Guess what, guess what???

I have a place to liiiiiiiiiiive!!!!! I've been praying so HARD! And yesterday, while we were looking at a bunch of other places my mom ended up randomly talking to the right people and found me find a place!!!!!!! :-D

I am renting a little house in Sumner, Iowa. It's yellow and it used to belong to a little old lady. It has a creepy basement. But other than that, it's kind of cute. And it's 10 minutes from Tripoli, where I'll be working.

The house has 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (although one doesn't work yet. The water is shut off on that part of the house), a living room, a kitchen with a small gas stove and a fridge, 3-season porch-thing, and a small lean-to garage. My landlord said he would provide me with a microwave, a lawnmower, and a washer and dryer. He has also provided me with some random kitchen utensils that he had, and figured I could use, including a brand-new wok and a lovely red teapot! He is also going to re-shingle the roof of the garage and has helped fix one of the doors to the working bathroom because it didn't shut. He is also working on touching up the paint on the outside of the house.

My family and I, including Jessica, are helping fix the place up a little. My landlord said I could paint the inside whatever colors I'd like, (as long as it's not something dark or ridiculous) and he'd pay for the paint. That's what Jessica and I are going to do tomorrow.... Paint, paint, paint! Today mom and I cleaned. Mom vacuumed and shampooed the carpet, and cleaned the working bathroom. I spackled all the holes in the wall.... THERE WERE DOZENS OF THEM! This lady was crazy about hanging things on the wall with GIANT nails that were meant to NEVER come down EVER. So I spackled and spackled and spackled. And then I unscrewed all the outlet covers and air vents and dusted for cobwebs. Like I said. Tomorrow we paint.

I have pictures, but I need to find the cord for my camera. It's gone missing...

Another bonus about my house is that it's right in front of the city garages where they store the snowplows and stuff.... And my driveway is part of their parking lot... So when it snows, I'll literally the first person plowed out! :-) I'm also one block from downtown and 3 blocks from the local library. AND the movie theatre in Sumner is $0.99. Major WIN!

A major LOSE is that we need to start going on mouse patrol and plugging up holes and stuff before it starts getting cold... Like, normal "it's getting to be winter" -cold. Not "50 degrees at night during the end of July" -global warming cold. There is no "evidence" of mice, other than random little bits of steal wool shoved in random places. And the house is old... Like... Built in the 30s-40s I think. (Aka.... creeeeeepy basement. Did I mention it has a crawlspace?)

Okay, that's all I have for now, aside from posting today's XKCD comic, which seems to be about perfect. Timing-wise anyway! :-)