Two more days

and I'm back in Pennsylvania for a week. I thought once Dawn was out there, there wouldn't be anything left for me to do. Ha. I've still got a million things to do; just now they're unimportant things. I think my main function right now is to move all of Dawn's belongings cross-country, two suitcases at a time. Two critical items on my list: - I'm still (desperately) trying to secure funding. I figured, we've got collateral, we've got income, we've got good credit, slam dunk, right? Well, the "slam" part is right. One lender wouldn't loan more than $200,000; another wouldn't include my income because I was in California; a third wouldn't make a "farm loan" (?!), and the last one said the mansion had to be worth more than we were borrowing. Uh, excuse me, but what part of "restore it" are you not getting? If it was worth that much, we wouldn't need to borrow the money, you see how that works? So far the only offer I've gotten is prime+8 for a 2-year loan. I could get better terms maxing out my credit cards. - We have to review the furniture list. Somehow the restoration estimate jumped from $20,000 to $87,000 when we weren't looking. And while I know that's still a good deal (remember, it's a tractor-trailer full of antique furniture), there's a lot of pieces that just aren't worth restoring. Like the funky gilded mirror that was in the attic, or the table leaves that we'll never use. Other planned activities: Get some updated photos for this blog; visit Central Market; give tours to several important people (i.e. anyone who asks), review the insurance, buy sheets and an area rug, order stairs for Aquarius, attend the Restoration Conference in Philadelphia; set up a wolf cam (don't ask); and see the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. (Although technically that last two are not restoration-related.) Last note: My stat counter says I've had 336 unique visitors since I made the site public, 17 of whom came from Google searches:

• "gary kopperman" (our furniture restorer, who was probably googling himself)
• "speedwell tavern" (a pub in England)
• "baron steigel and ege history" (now that's cool - I'd like to talk to this person)
• "speedwellforge lake" (sadly, we were only listed because they didn't put a space between "speedwell" and "forge")

Dawn riding the range