back story

Mary Beth and I didn't go out looking for a house — it pretty much found us.

Back in March, Mary Beth was on a morning walk kick: she'd get up with the sun — sometimes even with the rain — and meet sister bear Maureen at the little park halfway between our apartment and hers. Doing doughnuts around the park, she noticed the sign. In fact, she recently exhumed the photo of it she took from her smartphone.

I think I must also have noticed the sign some time while prowling for parking or walking Maureen's crazy dog Violet, because I knew what she was talking about when she mentioned the place. We should look it up or give the mysterious Manuel Vargas a call, we thought. Just to see.

Eventually, MB found out out online what they were asking for the place — and that pretty much seemed like that. Another nail in the coffin of the sustainable city-living dream... How on earth can a couple do it if neither one of them is a banker or lawyer?

I, predictably, gave up hope. Mary Beth, predictably, didn't. She looked in at the listing every so often and one day came back with the news that the price had dropped – a lot. Huh, we thought. But there was a lot else going on. There always is, right?

We missed one open house we thought we might get to, but then somehow found another when we weren't looking for it a few weeks later. Was it a good sign or a bad one that the thing was still on the market? Hard to tell in These Troubled Times... It was the very end of the day, and the lady realtor running the open house was heading home, but she gamely let us look around before she left. This is what we saw:

In a word — wowzah.

But maybe you're not wearing your toby+mary beth goggles?

Maybe this is more like what we saw...

Love at first sight!

we're in!

Okay, the much promised blog is up! Time to catch you up on what's what... Or at least what's what with us in our tiny little corner (okay, middle of the block, if you must) of the borough.

We closed on our little lady two tuesdays ago (July 14th) in one of the most Brooklynified events we've ever attended – except that it happened in Queens (at the fabled Bulova building, for those acquainted with an ersatz landmark). The closing really deserves its own post. And so does the three month ordeal leading up to it. But, as you know, the ancient greeks thought the best way to start a story was to start it after it already started... Plus I've been having a little – or even a lot – of trouble with the #$%&! javascript for this blog (we've basically agreed to disagree for the moment...), so we're already almost two weeks in.

So Voila! Here's what went down last week (so to speak...)

And here's how it happened:

No that's not me – I'm behind the camera. More about that and other things later...