For sale: 2004 BMW X3 2.5i

No, really.  We’re finally really serious about selling this little adorable and sexy – and very practical – 4 WD SUV. 

We’ve half-heartedly put it on the market occasionally since buying a full size Nissan truck last Fall (because this little SUV is actually functionally redundant with a truck in many ways!), but now that we’ve decided that we don’t need an extra car at home this summer -- and yes, now that college costs for the twins keep rising -- we’re actually ready to let it go.

Here’s the Craigslist ad:

• 4 WD (Traction control, ABS, stability control)
• Full panoramic roof
• Excellent condition inside and out
• 75,000 miles
• $14,950

And hey, because I adore my blog readers, we’ll take $500 off the price for you!

Interested?   

(Yes, folks – this is as close as this blog has ever come to trying to sell you something.  In fact, the closest tag I can muster is “stuff” because I refuse to start a “trying to sell my readers stuff” tag!)

Psssssst! Ya wanna buy a car?

Cuz we have one to sell.  You can find out more about it here.

Every time I have something to sell, I’m reminded of ol’ Lefty, the best salesman around:

Lest you think I’ll be lazing around on my week off…

The coming Friday is my last day at my current job.  It has been a frenetic and intense two years of 12 to 16-hour days managing at least 100 Microsoft marketing projects, each with up to 50 individual components, across at least 25 different Microsoft business units for clients who ranged from reasonable and friendly to unreasonable and unfriendly and I am weary, burned-out, and bone-tired.  It is only fair to both myself and to my new employer to take a week out to clear my head, rejuvenate my spirit, and focus in a whole new direction before jumping into my first day of work later this month.

While figuratively purging the Microsoft-induced mess from my head during my week off, I will be literally purging some messes around the house.  Normally I give the garage a good cleaning about once a year, but last year both my broken ankle and my brutal job kept me from doing much maintenance around the house.

So next week I plan to be busy taking care of a few things around here:

Bills need to be paid…

…a thick file of paperwork, bills, and insurance documents related to my broken ankle need to be organized and (hallelujah!) filed away…

…and two years worth of bills and paperwork (yes, those three boxes are all filled with to-be-filed paperwork) need to be filed into the physical cabinet.  I know… it’s the German in me that makes me hold onto and file physical documents when I know quite well that I probably don’t need to hold on to 90% of this stuff.

Then of course, there’s these important things that need to be done ASAP:

(Seriously, does anyone really feel this way about taxes?!)

And this, times three:

Once I finish all that paperwork and filing, there’s a garage that desperately needs attention – especially after three kids came home from college for the summer and left furniture and household items here after moving to the Greek system or moving into houses with friends.  Oh lordy, lordy – look what awaits me:

My blood pressure rises just looking at that mess… and then falls again at the thought of it cleaned, purged, and organized (and no, I do not want the kids’ “help” doing this stuff!)!

Then there are a few closets in the house that need attention…

…and some bedrooms that, with a little consolidating and spiffing, could pretty easily be made guest-ready:

Then there’s a deck that needs replacing…

…and a roof that I might as well just say is one of those “green” roofs because -- well, it is!  Ah, life in the Pacific Northwest…

Actually, just kidding on those last two, which are definitely out of my realm and into Tom’s.  Or maybe they’re into the realm of we-pay-someone-to-do-it-and-thereby-get-it-done-in-a-fraction-of-the-time.  Yeah, I think that’s the ticket on the deck and the roof!

Tom’s plenty busy doing stuff like this, replacing the track lighting in the living room with fraction-of-the-cost LED lights that I like a fraction-of-the-amount that I like the “normal” lights that were there.

 

So that’s my to-do list for next week.  Do me a favor and keep after me, because you know what I’ll want to do all week? 

THIS:

Elisabeth says the title for this post should be “Get this hideous table out of this house!”

I was thinking more along the lines of “For sale, cheap: beautiful inlaid oak dining table with two upholstered arm chairs and four upholstered side chairs.”

We got this table in 1988. It was our first major “fine furniture” purchase and we’ve treated it with kid gloves and obsessive protectiveness since then. I’ve always loved (and still love) the inlaid wood!

But apparently it’s akin to a wedding dress with sleeves (which mine had) or parachute pants (loved those too). In other words, according to our kids, it’s “soooo 80’s” and it’s time for it to go.

Sigh.

This is what we’re replacing it with:

…along with this sidebar (which Tom and Kat already put together, so this is the actual piece in our dining room):

But until we get rid of – I mean bid adieu to – our old dining set, we can’t do much with the new one.

I was asking $450, then I decreased it to $350 and now it’s a “make me an offer” deal! To my local readers... interested?

Addendum: The next week, this is what it all looks like (and the old set is sold!):