The House Opposite

This is the view from my 3rd floor eyrie (a.k.a. studio), where I mostly keep the blinds down for the sake of consistent lighting for working with Photoshop.

It's Bill's house; he has just taken the trailer off his truck. In winter the truck would have a large yellow plow attached, since he plows snow in the neighborhood (including our driveway and the parking lot of a supermarket not far away). Bill is a true jack-of-all-trades. His garage in the back is full of tools and equipment. He has plenty of time to use them, since he works as a fireman in Northampton's fire department. He and his family are terrific neighbors.

It's a great neighborhood altogether, just ten minutes walk from the heart of Northampton. It's come up in the world in the last couple of decades. Next door to us is the former town jail--a large, actually quite attractive brick building which has been converted to condominiums. A cruel blow was struck at the end of December when an arsonist set fire to a nearby house and others in the area, but we will recover.

Bloom asked (in a comment), "Do you live there?" Yes we do--it's not just my studio. It's a 3-unit condominium. We have the 2nd and 3rd floors of a house built in 1894; there's also a carriage house with the 3rd unit. All of it deteriorated for years until 2002, when a neighbor, a builder, was finally able to build it and renovate it. (Part of the coming up in the world which I referred to above.) I'll blip some of it in the days to come--though we're off to Boston this weekend.

So nice to have such real-life exchanges!