Moving Forward!

At Bootlegger's in the French Quarter!

As most of  you know we've been dealing with our latest rental disaster, but we just signed a one year lease with our new tenants and we're ready to move forward!  We're so glad to have the house put back together and occupied.  It's said that everything happens in 3's and this was our third rental disaster in the past few months, so we hope this chapter is closed for a while!

Ken and I took a break from reality this past weekend and headed to the French Quarter for a night out.  For Christmas, our awesome daughter gave us tickets to the House of Blues to see one of our favorite musicians, Edwin McCain.  Saturday night was the big event, and we had a great time.  A friend of ours came along and a night of great music and alcohol was long overdue!

Parked at the fire station where my Dad used to work, right next to Bootleggers, HOB n Edwin McCain!

After a night out ... Waffle House of course!

Sunday we hung out on the sofa recuperating from the previous night and watching television all day.  Monday we were back to the rental for one final day of last minute projects and a good cleaning.  I was the lucky one that got to clean the bathrooms and kitchen, but since Ken has been working on the house for over 2 weeks I couldn't complain.  Let me tell you, I HATE cleaning other people's funk and this funk was bad! Luckily the bathrooms were surprisingly clean compared to the rest of the house, but the kitchen was gross.  Ken warned me that I'd need to use the commercial grease cutter that he brought, but I still was shocked at the thick layer of gunk/grease that was on top of the kitchen cabinets.  They must have been having fish fries on a daily basis!  How someone could get a place so funky in just 3 years is beyond me.  But, after a lot of elbow grease the house looked like new when we were done.  We only wished we had a buyer now while the house is so clean.  But, we don't so we do what we have to do and meet our new tenant to sign papers and collect the money.

All the door trim was chewed up and all the carpet was stained and destroyed

That's not dust on those kitchen cabinets .. grease!  Finished product!

Now, we hope to do little more than collect the rent for a while.  However, we've learned our lesson about not being nosy and we'll be popping in on our new tenants every now and then to check things out.  To follow up, only one of the 2 contracts that I wrote was accepted and while typing this I just found out that the one is starting to look a little shaky with financing, even though they were pre-approved.  Ugh!  Keeping my fingers crossed.  For those that collect a steady paycheck, be thankful!  Commission only is tough.

So, now we're ready to start focusing on our own house again to get it ready to sell.  Oh, it never ends but we know all of this will be worth it soon.  Of course, we'll be mixing up our time between jobs and home improvements with Nirvana.  We don't want her to feel neglected and we're ready for a lot of new experiences on her this summer.

My Zen Den!

Since I can't run away to the French Quarter every night to escape, I often run away to my "Zen Den" which is a great substitute.  Check it out!  I have to admit it's pretty awesome! I'm thinking this look would be really cool in our sailboat!

And one last thing ... thanks to a fellow blogger, Sandee, you no longer have to type in a word verification when making a comment.  Sandee had recently posted about her blogging pet peeves, and one of them was having to type in the word verification even though the blog owner was moderating comments.  She had a point, so we've eliminated it.  Thanks Sandee!  We're listening.

Hasta luego ... until then.  Mid-Life Cruising!