 Peter |
 Louise |
 Madeleine |
 Toni |
New from the Monkeynut, Winter 2010 - The year begins with yet another story of rampant crime in Larchmont. Where will it all end??? Here is the description from the police blotter in The Loop:
Thank God for law enforcement! New from the Monkeynut: The Great Blow of March 2010 - Whoa Nellie! Quite a storm we've had over the weekend! Violent rain, furious gusts of wind up to 80 miles an hour, trees thrashing their limbs, showering us with everything from twigs to major branches. We have decided to put our house on the market, so we are doing some painting and fixing up. Brian, our painter, has been driving in from Cold Spring - he said that it took him several hours to negotiate all the debris on the roads. On Saturday, Louise had arranged for some sturdy high-school guys to come and help us load a truck with boxes of stuff we are taking to storage. I drove the truck to a storage location in New Rochelle, and then we all unloaded it. Driving back home was brutal; I felt that at any moment I was going to take a side trip to the land of Oz. I arrived home, soaked, frozen and dog-tired; I poured myself a large glass of Scotch and submerged myself in a hot bath for the next half-hour until the chill went out of my bones. Since then, we having been living just the way the cave men used to live - i.e. without cable TV or the internet. How did they do it?? It is now Wednesday and we haven't been able to change our Facebook status or anything. Madeleine left for Houston this morning, but of course had no idea of when her flight left or even from which airport. She finally called Toni and gave her the necessary information for her to be able to retrieve the facts from Travelocity. Now just imagine if the cell-phone towers had been toppled! My blood curdles at the thought! Much of Larchmont is still without power and the buzzing of chain saws drowns out the humming of generators. But the sun has finally come out and the temperature is very pleasant, so we are determined to put a brave face on things.
New from the Monkeynut: A River Runs Through It - What a stroke of luck! Just as we are preparing to list our house for sale, we have several days of torrential rain, producing the wettest March on record! Now we can advertize additional features of this lovely house!
New from the Monkeynut, May 2010 - about the house. The sale went blindingly fast - we listed it on Thursday, had a brokers' open house on Friday, had a public open house on Sunday and got a pretty good offer that same evening. We indicated the offer was acceptable, but then a few days later got another offer better than the first. We asked the interested parties to give us their best and we ended up accepting an offer a little higher than our asking price. Cool! So we were in a position to indicate that we were not likely to agree to major adjustments after the inspection. In fact, the inspection went fine and a representative of the bank has been out to take a look at the house. Closing is set for some time in July. After the contract was signed, we decided that we needed to get away - my partner and friend Bill Murray kindly offered us the use of his house in rural New Hampshire and so we headed up to Eastman, just short of Hanover. The first couple of days were spectacularly sunny and warm and we felt completely rejuvenated. We went hiking in the White Mountains. We went to Hanover and New London and visited a glass-blowing factory in Vermont and talked to a real estate agent in Eastman. We shopped and ate chocolate. But the weather then turned cool and grey and our visions of settling down in New Hampshire faded away. Indeed, on the day we left, the temperature was in the mid 30ies and it started to snow. However, overall it was the pause that refreshed and the good feelings from our trip helped us deal with all the issues still remaining about our forthcoming move. Move where? - I hear you ask. We have considered everything. Right after we decided to sell, I received an email from an old friend from Freddie Mac who has been teaching finance at the University of Otago in New Zealand. We're hiring, he said. So right off the bat, I was tantalized by the thought of a semester or two in the antipodes. Louise countered with Nicaragua - nice and warm, cheap and friendly, and much closer to our daughters. I cunningly advanced Seattle - surrounded by mountains and Puget Sound, home of several really good friends of ours and most people speaking English. Louise pointed a finger at the gloomy winters and then bid one Charlottesville - a beautiful college town surrounded by cheap countryside. I tried to squeeze in a city or two in Colorado, but Louise would have none of it - too much the great unknown. She then came up with a surprise move - Austin, Texas, which always seems to make its way into everybody's top ten places to live. So where does that leave us? Well, we're currently looking at apartments in Stamford, Connecticut. Stamford is quite an appealing place, big enough to have a couple of theatres and be home to some major financial firms, while not incurring the premium prices of places like Larchmont that are so convenient to New York City. There is a very pleasant harbor area and some lovely wooded countryside further north. We are not planning on buying a house but renting for a year, during which we will try to agree on our next destination. Could be Peru. Could be Arkansas. Check back in this space later to see how it all comes out.
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