Fewer than twenty four hours in town means that everything is a whirlwind, including my too short visit with Jessica. She was out and about with a friend when I first texted her, yesterday, but was free after Dad and I had done our errands, arrived in down and visited the house. So, off we went.

I've been craving a Starbucks Signature hot chocolate A LOT lately, so I offered coffee or a hot chocolate and just sit and talk. Oh, yeah. Jessica stopped by to pick me up, suggested the local chocolate house where they had all sorts of chocolate this and chocolate that, including hot chocolate, and off we went.

Now, Jessica is going to be mad at me for saying this here, instead of saying it to her directly, but well, I have to say the chocolate from this chocolate house has to be the third most disgusting chocolate I've had since I ate that bag of year-old M&M's in junior high school. The chocolate is cheap, tasting of was instead of cocoa. Passing on the chocolate from this place isn't like passing on real chocolate, it's like passing on wax lips - not really hard.

However, I hadn't tried their hot chocolate, so I was still game for this place.

I ordered a hot chocolate and a slice of pumpkin cheesecake, because, really, who can resist pumpkin cheesecake (except Elina, of course)? I was unsurprised when the hot chocolate tasted like Swiss Miss hot chocolate made from water and missing the marshmellows, but happily surprised at the cheesecake. It was tast-TEE!

We chatted for a while, sitting in the front corner of the coffeehouse-like sitting area, before I realized I had been sitting in a completely defensive posture, pointing away from Jess. I knew the reason for the posture, but hadn't realized I was expressing it quite so rudely, so I dropped my arms and turned towards her, in order to engage her better. The conversation became less awkward, and flowed easier.

Right up until the dynamic completely changed with a call.

Gabby was in the area with her dad, and hey, he'd just drop her off now instead of actually dropping her off at home.

Now, I'm always happy to see Gab (well, except when she's being a butthead, but are eight year olds ever buttheads? wait, don't answer that), but our conversation was actually starting to open up when the storm of energy burst through the door, arms and legs flying in all directions. Our conversation turned stilted as Gabby's dad walked in, and that was the end of that conversation.

At one point, Jessica commented to me that, hey did you know you can't kiss your elbow? I commented back, yeah, well, you CAN lick the back of your knee.

Try it.

Oh, one of the things I really miss about the Midwest is the weather. I miss it for about, oh, a day. Then I'm glad I live in an area with steady weather. Well, except for when it's not.

And the colors! Oh, the colors! Yay, FALL!

Everyone, meet GEORGE!

I'm going to hug him and squeeze him and kiss him and love him and name him George.

Name that quote.

No, Willy isn't going to be upset by that dog, not at all. Why do you ask?

My whirlwind trip... right. So, Dad and I went right over to the house when we arrived home. I was both dreading going in, and incredibly elated at the fact that the tenants who were in the house had finally left. They had broken the lease when they moved out and, at this point, I could not have cared less. They were costing me MORE to keep in the house than they were paying me in rent, which pretty much defeats the purpose of having renters in the house.

Aside from getting a property manager so that I won't have to deal with this situation again, I'll be managing the house differently also in that I'm 100% sure I WON'T be taking a chance on another tenant who has bad credit. Which is not to say everyone who has bad credit is a horrible person, not by a long shot, however, there's a good chance at a direct correlation.

I digress.

So, Dad and I went to look at the house. Here it is:

I crack me up.

The first thing that Dad showed me when we walked over was where the house's well is. Locating this well cost me $800 last month, so I damn well wanted to know where the hell the thing was. It had gone out the month before last, when the wires from the electrical box to the well shorted, as the owner two before me hadn't, well, bothered to actually insulate or protect the wires from the environment.

There are a lot of things that owner didn't do.

Next we wandered into the house. Knowing my nose is pretty much useless at this point, I immediately turned to Dad when we were in the house.

"What do you smell?"

"Nothing. Why?"

"Does it smell like mold?"

"No."

"Anything? Musty?"

"No."

F---ers. was all I could think in response.

I wandered through the house, looking at the work that had been done by the previous tenants, the work they were doing in exchange for reduced rent. The work was done was okay, I wouldn't say good. They kept all of the extra supplies I had bought. They left the windows unscraped and overpainted. And they have horrible taste in color.

The carpet was stained in a few places, so I was no longer surprised at their retarded insistence that I have the carpets cleaned three months AFTER they had moved in. Completely unsurprised, actually, as I had suspected this would be the real reason.

Still, the place didn't have any holes in the walls or broken windows or apparent damage to the insides. I have no idea if they were spiteful enough to send chemicals into the plumbing to ruin the septic system or not. At this point, I'm just going to have to hope for the best.

And find a property manager.

So, yeah, I hopped off the plane (well, rather, didn't hop back on to the second plane), and dashed off to Indiana to spend the day with Dad, check out the house, visit briefly with Jessica, and head back home.

On the way to the house, we stopped by one of Dad's businesses. He had asked if I was hungry (I was) and was interested in a sandwich. I mentioned that I had pretty much switched to a vegetarian diet, and that I didn't think that he had anything, as I wasn't really interested in a salad at the moment.

No problem, he said, the vegetarian patties are aMAZing, I should try one. Well, if a born-and-bred meat eater says the veggie patty is good, it's worth trying, so off we went.