USDA Rural Direct
The best news of the week is that we've been pre-approved for a USDA Rural Direct loan to help us buy a house outside of town.
This is a loan designed for low-to-medium income families who are inadequately housed and can't qualify for a loan in the traditional way (due to being low income or not having good enough credit.) This is the only way available to us right now, so I'm determined to make it work.
So, next is finding a place to live that facilitates my need for land and animals, and qualifies for the loan. It has to be in livable condition, according to them, can't be too big, or fancy, etc... Finger's crossed as I do have my eye on something already - we will view it on Tuesday.
Apartment Inspections
Of course, we can't have it easy, can we? So, at the same time as having to get our butts moving on the housing front, we were alerted to the fact that we have apartment inspections again this coming Tuesday!
We are not the tidiest of people (neither are we slobs). We have better things to do with our time than making sure we could be on the cover of "Living" magazine... We have hobbies and interests... plus, we are overly cramped (hence, the Rural Direct loan.)
So, we're scrambling like mad to get everything clean enough to pass inspections - and reminding ourselves that this is going to make moving easier when we get there...
The thing about inspections... Sure, I know it's their property and they have a right to know that it's being treated okay, but... it's a bloody invasion of privacy that happens every year here (last year, it happened multiple times due to some regulation or other...) It's one of the things that makes this place impossible to tolerate for much longer.
Between the housing thing and inspections, it has left no time for...
Writing!
I guess I needed a break anyway... words were hard to find since I had influenza. I've got several books almost done, but not quite... a couple that are done, but don't have their surrounding stories done... and several highly-developed plots ready to get completed...
Maybe next week...
And now we have...
More Snow
Apparently, I-80 which is the main highway between San Francisco and New York, crosses through the southern edge of Wyoming... it's been closed 54 times since October 1. That's one really snowy winter, even for Wyoming! Of course, the wind here is as great a hazard as the snow and when you combine the two, it's really bad for traveling!
This time, we're only predicted 3-5 inches, but we've seen before that the weather forecasters can get only part of the equation correctly and are often well off when it comes to the amount of snow we're due... so, we'll see.
Here is one of my favorite all-time snow pictures...
(Image available at RedBubble , TeePublic , and PicFair .)
I was playing with macrophotography, and found this amazing picture in my own front garden (in England at the time.)
Back to the present...
This week, I also treated myself...
Chickens
No, not yet... but it will happen.
But I did buy myself a copy of the most recent (2018, I believe) "American Standard of Perfection" which is the breed publication from the American Poultry Association (for which I have a life membership.) My only other copy of this publication was from 1983 - and they publish it every five years. So, it really was high time to get another!
Pictures...
I haven't written the next edition of Adventures in Art Ventures, but I needed to mention the fact that TeePublic thought I was a plagiarist at first and closed my account (rather than asking questions). I replied, telling them that I have my pictures in a few places, always going by Viking Visual or Viking Photography and Lori Svensen... They reinstated my account very quickly, but it was annoying.
There might be a way of being preemptive with them, which I would highly encourage (including putting the cross-posting info on your actual shop info.)
Photo taken in 2008 (I'm guessing) with my Pentax K100D.
Past issues...
Feb 2, 2020 - Flu Sucks!
Feb 9, 2020 - Planning 2020
Feb 16, 2020 - Skating and Eating and Writing, Oh My!
Feb 23, 2020 - Chicken Scratchings and Graphics
Lori Svensen
author/designer at A'mara Books
photographer/graphic artist for Viking Visual
(Buy my work at RedBubble, TeePublic, and DeviantArt.)
verified author on Goodreads
find me on Twitter
