It’s been a busy May. An intensive project at work (not bad, just really busy!), helping someone out after their surgery, multiple trips up to Pennsylvania (including for my grandmother’s funeral), not feeling well for about a week and a half (and having to scratch a planned triathlon), that sort of thing.

Oh yeah, and Charlie and I put an offer on a home.

We’ve been talking for years now about buying a place together, when we found the right one. We’ve talked about different neighborhoods in DC as possibilities (Downtown, Logan Circle, U Street, Atlas District, Southwest Waterfront, Brookland, Brightwood Park, you name it) and casually checked out open houses and such. But nothing jumped out at us. So we continued to bide our time and figured it was still a ways off, until we saw a listing for a condo in Takoma that just screamed, “You must buy me.”

The listing was too good to be true, so we went to see it at an open house… that turned out to be a glitch in the system and there was no open house. (Fortunately one of the owners was home and graciously let us in to look around.) Ten minutes later, we were in love. Two days later, we’d gotten a pre-approval letter from the bank and put an offer in. And the next evening, we heard our offer was accepted.

Now obviously until every last paper is signed things could still go south. We just had the home inspection, which went well. But the bank still has to do their appraisal, and of course this is the age of nervous banks. So even though all our ducks are in order something could go wrong with the appraisal, or perhaps Venus will eclipse Mercury and the bank will freak out and decide to grant no one their mortgages for the next two months. But, knock on wood, so far so good.

It’s funny because while we both love the Takoma neighborhood of DC (and the neighboring Takoma Park, Maryland), neither of us figured we’d find anything there. But sometimes a winner just drops into your lap. We’ve got great restaurants, retail, grocery stores, the pool, a farmer’s market, a library, the metro station, and yoga studios just a short walk away. It’s in many ways the perfect mix of small town and big city all in one.

So, more updates to eventually come. In the meanwhile I am playing the game of starting to sort, pack, and discard books. It’s going to be a busy June as well, it seems!