I had hoped that our experience with the unflushed toilets would be the only "adventure" we would have in attempting to sell our house. I had hoped that seven minutes would be the least amount of advance notice we would ever receive. I was wrong.
Twice in the last week, people have come to see our house with zero warning. None at all. The first time, we were all at home and a realtor showed up out of the blue with her clients in tow.
On our way out of the house (and you better believe I checked the toilets), I grabbed the camera and took this picture of us waiting outside until the strangers were done looking at our house. Miriam is holding a bunch of miniature My Little Ponies that she ran back in to grab even after the realtor had gone inside.
The second time was just this afternoon. We were eating lunch. Magdalena was wearing only a diaper and had blueberries smeared all across her face. Miriam's coloring books were spread across the front room. Our house smelled like potstickers - delicious, but perhaps not very sale-inducing. Still, when you're trying to sell your house and a realtor knocks at your door (with no advance notice, let me say again) with prospective buyers wanting to come inside, what am I going to say? That's right: come on in!
In other news, we have a GPS now. It was a graduation gift from Jeremy's parents and we have decided to call it Nigel. That way, all the shifty Tucson car thieves will not be alerted to its valuable resale presence in our vehicle's glove compartment when I tell Jeremy to "put Nigel away."
I know I'm a couple of years behind the times in blogging about zany GPS mishaps (see here), but I'll just share our experience of this morning. Our church meeting today was held in a chapel across town for a special occasion and so I looked up the address online, had Jeremy plug it into Nigel, and we were on our way. We figured it would take us about 25 minutes to get there.
One HOUR later, we pulled into our final destination, after calling a friend of mine and asking her for directions. In Nigel's defense, it wasn't his fault. The directions I looked up showed an address and map.
I've been to this chapel once before, and looking at the map confirmed that it was the one I was looking for. I never imagined that the street address given in the listing would not correspond to the map picture, and be completely incorrect. By following Nigel's (impeccably pronounced, British-accented) directions, we ended up in the wrong place.
The worst part is that even though Nigel's directions seemed increasingly suspicious to me as we continued in a very scenic drive across town, I kept telling myself (and Jeremy kept telling me): TRUST THE GPS. It is technology. It knows the city. It knows where it's going. Trust it. At one point, I questioned Nigel's directions out loud, and he repeated the same directions again, oddly, as if to chastise me.
At another point, long after we should have arrived at the church building, we passed through a remote intersection into one of the more far-flung areas of Tucson and Jeremy told me that Nigel said to "continue six miles..." I just about screeched to a halt right there in the middle of the road. It turns out Jeremy was just kidding (Nigel said to continue one mile), but it also turns out that Nigel was wrong. Because we were wrong. Because the internet was wrong.
Otherwise, we love the GPS. But today, we learned our lesson that a computer is only as smart as the information you put into it.
Twice in the last week, people have come to see our house with zero warning. None at all. The first time, we were all at home and a realtor showed up out of the blue with her clients in tow.
On our way out of the house (and you better believe I checked the toilets), I grabbed the camera and took this picture of us waiting outside until the strangers were done looking at our house. Miriam is holding a bunch of miniature My Little Ponies that she ran back in to grab even after the realtor had gone inside.
The second time was just this afternoon. We were eating lunch. Magdalena was wearing only a diaper and had blueberries smeared all across her face. Miriam's coloring books were spread across the front room. Our house smelled like potstickers - delicious, but perhaps not very sale-inducing. Still, when you're trying to sell your house and a realtor knocks at your door (with no advance notice, let me say again) with prospective buyers wanting to come inside, what am I going to say? That's right: come on in!
In other news, we have a GPS now. It was a graduation gift from Jeremy's parents and we have decided to call it Nigel. That way, all the shifty Tucson car thieves will not be alerted to its valuable resale presence in our vehicle's glove compartment when I tell Jeremy to "put Nigel away."
I know I'm a couple of years behind the times in blogging about zany GPS mishaps (see here), but I'll just share our experience of this morning. Our church meeting today was held in a chapel across town for a special occasion and so I looked up the address online, had Jeremy plug it into Nigel, and we were on our way. We figured it would take us about 25 minutes to get there.
One HOUR later, we pulled into our final destination, after calling a friend of mine and asking her for directions. In Nigel's defense, it wasn't his fault. The directions I looked up showed an address and map.
I've been to this chapel once before, and looking at the map confirmed that it was the one I was looking for. I never imagined that the street address given in the listing would not correspond to the map picture, and be completely incorrect. By following Nigel's (impeccably pronounced, British-accented) directions, we ended up in the wrong place.
The worst part is that even though Nigel's directions seemed increasingly suspicious to me as we continued in a very scenic drive across town, I kept telling myself (and Jeremy kept telling me): TRUST THE GPS. It is technology. It knows the city. It knows where it's going. Trust it. At one point, I questioned Nigel's directions out loud, and he repeated the same directions again, oddly, as if to chastise me.
At another point, long after we should have arrived at the church building, we passed through a remote intersection into one of the more far-flung areas of Tucson and Jeremy told me that Nigel said to "continue six miles..." I just about screeched to a halt right there in the middle of the road. It turns out Jeremy was just kidding (Nigel said to continue one mile), but it also turns out that Nigel was wrong. Because we were wrong. Because the internet was wrong.
Otherwise, we love the GPS. But today, we learned our lesson that a computer is only as smart as the information you put into it.