More Things I Won't Miss

Semis using our street as a cut through street.

The Good and The Bad

Will not miss:
1. The garage across the street drilling something into cars starting at 7am.
1a. Tow trucks idling to drop off cars at the garage.
2. The neighbors to the left in general
2a. The small one cries a lot
2b. The bigger one plays basketball in her driveway starting at 7am.
i. This means they don't park in their driveway and instead park occasionally in front of ours for days on end.
2c. The bigger one starts pogo sticking when she tires of playing HORSE
3. The neighbor in the back not wearing his shirt as he digs up his tiny yard and listens to oldies.
4. The neighbor kiddie corne to the left in the back with the crazy daughter who's too old to be living at home and once tried to get into our basement.
5. Super crowded commutes on the bus
6. The neighbors down the street with the endless use of their nextel phone and visitors with idling diesel trucks.
7. 20 minute trip to the library that is only 1.5 miles away
8. No cupboards in the kitchen
9. Tiny closets
10. Downstairs neighbor parking perpetually in front of the house instead of in the driveway barring any guests from using the spot.
11. Tandem parking


Will Miss
1. Short commute on most days
2. The Harvard Square Dunkin Donuts
3. Conley's
4. Being able to walk to Harvard Square

The Beginning of the End

The landlords are bringing the first potential new tenant through tonight. Of course, the place is in shambles compared to last week when they came through to take pics. We have boxes everywhere, piles of stuff in the spare room, piles of books everywhere...

We asked them to push it back till 8pm tonight instead of 6pm so we can quickly get organized....

More showings on Sunday.

Moving Ahead

We just found out that the appraisor is going in today at 1pm...

We were told it will be a couple of days before the report is ready. I'm hoping that the listing agent can glean something from the appraisor and tell our agent...

I've taking the optimistic approach that will appraise out at the right amount and everything will be fine. Assuming it is, these are things that I have thought of that I want to do to the new house, some lofty, others not so much. Keep in mind at this point I've only seen the house 2 times!

• Either replace carpeting with better carpeting until we can replace with hardwood floors in living room, upstairs hallway, and upstairs bedroom.
• Replace kitchen cabinets
• Replace kitchen linoleum with something that's not linoleum
• Replace kitchen counters with something that's not laminate
• Replace bathroom linoleum
• Repaint dining room, the yellow is just a little too tart looking, needs to be more subdued
• Touch up/repaint upstairs hallway. Like the color but needs to be touched up
• Repaint front porch
• Repair basement steps
• Consider replacing hardware on faucets etc
• Consider replacing hardware in kitchen
• Paint living room
• Set up work out stuff in basement
• Price treadmills
• Restain back deck

Short and Sweet

Real Estate: Purchase and Sale is signed, next is the moment we have all been waiting for......the Appraisal.

Moving: Our landlords are going in to the apartment today to take pictures for the Craigslist ad. We are confiscating any boxes we see, M has totally dismantled the music room already. I have listed lots of books on half and have a bunch more, including undergrad textbooks, to give away.

Family: My cousin and her friend left, we were sent a lovely Edible Arrangement as a Thank You from my aunt and uncle. My mother was planning on coming in September, she managed to persuade the same aunt and uncle to come out with her! Should be so much fun. It's been forever since they came out for a non-huge life event (college graduation, marriage).

School: Got a 24/25 on the final for my last class, waiting for my final course grade to be posted so I can get the partial reimbursement for the class. My online class, Health care Policy, Ethics, and Finance has started after an ever so brief respite (4 days) from my Spring class. One 8-10 page paper and a group project/presentation. Shouldn't be too bad...and it's my last summer class so I just need to power through..

Short and Sweet

Sorry for the sporadic postings but we have a ton of stuff going on, including but not limited to:

real estate wheelings and dealings
offer accepted, purchase and sale pending. crossing my fingers that the house is appraised decently or we have to rework our funding or renegotiate with the sellers....Radon test was sent in today, results pending

school
took the final last thursday, got 24/25. New class starts today (health care policy, economy, and finance)

guests
cousin and friend arrived last wednesday, leaving this wednesday.

....And It's Good!

After many calls from our agent to the seller's agent, our offer was accepted late Friday afternoon!

We're so thrilled, we think we got a great deal and the house has everything we wanted that we were afraid was too much for our price range. The home inspection is on Wednesday, we're doing our own radon kit. The purchase and sale will be contingent on the radon results. Our closing date is 6/26/09. We gave notice to our landlords, but they wanted 60 days to find someone so we're in there until the end of July. That works out fine because we can clean the new place before moving anything in, do some paint touch ups etc.

My tasks for this week include getting quotes from movers, finding an attorney to review our purchase and sale, and find out to lock our interest rate in.

We took a drive past the house yesterday and checked out the main street that's kind of near our house. We have plenty of things very close to us, but we're removed enough that we won't here traffic noise etc. We were delighted to see that the grocery store was substantially cheaper, gas was cheaper, and there was no line!

Tick Tick

We put an offer in on a house.....we've been waiting for 24 hours at this point to find out if it's accepted. We thought we'd be a shoe in by asking more than offering but I think there's a lot of interest in this house.

Communication from the seller's agent to ours has been spotty at best. It seemed like we would get a definite answer at two previous deadlines so hopefully this time he means it.

I'll keep you posted....

School/Home Search

Well, we now have a real estate agent working with us. It's someone we met at an open house and planned to call and then she got in touch with us to get feedback on what we didn't like about the house. Worked out well.

Also, we finally got our preapproval letter! We gave them the paperwork on April 24 and received the letter yesterday. They weren't kidding when they said their turn around time was decreased because everyone and their brother is refinancing.

School related news....last night was my last night of class. Now to study for the final...we were given a study guide (the exam is the first closed book exam of my graduate career) which was three pages long. Good thing the test is 2 weeks away....Two more clinic days left and I'm done. I survived!

Weekend recap



Knitting--finished 1.75 sleeves now. Should be able to finish the second sleeve tonight and then I think the easy part is over for this pattern. The sweater will be an Elizabeth Zimmerman special. I am hoping this goes better than my first attempt. While the concept seems easy, the instructions prove difficult since she wrote her patterns more in the form of a chapter of a book than a step by step. I found several steps very confusing making M's saddle sweater and had to call out to my ravelry.com peeps to get me through it. Maybe now that I've done one of her patterns this one will make more sense....



House hunting--it was the kind of weekend that makes us think we are either too picky or we want things that are outside of our budget. We didn't see anything overly promising at any of the open houses this weekend. We are supposed to get our preapproval letter today, when we have it in hand we are going to call one of the agents we met at one of the houses to get some help weeding things out. There was one near some friends of ours that looked very promising in the pics and then of course we get there and it was an instant no. It was actually cuter from the outside than I thought it would be and the inside was not as cute as I thought it would be. Go figure. It had a much older/out of date feel than I thought it would. Several other houses were no's from the second we walked in, one seemed like it had to be a foreclosure even though it wasn't marked as such. There was a distinct smell of cigarettes as soon as you walked in, ashtrays everywhere. They hadn't even taken the time to make their beds! There was one that was cute but built around the same time as our apt now, the windows needed to be replaced. There wasn't much space in the basement for us to be able to have a treadmill and M's music area. The upstairs was very cramped. It was 2 full baths but I didn't like that there was no bathroom on the first floor, one was upstairs and one was in the basement. Nothing has been a perfect fit so far.

Power Up

This weekend we went to more open houses, out of the 6 + that we saw one was close to what we are looking for. It was a cape style house with a nice backyard, a seemingly nice neighborhood (if we were willing to look the other way at the collection of men across the street holding beer cans without their shirts on). The house itself was mostly updated except the kitchen was smallish and hadn't been updated, but wasn't nearly as outdated as some of the other things we've seen. I was slightly confused the by layout, they had 4 bedrooms but made the bedroom on the ground floor into a TV room, and what I would have thought of as the living room was used as a 'sitting room'.



The concerns with this house is that the basement wasn't finished, so that would be something we would have to do. It's close to a swampy area which means tons of mosquitos in summer. Also, there are plans to build a power plant within 2 miles of the house, although it looks like these plans have been stalled for some time. I started looking at zoning maps and what not last night, and what exactly it means to be that close to a power plant. Basically, it's not great but on the other hand there are so many power plants here it would be impossible to avoid the effects completely. I stumbled on one report last night that suggested that effects are felt from 10-20 miles from the power plant. I then googled to see the nearest power plant to us now and there are several in the city so I'm apparently already feeling the effects of it.



Decisions, decisions. The search continues.

Sum it Up

• Green Sweater is done, I've worn it twice outside of the house and people liked it.
• Applied for a mortgage
• More open houses last week, two of note
• One more class left
• M's car dead in driveway
• Boigie is a fave at the vet
• Finished Northern Clemency--great writing. It's like the movies I like, not really much happens but somehow it's still really good.

Historical Lows

Ok, so I have heard sooo many times that interest rates on mortgages were at historical lows but I didn't really do the math until I attended a homebuyer seminar yesterday at work....now I feel the sense of urgency that everyone else has been feeling. The low interest rates, home prices at 2003 levels ( in my area at least), and the 8k homebuyer credit are all making me feel like we need to get moving on this.



We have started going to open houses, mainly just to see what we can get in different communities for our dollar...but now I'm thinking, we need to get serious about this. To take advantage of the first time home buyer credit, you must close by 12/1/09...closing takes about 60 days so that's the end of September...which means we need to start looking if we are at all serious.



The cons to buying now:

Will eliminate our cash reserve in an extremely iffy market



I've got one year left of school and will need to cut my hours from 40 to 30 hours beginning in September to accommodate my school schedule



The initial plan was to wait until we had a kid so we would know what to expect for child care costs



I don't know what to expect for my salary after school, I have heard that I may need to take a pay cut if you can believe it, although my salary is stagnant in my current position and has been for the 6 years I've been here so I doubt that will be the case.



Addendum: I wrote this a few days ago and forgot to put it up. We decided to get pre approved and start looking....first, we need to have a convo with the landlords because this would mean breaking the lease agreement. Next up--get preapproved.

Happenings In Short

As usual, I have zero time to post but in short, here are the details of my life lately:

• Laptop almost died, M saved it. Hard drive #3 and still kicking
• Cellphone almost died, M saved it. He's not sure how
• Open houses last weekend,cute neighborhoods but horrible commute.
• Class today, no clinical Thursday. 3 classes left after today. Note to self: savor current and summer schedule, because Fall is going to suck the big one.
• Got new yarn from Webs from aniversary sale for 2 new sweaters for me
• S and A are having another boy
• Anniversary coming up this weekend, M has something planned but don't know what.
• New yarn came: One is camel colored, one is a burgundy/aubergine.
• Farm pick up last Sunday. Pick up switching to Saturdays for summer.
• Cookie taste test: Nestle if you like chocolate, Pillsbury if you don't.
• New running shoes this weekend. They call it persimmon, I call it bright orange.

Robot Mode

Sorry for the sporadic posting.

I've hit the point in the semester where I feel that I'm on autopilot and start counting the weeks until my life is my own again. I feel like I get up, go to work, get home, eat dinner, chill out for a minute, go to bed repeat.

Anyhoo, presented last night in class, my only one for the semester so I'm glad that's done. The next hurdle will be my instructor coming to see my in clinic, I'm not sure what she does when she's there...if she comes in to see patients with me or what.

Cat update: they're doing well. Not the best of friends quite yet, but they are playing with each other somewhat, but inevitably, one gets annoyed at the other and smacks him in the head and one walks away.

Trip planning: I am in the middle of looking up hotels in San Fran. I asked one of my friends who used to live there about the best places to stay in terms of neighborhoods. She steered me away from the super touristy areas and into either the Castro or Mission neighborhoods but I'm having problems finding a selection of hotels in those areas, and hence, reviews. And tripadvisor.com is my friend...Also, SF isn't the bulk of the trip so I will want to do more of the touristy things than exploring eccentric neighborhoods so I'm leaning towards staying in Union Square of the Financial District because it seems that's where most of the attractions are.

Real estate: M and I went to 6 open houses last week in a town about 20 miles from where we are now because it's the closest affordable town to our current jobs. Out of the 6, we liked one and luckily we both agreed. Not that we are even quasi serious at this point. We have too many things going on...the overall economic strife, me being in school, the housing market still tanking, still saving up for a nice downpayment. But at least we agree at this point what we are looking for and the price range we want to be in. Incidentally, two of the houses have an offer pending..one I saw online and one via a phone call I got from the real estate agent who is soliciting offers for the house based on the sign up sheet. He left me a message saying that he got an offer and just wanted to give everyone at the open house a fair shot...me thinks there either is nothing cooking with this property or they did get an offer and it was totally low ball.....needless to say we didn't call him back. It was one of our least favorite houses.

Busy busy busy

In short, until I can expand, the week in review:

Cats are integrated, no more hissing

Presentation due for class today

Open houses this past weekend

Sick this past weekend

Need to finish planning San Fran trip

Real Estate Field Trip and Other Assorted Weekend Doings

On Saturday, M and I did a little real estate tour of all of the houses I had been stalking online. We have decided that the town we live in is too expensive for us to be able to buy there, or if we did buy there the house wouldn't be big enough and would need a ton of work. We started branching out and discovered, obviously, that the further away from the city you get, the more affordable things are. And they have the amenities and space we're looking for. And this would come with a long commute so it will be some give and take for sure. We're not ready to actually start looking looking, but we're going to start going to some open houses just to get a sense of what we could actually get for what we're willing to spend. If we stumble on somethign that is a total steal, we would consider it but otherwise, we're going to keep the cheddar accumulating at our almost non existent interest rate hoping to beef up our down payment to reduce mortgage payments. Just to get a sense of the status of things in our neck of the woods, there are two homes in the entire city selling for $349.9k. This is the cheapest price and both homes are 970 ish square feet, 2 beds 1 bath and total total fixer uppers. Some of the cities we looked at further out don't even have listings priced that high, it would be entirely possible to get a 1250+ square foot home with 3 beds and 1-1.5 baths for 260-300k. Now you see how it would be stupid for us not to move from our 'hood.




I also managed to get in a little shopping this weekend...it's always at this time of year where I start to feel really really sick of wearing the same old sweaters and I wander out into the nearest mall hoping that I will suddenly be inspired by some really awesome and novel ideas in the new spring line. No! Either I'm really boring and keep gravitating to the same things or the same things are constantly being touted as 'New for Spring'. I think it's a little of column A and a little of Column B. I ended up with a black V neck on clearance at Tristan, a few camisoles at the Gap to put under said V neck, and some fun lipsticks from Sephora. I already have more lipstick than I know what to do with so I forced myself to throw out some really old ones that are lingering from my days as a CVS pharmacy techinician back in the early 2000's. I also purchased this T shirt from McSweeney's, a web site featuring short stories and other literary submission categorized into a variety of themes. It never lets me down and always leaves me laughing so I try to support them in troubled times!