Who Can Take A Nothing Day

And suddenly make it all seem worthwhile…

I got the first season of MTM yesterday… I’m so thrilled.

I watched the first two episodes of it! So exciting!

I know, I’m a nerd. After watching them though, I’ve decided that..

A) Mary is hot

B) Mary and Rachel Ray look a lot alike

C) I’d marry either one of them

D) I want to move to Minn

E) The house that MTM was filmed in is real and is located at: 2104 Kenwood Parkway… And I want to buy it.

Nikki, Holy Nik and others stopped by last night, and we made ice cream. It was fun.

I didn’t come into work tell 5 this morning, I’m working the 5-1 shift. I hate it.

Good Day all.

One thought on “Who Can Take A Nothing Day”

  1. http://wcco.com/local/local_story_236121555.html

    (AP) Minneapolis It is famously known as the “Mary Tyler Moore house.” But these renovated digs might be a smidgen too upscale for even the real Mary.

    With an infusion of pizzazz, heralded by a daily symphony of saws, drills and hammers, the Victorian house just west of Lake of the Isles soon will be on the market for more than $3 million.

    “Substantially more,” says Don Gerlach, the mansion’s unlikely owner.

    Gerlach, an English teacher at Burnsville High School, and a crew of workers are putting final touches on a massive renovation that’s making the house far more majestic than in Mary’s day.

    That was the 1970s, when Mary Richards, played by actress and producer Mary Tyler Moore, lived in a fictional third-floor apartment at 2104 Kenwood Parkway, a backdrop for the enormously popular “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

    Though Mary never actually entered the house during the show’s original television run, the signature Palladian windows and iron balcony outside Mary’s make-believe apartment drew thousands of drive-bys, usually from visitors to Minnesota whose hosts said they just had to see Mary’s house before they left town.

    Indeed, previous owners became so weary of gawkers that they stretched an “Impeach Nixon” sign beneath the apartment windows to dissuade television crews from filming supplementary exterior shots for each new season.

    The traffic dwindled as the show went into reruns, but the glossy imprint of Hollywood remains within the memory of those who revered the comedy series about an insecure local television news producer who will “make it after all!” as the theme-song crooned.

    “The fact that it was the Mary Tyler Moore house was an interesting curiosity, but the major fact is that it’s a beautiful house in an extraordinary location,” said Gerlach, who bought the house in spring 2005 with his wife, Patricia, and her silent partner brother.

    Gerlach declined to name their purchase price, but Hennepin County property records show a $1.1 million transaction. It had been owned since 1988 by former Minneapolis Institute of Arts Director Evan Maurer and his wife, Naomi.

    During the Gerlach’s 15-month stewardship, the large-yet-genteel home has grown from an already capacious 6,461 square feet to 9,161 square feet, gaining a kitchen four times larger than its predecessor and virtually every creature comfort that someone paying north of $3 million would expect.

    The 19th century limestone and tan-clapboard house now has eight bedrooms, two more than before, and nine bathrooms, three more than previously. It has exercise, sauna, crafts, office and billiards rooms and servants or nanny’s quarters.

    The third-floor space — what the Gerlachs call the “Mary Tyler Moore Suite” — includes a media room with built-in speakers flush with the walls. The expanded kitchen features four ovens, two refrigerators, two dishwashers, an icemaker and a 5-foot range top. The home’s five fireplaces are enveloped by marble.

    But genteel pieces of the past remain, most prominently a sweeping mahogany staircase that was an imposing feature of the house, which was built in 1878 and embellished in 1892. It was designed by Edward Stebbins, the architect for Gethsemane Episcopal Church in downtown Minneapolis and many school buildings. The first owner was Spencer Davis, president of a farm implement company.

    For a while, the house was made into a multi-dwelling building. Indeed, the fictional house included Mary’s wacky friend, Rhoda Morgenstern, who lived in an attic apartment, and pretentious landlord Phyllis Lindstrom, who lived in the main part.

    Back in those days, the windows to Mary’s apartment were actually the front of an unfinished attic, but the Maurers remodeled the area into a home office and returned the entire house to a single-family dwelling.

    Now, it’s a new era. On Wednesday, Gerlach was in the process of choosing a real estate company from the several that have been competing to market the house, which will be offered for sale in the next few weeks.

    An English teacher for 38 years, Gerlach said he, his wife and her brother decided to pursue the venture as simply “something new” to do. In the idiom of real estate investors, they are “flipping” the house and envisioning the buyers as a family that wants every comfort and convenience and is willing to pay heartily for the privilege.

    They’ll be entering a buyer’s market, meaning there are fewer buyers than sellers.

    Pam Gerberding, an Edina Realty agent who lives two blocks away, says Gerlach has a decent chance of getting somewhere near his price.

    “Three million or above is definitely attainable in this neighborhood,” she said, adding that at least two homeowners purchased houses next to theirs for nearly $1 million and tore them down just to add the land to their property.

    As for the Mary Tyler Moore identity, the agent said she doesn’t think it hurts.

    “I think all the publicity around it being the MTM house has nothing but good feelings for most people,” said Gerberding, an admitted “MTM junkie.”

    As the house hits the market, Gerlach will again be spending his weekdays in front of a high school class. The first book he’ll assign his 11th-grade students?

    It’s purely a coincidence.

    “Great Expectations,” he said.

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