Finally, the end to our real estate journey.

I was beginning to wonder if our home-buying process would ever come to an end.  But, guess what?
WE HAVE A HOUSE!!!

Our official closing date is April 12th.  And then I'm a real homeowner!  Two weeks ago we finally received our short-sale approval from the bank after two months of waiting.  Much to my surprise, after that was processed, everything has moved very quickly and smoothly.  We had our inspections last week and everything looks good, and all the paperwork is done and turned in.  Now I just show up with a down payment check, sign closing documents, and get the keys!!  I don't think I can come up with words for how excited and relieved I am to be done with this process.  This is big.

Our new house needs a LOT of work.  It was built in 1950, and walking through it, you might think that the interior of the house has not changed much since that time.  We're talking horrible carpeting, pink and purple paint, wood paneling, funky hanging ceiling tiles, and nasty fixtures.   Structurally, it's a great house and it's in great shape... but cosmetically, we've got our work cut out for us.  Luckily the exterior has been spruced up relatively recently, so we won't have to do very much to the outside.

I'll post more photos of the whole house once we've actually closed.  And then you should expect a slew of posts about the various projects we'll be doing to the place.  I love before and after pictures, and we're definitely going to have some good ones with this place!  We're thinking that we'll spend a good two or three weeks working in the house before we actually move in.

It feels pretty amazing to finally know that we will be settling down soon.  Our current house has been half-packed for months and I can't wait to unload in a brand new space.  I am completely ready to jump head-first into fixing up this new place and making it awesome for us.

Oh, but first (and the reason we're not closing on the house until the 12th), we're going to go to Hawai'i for a little beach and volcano time!  Celebratory umbrella drinks will be consumed.  Then we'll be nice and refreshed to come back and start in on our new home.

Pottery > Tin cans.

Everybody knows that I love my job, I don't need to tell you that.  But there are definitely aspects of my profession that I will never pretend to understand or be excited about.  Honestly, I find a huge percentage of historical archaeology to be just plain boring and uninteresting.  Early contact-period historic stuff, okay, that's pretty cool, but anything within the last 200 years or so just seems silly to me.

For instance, I recently had to consult this reference for a report I was writing:

I'm not sure what I think is worse- the fact that archaeological sites containing Clorox bottles are even considered sites at all, or the fact that somebody actually took the time to write an entire guide to the changes in Clorox bottles over time.  Really?  

The sad thing is, it is generally accepted by most agencies that we define archaeological materials based on age... the rule is typically that anything 50 years or older can be considered archaeological.  That means that every year, new things get added to the archaeological record.  That means that as of 2013, we have to potentially record trash and structural remains from 1963.  Plastic.  Styrofoam.  The exact kind of stuff that many of us could find in our backyards or basements.  And this is why historical archaeology drives me nuts.  I'm tired of tin cans and barbed wire.  At some point, somebody is going to have to put their foot down and define a specific boundary between Historical and Modern, because right now I think they are getting pretty blurred together.

Dear government, when you are looking to cut funds for cultural research and preservation programs, can we just make a rule that anything containing materials that date post-WWII is not worth spending money investigating?  I don't want to spend my time taking photos of old motor oil cans and Fiesta dinnerware.  That's not the kind of archaeology I signed up for.  I'm here for the pottery and the pueblos, people.

96 legs too many.

I feel like two is the ideal number of legs to have.  Four legs is okay in my book too.  Eight legs, ok I'm probably going to kill you, but you're still tolerable.  But really, any more than that is just not ok. 

I've always hated centipedes.  I've encountered them many times in the field, and they never fail to give me the heebie jeebies like nothing else can.  They're big, they're fast, they bite, you can't tell which end is which, and they're horribly leggy (Wikipedia says they can have up to 300 legs!).  I've found them in my screens while excavating, under my tent while packing up camp, and in trails while hiking.  But you know what?  Those are normal settings for centipedes, and by that I mean that all of those centipedes were outside.  Not in my house.

Last Friday, I found this guy:

I found him in my HOUSE.  BETWEEN MY COUCH CUSHIONS.  How will I ever be able to enjoy watching television again?  I get a shiver down my spine every time I think about it.  I'm afraid to look under the cushions again to make sure he didn't have any friends.  I don't think I could go through the trauma of centipede-wrangling again.  He was about 4 inches long, which is definitely not the biggest centipede I've come across... but in my house?!

I was trying to clean the house a bit before a friend came over.  I pulled off the couch cushion to clean away some of the dog hair, and there he was.  I squealed.  I ran around the room looking for a solution.  The solution I came up with consisted of a huge kitchen knife, a pair of pliers, and a glass of water.  Eventually the centipede ended up in the water.  And then my friend Sam arrived at the front door just in time to see me holding a glass containing a drowning centipede in one hand and a huge knife in the other.

I left that damned thing in the water for a good few hours to make sure it was completely drowned.  Then I ceremoniously chopped it to a million pieces in the garbage disposal.  It was my only safe option.

A 19th century Tibetan poet once warned his fellow Bhuddists that "if you enjoy frightening others, you will be reborn as a centipede."  Smart guy.

Come on over, pull up a chair.

I finally have a new finished project to show off!

A couple of months ago I found this cool, old wooden chair at one of the flea markets here in Albuquerque.  For only $20, I couldn't pass it up.

The chair had been stripped and was really dried out when I bought it, and a few of the joints were loose and wobbly.  I sanded the whole thing down really well, cleaned it up, and glued everything in place.  I debated painting it a fun color, but decided that I should take advantage of the clean wood and stain it instead.  It took a couple of coats, but the stain turned out really nicely.

The freshly-stained chair sat by our front door for a few weeks until I finally found some fabric to use for the seat.  It took multiple different trips of wandering through the fabric stores, but this weekend I found some fabric that I really like and we were in business.  Josh helped me cut out wood for the seat, and then Mom helped me cover the seat.  I'm pretty inept when it comes to fabric.

We used some basic quilt stuffing to pad it, and then used some stretchy dark fabric on the seat so that a) we could stretch the padding tighter onto the seat, and b) there would be a darker color behind the light print of the fabric.  Then we stapled the hell out of it.  A little Scotchguard for protection and a little oil on the wood and we're good to go!

Viola!  My first finished project in quite some time.  This one even gets enthusiastic approval from Josh, probably owing to the orange colors.  Now if only I could just close on a damn house, I'd have somewhere to put all of this stuff...

Slush Puppies

It's starting to look like we may be on our way to Spring around here.  This winter was pretty mellow here in Albuquerque... it was cold and it was windy, but we got almost nothing in terms of snow.  I'm definitely not complaining about it- I'm ready for warm temperatures again- but, I am sort of sad that we didn't get to play in the snow more this year.  Josh and I went skiing in Santa Fe a few times, and we got a couple of snowshoe hikes in, but otherwise it was a pretty boring season for snow adventuring.

Last week I decided that we needed to get in a little bit more snow while we still had the chance.  I took off early from work one day and we loaded the dogs into the car and drove up to the crest of the Sandias for an afternoon hike.  We took some pretty photos.  We got snow in our boots.  Sienna acted like she was a puppy again, and Callie acted like snow was the most miserable thing she had ever encountered.  It was a good time.