Cherry Limeades : the ultimate post run beverage

Hey guys! I hope you all had great weekends!

So, we've mostly been up to the same the past few days. The negotiations on the house we "thought" we liked ended up going nowhere. They had priced their house much higher than the recent sales, and the kitchen was small and laid out VERY poorly. We had planned to gut it and have it completely rebuilt. So, we offered, they countered (and really didn't come off their price), so we countered again and made sure our agent told them that was our final offer. We were also doing some major haggling over the move in date/time. They basically were giving us 5 hours to move out of our house. Uhhhh......right. So, even though they knew that was our final offer they came back with a ridiculous counter and we decided to walk away. At that point we had already decided it just wasn't worth it - when you threw in the money we were going to spend redoing the kitchen it was just too much to really be able to recoup our investment if we decided not to live there for a long time. The next morning my agent called me and said their agent was blowing up her cell phone - they had decided to come back and offer what we had countered with - but still wanted to jack us on the moving time. I told my agent we weren't interested anymore - we had actually started to feel RELIEVED we didn't get the house, all because of the kitchen and a pretty big lack of storage/closets and stuff like that. Buying a house is like Deal or No Deal - they should've gotten us the first time around, ya know. Oh well.

Friday we got a second offer on our house, so now we have a deal and a "back up deal". I think we've officially moved into the "no show" status since we didn't show all weekend. YEAH! I think we had about 15 walk throughs in 10 days. It was getting old. Especially since the agent who came through Friday locked our front door key into the lockbox, which freaked us out until someone from our realtor came over to check it. How good would we have felt if some psycho out there had kept a key to our house??? Saturday we went out with our agent to look at more houses. There was one BEAUTIFUL house that's just a little more than we want to spend, and a lot more house than we need. It would have been so perfect if they hadn't added the upstairs and if there wasn't an acre of yard to maintain!! But it was awesome - it had THREE kitchens!! It was hot. Maybe if they drop the price more..... There was one scary house with a girl next door who had an eye patch, there was one OK house and then one house that was waaay too small and out the window of the formal living room you could see some extremely graphic graffiti. Nice. I have pics I'll upload later. We went back to an open house today for a new listing. Houses are just SO hot in Nashville right now. If it's worth anything it's gone in 2 days. There were 3 houses last week that were listed and sold before Saturday that we missed seeing because we were hung up on that other house. At the open house today we ran into the owner of our local running store. She's shopping in the same area and we've been to ALL the same houses!! The one today was just a little small, it had a tiny kitchen and basically no closets. The deck was a mess, too. We went to some other open houses but they were all too expensive. So, tomorrow night we're looking at MORE houses with our agent. We've got 4 weeks from yesterday to find something, or get an apartment.

After we looked at houses yesterday we went to the free Journey's BBQ thing at Cool Springs Mall. We got to see Tony Hawk and Shaun White skate, and Switchfoot performed. Since it was free it was SO crowded. We got there right when TH & SW started skating, and we couldn't see half of the halfpipe. We slowly made our way closer, and by the end we had a good view. Right next to a drunk redneck who spent the whole time arguing with his bratty kids who at one point he called $hit a$$es. Nice. Then he started hitting them. Even better. The skate performance was much better than the redneck show. They did some neat tricks and of course we got some good pics! It was really cool to see TH in person. He's SUCH a legend!! The Switchfoot concert was really good, too. He's a great live performer, and most of the parents with small, annoying kids didn't stick around for it so that made it even better!

Yesterday morning we went for a 12 mile run. I set my alarm for 6:15 (UGH!) and we got up, had some oatmeal and headed over to the greenway. We got started right at 7:30. It was warm, but not terrible. We did two laps around the park and then headed down to the lake. It was so humid, but the sun was blocked by some clouds so that helped. When I got to the end of the lake path I stopped and waited for Brent, we drank some Gatorade and then headed back. The 2 mile stretch from the lake to the Army Guard was miserable. The wind was SO strong. It was my slowest mile, at 9:45. I felt like I was CRAWLING. The closer I got to the park the better I felt, and I just kept picking it up. For Twin Cities Marathon I'd like my avg pace to be 9:30, and have a goal time of 4:15. I really picked it up my final mile, so I know I had a lot more in me. My overall average pace was 9:12 which is right where I want to be at this part of my marathon training. I've got a long, long way to go so I'd like to keep pacing right around there. Brent finished a minute or two after me and on our way home he had the best idea ever: we should stop and get a Cherry Limeade at Sonic. We stopped and got a large, and OMG it was the BEST thing ever. It was so good. It's only a mile from there to our house and I swear it was all gone when we pulled in the driveway! It was SO sweet and refreshing. Cherry Limeades may be my recovery drink of choice now!!

Off to bed, I'll try to post some weekend pics tomorrow!

Rae