The drive was 3 days of hell but well worth it.

Of course packing took way longer and we left at 6:00 p.m. which meant Wyoming, Cheyenne mountain at night. Haill and sleet on the peaks. A thoroughly terrifying run.


Utah was gorgeous. The rock formations were incredible and that's the simple stuff near the highway. I want to go back but I probably never will.

Idaho. What can you say about Idaho? The roads are good. Because there's nothing to build around.

And then we got to Oregon. The initial hills before the Blue mountains were both gorgeous and dangerous. Every moment driving around a curve I felt I was going to fly off into the scenery. I had to continually tell myself to look at the line on the road and not at the hills. It was vertigo inducing.

And then we did it again in the Blue mountains.

And then we did it again in the Cascades. Oh yeah that's right, I made it to Washington State.

And then we hit the ocean. Port Angeles is a beach town. I'm looking for the mermaids. The smell is wonderful. It's a mixture of the sweet pines and the ocean.

I can now officially say I've driven cross country. Not that I actually wanted to.

My house is about 300 ft vertical and then another 3 or 4 blocks away from the beach. I have no idea if I will have seagulls. I hung out there for a while and didn't see any.

The road to our semi-private beach for the neighborhood goes directly into a concrete ramp into the ocean. We can launch a tiny boat easily there and go drop crab pots a mile out.

This is an amazing time.

I'm hanging out at a hotel in Port Angeles waiting for the owner to move out so I can take possession. Closing is in 30 to 60 days but he wants to be gone and I want to move in. So I'll pay him rent for it that time frame and experience the house before closing which means I'll have more information which is always good.

I love where I am and I love where I'll be so there's no downside. I told the owner I would pay him motel rates at the high season right now but then it all disappears in 3 weeks. Then I'll pay your mortgage and he really wants it.

So he's got to kick out roommates and a guy in a motorhome that may not run. He may have to kick out some guy and have his motorhome towed. Or he hands me the keys and I have the motorhome towed. Or I charge the guy rent but I'm not sure I want anyone living on my property.

Strange times.

I've got land. Not a lot but more than I ever had before. I have a six-car gravel front area, concrete slab leading to my front door on with the house that faces sideways, and a deep lot with a huge locked shed in the back that has all my crap that I dropped off.

When I dropped it off there was a dolly here. Big wheels wagon. It's gone now. And my back hurts. But I want my stuff that is currently in the back shed.

Is it safe to drive my small SUV, kia niro, over the septic tank and green field or it is it bad and I should not do it?

Do it, don't do it you are safe you are f*****.

I think I got to go buy a dolly.

It is the only path through the driveway to the shed in the back. Either I can go over it or I can't. There is no concept of maybe.

The Kia can easily handle the bumps. It is a matter of will I crush anything and cause damage. Can't take chances on that.

That's why I ask.

When I was staying at the hotel there was a perch that they always played King of the Hill on. It was the hotel sign. And I told him to shut the f******. And they listen to me. I toss some french fries, they come eat them and they stay quiet.


I'm now in the house. I have achieved. Don't know how long it will last but I'm going to enjoy it while it does.

I know we are due. But due is a 300-year range. I am 58 years old with an expectation live to about 68. That's when my dad died.

So I think this gamble is worth it.

Showed up at the title agency for it.

Rented a shed in the back of the house I'm supposedly buying. Dumped all my stuff. I no longer have to worry about my vehicles being stolen with my whole life in them.

It just became real.

You have to drive through a couple of miles of State Forest just to get to my house. Look up Diamond point, Sequim, Washington.

I will create a Airbnb rental situation so it pays for itself during crabbing season. Feel free to drop by, you get to stay for free.

If you want to do it in crab season you can have a week and go out in the boat and drop crab pots and then each evening you'll pick up an infinite amount of crabs which you will share with me.

I could rent that house for $3,000 a day during crab season but it's all yours should you want to visit.

Owner agreed to move out and let me move in if I paid motel rates for 3 weeks and then heavily discounted reasonable rates after that until closing.

To start off with let me say the owner has incredible tiling and woodworking and plaster skills and he had a couple of years to work on this house. He also does pretty good paint but his tape edges with two different colors are often screwed up. There's lots of leftover paint in the shed to fix it if my OCD forces me too.

He also had electrical skills with an electrician living in a trailer in the yard to oversee him so they did some serious projects.

I'm in Washington which means some cold times and I want focused heat in a specific room. He put 220 volt heaters in every major room, bedroom, bathrooms with individual thermostats. I have no idea how much they will cost to run but I'll enjoy them for a year and figure out if I need to change anything.

He put in multiple ceiling lights that have long rails with the little spotlights all down. Some of them have dimmers and some don't. But they're all perfect for me since I hate generic single ceiling light that shines into my eyes.

He put in a Wi-Fi water heater. I could control it from my phone. I like. I tried to run it out during a shower and got too bored and stopped. So it's got more than enough water for me which is rare for a house of water heater.

His bathroom lights are about a foot wide but there's only a ring of light around the edge. They also include a very powerful very quiet fan. I can take a hot shower without putting the heater on and there is no fog on the mirror at all.

But then I set that heater and there's no fog and the temperatures perfect stepping out of the shower.

I'm an evil bastard and I have high flush toilets. Thank God I'm out of Colorado, I hated that toilet.

The upstairs bathroom has a window in the tub/shower. I haven't had one of those since a vacation house. I love a cool breeze in a hot shower.

Water pressures mediocre though. I might be able to fix it with a new shower head but I wonder is there any other way to increase the water pressure at a particular location such as pressure injection point at the shower head?

The light also includes a blue night light which is a poor design since blue triggers wiping out our sleep hormone but it's a nice try. It also plays music that I couldn't give a s*** about. But that fan is incredible. I've never had a decent fan in a bathroom that didn't blow my ears out.

There is some type of tile/ I don't know on the floor that is perfect, but I'm trying to figure out what it is. It looks like 6-in by 18-in pieces of wood that have been grouted in. I don't think it's tile, I don't think it's linoleum, I don't think it's wood though, but it is grouted in, well done grouted in I might add.

He has swapped the kitchen from the pictures that were on Zillow. He totally turned it sideways. He put in great spotlights for where you're going to do your work and put in a tile counter that is both beautiful and functional. Not very large though, we will have to work on that.

The backsplash of the double sink with the big hose faucet is tiled steel. Well done and everywhere you could possibly splash anything. Perfectly scrubable.

The stove is the same. He steel tiled everything to make sure you can clean it.

The actual tiles on the counter are about 10 in, two different colors, and he chose the grout to accommodate the colors of the tiles. He occasionally does artistic flares.

The refrigerator is a huge double door with ice maker and water and a pull-out freezer drawer on the bottom. Love it. Of course the ice maker stopped working 2 days after we moved in and I don't give a s***. I can make my own ice or fix it if it's worth it, I'm not hassling him over it.

The actual cabinet space for dishes in the kitchen is worthless. I have to put in more shelves for that. This house can't handle cabinets. But under the counter and pantry is wonderful. And I have a bar Right next to the kitchen with storage so I can put my various cooking items such as crock pot and rare use stuff there and still have a quick pull out to put it on the bar and have electrical access.

There is a sliding glass door that leads to a small balcony that I can fit a Jacuzzi on. I plan on reinforcing its weight bearing with 4x4 studs. I will review with a professional before we actually put a Jacuzzi on it though.

I stand on the balcony and enjoy the view of my trees and my neighbors. I got trees. They scare the s*** out of me. Any one of them could fall over and crush my house in a second. I have cedars that tower over my house, I don't know a hundred feet or so. They are side by side 10 ft apart and they are the perfect hammock trees. When it rains the rain does not get to that center spot. It is beautiful. And scary.

Those are just two of them of maybe two dozen trees I own on my property that are all dangerous and that someday might come down but I'm going to love them for a while and hope they don't kill me. Or knock over my neighbor's house and cost me a lot of money. I know I have to allocate a couple thousand dollars a year for arborists.

My neighbors are wonderful. I met both on both side (and I ring one's bell constantly to ask about stuff in the neighborhood and he keeps on telling me it's okay, keep on ringing his bell, he's a professor at the local college and his wife is the dean) and at least three or four others as they are passing by. I call them over as they walk their dogs and their families.

Hi. I'm under contract to buy and I'm currently leasing until closing. I promise you I will clean it up. I am not allowed to clean it up until after closing, I apologize. Then we b*******.

I have a six car wide two car deep gravel driveway leading into an incredible Sanford and son mess of crap. I have promised the guy he can pick up stuff until closing so I am not allowed to clean it up.

I have toxic waste. I am told that the bucket of toxic waste can be taken to an AutoZone and they will take it from me but I got to find a lid before I put it in the car.

Long run on stream of conscious holy s*** what's going on to follow.

I have steel structural construction beams. I have a compressor on wheels that probably weighs a couple thousand pounds. I have a standing floor jack. I actually don't have these things because I'm waiting for him to take them away. In front of that I have a variety of garbage that he wants so he put it all by one edge of the property and said he will pick it up. I have about 50 ft of stuff that I can't possibly lift. I have celling joists that would go across a 50 ft building. I have a pile of wood that's the result of him cutting down three of those trees when they came crashing down on the neighbor's fence. He plans on heating his new place for the winter with that stack of wood. I told him I wanted a piece or two simply because I could turn them into tabletops. He's happy with that. I rolled one away because I couldn't move the other.

He was supposed to pick up some of it yesterday. He broke his ankle. He's not going to pick up anything. He either has to find friends to do it or I have to handle it.

Then there's the piles of stuff I told him he could leave behind. I wanted to ease his way out and it would cost him to move and they actually might have some value. But do I want them in my yard and pissing off my neighbors and screwing up my greenhouse space? No.

He's got about 50 pieces 50 ft long of plastic decking material.

He's got conduits. 20 to 50 ft long. A variety of conduits that is for electrical and irrigation work. They are as wide as 2 ft and as skinny as half an inch. Stacks and stacks of them behind the house. I told him I take them to either use them or clean them out myself.

I've got a fire pit that is constructed out of triangular cinder blocks three levels high and approximately 15 ft wide. It is filled with garbage right now. Maybe I can burn that garbage or maybe I'll be creating a toxic waste situation. Either way I will clean it out and then dig the dirt out from underneath because I'm want something that's not poisonous, thank you very much.

I've got two wood piles. One would piles obvious trash and the other wood pile was a series of boards that I might want to use for projects someday. Of course it's out in the rain and I will have to dry it out and clean the fungus and sand it all and stain and urethane and whatever. But I have a serious wood pile to start off with. I've been picking out pieces of wood and putting them under the front area of the house to get out of the rain.

He left me a radial arm saw. I hope I don't kill myself with this thing. He left me skis. I won't be doing s*** with those. He left me hand tools that I don't know what they are. Stacks and stacks of hand tools that I tossed into a tool case that I then couldn't lift. I had to drag it onto a mechanics dolly, the kind you skate underneath cars with, well padded and a very nice dolly, and just to move them out of the area they were in. I think I will create a website where I post pictures of things I find here and the name of the website will be what the f*** is this?

He also had cops being called to the location all the time.

My neighbors love me just because I exist to buy the house. Everything else is a benefit.

Back to the house. Primary living space is upstairs. You have to walk up steps to get where you want to live. After that I don't walk steps.

Downstairs currently has washer and dryer. They are small, appropriate for two people but no more. They are front loading. They're very high-tech. The dryer does not have a vent, you have to empty a water collector every two or three loads. It will increase the heat downstairs but I hope not the humidity. This water collector is not an aftermarket shovel on the vent and hope it works. It's built into the dryer and should actually work. I've seen the other and it was horrible.

I could put another washer dryer upstairs to allow for isolation and put a locked door in the stairs. It also has a lovely front room which is our mud room (just some place to walk into and clean up before walking into the rest of the house, but this is a decent room with three windows and a cabinet space), a second room which could be a very small living room, and a bedroom and a bathroom. We could take either the mud room or the living room and turn it into a kitchen and put steps on the outside to the balcony to get to the second floor.

At that point it's a totally separate apartment and either a living space for failing elder in laws or a rental space or a space for us to live while we rent the upstairs space. Either way this house should be a money maker in my old age.

Okay I'm done. Lots and lots more but I'm done talking right now and fixing typos. I know there's a lot of them above but I just stopped.

But I will add in a cat story. Every time we have ever moved we had to make sure the cat didn't do a panic run. The cat never knew which door led to outside it just wanted to go to the next room. But my cat does not want to go outside unless it's being chased.

So I've lived in single room motel rooms with my cat for quite a while recently always trying to make sure it didn't run the door. She's chipped but we don't have a collar on her, she's totally inside cat.

So we move into this place in two days later we get a dog. The first two days the cat is hiding as she does in every new location. We try to find her but we know she's better at hiding than we are at finding.

But at previous locations in this time frame she managed to get out the door and was truly gone and then showed up screaming at the door.

So we have a significant paranoid level on losing the cat right now. And we got a dog that freaked her out. We were idiots.

So 5 days later after seeing the cat maybe 30 seconds a day we get rid of the dog. Dogs gone, cat should be happy. And she goes into hiding. Or she escapes. But she's gone for the day.

I do the typical neighborhood walk, I ask people if they seen her, blah blah blah, but I'm not too worried since she's done it before. But the situation requires action so I took it.

That night she shows up, wanders out, and we go where the f*** were you?

So over the next couple of days she becomes more apparent and active but disappears occasionally and we can't figure it out.

I'm in the bedroom closet working through the various bags of clothes and I reach for a large round bag that contained a camping mattress that I am currently sleeping on.

When you hear camping mattress you think roughing it. No. I am in a very large bedroom with a queen size bed that is actually electrically and mechanically adjustable, came with the house but I told him to throw his mattress away or take it away I did want it. So on top of that I have inflated a queen size Air Mattress. And on top of that I have a 3-in foam pad with a very good flock backing on it. And on top of that I have a sheet. And behind me a stack of pillows. So camping mattress means nothing here. But the bag it came in does.

We are waiting for the king size mattress to show up. We already got the frame.

We have never turned the bed on. We will be moving it downstairs when the king size shows up. And we are always afraid the cat is hanging out in the mechanisms of it.

Back to the bag. I'm working through various bags of stuff and I pick up this very large bag and I realize there's something heavy and lumpy on the bottom. I bring it up to face level and look down into it. At that moment the cat erupts. It does some serious clawing on its way out. It didn't mean it. But now we knew where it was hiding.

Yeah, this place is a win. I don't know if it's real yet since closing hasn't happened but generally I'm feeling good.

I'd like to send you pictures to figure out value.

At this moment I have all this conduit material plus I got a whole bunch of crap to be cleaned out. I say crap but that compressor might have value or might just be too goddamn heavy to move. For me.

But if a contractor comes to take these conduits I want him to take some of the crap off my land so I don't have to pay anyone to take it off.

So I need to determine the value.