furiousBlog

Getting ready for the move is taking up all my time (well, not all of it; I did watch last night's excellent episode of Heroes...). We put in the papers requesting that we be allowed to move stuff into the new house earlier than the settlement date. Our realtor recommended against it, but we're doing it anyway. If they agree, we can start moving stuff in but we can't actually start living there until we settle.

We're really trying to move on the cheap. This means that we'll be using our van, and possible our relatives' vans, to do most of the moving. As long as we can get in early and take our time, this won't be a problem. If we have to wait until settlement, we'll have to rent a truck and it'll be a big pain in the butt. Assuming we can get in early, our plan is to move everything except for the stuff we'll actually need in the interim: clothes, beds, minimal kitchen stuff, the TV, etc. We've already packed up about half our stuff, which is now taking up half of our living room.

Another thing to report is that we finished up all the stupid stuff the buyers wanted fixed from the home inspection. Their inspector did a pretty bad job and found some really nit-picky stuff. There were a couple things that really did need fixing like a couple leaks in the roof and the refrigerator door gasket (the squishy thing around the door that makes the seal). There was also some things that didn't need fixing like the sump pump that he claimed wasn't working and was about to overflow. It had been raining like mad that day and the sump was filling up; it just hadn't reached it's trigger point when he looked at it. It's working fine and didn't overflow. The best illustration of their inspector's ineptitude is that he said we had to put in a cold water cutoff valve to the kitchen sink but didn't require one for the hot water. He apparently confused the cutoff for the dishwasher with a hot water cutoff.

So the current state of things is: busy doing all the obnoxious little getting-ready-to-move tasks that are usually the worst part of moving. In our case, however, the waiting for seven and a half months is/was the worst part (barring further catastrophies, of course).

As a side note, my parents finally got in to look at the house. They drove by it to look at the outside and in the windows when a neighbor came out and said that the car parked in the driveway didn't come with the house (he was taking advantage of the extra driveway while it was available). My parents got to talking to him and my mom asked if he by chance had a key to the house. Weird question to ask some random guy, no? Well, he did and he let them in; he let two complete strangers in to a house that wasn't his. Obviously, we'll be changing the locks... Anyway, he showed them through the whole house and discussed all the different changes that people have made to this model house. They really liked the house (and the neighbor, too).

It's official, our house has a real, live contract on it. Over the weekend, we went back and forth with the buyers several times before we finally came to an agreement on the terms. We signed the papers last night and after we got one document that we were waiting on, faxed them over to the buyers. At the same time, we removed the contingency on the offer we had in on the new house.

It's done. Our house has sold (barring any surprises in the next couple weeks, that is). We're buying a new one. This has been a miserable experience. I'm glad it's (nearly) over. And it only took seven months, two weeks and two days!

The people who came on Saturday and then again on Tuesday submitted an offer. Calling it an offer kind of exagerates it, however. We're asking $309,900 and were offering $3000 in closing costs. They offered $295,000 with us paying $11,000 in closing costs. That's a $23,000 difference. Needless to say, this is a low-ball offer. We're probably going to make a counter offer of the full price but with the $11k in closing costs. We're waiting, however, for some people who said they were really interested to come see the house first, just in case they want to make a better offer. It's a long shot, but what's another day or so after 7+ months?

If we end up countering the current offer it'll be subject to us getting a deal we can live with from the sellers of the house we want to buy. They'll need to come down some for all this to work. They've been on the market even longer than we have and they've already moved out. We're hoping that those two things make them motivated to sell when a 'real' (non-contingent) offer is on the table.

Update 11/9/06 9pm:It looks like we're going ahead with our counter offer. We're having to do some financial shenanigans to make it all work.

Isn't today the best day ever? The Republicans have lost control of the House and probably the Senate and now Donald Rumsfeld is resigning!

And on the technology front, Sun is open-sourcing the Java programming language and releasing it under the GPL! (this probably won't mean much to most of my readers, but believe me, it's a good thing)

What a day!

p.s. Why doesn't anyone ever post comments to my political posts?

I had a few hours to kill at Laguardia airport in NYC before my flight home from my recent trip. So, I picked up a book that I had first noticed a week earlier but had decided against buying. The place where I first noticed it was at National Airport (some know it as Reagan National, but to me it's just National) and the book was The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. This book, like Midnight, is a nonfiction book that expresses the essence of a particular city by telling the various stories of its inhabitants. Even though it is nonfiction, it reads like a good novel with tragedy, mystery, and a cast of characters that would've turned Charles Dickens green with envy.

The city in The City of Falling Angels is Venice, Italy. The tragedy is a fire at the Fenice, a beautiful, historic theater. The mystery is why did the Fenice burn: accident, neglect, or arson? As great a story as that is, though, the real point of the book is to just tell the stories of the characters: the master glass-blower, who witnessed the fire from his home close to the theater; the rat poison manufacturer (the secret is that rats eat what the people around them eat, so he puts local ingredients into the poison); the snarky artist who donated a statue of a horse to the city and invited a member of the government (who just happened to be an ex-stripper) to the unveiling (when the statue was unveiled, she was topless astrided the statue); the famous poet and his mistress-turned-wife; and many others (all just as colorful as the last). Some of the best characters in the story aren't people at all, but the buildings and the city of Venice itself. The two buildings that most stand out in my mind are the Fenice and the Palazzo Barbaro. The book dedicates many pages to the histories of both: the twists and turns of fate that have lead to their present.

John Berendt, in a mini-interview on the book's Amazon.com page (linked above) tells of one of the most memorable characters to him and gives an excerpt from the book:

I don't have a favorite, but Count Girolamo Marcello is certainly a memorable, highly quotable commentator. "Everyone in Venice is acting," he told me. "Everyone plays a role, and the role changes. The key to understanding Venetians is rhythm, the rhythm of the lagoon, the water, the tides, the waves. It's like breathing. High water, high pressure: tense. Low water, low pressure: relaxed. The tide changes every six hours."

I nodded that I understood.

"How do you see a bridge?" he went on.

"Pardon me?" I asked, "A bridge?"

"Do you see a bridge as an obstacle--as just another set of steps to climb to get from one side of a canal to the other? We Venetians do not see bridges as obstacles. To us, bridges are transitions. We go over them very slowly. They are part of the rhythm. They are the links between two parts of a theater, like changes in scenery. Our role changes as we go over bridges. We cross from one reality ... to another reality. From one street ... to another street. From one setting ... to another setting."

Once I had absorbed that notion, Count Marcello continued: "Sunlight on a canal is reflected up through a window onto the ceiling, then from the ceiling onto a vase, and from the vase onto a glass. Which is the real sunlight? Which is the real reflection? What is true? What is not true? The answer is not so simple, because the truth can change. I can change. You can change. That is the Venice effect."

I was not terribly surprised when he later told me, "Venetians never tell the truth. We mean precisely the opposite of what we say."

In the telling of the various character's stories the reader is given a glimpse at the heart of Venice. When the book is over, the reader (this reader, at least) is left wanting more: more history, more characters, more story, more Venice.