Journey to Gestalt

( At least there IS some, which is a relief. )

Damn, I'm tired.

...from @Jon_Favreau:

* Sam Rockwell had a great day today. 4:01 AM May 30th
* No sleep last night. I was wound up from an intense week. Now I'm at work again to prepare for upcoming work. Mild delerium setting in. 12:28 PM May 30th
* I'll be skyping a bit from the set of Iron Man tonite on Jimmy Fallon. [about 20 hours ago]

Congratulations and all best wishes to velithya and Chas - thank you so much for having your wedding streamed online so that your friends on other continents could "be there" with you. The setting and ceremony were beautiful, and you both looked so happy. ♥

I wish you a long life of happiness together. {{{Hugs!}}}

Yup, it's more tweets from @Jon_Favreau !

* Just wrapped.Good week of shooting.Looking forward to a three day weekend.Have a happy and healthy Memorial Day. Remember the fallen heroes. 5:09 AM May 23rd
* Today is the halfway point in shooting. 11:02 PM May 26th
* Looking forward to miniburgers @CounterBurger in El Segundo. Best burger in town. Full disclosure: I'm an owner. Let me know if you've been. 4:52 PM May 28th
* Don't know if you seen this article in the Air Force Print News: http://tr.im/mFNx (via @amezri) 5:01 PM May 28th
* Scarlett kicked ass yesterday. All of her preparation has really paid off. She has a great work ethic. A real pro. 10:48 AM May 29th

Updated the Sale post with some more CDs; there'll be a few more to follow later tonight.

::ETA:: Okay, I lied about more last night. >,> Over the weekend - yeah, that's it.

Gah, so much I need to get done today & tonight. Half of it I had planned to do last night; then I found out we had a [expletive deleted] play rehearsal last night, not the usual schedule.

As a reminder:
• Call bank re: mortgage pre-approval (left voice mail)
• Laundry
• Office Depot, pick up replacement for borked USB drive
• Dr. N
• Grocery Store (check coupons)
• Start clearing computer desk
• Scan/photograph and list more items for the sale post

Oh yeah, and getting to bed before midnight tonight? HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

I still need to figure out if the jaw pain is an incipient root canal, or just me clenching my teeth. It didn't hurt when I woke up this morning, and I have caught myself clamping the jaw pretty tightly - but I don't think that's enough evidence to call it one way or the other. *sigh*

So - that's the cat and the teeth putting in their bid to keep me from saving up more money. The only thing left to make it a trifecta is an unexpected car repair. *pats little 'mobile* "...you hear me, baby? Hold together."

So with the market in its current condition and my job being relatively stable *knocks on wood*, this is probably the best chance I will ever have at owning my own home. You may have already seen my posts skimming the highs (and omg lows) of my first two rounds of house-hunting.

I'd given my finances a once-over and just about figured I could swing it, when somebody said two dreaded words I hadn't taken into account:
Closing Costs. D'oht!

That - and the prospect of packing up all the stuff I've been collecting over the last *coughmumble* years - inspires me to offer some items for sale. ( Lots of stuff behind cut - mostly music & manga, for now! )

This post will be updated - removing things as they sell (hopefully), and listing some additional items as I get things sorted out. If you know someone who might be interested in any of this, please point them toward this post. Thank you!

Not much so far this week for tweets from the set of Iron Man 2.... @Jon_Favreau must be busy, busy, busy.

* Just got back from dinner with Kevin Feige and Robert Downey. We're nearing the halfway point in production. 12:32 AM May 18th
* Mickey back on set after a stint on the Expendibles. 7:44 PM May 18th
* Expendables. I stand corrected. 9:05 PM May 18th
* Paparazzi outside set. http://yfrog.com/enrfxj 4:13 PM May 19th

Took off after work last night to look at two more houses I'd found online; this time Rissi came along. We met Marvin the Martian Realtor at the first of the two new properties.

House the First: "This Two-story Farmhouse home features ... 1 car Attached Garage ... 2 bedrooms, 1 full bathroom..."

My second "Internet Romance" house. It was, honestly, a nice little place, although not as spacious as it looked in the online photos. The downstairs was open and bright; new Pergo flooring & fresh paint made it look pretty spiffy. The ceilings were a teeny bit low, and the kitchen was small. The two bedrooms upstairs were decent, only disadvantage there is that the smaller of the two had no closet and would require a wardrobe or armoire to be used as an actual bedroom (which would take up a fair chunk of already kind'a limited space). The bathroom was likewise in okay shape - though I'd probably replace the sink with a pedestal version, to keep the little nook where the toilet was from looking claustrophobic.

Again, it had a relatively new high-efficiency furnace, and newish hot water heater.

Its main problem: it was - well, a nice LITTLE place. Like the best of last Saturday's houses, it had no basement. It also didn't have the long garage & mudroom that the other place had. Long, pretty front yard, teeny little garage... I'd have no problems at all renting a place like that, but it didn't inspire me to want to buy & make it my own.
Conclusion: second-best property so far, but I doubt I'll put in an offer. *sigh*

House the Second: "This One and a half story home features Frame exterior, Composition roof, 8 car Attached Garage, ... 1 fireplace, Gas heating, Central Air cooling, 5 bedrooms, 2 full bathrooms, 1 partial bathroom ... Jet Spray Tub...."

Okay, I knew going in that this one - just based on its description - was going to be ODD. On the off chance it was a good sort of odd, though, I had to see it. I mean... 8-car garage, wtf?! But I thought depending on the condition of it, I might be able to use some of that space for an art-studio type area - and if nothing else, it'd give me more storage than I could need.

First of all, this place was a royal bite in the shorts to find, and we had to drive up some very hilly roads to get to it, which can be a big strike considering Pittsburgh winters. The property had been neglected for longer than most of the others I've looked at, with the grass nearly a foot tall.

From the front, the place honestly looked like at one point a business had been run out of it. The inside... you know, if I were looking to move into a place with a couple or three friends - and at least one of them had some home-repair skills - it could have been tempting. It was a funky, rambling place, with a full-sized hot tub on the second floor, a coat of arms hanging on the wall just outside the hot-tub room and a set of deer or elk antlers on the wall opposite, various piles of interesting clutter left all over the place. At least one of the "5 bedrooms" was captive to another; one of the upstairs bedrooms was almost completely taken up by a plywood platform built for model train tracks! There were a couple of random skylights; the kitchen on the main floor was narrow but long... the strangest thing, I think, were the two sets of double doors on the second floor.

...yeah, the ones that had no deck or steps outside them. O_o (...although now I think I know how they got that hot tub onto the second floor.) I didn't even venture down into the basement to check the furnace and water heater.

There was no access to the alleged 8-car garage from inside the house proper; it didn't look quite that large from the outside, and all its windows were either painted over, or the kind of patterned glass that lets in light but you can't see through. No way of knowing what its interior looked like - but the house itself, while amusing and plenty quirky, needed more TLC than I could give it on my own.
Conclusion: Sorry, O Quirky House - but I do hope you find a young family and/or collection of people who can appreciate your oddities and fix you up proper!

(Sub-conclusion: If I were to win the lottery, the weirdness/amusement factor would almost be worth buying this place and rehabbing it!)

After that, I made Marvin take us back to the best house so far, so Rissi could see it. That one is still entirely a possibility.

He had another batch of handouts for me to look through and see if there were any I'd be interested in visiting. They're all in a neighborhood closer to work, but frankly on most of them the property taxes are no better - and I think only one of that lot has off-street parking. 8P I'll go through 'em more thoroughly tonight, though - and find my list of the houses I thought looked interesting in that neighborhood as a counter-proposal.

No new houses this weekend, as Marvin is out of town and I will either be away myself or lurking around area garage sales, depending.

I really need to write up the second round of house hunting... tomorrow, when I'm a little more alert, I think. And maybe when I've gotten the photos of The Weird Place off my camera.

No, really.

Just a single tweet from @Jon_Favreau yesterday:

* Leaving Edwards Air Force Base. Heading back to LA to finish out the week. My awesome crew worked their butts off. We got some great stuff. (~1:00 AM EDT, May 14)

...we really have to wait another whole YEAR for the movie? *grabby motions*

Yes, the icon is kind of appropriate. Okay - going to try writing this up again, and hope MicroSquish doesn't devour my text this time!

I've got half a dozen more houses lined up to look at, and have once again fallen in love with one of them based on the realty website's pictures. (Somebody remind me of how rarely 'Internet romances' work out, okay? ...even when it's between a woman and a vacant home, instead of another human being.) It's a renovated farmhouse with big airy-looking rooms on the ground floor; looks like hardwood floors downstairs & carpeted bedrooms upstairs. The exterior doesn't look like much in the photos, but that's not such a big deal to me; I'd rather not look like I've got anything worth stealing, y'know? (Not that I do, really - most of the tech I own isn't exactly what you'd call "cutting edge.")

Acquired so far for new living space: inexpensive used microwave and TV. Three cheers for living in a college town when the students are moving out! Also got a set of pretty new flatware I found at Target. Also have spotted some tempting furniture on the local Craigslist, but I really shouldn't start picking out stuff there until I know where I'll be and what colors I have to try to coordinate with. (The farmhouse? What I saw would be fine there. The best of last Saturday's houses? *BZZZZ* Wrong, could not use that particular sofa & chair in a living room with red carpet.* )

So, note to self for today: call real estate agent and make appointment to either look at the two closest properties tomorrow evening, or make it another long day of looking at scary little houses Saturday if he doesn't have the time tomorrow.


* The red carpeting makes the room in and of itself look quite snazzy - but there are some colors/patters of furniture that one just should NOT choose, in that case.

I had about half of a post about house- and house-stuff-hunting typed up yesterday, when Notepad - NOTEPAD of all things! - locked up on me and spewed the whole thing out into the ether.

So instead, you get the latest IM2 related tweets from @Jon_Favreau.

* Shooting some scenes at Edwards Air Force Base. They have some pretty cool toys out here. 2:57 PM EDT, May 12
* Dusk in the high desert. The wind is blowing hard. 11:15 PM EDT, May 12

Is there any interest left in Gundam models? Gundam W, to be precise... back in the day I had plans to construct a Deathscythe Army, but never got around to building them. Now I'm trying to declutter and raise money, but I don't know if it'd be worth the fees to list them on eBay.

Opinions?

Okay, I really ought to have remembered how frustrating this process is, from tagging along as Nan & Lara shopped for homes.

( The Long Ordeal of My Saturday [seriously, this will be tl;dr for a lot of people] )

So, I'm going to give a rest for a couple of days, and go through more of the online listings, before I look at any other houses. The second place is still an option.

I may have lost my mind, but... I'm house-shopping. ^^;; Going to talk to the bank first thing Saturday morning to see if I qualify for any kind of financing, and if so I've already got two places to take a look at, and a real estate agent to show them to me.

Considering how long the process of finding the Mews house took, I really don't expect to hit pay dirt (or brick or siding) on the first attempt.

BUT.

If I do, I'll be 'liquidating' a few things to try to raise as much extra cash as possible (some Japanese manga, some English translated manga, some CDs, maybe a couple of art books). Going to list them via the journal sites first, before I resort to signing up with Half.com or something. A few things I'll probably try to eBay first, and add 'em to the list if they don't move there.

So yeah - watch this space, I guess?

He posted the following today:

* Scarlett's first day on set in the Black Widow outfit. You've never heard a crew get so quiet so fast. (~1:00 pm EDT)
* Now shooting first scene with Tony Stark and Nick Fury. (~4:00 pm EDT)
* Stay tuned... Posting a pic. (~9:45 pm EDT)

...and nothing since then. And I can't wait up any longer to see when he posts the photo! ;_;

Will look first thing tomorrow.

Was watching the Derby coverage, and suddenly heard a few notes. Thought, "No, can't be!" Heard a few more and it was unmistakable - they stole "Driving with the Top Down" from the Iron Man soundtrack for one of the pre-race montages.

>,> Did a crap job of editing it to fit their footage, too. If I were Ramin Djawadi, I'd sue them.

...tried to cross-post from Dreamwidth but it didn't work. *headscratch* Oh well, I'll either figure it out or C&P between the two. ^_^

Don't it just figure, the one time I let myself get invested in a fandom comm, it descends into hate memes and trolling, and then implodes.

So much for wanting to get away from rants.