When I landed in Seattle on Friday, I didn't have much planned -- just a lunch date with D and then an afternoon of grading before officially starting spring break. Then I checked my e-mail and discovered that the house at the top of our list of places to watch had dropped its price by a tidy sum.
D and I were intending to put together an offer for the No. 2 house on our list (in terms of size, it didn't look like it would last us as long, but the price was better in comparison before the change on the other house). We weren't quite ready to make a decision on lenders at the end of my last visit, but D's done a lot of research since then and we had our choices narrowed down. So when the price drop came through, we decided to act on that house right away -- we figured we probably weren't the only ones watching and waiting.
We spent the weekend getting all our paperwork in order and put in a bid on Sunday. As we predicted, a competing offer was submitted Monday morning by someone else, so D and I did some thinking and decided we'd give the owners a price cap in the looming bidding war and then wait out the rest of the day (our deadline for a response was 9 p.m. our time). About ten minutes before our offer was to expire, we got a call from our realtor, who told us that the other offer had been withdrawn and that the owners had a counteroffer for us.
It turns out the owners were only willing to budge a tiny amount -- so we decided this morning to make an offer -- a final one -- at the value of our price cap in the bidding war that never happened. We've done our homework and know it's a reasonable price. So we shall see what happens next.
(Yes, I'm deliberately keeping this post as neutral as possible until we have more information. There's all kinds of back story that can't be posted until this is over.)
On a subject I can safely emote on, we took care of a Quaker parakeet named Sammy this weekend for a friend of D's who had to be out of town, and now I'm smitten. I know I said I wanted a kitty, but this bird leaves me seriously torn about what kind of pet to get.
I think what was so appealing about Sammy was his curiosity and his response to our attention. We really had to work to earn his trust, but that was what made the (brief) relationship we cultivated with him so rewarding. He was pretty nippy at first (chomping hard enough to break the skin), but we understood that he was in an unfamiliar environment and felt leery of us. So we worked on him with pieces of celery offered through the bars of his cage until he calmed down. Eventually, he was willing to climb onto D's arm without drawing blood. He still tried to bite anything that moved suddenly (sometimes our hands, trying to brush his beak away from our necks, which he liked to nip), but he got comfortable enough with us that he would perch on our shoulders and chirp back to us when we whistled and offered him treats.
Sammy's owner lets him loose at home most of the time, so as he grew to trust us, we started taking him out of his cage more and more, which he liked. We figured out that TV excited him -- he started shrieking at the people talking on the screen and darted back and forth on D's arms and shoulders (pausing only briefly to groom D, which included yanking out some of D's chin stubble!). The real breakthrough, though, was when we turned on some music. D had noticed before that Sammy got talkative listening to the dishwasher at his owner's apartment, which has a rhythmic thump to it when the arm spins. So we found an internet radio station that plays techno/dance and turned up the speakers. Immediately, Sammy started chattering away, spouting random phrases including "Good boy," "Pretty birdie," and "Here, kitty kitty kitty"(!).
It was great fun watching D interact with Sammy -- D had an African grey parrot and a Nanday conure when he was a kid, so I imagine this weekend brought back good memories for him. We spent part of Saturday evening giving Sammy some playtime, and I managed to get some pictures. Here are the ones that actually remained in focus.
2 comments:
Oh I feel so excited on your behalf but I do admire what you are doing - keeping it low and not thinking about it all the time, just in case it doesn't happen. I reckon this is 'your house' though and when you get it you must let me send you a super-duper card (don't worry I'm not a stalker, although obviously if I were then I wouldn't admit it)
love the bird, get a bird and teach it French
Oh, EXCELLENT idea, FF. D does like the talkers -- we spent some time last night looking at websites that described different types of birds and rated their speaking abilities. Who knows, a bird may be in our future. Though if we get one, a cat will be out of the question for the rest of our lives. These kinds of birds have lifespans of 50 years in some cases!
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