2009 in Review

I'm really going to try to keep a blog updated this year. For realz. But first, last year in review.

January, 2009 started with a worsening economy and lots of cold job leads. By the end of the month, things looked grim. I took a chance on a very shady Craigslist post regarding some employment with an athletic facility that involved marketing and customer relations. Which in February lead to Chicago Sailing...


Within two months of starting at Chicago Sailing, I'd traveled from the North Branch of the Chicago River to Belmont Harbor aboard a houseboat. (Remember when Chicago was trying to get the Olympics? So glad that didn't happen!)


I spent a harried 6 months learning a different business (though still a leisure activity), new "life skills", and meeting lots of very interesting people... More about that later! Once October rolled around, I realized how busy I had been and had something even more pressing to work on.

See, one Saturday in late March or early April, the manfriend and I were getting ready to go out. He had worked the night before with one of the Long Room bouncers who has a day job working as a real estate agent. We had been tracking Craigslist and looking at 2 or 3 bedroom apartments to move in to when our leases were up at the end of July (coincidental, no?). Jeremy had been talking about houses you could buy, in Chicago, for under $200,000.

By the end of April, we had a contract on our little piece of property in Chicago.


A classic Chicago bungalow, on 1 1/2 city lots, the picture of the outside is much better than the inside. Over the course of 4 months we discovered mold, evidence of squirrels and many involved projects. We finally closed at the end of August and spent one month trying to get it ready to move in to! THIS WAS NOT ENOUGH TIME.

It looked good on the outside.



On the inside we chilled in our bedroom, luckily it's big and about the size of a studio. Last week we got running water on the first floor. And a working kitchen. The joy I hold for things such as running water cannot be explained to people who have not gone through a rehab!

So, in short, 2009 held a new job, moving in with the manfriend and a homestead of our very own - desperately in need of repair. I'm hoping for a calmer 2010, but in the meantime, lots of posts to process!