are your crossed fingers cramping up yet?

Mine are. Long story short, we've heard diddly squat on the house (to my one international reader: that means "nothing"!) I'm not even going to speculate on what happened. From talking to others who have gone through the home selling/buying nightmare, these things are to be expected. I suppose I should be thankful that we didn't get as far as having things in writing and *then* have the deal fall through. It's probably best that the lady disappeared this early on.

In an attempt to be optimistic, I will say that at least it seems we may have hit a price point that is generating more interest.

Also, I will say to anyone reading this who may be looking to buy a house: don't fuck with people. It's not nice, especially in this market. And if you decide you're not interested after making some tentative moves toward an offer, at least have the courtesy to let someone know. Maybe this is karmic payback for that time I went on a date with a guy I thought was really fun, but then on the date I realized I wasn't attracted to him--it was like a brother kind of thing--so instead of having the balls to tell him straight up I wasn't interested, I simply ignored all his calls until he stopped calling. I felt bad about that for a really long time, pretty much until the guy married a really great girl, which assuaged my guilt.

But anyway, I am *this* close to burying a statue of St. Joseph upside down in my yard...

waiting...

Yesterday we got the call: someone was making an offer on our house. We shared a few moments of excitement, which quickly lapsed into J admitting "I feel like I'm going to puke." I suppose excitement manifests itself differently for everyone!

They had offered us $10K less than our asking price, which we had just dropped by $10K about a week ago. So, J was reluctant to take it. (OK, I'll just say it, my husband is *stubborn*, no 2 ways about it). I can certainly understand his position, but considering our house has been on the market 4 months and this was our first offer, and adding in the fact that it is now a *total* buyer's market, especially in our area...well let's just say if it had been totally up to me I would have just taken the offer and been done with it.

We have countered with a number $5K more than they offered. You would think that if these are reasonable people, and if they really like the house, $5K should not be a big deal. But for now we just have to sit here and wait for the phone to ring...

another episode of "why I love science"!

"The whole of science consists of data that, at one time or another, were inexplicable." - B. O'Regan

Anyone who knows me knows I am a skeptic. If you forward me a stupid e-mail, I'm the one who'll look in up on snopes.com and send a rebuttal to the whole list. I don't believe in the paranormal, which means that certain people in my life don't enjoy watching "Ghosthunters" with me. I turn my nose up at "spirit balls" or other weird smudges in graveyard photographs, and thoroughly enjoyed a recent exhibit on "spirit photography" (which explained how all the tricks were done). What non-skeptics consider paranormal, I consider "things that science will eventually explain".

Having a background in neuroscience, I was especially intrigued and delighted to read this article in the NY Times, which chronicles recent discoveries that begin to explain (scientifically, that is) out-of-body experiences and other strange sensations once considered (not by me, of course) to fall within the realm of the paranormal:

They are eerie sensations, more common than one might think: A man describes feeling a shadowy figure standing behind him, then turning around to find no one there. A woman feels herself leaving her body and floating in space, looking down on her corporeal self.

Such experiences are often attributed by those who have them to paranormal forces.

But according to recent work by neuroscientists, they can be induced by delivering mild electric current to specific spots in the brain. In one woman, for example, a zap to a brain region called the angular gyrus resulted in a sensation that she was hanging from the ceiling, looking down at her body. In another woman, electrical current delivered to the angular gyrus produced an uncanny feeling that someone was behind her, intent on interfering with her actions.

To read the rest of the article, click here.