Happy Trees and Boxes Day from the Minter/Donaghy/Roney’s!
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The time will be 30 Dec 2004 19:00 UTC. It looks like all the issues have been worked out and this house buying thing will be moving forward. There are a couple outstanding contractual issues to be worked out. Since the house appraised for enough without the screen to get the mortgage company off our backs, any arrangement about fixing the screen is outside of that. So the agents are hammering out the details of how the escrow will be handled and everything. Hopefully nothing will come up last minute that will stop that. That is the last remaining detail. So this time next week we should have a house. We won’t be moving instantaneously though. We’ll do it slowly over a month or so. I won’t send out the new address and such until everything is official. Cause that one remaining detail might still rear its ugly head and cause a problem. But if not… After long last and many trials and tribulations, the September Top Ten for my email contest has been released to the public. Click through to find out the results…
Bug Inspection: No bugs. House Inspection: Lots of little things like a door that sticks when you lock it and sprinkler heads that need replacing and places where the molding doesn’t line up quite right. And things like that. But NOTHING MAJOR. Mortgage Company: The house without the screen appraised for the amount we were going to pay WITH the screen. Which SHOULD mean the mortgage company will get off our backs about the screen and approve it as is, and leave the screen issue to be between us and the sellers and stay out of it. Cause the house is already worth more than we contracted for it by enough to pay for the screen. We will hopefully know for SURE tomorrow. As things stand right now though, it looks like this will go forward, and we will close on December 30th. Yesterday I did someting which is just the height of geekdom probably. While I was AT THE MALL to help Amy do some Christmas shopping for her mom and grandma, I used my Treo smartphone and ordered two items from Amazon. While walking in the mall, past stores which may well have had what I was ordering. Go me! Rebecca had lots of problems with Amazon this year. I saw her warning, but went ahead and did most of my Christmas shopping at Amazon this year anyway. I did a little bit more at ThinkGeek and got one thing from CafePress. And yeah, I reluctantly got a few things in actual stores due to Brandy’s influence. I did almost all of the shopping Saturday morning. Then little dribbles since then. I believe I am done now. The things I bought at the mall via my Treo on Amazon yesterday were the end of my shopping. We have mailed most of the presents leaving from here already. One more box will go out in the next couple of hours. CafePress and ThinkGeek have not shipped yet. Neither has the CafePress one. As for Amazon… Out of 22 items ordered since the beginning of December… 13 have already shipped… (of which 7 have already been received)… which leaves 9 items which are “shipping soon”. They all say they should arrive at the 24th at the latest… but we shall see! Anyway, ordered from Amazon while at the mall on my phone and ignoring the stores around me. Love it! Um, now it is time to leave for the house inspection. Gulp. By the end of the afternoon we should know about that, and what the mortgage folks say. Gulp! True to her comments on my last post, Brandy has gone and made herself a blog. She is calling it Drunken Sailor. Not sure what kind of things she will be posting, but of course I will be checking in regularly. As I do with anybody who is in the current “top twenty people emailing Abulsme in the previous year” list who has a website that I know about, I have added her to the “Friends’ Sites” listing on the left. We’re now up to 9 out of 20 having websites. (Since Brandy is on that list twice at the moment.) Not bad. Almost to the 50% mark. But not quite. Well, Marilyn also one made a page with my help. But she hasn’t updated it in years (since the day she made it), and doesn’t have access to it to update it even if she wanted to, so I don’t think it should count and I don’t link to it. Shame though. If it did then we’d be up to 11 out of 20 (since Marilyn also has two addresses on that list right now). Anyway, back to Brandy. So far she is saying stuff about cheap fruity wine and getting my bird drunk. We’re watching a movie right now, so she probably won’t post again until morning. But we shall see! :-) The bank is hesitating at approving the escrow arrangement on fixing the screen enclosure. There will not be any official word on it until Monday, but the wording so far is they are “concerned”. They may want the sellers to put a larger amount in escrow (which from what I hear they can not afford) or they might want us to put down a bigger down payment (which we can probably swing if we absolutely need to, but it will be hard to arrange with essentially one weeks notice). We will find out for sure Monday. That is also when we will also find out the initial inspection results. So by Monday evening, we should know a lot better what the situation is. But my rough guess is that the chances of this purchase actually happening have dropped from around 90% to closer to 60%. Odds still on our side (barely), but also a BIG chance of it not happening. Which would really piss us off. Because we have everything in place. The only reason there is any issue at all is because the seller’s bank is threatening the seller with foreclosure if they don’t sell by the end of the year, and because there is a shortage of screening materials in Florida right now. Nothing whatsoever to do with us. If we could only get the seller’s bank to hold off a few more weeks, then there would be no problem at all. We have no issue waiting. It is the other side that can’t. Grrr!!!! I hate this. We will be most upset if this doesn’t go through. Grrr!!! There is rapid movement on the house front. 11 Dec 2004 – I get my final relocation check. 13 Dec 2004 – Repairs are in full swing at the house. 15 Dec 2004 – We get word that repairs are on schedule EXCEPT the screen enclosure. It has been delayed because the screen contractor is waiting for the materials to be available to do the work. (There is a shortage because practically everybody needed to have this done after the hurricanes.) We were offered the option to take the repair money for the screen in escrow, and move forward to get the deal closed by the end of the year. Closing by the end of the year is much better tax wise. But we could tell them to just finish it and we’ll wait. We think about it overnight. 16 Dec 2004 – We are told we don’t really have the option of waiting. While our interest rate lock is good until late January, the people selling the house are in financial trouble. The bank has been holding off foreclosing on them because they have a contract with us, but are getting impatient. They have already waited since September. The house will be foreclosed on them if they have not sold by December 31st. After that, while the bank MIGHT sell to us, all bets are off, and most likely the place would just go up for auction or some such. We have checked with several people and the stuff with the screen seems to be fairly low risk. And we want the house. So we gave the word to go forward. This brings us to now. 18 Dec 2004 – If all continues to go according to schedule, they will be finished with the repairs on the house. 20 Dec 2004 – We have scheduled the main house inspection and the bug inspections. 21 Dec 2004 – The mortgage company appraiser will look at the site. 22 Dec 2004 – The legal survey will be done. 23 Dec 2004 – We have to officially decide if we are NOT going to proceed based on any of the results above. If anything came out bad, this will be when we can back out. 25 Dec 2004 – Christmas TBD Dec 2004 – Sometime in the week between Christmas and New Years, exact date to be determined shortly, we will close on the house. All of Jan 2005 – We will slowly transition from where we are to where we will be, maybe stretching into Feb 2005 if we need it. But hopefully not. Of course, all of this is still contingent on a bunch of stuff. So it could still fall through. But at the moment it is looking good. We shall see. And then, if all goes well, we’ll have to tighten the belts and get used to paying a full mortgage again (about 25% more per month than I paid in Pennsylvania at that — but it is a bigger nicer place fit for a family of three with room to grow rather than a size perfect for a single guy). That will be a big change from the generous deal of a rent Ivan’s family is letting us stay where we are for. (Thanks again Ivan! You are awesome! I’ll officially let your dad know when we want to close this out as soon as things are actually final… I’m thinking we’ll close it out in February… but that is still a little TBD.) Anyway, while we transition things will be tight again for awhile. So that probably means no trip to the inauguration this year. Not to mention no new car, new GPS, new computer or random trip any time soon. Maybe later in 2005, but certainly not up front. It will take a number of months for things to fully stabilize again. This stuff is nerve racking! But it will be good.
Ever since the last episode right before Thanksgiving I’ve had occational twinges of pain. Nothing as bad as that first night though. Just discomfort mostly. At worst I’d take one of the Tylenol with Codines that the doctor gave me and it would get better and be gone in a few hours. For awhile. It would happen every couple of days. In between I’d feel mostly fine, although perhaps not 100%. Thursday evening after work I started to feel a little uncomfortable. Not bad though. Just a little. I was tired though, after not getting much sleep after my flight home the night before. So I went to bed early. Like at 9 PM. I woke up when Brandy came to bed a little before 2 AM. I got up for a quick bathroom trip. But there was some pain. Not a huge amount, but some. And it felt like it was moving a little, and almost out. Sure enough, a couple minutes later, with some help from me and some strategic use of tweezers, I passed another stone. (I know, too much information… too bad!) It was huge!!! It dwarfed the other one from the other week. (But for some reason it had hurt less… dunno.) I’ve been having kidney stone episodes every couple of years since 1996, but this is the biggest one yet. I know lots of people have bigger ones, and sometimes ones too large to pass that require surgery to get out. But still. OUCH! After some of the other ones in previous years, Rebecca has said something like “The size of a grape-nut? That’s nothing! Tell me when you pass a watermelon!” OK, so no watermelon. But I did a little better this time. More like the size of a pea. That is it in the picture above, next to the one from Thanksgiving week. See how much bigger? It is also a much different color. That probably means something, but I don’t know what. And while in the picture it looks like it might be soft, trust me, it is a stone. Completely hard and solid. I am actually amazed how little this one hurt. I hurt a lot more with the little one, and other ones in the past. This one caused twinges over the last two weeks and it did hurt off and on, but when it finally passed, it almost didn’t hurt at all. Afterwords, it did hurt some, and I took another of the special Tylenols. Since then I have been up. I am getting tired again though. And I need to be at work in a few hours. And the Tylenol has me all groggy. (But pain free!) Now that this one is out, maybe this series of stone episodes will be done and I’ll be OK for a couple of years. Or maybe there will be more next week. Dunno. Guess I should do that follow up with the doctor soon. They were going to give me a refferal to a specialist, but hadn’t done so yet. I’ll call them up later today and get that moving I suppose. I think I need to go to bed now. I just saw this news on Drudge. It makes me very sad. Brudnoy, in cancer’s grip, prepares for end
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I got a lot of flack from a variety of people when I posted the