My weekend (and other stories)

[annwfyn]

So, this weekend started extra early for me this weekend when I had a mini-breakdown on Wednesday night and ended up not sleeping and taking Thursday off work. Bless them, they were quite nice. I just called and asked if I could take it as last minute holiday as I'd had a domestic crisis which meant I hadn't got to bed until 6 am. As I had nothing much to do at work, they were fine with this.

And as a result I've had a quite nice long couple of days so far.

I've had lovely milkshakes with pierot. I've seen Fast & Furious 5 (which bizarrely counts as one of the more feminist films I've seen this year. OK, so it didn't pass the Bechdel test but it had tough independent female characters who made their own decisions, who drove fast cars, who got to be cool and who drove the plot forwards. Oh, and it also had a sexy male Asian major character who got the girl, which means it got points for avoiding the 'sexless Asian man' stereotype as well), I've done a load of work on a Lost tabletop game I want to run at some point (a sort of weird Neverwhere 'baronies of London' kind of game, and a bit of a Maltese Falcon theme to it as well) and today I am burning meat and being sociable with pleasant people.

And this is all good.

I now need to work out what I'm doing for the rest of the weekend. I think at least one of my goals should be to get the house a bit more sorted as part of my 'get it on the market at the end of May'.

And this ties neatly into another decision I've made.

There are significant parts of my life which are not working. And therefore I am going to change them. I am, in fact, setting myself three goals for the next year.

Goal One: Get the house on the market at the end of May, and get it sold by Christmas.

Goal Two: Get out to Seattle to visit people by the end of January.

Goal Three: Get the money and time to go backpacking by the end of next year. I'd like to go to Rio and travel through Brazil and Argentina, but I am flexible. One thing that is sort of tempting is to get two months clear, then look at where has cheap flights in the week before I want to leave.

And these thoughts make me happy. If anyone has any recommendations for backpacking destinations then those are also gratefully received. And for now, I am going to go and eat good food, with 'Sweet Caroline' playing in the background, and people I like very much chatting about me. And this, in and of itself, will make all things good.

Comments

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I've kinda been giving myself four months as a minimum and I suspect it'll take us a while to get an offer on the place. Hence the six month window, which I'm hoping is reasonable.

[omentide.livejournal.com]

It depends how you price it. We had to drop before we got significant numbers of viewings but, once we did that, we got an acceptable offer very quickly. Our neighbours sold quite recently for a great deal more but they are a house (they have neighbours to the right and the left), we are a flat (we have neighbours to the right and above). Also theirs was perfectly presented and ours is eccentrically decorated (we like colours) and 'needs some work' - we only have fitted carpets on the stairs and in the hallways - the rest is painted floorboard with kilims. Also they waited a long time.

But, having been here over 12 years we were bound to get more than we paid for the place. We paid just over 62K.

I am horribly twitchy now whilst we wait for the purchasers to secure their finance. I've been assured that there is no real problem here - estate agents and solicitors have been very efficient...

I would recommend my estate agent and solicitor but the estate agents are local (they have five offices in Northwest London) and my solicitor is based in Watford. She worked at our place in a break between conveyancing jobs and she is really, really lovely.