One House Nearly Down, One More to Go

Don't want to jinx things, but things are looking good on the real estate front, as far as selling the Austin house. It was on the market for all of a week and we ended up with half a dozen offers, eventually going with one that was not only nearly $3K over our listing price but that's scheduled to close in just two weeks. Obviously pretty happy about all of that, but especially as far as the interest being pretty proportional to all of the work I put into the place the last few months, completely renovating the kitchen, upgrading both bathrooms, etc. I wasn't completely convinced it'd pay off in the end, but decided to trust the gut. Score one for the gut.

I'm also nearing the finish line of the flip house I bought here in town, with just another couple of weeks of work before I hand it off to flooring installers/HVAC repair folks. The timing of the above good news in regards to the Austin house definitely helped me catch a second wind, and I've been putting in pretty long days of late, 12-16 hours, trying to get to the finish line. At which point, more than likely, I'll reload and do it all again with another house (or two).

While the potential for extra money is the obvious shiny thing catching my crow's eye and dictating largely insane levels of personal labor output of late, it's also morphing into a larger way of life, one that's making me pretty happy of late. I'm in the best physical shape I've been in for many years, maybe ever, and the nature of the work itself is pretty damn satisfying. I like taking a fairly blank slate of a house and making it nicer. For the most part, it's completely and entirely controllable, and I get out exactly what I put in, without a two-outer on the river to completely and utterly wreck the stack I've spent hours and hours building.

And, not to be cheesy and/or ginormously melodramatic, but I feel like I've been holding up end of the personal pact nicely that I made when we had to put ScurvyRat down. What killed me the most about losing him was how hard he fought, up until the very bitter end, because, you know, he otherwise might miss something. He kept trying to climb up on my shoulder when I drove him to the vet that last day, because that's where he liked to ride in the car so that he could see everything and not miss a single thing, all despite the fact that he was sick as hell, and likely in tons of pain.

So I told myself that if our little $7 pet store rat could fight that hard to enjoy every second of life, I had no excuse not to bust my ass, if there were things I wanted out of life and getting them was just a matter of hard work. Which lends itself to some long-ass, exhaausting days in the short-run, but if my wife and I can be done with working for other people and free to live life exactly like we want to by the time we're 40, hell, I'll take that trade-off.

Still haven't nailed down definitive word on potential employment for the Main Event, but keeping my fingers crossed. We're going to be in Vegas June 20-24th for a long-planned vacation anyway, so one way or another I'll get a bit of a taste of the WSOP this year. We're scheduled to close on the Austin house on June 19th, which is a bit tight timing-wise but will be perfect, if it goes off as planned, as I'll be able to gambool it up without worrying about paying three mortgages on houses, two of which are sitting empty. Still likely not going to play in any WSOP events, but I would like to hit up some of the single table satellites at the Rio, especially since it's reportedly much easier this to simply play them and cash in anything you win. We're continuing our circuit of Vegas hotels, staying at the Mirage this time, and I hope to get in some time playing NL there as well.