Prefab House Kit And Considering: A Farm House In The City.

We were busy this weekend but it wasn't on the land visiting the prefab house kit...
And more weather worries: This afternoon? It slushed.
Not downy snow, not sleet, but this weird, heavy, wet... slush falling through the sky like slowly pouring a Slurpee through a beat up colander.

Near the land, it seemed to crystallize a bit more - here is our friend George's farm in the snow...




We shall see if we make it to the prefab green home this coming weekend or are snowed out AGAIN!

We couldn't visit the prefab house kit this past weekend because I volunteered for Children's Home Society at The Byrd Theatre, showing "Angels In The Outfield" to highlight adoption and foster care...


And explored an urban farm house. THIS HOUSE is in the center of our city.

It was great to consider how we might spend the next few years in Richmond before we move to The Land- in a more urban setting, closer to our friends...The reality is that Handsome Husband is not able to telecommute as easily as I (yet) from the land, and our children are in a special program they would have difficulty achieving anywhere else (which ends in 5th grade).

I reflected:

• After weeks of a bad cold, I look around this beautiful mid-century house, with a HUGE back yard where my children, dogs and chickens roam and think, "Well, they aren't SO lonely even though there's no children around during the day..."
  
• I'm frankly wondering if I'm too tired to move. We have ENOUGH going on with the net zero passive solar prefab SIPs house kit construction and the land, which will take us *years* to accomplish our goals...
  
• I spoke with a contractor I know well from Green Drinks.
  
  I asked, "If we refabbed and restored this old farmhouse which is without insulation, I would ask you for a proper quote, but just off the top of your head, what would you Guess-timate it would take to properly get this house to insulated, updated standards?"
  
  He paused awhile, then answered,
  "To do this properly, I would show up with a truck.
  I would demolish the farm house and cart it off.
  Then I would install one of your energy efficient prefab  house kits.
  And THAT would work, properly."
  
  Ummmmm...
  I'm a HUGE preservationist... but his point was taken.
  (And I was honored, but also sad my dreams of an Urban Farmhouse seemed to fade when considering how inefficient it is... OH the sunflowers and garden I would have planted!)
  
  
• I have $70 worth of seeds to plant, starting in the cold frames this week.
  How can I move after I sow seeds for the season?!?
  

I could *totally* picture our family being so happy in that urban farm house... 
Everything in walking distance...surrounded by old friends... AND CHILDREN.
Yet I'm strangely content in the solid mid-century this week...

But edge-of-suburbia, don't you get comfortable:
We all know what these boots are made for...

 

The original C3 lives.

Almost ten years ago, I started a small business.
C3 was my prominent logo, and it was a very personal choice because it formed my intitials: CCC. My business, Copeland Casati Media C3, was technology and advertising.

Despite starting a company from scratch with no industry name, no salary, and no employees, I persevered, and succeeded. So imagine my horror when, after eight successful, hard driven years, I opened the paper, a newborn at my breast, and read,
"C3 Creative Change Center, a creative advertising and web center in downtown Richmond!"

Um... I'm in advertising and web. For years.

So I called them.
"I am so sorry, don't worry, I'm not mean, but I'm sorry but I have been using C3 as my logo for years and you rent space to people who compete against me!"

Their response was, "Well we already printed letterhead, so despite the fact that we're supposed to be championing small creative businesses, um, sorry, it's not convenient to rethink our month-old identity."
Oh yes it was.

I then had to spend the money I would have spent for our first family vacation *ever* on a lawyer to protect who I was and had been for eight-ish (nine? ten?) years. Because after my phonecall, instead of doing the right thing, acknowledging that there was already a C3 in Richmond... they... tried to trademark the name!

Instead of them doing the right thing.
And with a minister or someone ministry-related at the helm, a Michele Stuchell who was supposed to be this good person championing creatives like... um, myself, a creative who started a creative business using C3, in 1999. Oh, Yes.

I would go in to pitch new clients and they'd say, "Hey, isn't your office at (where the Creative Change Center was) XYZ?" or "Did you just have that party?" Current clients asked me if I moved. And people called there looking for me, here.

So, in honor of the REAL, ORIGINAL, HOMEGROWN C3, ; ) I would like to publish the no longer working but supposedly C3 Creative Change Center domain: which shows nothing.

C3 Creative Change Center. Couldn't you have been creative and... changed?
www.c3va.org