of days ago. Very funny!
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I didn’t realize that weather was PC. If it was Mac…
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It the weather were Mac, it wouldn’t be snowing in April. 😉
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🙂
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Since we are (ahem!) drifting OT, I have something to share. This is secret tape of William and Kate’s wedding rehearsal. And why DOES it look familiar?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kav0FEhtLug&feature=related
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I thought they did a good job finding actors/actresses who looked like the royals!
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A couple of the castings were eerily accurate!
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Funny stuff, and well done. In fact, I couldn’t figure out how a fly-by-night amateur video jokester managed the necessary budget to put the whole thing together until I got the T-Mobile ad at the end. Aha!
It’s probably good for them to get this online now. Who knows if the company will exist on April 29th?
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What fun!
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Aw, Steve, you spoiled their surprise! 🙂
Dale, did you ever think of going into real estate?
I’ve begun checking out Assisted Living facilities for my mom in the Twin Cities. Been to four now, and I don’t see how we’ll ever decide. Each one has some feature the others didn’t. They ALL look greener in some way.
The real “greener” is my imagined relief when I have her in town where contact is frequent and I can Keep an Eye on everything. But I’ll bet there is some downside to that I haven’t imagined… Anyone else that’s done this?
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I have some experience with assisted living as a place for my parents and some other people I know. I think it pays to check out the places available like you are doing. You might want to pay attention to the quality of the food service and the management. Some places don’t serve the best of food. Good managers who seem to care about doing a good job can really make a difference. This is just my opinion from what I have seen. I personally think it is very good to have your mom near you so that you can help her if she needs help and so you don’t have to travel very far to provide help.
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The best assisted living facility I have ever seen is the Shalom Home on West Seventh in Saint Paul. Beautiful new building, extremely caring staff, and continuity of care as needs progress. I don’t know about pricing but it’s worth more than others I have been too. It is not necessary to be Jewish to live there, although it would be prudent to not be anti-semitic.
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Thanks for the tips.
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Anyone else experiencing a screen that won’t let you see all the way to the left? It’s like the space bar at the bottom is stuck or something, I can’t read the left-most letters…
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I’ve seen that in the past, not today. When I saw what I think you are describing,I closed, then reopened and and I was okay.
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Yes
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Same here.
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When I was in my 20s and 30s I used to wish I had a Monday – Friday, 8-4:30, weekends and holidays off type of job. Now that I’m in my 50s I have such a job and I’d love to work some holidays for the extra pay. I don’t mind working evenings anymore either, because they’re quieter. Is that the way life goes, or what?
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