With admit in hand and the gears in motion for me to start classes at Cornell in August, Elizabeth and I have had our hands full preparing for all the changes. Mainly, we have started packing up our belongings for the move, sorting through the excess property that we have accumulated in our house over the past four years, and finally got the house presentable to potential buyers. We planted the "For Sale" sign on Saturday afternoon and had our first showing on Monday, with three more scheduled for its first week on the market. That's a good start, but I'll be pretty anxious about it until we close a deal.

I hate doing real estate business mainly because I hate realtors. I'm loathe to enter into a financial agreement where the compensation is not based on performance, and the entire real estate industry is designed to maximize profit for the realtors, not the buyers/sellers. I just always feel like those perpetual smiles you find on any realtor's face belie the fact that they know something that you don't. My current realtor has a pretty good reputation and he has been good to work with so far, but still, he is a realtor...

--Chris