{"id":247,"date":"2005-10-24T12:33:33","date_gmt":"2005-10-24T12:33:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/?p=247"},"modified":"2005-10-24T12:33:33","modified_gmt":"2005-10-24T12:33:33","slug":"open-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/?p=247","title":{"rendered":"Open House"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The idea of opening my home to bunch of strange folks — not strangers,
\nmind you; just strange — is not something that comes natural to me.
\nThis may be apparent if you examine the facts. The wife and I now live in our second
\nhome and we just hosted our first open house. The math isn’t
\nespecially difficult.<\/p>\n

In a way, I’m surprised it happened at all. In the past, I’ve
\nthought of an open house as something you postpone until your home is too
\nold to show off. After all, a new homeowner is incredibly busy after the
\nbig move. We were no exception. Who wants to clean? Who wants to clean
\nright now?<\/p>\n

This was certainly the case the first time around. My
\ndesire to name the delayed party (“Housecooling”, “Houselukewarming”,
\n“House not quite warm, not quite cold, but somewhere in the middle”)
\ndidn’t help remove the sting of that missed opportunity from my wife.<\/p>\n

This time, however, the wife wasn’t about to let me wiggle out of it and,
\nto tell the truth, my agreement in the matter was more than passive.
\nHell, I wanted to show off my new home. I’ll admit it.
\nTwo months later, I’m still incredibly excited about it. I get giddy
\nwhen I peer out the front door. I smile when the garage door opens
\nfrom a simple button press. I wanted to share. I wanted to show folks what
\nI’ve been blathering about for the past 4 months. I almost didn’t
\nmind the cleaning.<\/p>\n

It didn’t hurt that an open house was a great excuse to convince the Baltimore natives that we call our friends and family to visit us across state lines. The wife and I are cognizant that we now “far away” in both a geographical (somewhat true) and phycological (more true) sence. Our neck of the woods now includes trees. It was great to see people under them.<\/p>\n

I want to thank everyone who came (and sent us yummy gifts — you know who you are). This precious opportunity to show folks our new little world was a lot of fun for us, but ultimately imcomplete. I hope to see folks make a return trip. I need help drinking all the leftover beer.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The idea of opening my home to bunch of strange folks — not strangers, mind you; just strange — is not something that comes natural to me. This may be apparent if you examine the facts. The wife and I now live in our second home and we just hosted our first open house. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}