dangerblog

Pity Me

Tomorrow is my home inspection, which is the last real step before I buy my house at the end of June.  But enough about that.  Even I am tired of hearing myself talk about the house.

So I am definitely coming down with a cold.  I know I've been saying that for weeks, but my previous claims must have just been general sluggishness.  Now, there's the sneezing and the hint of chest congestion and the slight sore throat and the constant feeling that I am going to freeze.  It seems like half the people I've seen lately have a cold at some stage, so I am not entirely surprised.  I don't have all the cold symptoms just yet, but I can definitely tell they're on their way.  I am armed with lots of chewable vitamin C, some Cold Eeze, some Robitussin and tons of fluids.  If that doesn't knock it out of the water, I don't know what will.

I have to tell you about my birthday last week and my trip to see B this weekend in Raleigh, but I am going to save my stories for later in the week when I am tired of whining about being sick.

House? Check!

Okay, so I have a signed contract on the house.  I have been a very busy little bee today.

Home Inspection Appointment? Check!

Pre-Approval Letter? Check!

Home Owner's Insurance?  No, but I got a lot of quotes!

So, if I can decide on a home owner's insurance company tomorrow, I will be able to go on vacation on Thursday and not have anything hanging over my head.  Yay!

I am not going to close until the end of June, and my lease isn't up until July, so I have quite a while before I am actually moving or anything.   I move a lot, so I'm pretty much the packing machine.  I have a system, and it works.

On Sunday night, I was so worried that I wasn't able to sleep.  This is in direct contrast with last night, in which I couldn't sleep because I was mentally redecorating every room.  It's only a matter of time before I bring out Visio and start trying to figure out how I am going to arrange the furniture. 

I am so Type A.  Let the list making begin!

House Hunting Update

I will find out in the morning for sure, but I think I am going to get my house!  I had to go up a little bit on the price, but they are covering a ton of closing costs, and that makes me very happy.

Then the fun part begins.  I will have 5 days to get a pre-approval letter from my mortgage guy.  It seemed like everything was in the clear before, but now I have a ton of things to send him and 5 days just seems really fast with Memorial Day weekend coming up so quickly (And of course, I have plane tickets to go see my friend B in Raleigh, so I won't be around.) Really I just have tomorrow and Wednesday.  Oh my.  I have to provide a homeowner's insurance provider and I have to get the house inspected within 10 days.  Oh, the fun is just beginning.  Just beginning, I tell you.

Found a House

I looked at houses again yesterday, this time in the nicer-but-further-out neighborhood.  I had about 7 or 8 houses on my list, but the majority of them were under contract or pending, which at first made me very depressed.  We still looked at the ones that were under contract, and they were pretty crappy and then I started getting REALLY depressed.  What the hell was I going to end up with?

The next to the last house was an older home that must have been gutted and rebuilt.   It had that new house smell.  It was a little smaller than I wanted, but it was so nice and the landscaping was beautiful and I was practically clicking my heels because I was so certain this was going to be the one.

And that's when we went to the last house, which was not my favorite on the outside, but on the inside, it was spacious and homey and lovely.  And I wanted it.  I looked at it from top to bottom 3 times and wandered out in the yard.  I was quite smitten.   So I put in an offer last night.  I could barely sleep last night from the excitement/worrying.  (More on the worry side than the excitement side really.)

Turns out they are also entertaining another offer.  So I will probably have to wait until tomorrow to find out.  And it is absolutely positively driving me up a wall. 

But that's not all.  I found a mortgage guy, as I've mentioned, but when I was looking at my paperwork that I had to fax him this morning, I had a couple of little things that I wish I didn't have to send him.  It probably would be better for my emerging mortgage-buying ulcer if I just pointed them out and said, "If this and this is going to cause a problem, do me a favor and let me know as soon as possible."  But so far I am going for the superficial, "I'm sure everything will be fine" attitude while I continue to develop ulcers.

On the bright side, I've become extremely talented with the fax machine today.

House Hunting

I'm sitting around now waiting for my second house hunting appointment at 3.  Today seems to be crawling along at a snails pace and I am so ready to get on with this.

I found a mortgage guy I really like.  I got his good faith estimates, and amazingly, he does not appear to be trying to rip me off at all.  Actually, all my estimates improved drastically when I started taking control of the whole conversation.   Yeah, here's what I want, send me your good faith estimates.  If they're reasonable, we'll keep talking.   So now that the whole mortgage thing's out of the way, my stress level has decreased dramatically.

I looked at houses for the first time on Friday with my buyer's agent.  I use that term loosely, because as far as I can see, he's pretty useless other than securing appointments to look at houses.  I send him lists of MLS listings, and he takes me to see them.  He's never actually sent me a listing that has just hit the market that he thinks I might like.  I think I may actually know more than he does when it comes to how long the houses have been on the market and their price history.  Thank God for Realtor.com.  Really.

The houses that I looked at on Friday were horrible.  Two of them were in absolutely wretched, let's-just-tear-it-down-and start-over condition.  Original wiring.  Bad flooring.  Cracks in the ceiling.  And that's not even getting into any of the practical aspects like their complete and total lack of closet space. 

The other two were okay houses, but with really bad locations.  One was a cute victorian (hideously decorated on the inside) that was actually slightly above my price range that was across the street from condominiums that looked like they were one step away from becoming the projects.  The other house was smaller and very reasonably priced but that was definitely in the 'hood.

I chose this section of town to look in first because it is very convenient to where I work and where I go to school.  But now that I realize I have to double my price range to get a house that I would actually live in, I see that that area is out.

So today, I am going to look at houses that are still downtown, but a little further out.  I drove around and looked at them yesterday, and only one had a really iffy location (near some train tracks).   Much more respectable neighborhood.   All the online pictures look really good, but as I learned with the last batch of houses, that means absolutely NOTHING.

So, wish me luck.  I can't wait to get this whole process out of the way.

I Feel Like a Slug

Ever since I've been out of school, I've been feeling like I'm not being all that productive.  Sure, I ran a couple of days last week.  I've taught some kittens how to be little lovemuffins.  I've scoured the earth for a reasonable mortgage.  I've even done some DeLush work.

This weekend I tried to make myself relax.  Even though I woke up at 7:15 AM on Saturday, I made myself go back to bed.  I went to the opening day of the Farmer's Market in our downtown area and got some awesome bread and sweet potatoes (and sadly, some local salad greens that look and taste like local weeds). 

Saturday night was really interesting.  I went to a local outdoor concert festival with a friend of mine.  Well, before Saturday night, she was really more of an acquaintance.  We'd had conversations here and there, but we'd never really had a social outing.  On Saturday, we had an awesome time talking, and I am really hoping this will be the start of something cool.  And she just bought a house in one of the two neighborhoods where I am looking.  (Bonus.)  I have had a really hard time making friends in this city, so it was wonderful to finally connect with someone.   

At the concert, we met some of her friends, and in an amazing coincidence, I work with one of the other girls in their group.  So we talked a bunch too, and now we're talking more at work.  I might end up having some friends here after all. 

I had real stuff I wanted to do tonight, but I am feeling kind of run down.  A bit of a sore throat.  A little feverish.  It's been quite a while since I've come down with anything, so maybe I'm due for a cold.  I sure hope not.

One of my old Atlanta friends is coming on Saturday and bringing me her cat to take care of from now on.  We haven't seen each other in months, so this should be quite the reunion.   I need to make sure I'm well by then.

Oh well, screw the real work.  I need my beauty sleep.

Mortgage Hunting Is Exhausting Even Over the Internet (Despite Constant Entertainment From Kittens)

As promised, I have to show off the kittens I am babysitting:

As usual, I could not get my camera to play with my computer, so this is a photo sent to me shortly after they were found.

I had to leave them alone all day today.  During lunch I went to French Table for the first time (to hear and speak French with others who have no idea what they are saying), and then I had a big "Goals" session with my manager.

When I came home and burst into their little room, I found that they had grown at least an inch.  Really amazing.  Kittens are so easy to train.  These guys used their litter box for the first time today, and they're already on solid food.  And they're only 4 weeks old! (This is all very exciting for you, I know, but this is the first time I have really witnessed the wonder of baby animals.)

Today was the day I was supposed to get pre-approved for a mortgage.  Well, I guess that was achieved, because they are going to send me my letter in the morning, but I didn't get to ask them much at all (okay, anything at all) about their loan programs.  I wasn't overly impressed with their process, so I set out to find other lenders on the Internet.  That's when I discovered the whole "0% down payment" is not what I was expecting.  Closing costs are astronomically expensive.  Unbelieveably.  Obnoxiously.

I still want to look at houses.  Maybe I can get the seller to help me with closing costs. I'm just exhausted from looking at every stupid mortgage site on the planet.  *Sigh*

The Rest of My Life

So last week was finally the end of my hellish semester of school, so you'd think I would be back here on the blog telling you all about what's going on.  I have been feeling unbelievably lazy since I got out of school.  I am letting it happen a bit too; I keep telling myself I deserve a breather.  Especially since I got A's in BOTH of my classes.(I was truly amazed and astonished by that.)

This past weekend I drove to South Carolina to see my Mom, which was a really good visit.  The older I get, the more I appreciate her and the more fun we have hanging out together.  We went down to Myrtle Beach to check out the new mall there and shopped in a few other places.  I still have it in my head that I am going to buy a house, so I didn't really have any money to spend this weekend (not that that stopped me from getting a camisole, a necklace and a bracelet, all on terrific sale).  The drive wasn't awful, thanks to the wonder of the XM radio.

This week I am winding up the project at work that I have been on for the past 1.5 years.  I have a lot of stuff going on, so my focus has not really been on work this week.  I'm still contributing, but my mind has been elsewhere.

Last night, I volunteered to babysit some kittens for the next two weeks.  They're only four weeks old, and the people at the humane society here, who apparently were born with a stone where their heart should be, said they couldn't take the kittens at that age, but they could put them down.  Great.  So I am going to be a part time foster parent for them until they are old enough to be adopted out. 

It's so cute seeing their little personalities develop.  They were wild kittens of feral cats, so they have to be given lots and lots of love to become pets.  They are truly the cutest things on the planet, so I can't stay away from them.  They're already turning into little lovebugs.   Pictures tomorrow.  Promise.

Oh, and I've been running the past couple of days!  I haven't worked out since the very beginning of the year, but now that I'm out of classes, I have absolutely no excuse.  Later this summer, the track club is putting together a half marathon training group that I may join, so I have to build up at least some endurance.  I am such a wimp when it comes to exercise.

And the one other thing I've been trying to do better since I got out of classes for the summer is actually getting some sleep, so I'm going to get on that right now.  Good night!

Free, Free At Last

Tonight I took my French final (much harder than I expected) and turned in my final art project and my portfolio.  Phew!

A couple of weeks ago (well, even a couple of months ago) I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown.  I was still working as a contractor, making sure I hit 40 hours a week so that I got paid while working on DeLush constantly and spending 30 hours a week on schoolwork. 

But now when I look back, I am really amazed that I pulled through and finished everything.  I had visitors here for some of the weekends.  I went away for several weekends.  I didn't get to exercise, but I did completely change my eating habits for the better.  I managed to stick to my budget pretty well.  All in all, I am very happy with the way the past couple of months have gone, outside of a few tremendously stressful days.

I am already starting to make lists of things I want to do now that I am done with school, but there's no more deadlines, so the pressure is off.   

I really appreciate everyone's encouragement over the last couple of weeks.   You've been very patient with my lack of posts and email responses. 

Now, let the summer vacation begin!