incoherent mumblings…
caveman on teh interwebs

Well, we’re on the “home” stretch now folks.  With the closing scheduled to take place at 4pm on Wednesday, its time to start embracing the fact that this really is happening.  Time to change the “when we get the house” to “Thursday I’m going to…”  In preperation for that, I’ve officially scheduled both Thursday and Friday off from work.  At the moment, I’m also looking at taking Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off next week as well.  We’ll see how bored I get…

My plan is to start the work tonight when I get home…  Obviously I can’t work on the house as it isn’t mine yet and they’ve taken the key box off so I can’t get in anyway.  I’m talking about starting to pack.  Maybe not the computers or all of my clothes yet, but the things I haven’t been using on a daily basis.  The books can come off the shelves and go into boxes as well as most of my DVD’s and video games.  One more time I’ll go through and break down boxes from computer parts and the like so that they aren’t cluttering the house…  One more time I’ll do the “This might be usefull in the future but I haven’t used it in ten years so I might as well throw it out and buy a new one if need be” routine.

Unfortunately the first thing on the list will be to do laundry.  With the low power situation this weekend, I didn’t get to do any. 

I’ll have to remember to take the Jeep on Thursday so I can bring bigger things to the house from where I currently live, my parents house, or a store. 

I plugged my phone into its charger at work and was surprised a moment later with it telling me I had a voice mail.  The thing has been on my hip all morning…  How could I have missed a call?!?!?  This is one of those rare occasions where I didn’t mind getting a voice mail…  Not one little bit.  It was my mortgage guy saying we have CTC…  Clear to Close.  Oh yeah baby!

Thats really the last major hurdle to the purchase of the house.  Now I just need a bit of patience to wait for next week Wednesday.  We’ll close that day and I’ll do a little dance of joy and then the reality of whats ahead will slowly start to sink in.  There is so much to do.  The bathrooms both need work.  The kitchen sink needs to be fixed.  I WILL HAVE A GARAGE DOOR OPENER DAG NAB IT!  And the lawn needs some attention.  Thats just a few of the things I have to look forward too. 

As I have learned far to often in this entire process, getting the clear to close is just the next step in a progression.  It was a major hurdle only in that it was the last thing that could really stop the purchase.  Now we move on to the next hurdle, which means I have to practice my signature a few thousand more times so that my hand doesn’t cramp up at close.  From there we have to get the utilities turned on and in my name.  That, I think, will be the end of the purchase process. 

I am both excited and frightened as we continue to move forward.  This is a big investment and large burden to be taking onto my shoulders.  I’m sure it will feel like second nature after a few months…  At least it did with the bike and then car.  It took me awhile to overcome my extreme hatred toward long standing debt.  I know this is supposed to be “good debt” but it means I still have to pay somebody something every month for the priviledge of having something.  Thats why I don’t usually have credit card debt.  It litterally pisses me off.

Well…  I think its time to do a serious search for some project management software (probably web based) for the house.   Theres gonna be alot to do and managing it will be key in getting everything done before winter.

Apparently what happens when a house goes back to the bank (foreclosure) is that the county decides it is an no longer a homestead but an investment property.  So they crank the taxes up a few notches.  Now, logic would dictate that once it gets purchased, the powers that be should change it at that point so that I don’t have to pay the huge taxes.  Why should I have to pay a huge ammount when I didn’t own it during that time anyway?  Right? 

Well…  You know the government.  Bullshit.  They look at you, smile sort of politely, and tell you that you have to wait until the re-evaluation comes up.  That, lady’s and gentlemen, is in March.  Oh, they will give me back the extra I’ve paid but in the mean time I am losing out on the interested.  This, in the modern era of computers, is a screw job.  Send a friggin memo to your data analyst person and change that little field to indicate it has a primary resident.  I would assume that since they have to put my information in anyway that that would be easy…  Oh no… 

I have resided myself to the fact that this is the way it is and will simply make the payments.  I can’t back out now because the clerk’s office is filled with retards.  Only thing is, taxes are due in July.  That means I have to have a big chunk of money for them to cover that.  That chunk of money wasn’t anticipated for in the loan.  Long story short, I have to give them around two grand to make sure everything is covered.  I am not pleased by this as it would run me pretty close to empty on the old wallet.

So now I tuck my tail between my legs and do what I didn’t want to do in the first place…  I ask my parents for help.  It is a small sum and only because it has come up as a surprise, but there would have been another feeling of accomplishment.  “Look what I did…  On my own…  Aren’t you proud?”