it's been a HUUUUGE weekend. karl and i had our 1000 day anniversary yesterday and to celebrate we had pizza and bought a house.

EEK! it was the first house we'd looked at, about a month ago. then, it was priced too high, especially considering the kitchen. but last week we discovered the price had been lowered by 20K, so we called up the realtor and went to look at it again on friday. we discussed numbers, and decided to put in an offer for 20K less than the (new) asking price. we figured on a counteroffer sometime this week, but last night the realtor called us saying the seller had countered with 7K less than asking. we returned with 2.5K over our offer. they returned down another 4.5K. we upped another 2.5K and they came down 1.5K. at this point, their number was $1000 more than our last offer, and $1000 more than what we thought was our top price. but we talked about it and decided that we couldn't let the house go for $1000, which works out to $6/month. $6! so we accepted, if they'd move the settlement date back 2 weeks, which saves us a bit on overlap with our rent. they did, so we have an agreement!!! i still can't believe that we bought a house in 2 days, and that we negotiated a 20K difference in price in 15 minutes. i'm all a-whirl. reeling between oh shit what did we just do and what color to paint the living room.

today we went in to sign the corrected papers, and are just waiting to hear from the realtor that she's got the agreement back from the seller. then we can officially get the mortgage and schedule an inspection and get the show on the road!

there are some things that we're going to fix right off the bat, before we move in. the first is the %#&@ kitchen. it is so small that not only can you not have more than one person cooking in it, you can't even have more than one person STANDING in it. can't open the fridge door and the dishwasher door at the same time. so we're going to knock out the (load-bearing) wall between the kitchen and dining room and make some changes. to keep costs down, i'm hoping we can have the old cabinets, and maybe the stove, from my mom's kitchen, which she is about to have redone. since we're also taking her old dining room table, our dining area is going to look very much like the one i grew up with. weird. the other main thing that needs doing is the floors. there are random-width pine floors throughout, but they are in pretty terrible condition. nothing that refinishing can't fix though. so just after we settle, we're going to get the floor guy in to do the whole place. we're getting excited about all this work, and are going to be spending mucho time and $$$ at the House Depot. karl's even excited about the "backyard" which is (a) about 10' deep and 14' wide and (b) a jungle. seriously. you step out the back door onto a small concrete patio and are literally surrounded by huge weedy plants. i kid you not when i say that there is an area of no more than 2 feet square that is free of jungle. so we'll rip out all the weeds, put up a retaining wall at the back, fill it in, and make a lovely, LITTLE garden out of it. i hope.

so, happy 1000 days. actually, by now, 1001.

and that wasn't even the WHOLE weekend! on saturday, we went to knoebels with J & S. i wasn't expecting much from a small family owned theme park in pennsyltucky (to get there you have to drive through centralia, pa, the town with the 40 year-old smoldering underground coal fire. on the way home, we saw ACTUAL SMOKE coming out of the ground. someone should film a horror movie there. it should be a no-brainer, what with the smoke rising from the ground in the town graveyard. and the toxic fumes would cause actual harm to the actors and crew, lending an air of authenticity to the project. anyhow, knoebels was waaaaay better than expected. it's my new favorite theme park! it's small enough that you don't have to walk miles to get around! the lines are short! there's lots of trees! the coaster (well, the two wooden ones anyway) are aMAZing. really, very very good. my previous favorite coaster was the cyclone at coney island, but it has been replaced by the phoenix at knoebels. the food? the food is both deelish and cheap. pierogies! tri-taters! pizza that's better than any i've had outside brooklyn (must be the water because the crust? on that pizza? a little slice of heaven.) waffle ice cream sandwiches. it is a crime, a CRIME i tell you, that no one has thought of this before. they take a 3"x5" slice of ice cream and put it between two quarters of a hot waffle. and voila! sandwich! and the food is cheap! i cannot say enough good things. oh! one more good thing that i just remembered. the park is free to get into--instead of paying a flat, overpriced fee to get in, you pay per ride. $1, $1.20, whatever. actually, you can buy a day-pass if you want, that will get you on unlimited rides. but it's cool because if there's people in your group who don't ride much, they don't have to pay to get in. knoebels! hurrah!