The Rest of the Story

On March 27th of last year I posted a note about renting our little cottage in the University District and described three candidate couples.  I did not report that ultimately I chose the bike riding woman with the semi-monk boy friend who was away on a six week silent retreat.  She had stayed nearly an hour looking over a place that can be adequately evaluated in 10 minutes or less.  My reason was that I found that she would have been the hardest to turn down.  She seemed to want the place the most.

It was not a bad choice.  E and B stayed about a year and a half, paid their rent on time, and left the place as near ready to rerent as any tenant ever has.  There was however one little matter that makes this update blog worthy.  Quite often if I am going to be entering a rental space to do some chore while the occupants are not present I will say in a very cute and charming way, "Hide your marijauna plants, I'm going to be working on the X today."  It's not much of a line, but I've said it to quite a few renters over the years.  In fact it turns out that I once said it to E, although I had no specific memory.  On the next to the last day, just before they departed, I asked if I had said something like that and indeed I had.  We had a good laugh at that point, in my case imagining,  and in their case recalling, just how that line went over.  You see, as was only revealed by the state of the house at their departure, the little cottage had actually become quite a little farm for the past year or so.  Remember the long long period of scrutiny on the first visit?  Ah so.  Maybe I am missing a bet by using this place as a residential rental.