Nana done, we start...

So, the word is that Nana's bank account took a nice bump this week when all the "I's" were dotted ant the "T's" crossed on the sale of the old family home. This will help secure her place in her new home for decades to come and frees her from snow removal forever. Now its our turn in Juneau.

Yesterday we signed the listing agreement with a Real Estate agent, may she be half the advocate of dear Ron Saylor, placing the Juneau house in play. She immediately told us another agent in the office had an impatient client with ambitions to buy exactly what we are selling: waterfront, 2,000+ square feet, and a budget $70,000 above our listing price. I immediately suggested we change the listing price but too much evidence says we are probably where we should be if we expect to get legitimate offers. The agent, Mimi Rothchild, has been very complimentary about the condition and presentation of the house. In fact it has been largley depersonalized and reasonably "staged" with the features of previous domestic modifications erased: No more solar murals, adventurous sponge-paint color patterns, or any evidence that a pet ever lived here. All the agents we interviewed have expressed generous expectations for a sale price. I know that's a salesman's ploy at times to get the listing but it is comforting to hear someone talk a good game on our behalf after the tough times we've seen in real estate. We have hired a cleaning service to begin coming to the house to prepare for future showings. The owner of that service immediately told us the house will sell "right away!!". I wonder if she has been coached by the agents to flatter all the customers.... In any case, final preparations are in the works.

We are trying to clean out sheds for our eventual move. I completed the new garbage shed at the top of the driveway to house the new automated refuse system that is coming to town. This is the best of what I have seen in Spokane and Austin: new big roll-away cans are provided so that a single driver operating a robotic arm will stay in the truck, grab and dump the can and move on without leaving his vehicle. We also get a big blue can that will take an expanded list of unseparated recycleables in the same fashion. No more trooping to Lemon Creek to shoulder up with the Volvo's and righteous Subaru's to divide our waste stream into more righteous dumsters of selected useful junk. As in Austin, this combined stream of recyclables makes me nervous. I can sort of understand how metal might be magnetically drawn out but I have this uncomfortable image of a behind the scenes 3rd-world rag-pickers bending over a stream of my crap picking triangle 1 from 2,5, or 7 at some cross-border midden heap of modern enterprise. I see modern community service obligations for Hollywood miscreants requiring them to stand shoulder to shoulder with them and appearing in telephoto images on the front of the Enquirer. Will that be my milk jug they are separating fom my soggy Sunday NY Times?? In any case, my stuff should be safe from the bears before it gets to them.

Next week, I go to South Carolina to do some CME. I committed to the plan to keep my medical license requirements up when it seemed like my retirement plans were not so solid as Mom's. We have just been told that the medical building has been approved for purchase by the Hospital, that's step one. If the house gets sold this summer, that's step 2. Then I have to work out an arrangement with Rob or the Hospital to make some kind of modest settlement for our investment in the practice and I can stop avoiding my wife's pointed stares when she is tapping her toes in retirement, step 3.

We are thinking about our transition if the house actually sells. Very few rentals are around. We may jump ahead to the truck and 5th wheeler idea to complete our time in Juneau at start retirement. As I look at the options in that market, I have the same experience I had looking at boats many years ago. I start with a modest expectation and budget and rapidly raise my sights to stratospheric options that seem so appealing just beyond my reach. You know, satellite dishes, serious flat screen TV, really fine cabinetry....We'll see.