If You Want To Know

It's quite possible that I should update this thing more often. I have stories to tell and updates on my crazy world, but right now, laziness trumps the need to express.

We flew back into town yesterday after spending most of the week in Florida. It was quite a shock going from eighty degrees and sunny to forty degrees with a chance of snow. I'm not sure how much we accomplished. I had an interview and a site visit and we did a lot of house hunting.

The job hunt is sort of going well. I have a firm offer from one hospital, but it's nowhere near where we want to live. I don't think I'm going to take that one, but it's good to have the offer in your pocket when negotiating other offers. The interview at the second hospital went well. I got a phone call a couple of days later saying that they were definitely going to make me an offer, but I haven't heard back yet. The job is much closer to the gulf coast and seems to be a lot less stressful. On the negative side, it's a Monday through Friday job. I was hoping for three twelves. I have submitted my resume to a couple of other places but haven't heard anything.

With the job situation in hand, the next issue is to find a place to live. Kitten accepted an offer on her house and they are looking to close at the end of May so there is some urgency to the problem. We spent three whole days looking all over the bay area without any results. We did find one gorgeous house. Huge lot, enormous common rooms, four bedrooms three baths, lake front and just at the upper edge of our budget. We were so excited, we called Kitten's Dad and told him we would make an offer without even looking at the rest of the house. He called back pretty quick and told us the house had been built with "Chinese drywall." Huh? Turns out that between 2001 and 2007, there was a shortage of drywall and a significant amount was important from China. This imported drywall has a very high sulfur content and when exposed to heat and humidity, typical Florida conditions, it emits sulfur gasses that not only smell bad but can combine with moisture to form sulfuric acid. Putting the health problems aside, the stuff basically eats copper and silver. In short, all of the wiring, appliances, HVAC and mirrors need to be replaced and if you don't replace the drywall, the same thing will happen again. We were told that the cost of all of this for the house in question had already been estimated at over a hundred thousand dollars. So a house that was barely in our reach becomes financially impossible. I'd curse China, but not everything that is Chinese is caustic and a danger to your health (right Cindy?).

Everything else we looked at either didn't sing to us, or just wasn't worth what they were asking. The hunt continues.