New Developments at the BardiacShack (tm)

In April or so, a friend of mine told me about an acquaintance who's going through a painful divorce and was looking for a place to stay for a couple of months during the summer.  Without a great deal of thought, I said it might work at the BardiacShack.  (The house is mostly on an upper level, with a walk out, well-finished basement with the laundry, a den sort of room, two bedrooms, and a full bathroom.  So someone can be downstairs and have a fair bit of privacy while I'm upstairs.)  A day or so later, I got a call, and we made arrangements for A to come stay for a couple of months.

It worked pretty well.  A's a thoughtful adult, pretty quiet, if a bit quirky.  And A cooks sometimes, and that was nice.  

The only wrinkle was that A began seeing B, and B is more than a bit quirky, and spent a lot of time here.  B is also quite nice, and friendly, and also likes to cook a lot.  But one of B's quirks is that their house is lived in with several adult and near adult kids and friends, and so a bit messy, messy enough that B never wanted A to see the mess.

Anyway, it was a little weird, but Sunday A and B loaded A's car and went off so that B can meet A's parents.

And now the BardiacShack is mine, and I'm even more of a "confirmed old bachelor," so to speak.

So that's one biggish thing.

The other is that a couple weeks ago a solar company contacted me, and it put the spark in me to look at other companies, too, so I've just signed a contract to get solar panels on a south facing roof.  It looks like seven or eight panels will fit there, and that would be about 120% of my electric energy, needs, so I could run air conditioning more freely if I wanted, and so on.  I talked to my financial guy, and he says the investment makes sense, even if I only stay in the house another five years, because it also adds to the resale value of the house.  And there's a tax credit, so that's also nice.

And finally, my financial guy gave my basic travel plans for next year a big thumbs up, and figured out where the money should come from (tax implications and such), and so, within a few days, I'll start planning that big adventure!