love's what you deserve

I had a rather unproductive day, which was frustrating even though (or especially because) I did it to myself. The most interesting thing that I accomplished was getting the abstract for my house - it was at my lawyer's office here since he'd done a title opinion when I bought the place, but since I closed remotely I didn't see it then. I decided that I was curious about who had owned it in the past, so I picked it up and read through the whole thing this afternoon.

It was an interesting read - the title chain started with the surveying of this area of town as the 'first addition' to the town (back in the 1870s when town thought it was going to get way bigger than it did). I live next to an area that was surveyed out in hopes of becoming the county courthouse, but the courthouse went to a different town, thus changing this town's fortunes forever. And I own basically a city block, although there was no road or alley surveyed between me and the proposed courthouse site. My 'block' is further subdivided into fifteen lots that, theoretically, would have been shops and offices around the courthouse - but now it's just me, and a part-time [censored], and a lot of yard.

sssanyway, the abstract had names of previous generations of people/families that are familiar to me, even if I didn't know the specific individuals. There were a couple of divorces, and the divorce decrees were included in the abstract, which made for interesting side reading (and complexity for the deed, especially when one party of one of the divorces died while the other party was still paying for the property on contract to the original owner). The biggest laugh I got, though, was that I had flippantly told [censored] that I just hoped the abstract didn't mention Standard Oil (since you never want to discover you live on top of buried fuel tanks) - and then the abstract actually *did* mention Standard Oil, but only in relation to other property in one of the divorce decrees. Lol.

After that thorough examining of my abstract, nothing else was all that interesting. I also did some deep research on how to kill wasp nests, since a new nest is forming on my balcony door and I need to kill it with extreme prejudice before they multiply. And I should have cooked tonight, but instead I ate boxed macaroni for dinner. And then I read half of 'Forgotten Peoples of the Ancient World' - it's way too high level and cursory, and also only deals with Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Mediterranean, which seems way too simplistic. But I'm looking for tidbits that might spark some story ideas, and I stumbled across some interesting factoids, so that's what I wanted.

And now I need to sleep - goodnight!