A truly momentous occasion

I'll be re-listing my condo.  Real soon.  Like, as soon as it's clean.

During last week's rains, there was some water ponding inside my fireplace wall.  The HOA Board was really on the ball and got someone to come out immediately and look at the roof -- they patched the bit around my chimney which they thought was leaking.  It rained some more the next day but I'm honestly not certain whether the patch worked -- it's hard to tell whether the water I saw in my wall was the same pre-patch water that just hadn't dried yet, or new post-patch water.  The HOA hired a rain leak expert to come out today.

Enter the rain leak expert, who is mad at us for patching the roof.

!!!

???

Apparently, he refuses to do any water testing unless he is certain that there is a leak that he'll find -- he won't water test just to verify whether a leak is patched.  So if we hadn't patched the roof, he would've water tested, diagnosed the leak, and told us what to fix.  But since we did patch the roof, the only way we can guarantee that our patches stopped my leak is to ...

(are you ready?)

... wait for it to rain again and see what happens.

Now, it does, in fact, rain in sunny Southern California, but not with any sort of regularity, even in winter.  In fact, it was in the 70s today, and the forecast is for clear skies as far ahead as they're willing to forecast, with no more than a 20% chance of wet stuff falling from the sky.

Time is a-ticking and I can't really wait around for the heavens to open and water test our roof.  So, y'know, screw it.  I'm relisting again, and will totally disclose the repair situation.  My real estate agent is down with this plan.

For the listing, I've decided to put together a list of all the improvements I've made to this place over the twelve or so years I've lived here.  (The unit next to mine is also on the market, so I am now preparing Operation: Make My Place Look Like a Way Better Deal Than Hers.  This is a very challenging proposition as I need to accomplish it without asking a lower price.)  Conveniently, I've kept receipts in a file folder labelled "home improvements," so making the list wasn't that hard to do. 

The math kinda took me back a bit.  I've put over $60,000 into improving this place.  It didn't seem like that much over time, but put all together on a single piece of paper, it's a fairly impressive sum.