Here is an interesting idea: WEBook. According to the web site, the purpose of WEBook is to:

WEbook is a revolutionary online book publishing company, which does for the industry what American Idol did for music. (Modestly speaking, of course.) Welcome to the home of groundbreaking User-Generated Books. WEbook is the vision of a few occasionally erudite people who believe there are millions of talented writers whose work is ignored by the staid and exclusive world of book publishing. It just makes logical sense that if you create a dynamic, irreverent, and open place for writers and people who like reading to meet, write, react, and think together, the results are bound to be extraordinary. Cue WEbook.com, an online publishing platform that allows writers, editors, reviewers, illustrators and others to join forces to create great works of fiction and non-fiction, thrillers and essays, short stories, children’s books and more.

Interesting site. I’ll have to check it out more. I wonder what publishers think about this new form of publishing?

The house is being shown today. Here’s hoping that the people really like it. I need to sell it soon. It’s getting old having it on the market… But the maret isn’t exactly spectacular either.

Remember the lady I had called earlier about boarding near Hillsborough? She called me last night. Her daughter is going of to college so she’ll have space for one boarder? Well she called me. Originally I had told her that what she wanted would be too much and that I wanted to check around. (And I have not… Her rates were about par for the course, but no one else had the type of cameraderie I was looking for.)

We had a really good talk. Her daughter will be leaving in about 1-2 months for college and will be taking her horse with her, as planned. Because of the recent rains, the cost of hay this year is projected to be less than it was in last year with the drought (think $15/bale when it’s normally $5/bale). The original price increase in board had been partially based on the cost of her other boarder (a draft horse!): 4 pounds of grain a day plus beet pulp and hay. Isis eats 1 pound of grain a day and about 10 pounds of hay. A 50 pound bag of grain goes bad before she finishes it. I also offered to help out with barn chores and give a hand when needed.

The lady said that she really wants to get her mare started over fences — I told her that’s precisely where Isis is (told her about the show Isis and I went to in July 2007).

She has her instructor is giving a lesson at the farm — I’m going out to watch.

On top of that, there is a club she belongs to called “Horse Masters,” it’s part of the U.S. Pony Club except it is for adults. The meeting for Horsemasters is on Thursday (2nd Thursday of every month). You can guess what I’m doing on this Thursday evening.

The local Horsemasters group tries to have a workshop once per month plus they host an annual fun show. It’s geared towards adults getting back into showing who are having fun but not crazy riders like some of the kids. One over fence class is called “Fossils over Fences.”

This Saturday is the monthly workshop dealing with natural horsemanship — building a relationship with your horse.

So all of this sounds absolutely perfect. And with any luck, things will coincide so the house will sell and I can bring Isis out here some time after Susan’s daughter goes to college.

How’s that for some good news? Basically this is the exact kind of situation I have been looking for for years.

I was giddy driving home last night with this news.

The site is currently going some updates from WordPress 2.1.3 to 2.5. The photography page is offline while some compatibility issues with the gallery are sorted out. Hopefully it won’t take that long… but you know how it goes.

I looked at houses on Sunday with my friend in Hillsborough and my younger sister. We drove around Hillsborough and Carrboro (a little too far away from work to be feasible).

One house sounded good: old Mill house built in the early 1900s with one bedroom/one bath for $600/month. No problem with pets. Sounded great. Things always sound better in ads than they do in person.

The house turned out to be less exciting than anticipated. It is very small but doable. The rooms in the house are large, which helps. Cats aren’t a problem, which is a good thing. Deposit is reasonable: $600 first month’s rent and $300 deposit. Still going to be hard to come up with that amount of money.

The real shock was the utility bill: it is about $150-170/month. I was paying $60-150 in Knoxville for a house with about 2-3 times the floor space for electric, water, and sewer. The $150-170 includes electric and gas, not water, which is another $40.

The house is cute and the neighborhood is okay, but really cramped. The guy who owns the house reminds me of the guy I bought my house from. Nice enough, but a slob and a pack rat. He knew we were coming over at 2:00 on Sunday. He didn’t even bother to clean.

The house interior was a *wreck*. He said it was laundry day — and I believed him. Clothes were piled every where. He was mortified when I started taking pictures. He claimed most of the clutter would be gone and the house would be emptied. He said it might be available on May 1, but that would be pushing it (honestly I don’t see how he could have everything cleaned out by then). Parking was nonexistant because of the way the guy had the entire two-port carport cluttered with crap. It was a mess.

The place has potential to be really cute, though. Nice flower garden with a lot of amenities. So not bad overall.

I asked the guy how long he would lease the place, he said at least a year, but wasn’t sure about longer than that. If I get settled some place I don’t really want to have to move at the end of a year. I’d like to have the option to stay longer, you know?

I left that place feeling like I won’t be able to afford anything. It wasn’t the house so much as what my budget could reasonably do, considering the difference between when I was expecting to pay for utilities. (And did I mention I’ve had to take on an additional expense to have the lawn trimmed at the house in TN?)

I called maybe 5-6 other places around when we were driving. I’m waiting on call backs from most of them. So far two of them hvae called. One house in Hillsborough (3 bedroom/2 bath) was $900/month; another place out in the middle of no where was $400 for a 1 bedroom/1 bath — no kitchen, no nothing but the bedroom and bathroom.

One place looked really good. It’s a duplex in Hillsborough. The back yard comes right up to Eno River. There are woods and places to hike right there. It was beautiful. (Have pictures to send you of it.) Place rents for $650/month. No idea on availability. Laura said that she had called about it earlier in the week. Apparently, one person has offered to rent both sides of the duplex. Within the next two weeks, the realtor will know if the duplex will be available or rented. I called the realtor and left a message — can’t hurt to get my name on the list. It would be a stretch, but it’s so pretty out back behind the house. (Unless being that close to the river breeds mosquitoes.)

I spent some time looking through Craigslist for additional houses. Found one place in Durham where a lady is looking for someone to take over a five-month lease. It’s a 1 bedroom/bath apartment off of 15-501, which is relatively close to work. Maybe 10 miles? The rent is $600/month plus utilities ($60) and cable/internet/phone combo ($100). That’s about what I budgeted. I’ve emailed the lady to ask about pet policy.

As much as I love my parents, there is only so long I can stay there without being in the way. One extra person might not be so bad — but there are three of us staying in the house right now. We’ve taken over almost every spare room. Some times things just coincide like this. It definitely makes it harder on the household — especially when one of us comes with three cats.

So I did my budget and it looks like I can just barely afford to rent a place and continue paying the mortgage on the house in Tennessee. With any luck, the house will sell in a few months so I won’t have to seriousy consider renting the property.

It’s a scary proposition taking on this much financial load. There is very little room for error in the budget and that is not comforting. I can do it for a month or two or three… but not for six months or more.

There have been so few viewings of the house the past two months. February was great — 8-10 viewings but still no offer. My real estate agent and I lowered the price on the house to see what happens… That was only April 1. I know I need to be patient, but it’s getting old. Just the way the housing market is right now. Not much else I can do.

My biggest worry about renting my own place before the house sells? I can’t afford to bring Isis here until the house does sell. The board will be more expensive and that will blow the budget. Sigh.

Damn but I miss my kid. I feel like I’ve lost my sanity with her in another state…

A friend of mine sent me a link to a page of Cat Resolutions, including this one:

I promise I will meditate more closely upon the causal relationship between going dumpster diving on Sunday afternoon and projectile vomiting Monday, and being brought to the Evil Place Where They Stick Things Up My Butt on Tuesday evening. I realize that if I hadn’t done the first, none of the other things would have happened.

Hee!

New and improve weather forecasting! Read the amazing news at the Weather Underground:

Cyclopsychic research breakthrough proves hurricanes/global warming connection

Posted by: JeffMasters, 8:13 AM EDT on April 01, 2008

A stunning new breakthrough in hurricane research has conclusively settled the matter: global warming is making Atlantic hurricanes and tropical storms more frequent. The new research, accepted for publication later this millennium in The Journal of Irreproducible Results, offers incontrovertible proof that global warming has increased Atlantic named storms by 57-67% over the past century. Using the pioneering new techniques of cyclopsychic storm detection and psychomortorodentiatempestology, the researchers, Professors Peter Webcaster and Judith Flurryfury of the Georgia Institute of Technophobia, and Dr. Greg Hallmonitor of the Colorado Association for Research and Modeling of the Atmosphere (CARMA), showed unequivocally that the lack of satellite measurements and aircraft reconnaissance in the early part of the hurricane record led to only a modest undercount of Atlantic tropical storms. Thus, more than half of the observed increase in named storms in the past century can be attributed to global warming.

Rest of the article on the Weather Underground