Wow, it's been so long! Since I didn't get you a gift, here's an update.

For starters, my tenant gave notice and moved out last November. This was great news, but bad timing. It would have been crazy not to take advantage of the vacancy to pull out the wall-to-wall carpeting and refinish the floors, replace the kitchen cabinets, and tile the bathroom floor.

Only bad part is, I'm still deep in debt from my own renovation, and I already had plans to go "home" for Christmas before I knew about this. So naturally when the IKEA kitchen cabinet order turned out to lack certain key items the day before I flew east, it was hard to take care of everything before I left. But not taking care of it would have been worse, since the longer I'm paying for that unit without any income from it, the harder it is to pay off my old and new debts.

Anyway, I'm so sick of all this renovating now. It's like a second job, that apparently I'm not so good at. The scariest part was yesterday, when my contractor managed to leave two stove burners on (long story) while the floor guys were sanding and putting on the final coat of highly flammable finish. What are the odds? You can see my footprints on the floor finish since I had to get to the oven (9 hours later) to turn off the burners before the building exploded or we all passed out from the fumes.

Anyway! The good news is, now I'm planning to use the unit as a furnished vacation rental. So if anybody wants to visit me, they'll have their own, furnished apartment to stay in! This better be worth it . . .

Happy Birthday Paul! (And Happy Birthday to my brother Erik too!)