kareina

The realtor tells me that bidder number four is out, so now he will talk with the former owner's heirs tonight and get back to me, probably tomorrow. I let him know that if they want to do paperwork tomorrow please let me know tonight, so I can drive down today and stay with Keldor.

Edited to ad: The relator sent me an email at 22:00 tonight saying that the sellers have accepted my offer and he will contact me tomorrow to work out details of when and where to do the paperwork.

So, I am not really surprised to report that there are two more bidders for the house. Over the course of the day the other two have been raising the bids by 5,000 or 10,000 SEK (just a bit more than 500 to 1000 USD or a bit less than 500 to 1000 euros). A friend in Tassie reports that the asking price (350,000 SEK) is less than his friend paid for an electric car.

The bid is at 290,000 SEK just now, and I have been silent all day.

However, if I were to pay as much as asking price, and our high-end estimate on renovating cost is correct then I still have 100,000 extra in house savings to cover unexpected problems.

I had thought to not bid again if others are interested, but the whole "cheaper than a car" thing really got my attention. However, perhaps the take home message ought to be "new cars are super expensive" and not "so buy the house"? What do you guys think?

The cute house I bid on on Monday morning had already gone past my price range by lunch time, but not so much out of my range as to remove the temptation of being stupid, where "stupid" = completely empty the house savings account rather than leaving some in reserve in case things break. However, by Tuesday evening the bids had crept up high enough that the temptation was going away. I also spoke to the bank on Tuesday, who confirmed what I had already suspected: because my job is only a nine-month contract they won't give me a loan. No, not even a small, short one to be paid back within those nine months. Therefore I resigned myself to not getting the house (unless a miracle happens and the seller chooses my bid even though it isn't highest).

This morning my sister wondered idly just how much money I was talking between the difference between my highest bid, and what I would need to bid now if I wanted to re-enter the bidding. Once she converted that to US dollars and saw that, actually, in the scale of house buying prices she is used to, that amount was pretty much nothing, she offered provide the extra cash if the bid was successful. So I tried again. However, this time I didn't have the nerves I did on Monday--I had already accepted that I wasn't going to get this house, therefore I could just enjoy a few day dreams about how life might be if I did, and then the other bidders quickly responded and pushed it back out of my price range again.

So I wait. The right house is likely to come up, eventually.

I have been checking Hemnet pretty regularly to see if there is anyplace for sale that I could love, at a price I can afford. I saw one that looked interesting, but a bit far away that we decided to have a look at on Sunday anyway. Its location was lovely--7 hectares, with forest, full of blueberry plants (that have lost their leaves already, of course, but one still recognises them), and a field large enough for a West Crown camping event. However, at 1.5 hours from the nearest airport I don't know that we would be able to host an event there and get people to come even from Drachenwald. The house was in much better shape than expected given that it has sat empty since 2016, and it already had things like triple-pane glass in the windows and had been drilled for "mountain warming". While the asking price made it tempting (as I could have bought it outright), the fact that it is 2.5 hours from where I work means that I couldn't actually live there during the week, and it is an hour and a half from Keldor's work, which is also too long for regular commuting. Therefore we won't be making an offer on this one, which is good as the bidding has already gone to nearly twice the original asking price (which, to be fair, is still well within the price range I would consider for a place I loved in a location I was happy with).

Tomorrow we will go look at one in a better location. This one is only 1 hectare of land, but it is in a pretty location and is about half way between Luleå and Skellefteå, which means just over 1 hour drive north to where I work, and just under one hour drive south to where he works. I don't like the idea of commuting, but at least that would be fair to both (and it would mean we could see one another in person more often than now, when we sleep in our own towns during the week and then spend weekends together).

Since that viewing is in the early evening the plan is for me to then follow him back to Skelleftehamn and stay there Friday night and then head to the Umeå area on Saturday for a gathering of the Norrlands Viking group (an informal group of mostly SCA folk who have Viking era costumes and want an excuse to wear them more than just SCA events).

However, this morning I woke up with the left side of my nose feeling stuffed up. No other symptoms, but one doesn't go to the gym or to work during a pandemic with any symptoms at all, so I cancelled my morning acroyoga and let work know I wasn't coming in. I will see how I am feeling later in the day and if it was just me being paranoid, or if I am actually fighting off some sort of virus and the minor feeling of blocking is a sign of the battle.

Since I am home I am taking advantage of the time--I have stripped the bed and am washing the sheets, and I have been making good progress on figure 4 for that paper that I haven't worked on in weeks.

I blame not making time to type up what I am up to on being busy and lots of small-scale travel.

When last I posted I was spending a week down in Boliden collecting rock samples from the drill core stored there. It is fun, but tiring, and while they generally provide a decent room with access to a kitchen, it is *Not Home*, and I would rather be at home, since I rather like it there.

That weekend instead of going home I met lord_kjar at his brother's house, which is located in Bureå, 15 min south of the city of Skellefteå (Boliden is 30 min inland from Skellefteå, so it wouldn't have made sense to do the 2.5 hour drive home, only to turn around and then do the 2.25 hour drive to the brother's house.) That was our third weekend in a row at the brother's house working on projects. Their place is starting to feel like home to me. It helps that when we are in project mode they let me do the cooking.

During those three weeks we managed to complete a linen underdress for her, a linen under tunic for him, and mostly complete a wool over dress (both in the fitted gothic gown 13th century style) (the over dress still needs lacing holes). Meanwhile, while I focused on helping with the sewing projects lord_kjar was useful out in the Bus/motor home. I am told that he re-did much of the electric wiring and installed lights where they want them. They also ripped out the old ceiling cover (of fuzzy carpet) and replaced it (with a heavy duty-smooth vinyl paper designed to be used in boats, so it is water resistant and fire retardant), re-did the bathroom, replaced the kitchen sink, counter, stove, and installed a new stove hood. I think they accomplished lots of other needed tasks, too. It is looking good to have everything done before we need it for the road trip to Double Wars in May.

The following weekend we didn't do the 2.25 hour drive south to the brother's house, but instead we drove to Umeå, which is fully 3 hours drive south. Why? Because our friend L, who lives in Umeå, invited us to come participate in a Kontaktimprovisation and Clown workshop. I had never heard of Contact Improv before she mentioned it to me, and I want to know why not! Imagine combining massage and dance, two of my favourite activities! I don't know how much that weekend's workshop, which ran from Thursday evening through to Sunday evening of Easter Weekend was typical for Contact Improv, and how much was only there as part of the Clown workshop, but I will try to remember enough to sort of describe it.

The warm up sessions generally involved breaking into groups of three people (since there were 15 of us total). One of each group would lay on the floor, and the other two would start to massage them. after working over the whole body once the massage movements would become longer strokes along the limbs of the one getting massaged, and they would start to move, in part in response to the touches, and in part the touches would follow the dancer's movements, accentuating them and encouraging them. Gradually the dancer (who had been getting the massage) would move more and more of their body, first rolling around on the floor, and gradually working towards upright too, and the touches would become briefer and less contact. Once all the dancers from all the groups were moving on their own we would stop, another person from each group would lay down to be massaged, gradually moving into dance, and then finally the third person would get their turn at massage/dance. It often happened that I was sleepy at the time we started this process, so I always volunteered to be the first dancer, as I could sort of nap during the first part of the massage, and then doing the movement woke me up enough to do the massages for the other two.

We did most of our dancing without music, other than whatever noises the dancers were inspired to make. Since a number of us like music the noises we made was often very musical, and sometimes were songs with words (both made up on the spot, or a few times songs that a bunch of us happened to know). The Clown workshop was a bit odder. I haven't had any particular interest in being a clown, or any sort of performance, but that was the other focus of the weekend, and it was the weekend we happened to be available to go play and do something different, so when she suggested it we said yes. Besides, while I don't particularly want to perform, neither am I easily embarrassed, so when faced with an assignment to think of an emotion I happen to be feeling and then come up with a way to express that emotion through dance I can do so. Perhaps not as well as someone who lives to perform for others, but I did participate. And if a certain percentage of my clown dance involved climbing on the bars on the wall no one who knows me is surprised to hear it...

After the weekend we brought L home with us for a visit since she had a chunk of time with no classes she needed to attend, and it has been nice to have the company--especially as she joins me for my daily yoga session. I haven't had a consistent yoga partner since clovis_t quit doing yoga with me, and I miss it.

She is still there the first half of this week, too, but I, sadly, am not at home. However, I am at a delightful home this time. I am, once again, in Boliden. Yesterday and today was a geochemistry course taught by the guy whose PhD thesis I was given when I started this job with the words "your project will be something like this, but in 3D". It has been quite a useful and entertaining class. I will stay here the rest of the week and collect more rock samples before heading home on Friday.

Unlike my other trips to Boliden, this time I am not staying in the company owned apartment room that I usually stay at. That was fully booked this week, so instead I am doing an experiment. A couple of the geologists here own a house in a village about 30 minutes drive inland from Boliden, and they are kindly letting me stay with them. I asked them in part to see how I go with a 30 minute commute, since lord_kjar and I plan to start house-hunting next winter (once we have saved up a down payment we are happy with). We both want land (enough to host a medieval camping event "in the back yard" and a shop. Such things are best found out of town, but how far are we willing to go to get what we want?

So I am staying with this lovely family, in the village of Svansele, in their beautiful large house which was built in the 1880's. If we can find someplace half so nice I will be happy--the house has ceilings which must be nine feet tall, large, spacious rooms, and fabulous view down to the Skellefteå River. They have 4 hectacers, and own all of the land down to the river, and some of the land across the road, too. The house came with a large barn, and in one of the rooms in the barn they have a huge trampoline, which they are able to use year round, since it is under cover and not being snowed on. They only moved her in October, so they don't yet have the horses and sheep they plan to get, but they have a very sweet cuddly cat, a friendly rabbit who also cuddled with me at first meeting, and a bunch of hens who are paying rent in yummy eggs.

I have had "shop" on my wish-list for a while, but now that I have seen the trampoline in a barn idea I think that "barn" might just have been added to the "would be nice" list. They are also thinking of converting part of the barn to a climbing wall. I want a climbing wall!

So far I have had only two work days of commuting here, and Monday only sort of counts, since I woke up in my own bed in Luleå at 04:30 and then did the 2.5 hour drive to Boliden, leaving home at 05:45 to be certain I could get there on time for class at 08:30, and then did the drive out to their place (stopping a couple of times to look at the map on my phone to see how far the little blue dot had moved since last I looked, to be certain I didn't miss my turn (they had left class a little early to go pick up their daughter from day care)). But so far I don't mind the commute, since the drive is quite pretty. I do have to be certain that I bring both lunch and dinner with me though--by the time I get into the car in the evenings after class I am starving again (never mind that I had nibbled on more food during the afternoon coffee break), so I eat a little before starting driving, and eat a bit more while driving, and am well fed for the day by the time I get home at 17:30.

I can't say I liked the evening sun in my eyes during the drive home on Monday, and at first thought that I should take care not to look for houses located to the west of the uni for that reason. And then I remembered that we live in the north. Sun in the eyes will only be an issue for a short time each year, and there is no direction that will never have sun low in the horizon at one time or another. So I am free to pick any direction I want (though, to be fair, it is less often low enough in the north as to be in one's eyes when driving that way).

That sort of catches you up with what I have been doing, though I haven't reported on the progress in embroidery, nålbinding, or looking at rock thin-sections at work, you can be assured that they are all doing well. I have been enjoying reading other people's posts, even though I haven't been making time to type, and I encourage you all to post whenever you have the time to spare.

After I get home on Friday I actually get to stay there for two full weeks before I depart for a week in Cyprus, immediately followed by a week at Double Wars.

...but I think it will be "home". I went across the street this morning to look at the apartment for rent.



The apartment building is the brick one on the left side in this photo (which was taken from my office window). The one you can barely see due to the denseness of the foliage on the tree. I like the trees on this street, and, having just spent years in which my commute to work involved walking from the bedroom to the living room, I like the location of this apartment, where the commute will be down the stairs, across the street, and then up some more stairs. The apartment itself is very small. The good features include the high ceilings, which gives room for the sleeping loft. Right now it is set up with a row of moveable closets against the wall, and a small futon couch under the loft. My plan is to rotate the shelves to close the under-loft area into a storage closet, and bring the couch out into the space where the shelves are now. Other good features include a bidet (standard in all Italian apartments, from what I've seen) and a shower-massage. The down side is that the "kitchen" includes only a sink, a portable two-burner electric hot-plate, some cupboards, a bit of counter, and a tiny fridge. I was hoping for a better oven than the toaster oven I'm borrowing from my boss, but I will never find a better location, and a better kitchen would mean higher rent. I'm told I can ask the owner for additional furniture if I want it, so I'll ask for book shelves, at least a couple of them, because I'll need one to serve as a pantry.

I've got a meeting with the owner on Friday, and if he likes me, and I don't change my mind, we will do the paperwork then. It will be expensive, particularly the moving-in expenses. Unlike the US and Australia, where any fees paid to the agency are invisible to the tenant, in Italy they are seperate, and paid up front. Therefore, in addition to my first month's rent (€650/month), I'll need to also fork over two month's rent as a deposit, and an additional €720 for the agency fee. I'm told that in Italy they write the contract for a smaller number than is actually paid; typically a €650/month flat will have a contract which says €400/month, and the remaining €200/month are paid in cash directly to the owner, who is only liable for taxes on the amount in the contract, and therefore can afford to set the total price cheaper than they would if they were being taxed for all of it. I wondered aloud what would happen were one to pay only what the contract stipulated, and was assured by my colleagues that it would be better to pay the full amount, regardless of what the contract says. I'm also told that the contract should be for four years, and then I should give written notice of my intent to move six months in advance of my actual leaving date, and that it will be fine. This seems odd to me, I already know my leaving date--December 2010--that is how long my contract with the University lasts till, and I won't need a place here once that expires.

I could save *lots* of money if I chose to commute. One of my colleagues commutes from the town of Como, at the edge of the Alps. He pays less than €600/month for a three-bedroom apartment. However, he also has the one-hour each way train trip to make each day, followed by either then taking public transit from the train station, or a half an hour walk. I am simply not ready to do such a commute--I am too used to living at the place I work, I'm not interested in spending such a huge amount of time in transit, and if I lived in Como I wouldn't want to leave it to come to Milan! I've only got just over 15 months left here, the first three zipped by with lightening speed. I'm content to camp in an oversized closet for now, and hope that my next job is in a more desirable city (like say one with houses in the University district, as is typical of the US and Australia, and, I hope, is also to be found somewhere in Europe).

In other news, I won't be welding gold capsules today--the laboratory microscope we use for this task has been borrowed by the microprobe technicians, who are doing annual maintenance .

Now that I’m back in Milan, and August (also known as the month the city closes) is over, it is to begin the house-hunt in earnest—to find the place where I will live for the next year and three months. Therefore, this morning I went out and found a realty place where the receptionist spoke a bit of English; I told her I wanted to rent something in the neighbourhood, she made an appointment for me to come back at 13:00 to see one apartment, and a second for 15:15 to see another. Accordingly, I returned to their office at 12:55 (as I despise being late). That receptionist was gone, but the next guy on duty had much better English. I chatted with him while waiting for the realtor who was to show me the apartment to show up. After a bit the receptionist called the realtor, who was taking longer dealing with a contract than expected. So we chatted some more (this receptionist had spent a year working in England, so was quite fluent in English). Eventually the realtor shows up, with the people he's doing paperwork with, and they aren't done yet. At about 13:40, the guy I'm chatting with apologizes for the delay again, and I suggest that perhaps I can just look at both of the apartments at the same time, so he checks, and the relator says yes, so they tell me to meet the relator at the apartment at 15:15. So I went home for a snack, and went to the apartment from there, arriving at 15:10 (of course) and wait. Finally, at 15:29 both the realtor (who doesn’t speak English) and the English speaking realtor arrive. The apartment turned out to be a nice enough place--plenty of cupboards, a small but useable kitchen, and a decent bathroom, complete with shower massage. So I ask how much it costs, and they say 190,000 Euros! To which I reply that I'm looking to rent, is this one for sale? Yes, it is. The first lady misunderstood me and thought I wanted to purchase a place to live. Sigh. I’d love to. Alas, I’ve no down payment, and somehow I don’t think I’d be able to obtain a mortgage without one.

However, the day was not a total loss on the house-hunting front. I also called on an apartment for *rent* which is across the street from my office. Not just across the street, but in the building that I’ve most admired from the outside. However, it is kind of small (28 square meters), so I won’t know till I’ve seen it if it will do, and my appointment for that one isn’t till Wednesday morning.

In other news, I've posted a compare/contrast essay on the two conferences I attended the past couple of weeks on my other blog.

Those of you who caught my status update on Facebook last week will know that I'd planned to accompany the local SCA seneschal and some others he knows on a tour of a dungeon on Thursday of this week (yesterday). Come Wednesday I still hadn't heard back from him as to where/when to meet, so I gave him a call to discover that due to the people who are in contact with the appropriate people to get tickets having been out of town, that plan had fallen through. However, he and I had discussed my helping him get some new tunics cut out, since he's fine with sewing, but doesn't much care for the part about fabric cutting. So I agreed to meet him at his place around 10:30 in the morning.

Since I also wanted to be certain that I did a tiny bit of uni work, I got up the first time I woke (around 06:30), and went in to uni for a couple of hours before taking the metro across town. I spent the day helping him get a couple of tunics cut out (with a break to go to a Chinese restaurant for lunch--my first time eating restaurant food in this country. The deep-fried shrimp don't come with hot-mustard here, and I didn't try asking for any). A bit after 4pm we finished up the cutting and he was happily sewing, and I was getting tired, and wanting to get some work done, so I took the trip back across town. I decided to go first to my office, where I'd left my computer, eat my left-over chinese food while checking to see if anything important had come in via e-mail, and then take the computer home for a quiet evening of rest and uni work.

No sooner than I had sat down to the computer to enact this plan and the phone rang. It was clovis_t saying that he was returning to Milan sooner than he'd originally planned, and would arrive at the station at 18:29. It was 17:30, and it is a half an hour walk to the station. Sigh. So much for plan A. So I quickly ate, looked at mail, and returned home long enough to drop off my sewing stuff and put the cheese I'd purchased while out into the fridge (the block of ice I had with it having melted by then). This left me 20 minutes to do the 30 minute walk to the train station. So, despite it being a hot evening (aren't they all?) I jogged part of the way to the station, arriving pretty much as his train arrived, so I found him straight away.

We had a pleasant evening exchanging stories of recent adventures as we walked home, returned to uni for more e-mail (after showers for each of us to recover from the walk!) and then I got a massage before yoga. I sure needed it! My legs were kind of sore from jogging two days in a row.

So I didn't accomplish the work I'd planned to do, nor did I have the quiet evening I'd anticipated, but I think I managed to have a good one nonetheless.

I am starting to get more concerned about finding an apartment to rent--the arrival of the package I'd posted myself from Sydney (which went via ship) really underscores the fact that it has been long enough since giving my stuff to the shippers for it to arrive any day now (or weeks from now--I still haven't heard from them, though just now sent another e-mail asking for a status update). While I'm happy with the place I'm at, adding 7 cubic meters of stuff *and* the two other flat-mates that it is meant to hold would make it a very tight fit indeed, so I really will be better off finding a place of my own. Therefore I just spent more time on line at the rental web page I've looked at before. Previously I'd used the form on that page to request information on apartments and received no reply. This time I clicked on the links to the individual realestate agencies and sent them e-mails explaining what I'm looking for and where. I did try calling a couple of them, but got answering machines which said something very long and complicated in Italian, so I gave up and switched to writing. I've never reached a human when calling such a place here, and I have no idea if the problem is the time of day I'm calling, the fact that everywhere shuts down in August for at least two weeks of holidays, or if they always screen their calls.