Jumping the Shark

We've come a long way on this little blog - it's served its several purposes pretty well, I think. Posterity for us, information resource for others doing the same thing, getting the word out about our house as a rental cabin. I'm not blogging a whole lot lately - not as much to do out there for me. I suppose I could turn this into a "what it's like to rent out your cabin" blog...

And though I'm sure I'll keep popping over here to blog about the house (I'm of course feeling invigorated as a blogger by the start of the academic year and the real world responsibilities blogging can distract me from), this post would certainly be the perfect way to wrap it all up. We've gotten a few inquiries from folks interested in writing about the house (Emily's blurb on Washington Spaces being the first to actually spill some virtual ink about it). An editor from the spectacularly-named Garden & Gun spoke with us a couple of times and actually asked for a release to use some photos from the blog, so I expect they will actually run something too (alongside what seems to be some pretty impressive content). And then last month I got an email out of the blue from Aaron Britt at Dwell, who wanted to know some details about our place and the narrative, see some pics, and asked whether we'd be interested in being in the magazine (some people apparently say no). I sent him what he was looking for and didn't hear back and figured that was the end of it. A week later and I get another note from Aaron that if we're still up for it, they'd like to run a story about our place in their upcoming prefab issue (Feb 09) in the "My House" section (a smallish column written in the subject's voice with pics and some nuts and bolts "how/why we did this" details). We were traveling a lot last month, and I went right out to the house when we get back to meet with a freelance reporter for a couple of hours (kicking some very understanding guests out of the house for a bit - thanks Heidi!). Then last week we met my mom and her husband out at the house for a couple of days. And after they left some fancy freelance photographers from NYC came and shot a day's worth of pics.  Which was exhausting for all involved, but I think they got some pretty good shots (our kids are pretty photogenic, I have to say), and they even took a couple with an extra fancy camera in the format they use for the cover...


We let them have some leftover soft tacos and wine:


We spruced up the house a bit - this piece over the bed upstairs is borrowed from Michael's friend Ezra, whose parents picked up this scrap of sheetmetal that some artist punched circles out of with plasma cutter - so perfect that we almost "lost" it on the way home:


Chris the photographer was persuaded by his assistant David and me to take a sunset shot of the house from the top of a tall ladder, which Chris wasn't thrilled about but his inner photographer trumped his fear of heights:


And our kids finally crashed after being troopers for an entire day of "go stand over there and smile":


All in all, pretty exciting. Who knows how it'll turn out - we'll see how well the writer can turn two hours worth of blabber into 700 coherent words. And even if I come off like a moron, I saw some of the pics (they take polaroids before they take the real thing) and I know they got some good ones. (It costs $3k/month just to advertise in the back of Dwell - a couple of nice pics and our website name in the middle of the magazine certainly beats the pants off of that! And for free!)

If this blog were a movie, this post would have to be the equivalent of the nerdy guy finally falling into bed with the beauty next door, roll credits. I'm sure I'll keep blogging and ruin this perfect ending. But if I ever have Blogger print this up into one of those book blogs, you can bet this will be the last entry.