Yet Another McMansion

The house in the background went on the market about two weeks ago for an advertised price of $1.2 million US dollars.  That’s not unusual for this area as the price of housing has always been extremely high and almost all of the new houses being built are McMansions.

As the house went through the various phases of construction, I had this nagging feeling that something about it was different.  And then one day it occurred to me – the house has a one-car garage.

Now I have nothing against one-car garages, but one of the standard features one sees in the McMansions going up around here is a two-car garage. 

Would you buy this house if you could get one with comparable floor space and features at the same price, in the same neighborhood, with a two-car garage?

Going Up, Part XVIII

504 Stephen CircleThe second McMansion in our neighborhood is now under contract and the prospective new owners are said to be hoping to be in the house before Christmas.  There has been a flurry of activity around the house for the past few days.  I suspect they are working on the developer’s punch list and getting ready for the walkthrough and inspection by  the buyer.

The initial asking price for the house was $1.384M.  It will be interesting to see what the actual sell price was.

Update, 31 December 2011 – the closing price on house was $1,216,500.  A real bargain! 😉

Bambi

This past Wednesday, we had an unexpected visitor: a white-tailed deer.  It was a young buck about four feet tall with small two-point antlers.

deer111105Our property is enclosed by a six foot high fence, which you can see in the background.  Both the front and back gates were closed and there were no loose boards or holes in the fence.  The deer had to have jumped the fence to get into the yard. 

gunpig111101I found out about the deer when I went out on the back deck to see why our two Jack Russell Terriers were making so much noise.  They were harassing the deer and chasing him along the back fence.  At first, I thought a large dog had gotten into the yard, but soon realized it was a deer.

Our back gate opens onto a busy four-lane highway that runs along the back of our property.  Once I got the dogs safely in the house, we called the town police for help since opening the back gate to let the deer out would be a real hazard to both the deer and the traffic.  And I didn’t want to open the front gate and have the deer running amok in the neighborhood.

Two of the town’s finest showed up in short order and decided it would be best to try and get the deer out the front gate.  So we opened the front gate and the officers tried to herd the deer out the front gate.  Unfortunately, the deer would not cooperate. He ran toward the open gate, but always turned back at the last moment.

As a result, Plan B went into effect.  They would open the back gate and one officer would stop traffic on the highway and the other would herd the deer towards the back gate.  They got all set up to coordinate their activities, but lo and behold, the deer had disappeared.  We assumed the deer had jumped the fence or had made his way out the front gate while nobody was looking.

We did one more test to make sure the deer was really gone.  I let the dogs out and they went off following the deer’s scent, but found nothing.

Or maybe this was just the ghost of Bambi haunting our back yard!

9/11 + 10

911memorialTen years later and we’ve been battered and bruised, but we’re still here.   Can’t say the same for a number of those responsible for the horrific events at the Word Trade Center, the Pentagon and Shanksville.

 

Irene, Part II

In a previous post, I said that Hurricane Irene had not left much visible damage other than fallen tree branches.  But I forgot to mention just how large one of the branches was.  We were lucky in that it fell forward and got lodged in the upper branches of a neighboring tree rather than across the back fence and the power lines and highway adjacent to the fence. 

Note: click on a picture to view a slide show with larger images.

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