Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Aniverseries

So it’s been a year. Actually a bit over but I’m lazy about posting.

A year ago the house was freezing. The dog and I had no heat or water, the roof was kind of patched, there was snow on the ground and we were heading into lots of demolition then pouring rain and sweltering heat, and more destruction, and trees falling over and blackouts etc.

But in April and early may I was just trying to keep warm and waxing poetic about the good old days when I had flush toilets and running water. Showers and flush toilets. The ability to wash clothes and dishes and... flush toilets.

Well, it’s been a year and on the 31st of March we held a party. Did I mention that this neighborhood like parties. Anyway we had somewhere between 100 and maybe as high as 150 over the course of the night. Went through a lot of home brewed beer, lots of food (these neighborhood parties are pot lucks) and generally had a good time.

I was in the basement (brewery) manning the taps and thought (mistakenly) that people would come down get some beer and head up. It got crowded upstairs so a lot of folks decided to just camp out in the basement. That was fun but it meant I hardly saw anyone who didn’t come down. I had some help so I did get up eventually but wow.

I had brewed around 15 gallons of beer and five of hard cider. That was all consumed shy a class or two. Even though a ton of food came, it all got eaten. We had hardly anything left over. A lot of kids came with parents and they had a room for games and such upstairs but a lot were hanging out with the crowd so I guess it was interesting enough for them also. We did stock a large amount of juices etc. so they weren’t starved for libation.

Monty, who has been party tested but never with such a large crowd, resisted all his breeding and did not counter surf. He just kept circulation keeping track of the goings on. He slept pretty solidly for the next two days.

In April last year it looked like

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This year March looked like

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And now we are in full bloom SPRING!

BTW this is the same date as the snow picture above, but this year...

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But back to important things.

You can look back at the posts if you don’t remember but at one point the house looked like a bomb had gone off downstairs.

But now!

The dinning room

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Once looked like

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And the “breakfast room” (we really haven’t figured out names for all the rooms yet).

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Used to look like

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Actually it got a lot worse. About 1/4 of the ceiling and parts of the wall were gone before the it started to get better.

I like this shot... It’s the stairwell to the basement. When the bozo owners at some earlier time moved the stairs they made them really steep AND not enough head clearance. So I put the sign on the head bonker so people would notice and not get knocked cold coming down.

Must have worked because no concussions!

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The basement “brewery”. That is the old boiler behind me that we are trying to sell.

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Looking the other direction in the basement.

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And some “before” shots.

Removing the old heating system

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And YES it was wet!

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So a good year. Early spring and who knows?!

A friend sent an article from the Huffington Post

The #1 most affordable place to buy a house?

Detroit

The #1 most expensive place to buy a house?

San Francisco.

This may be why this year there have been three households (other than us who have moved into Indian Village from California and at least two from NYC. There are a lot of new faces and suddenly we are no longer the new comers but “old hands” in the hood.

So long for now from the Big D.

BY THE WAY,

All the nice photos of the Party were by Annie Oneill.

She does weddings and all kinds of events.

She shot these as a favor because she is both Great! and a great neighbor.

Her email is annieoneill@mac.com

and here website http://weddings.annieoneillphotography.com/

-30-

1 comment:

  1. I was wondering who I gave that Vent du Sol tablecloth -- Ha, you guys lucked out. Well, it looks gorgeous in the new room. xxxx Nadine

    ReplyDelete