"Grab the brown thing by the dark pointy parts"

I apologize, I know I got the above quote wrong, but I'm sure my wife will correct me.

I've neglected my blog a little bit because, lo-and-behold, I've been too busy to manage a post. There is a decent chance that I will be working under a new contract that we had 1 1/2 business days to turn around a proposal on. I don't know for sure whether we'll get the contract, and what that really means in terms of how much time I'll have for posting at work, but my guess is that it will be considerably less.

We are about 95% done with the landscaping in our small yard. My wife worked hard this weekend to get everything planted in the garden that rings our home and she even mowed the lawn for me (because I was at work doing the proposal writing thing). It looks great, will really take off once it gets warmer outside, and should help us sell the house in a hurry if we need to.

The housing market here is just silly. I know there are lots of places in the country that are even more out of control than our area, but, really it seems a little ridiculous that we could sell our place for more than my folks could sell their's. When we purchased our townhouse in September 2002, I was really worried that we'd purchased at the peak of the trend. I'd even scan the paper to see if other houses in our neighborhood were selling for more or less than what we paid. Turns out, the value of our home has doubled in the time that we bought it. This is good. If we want to move out of Northern Virginia. But it means we've just kept pace with the other houses in our area, so it really isn't that great if we decide we want/need to stay here. *Sigh*

Well, I'm headed over to the Puzzle Palace for an oh-so-thrilling staff meeting. I should have time later this afternoon (assuming that the proposal bid isn't accepted by then) and will touch base later. I've still got a good 7 minutes of my 15 minutes to go.