Well, we did it: We motored up to Lansing yesterday and bought the house. It still seems like a silly idea, buying a second house when we figured we couldn't afford the first, but oh, well. The full financial ramifications won't hit us until October, and October seems like it's months away . . .

The closing itself was rather amusing because the seller was so young. His father and he had bought the house for him to live in while he went to law school; he's just finished school and just taken the bar. His father wasn't there because the kid was his attorney in fact. When we all sat down to start signing, I said to him, "I see you're acting as your father's attorney. How cool is that?" He broke into this huge, beaming grin that just lit up the room. It was just fun to enjoy his energy: He's got the world by the tail and is off to seek his fortune in the wider world, having bought a new house and now sold this one . . . As we were leaving he was giving us all sorts of tips about the vegetables in the garden and the paint on the walls and so on and so forth . . .

After we closed, we went over and took a look. (I took pictures, too, but I seem to have left my camera there . . . grr. They'll have to wait until tonight.) I'd taken four camp chairs so we'd have places to sit, so we put those up in the living room, and sat and absorbed the ambiance while we waited for the Egress Window Guy to arrive. I was enormously pleased to discover that we have a screen door on the door outside to the back yard - for some reason, that had been worrying me excessively; I'd worried that we couldn't get any cross-ventilation in the house.

But that didn't turn out to be true at all. I opened every window in the place - discovering as I did so that the windows had been replaced at some point, and the new ones are really nice. It was a breezy day to begin with, and soon we had air flowing everywhere.

Martin and Randy stopped by for a while, and helped us rip out the carpets in two of the bedrooms. Then the window guy arrived, and while he was there Kathy and Ben came over. (Emma's getting a basement room, so she needs an egress window - and, more important in my view - she needs some light down there.) After Kathy and Ben left, Emma and her friend Dave arrived . . . it was nearly dinnertime by this time, so they went and brought back take-out from Charlie Kang's, the first place I ever had bibimbap, oh, about seventeen or so years ago. (I still don't know how the rest of the menu is, because that's the first and only thing I've ever gotten from there.) It tasted awfully good . . .

We finally left for (our other) home around 7:45, having been at the new house for about eight hours. I'm pleased to report that it's even better than we had hoped. We were struck by how sunny the house is; all day long, the light in the living room was abundant and pleasant. Your eye is naturally drawn outside to the deck, which makes the room seem a lot bigger. (The deck is crying out for flowerboxes full of geraniums; I can see them so vividly in my mind's eye that the deck looks bare without them.) We've decided to use the room in the way it was designed to be used: We'll have a combination living/dining room, because the window under which the dining room table will go faces south, and it would be such a pleasant place to sit and read the Sunday papers . . .

And the light coming into my new study is also wonderful. This room is an addition, and they took care with the windows; one of them goes down to desk-level, and the other, although smaller, faces out to the deck. They not only fill the room with light, but they provide great views out into the back yard. (I'm trying to decide what to plant so that I see interesting stuff from those windows.) Before we left, it looked like we'd left a light on somewhere . . . but no, it was just the sunlight pouring in from the study. And the floor is amazing, too; happily enough, it's just the kind of wood I had wanted in the sunroom but we couldn't have because of the weird sunroom subfloor. The walls are painted lavender; we've dubbed the room "the Mackinac Room" because it looks like it could be a sitting room in one of the Victorian cottages on the island. (I'm planning to hang a photo of the bridge as soon as I can possibly find one that will look nice . . . )

The best part, though, were our fortunes from the cookies from Charlie Kang's. (See, Peter, if I don't believe the horoscopes, I can't believe the fortune cookies either, and what fun would that be?) Emma's said, "You will inherit a large sum of money" (which I took as personal good news, figuring it would probably come from us), and mine said, "Your original ideas will get you well-deserved recognition."

Ah, yes. Now I remember: That was the point of moving to Lansing - so that, now that the kids are grown, now that I have a short commute to work, now that I don't need to work in the summer, I will have time to sit and think and actually write up these ideas I keep having . . . in short, so I can have the kind of academic lifestyle I wanted back at Adrian College, and that drew me to the profession in the first place . . .

At the moment, things look pretty good.