the tower

It's nearly, very nearly, finished - which, given that we've had contractors here since January, and they've started to feel like part of the family, is a Good Thing. This tower - looking here like a northern European barn of some kind, or a wannabe grain elevator - proved necessary to bring the stairs going up to the now-converted loft up to code: there is certainly, now, plenty of headroom. And since the loft has a/c, and it's very hot outside, we might even inflate an Aeron bed and sleep up there for the first time.

But. The big but is that when we began the construction we had no intention whatsoever of moving for a long, long time. And now we will be heading back to California by this time next year. And this was not predicted, or predictable. And this is not exactly a time to start trying to sell an upgraded house. And now every picture I take of it looks like a realtor's carefully posed shot (not that there are a whole lot of grain elevators on the market in Highland Park). So if anyone out there might be tempted by some high-quality NJ real estate... I found myself singing its praises to a stranger (a stranger who by chance lives in a house we've always deeply coveted, right round the corner) in a doctor's waiting room in Princeton today: perhaps word of mouth is the way to go...?