dianaschnuth

How sweet. Aaron just called home to see how my trip to visit the Teamster Legal Fund went today.

See, the Teamsters Union has a lawyer on retainer at the Union Hall. Teamsters can consult with the lawyer for free with minor matters—it’s included in Union Dues—and pay only a small co-pay for cases like non-contest divorces and… home closings. And that is the capacity in which I was utilizing the Teamster lawyer this evening.

The meeting was fairly uneventful, and the Purchase Agreement looks perfectly fine. The trip to and from the Union Hall, however, involved me getting turned around and going down wrong streets multiple times. That part of town, up the Anthony Wayne Trail close to downtown Toledo, is a weird place. But I got there in time and got home in the end, and that’s all that matters.

So, we’ve signed the Purchase Agreement. We’ve had it looked over by our lawyer within the three-day period after signing. We’ve paid the appraisal fee for the home appraisal and land survey. The home inspection is on Friday at noon. Closing will be on or before March 5th (hopefully before), after which we are required to give the current owners 30 days to vacate.

Which puts us five days beyond our current lease.

That means that next on the agenda is giving our landlady, Mrs. Smith, a call to appraise her of the situation. We’re really hoping she’ll be nice and extend our lease by a couple weeks or a month. Actually, we haven’t made any provisions for what might happen if she refuses, so I really hope she’s OK with that. 🙂

Once all the boxes are unpacked and we’re in our new house, we’ll definitely be hosting a big party. It may not be until well into the spring, but you can count on it sometime. Oh, yeah, and we’ll have at least one extra bedroom, a big finished basement, and one air mattress, in case anyone gets too… jolly.

*crossing my fingers that the home inspection doesn’t turn up anything bad*

It’s true: we’ve been pre-approved for a mortgage loan. w00t!

Now, Step 2 is finding a realtor and looking at some houses. John from NOIC is being nice enough to do some legwork for us and hook us up with a realtor. I’m sure it’s not just for our benefit, though; I’m getting a definite "you scratch my back…" vibe about his relationship with the realtors he’s researching for us. That’s cool, though. Whatever gets us into a house by April.

While I was looking for houses on Realtor.com the other night, I found this sidebar. Read the caption carefully. Then scratch your head at the randomness and move on.

We’ve found a couple nice homes on Realtor.com, mainly in the Wildwood/Reynolds Corners area of Toledo. We have a few requirements/preferences:

Three bedrooms (or two plus a den) • Attached Garage (preferably two-car) • Dishwasher • Central Air • Pleasant neighborhood (where we can safely take walks)

It would also be nice to have a washer and dryer included in the deal, but we can always buy those later. If push comes to shove, we could install central air later, too, like the Frieses did, but we’d kind of prefer to enjoy the first summer in our new home.

There are lots of other houses that don’t meet all our wants, but that are still pretty cool, too. I think we’ll find something right for us in the right amount of time and for the right price. It’ll be fun.

Gotta go back to work tomorrow. Don’t want to.

Spent today chillin’, cleaning the bedroom, French-braiding my hair (Go me! I done it!), watching TV, and making a Spearmint candle for myself. Did not spend today reflecting on the life of the country’s greatest Civil Rights leader. That’s OK, though, because when I get Presidents’ Day off next month, I don’t intend to reflect on the lives and achievements of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, either. I’ll probably do pretty much what I did today.

John from NOIC also had the day off, so he wasn’t there when I tried to give him a buzz. Hopefully I’ll get some news at work tomorrow about the mortgage. Gah. We need to get going on this shit so we can find a damn house and close on it before March 31st.

My boss has this week off. So, it’s entirely possible that my e-mails and phone calls will increase exponentially starting tomorrow, since he left contact information in his voicemail and e-mail for each division of Quality Control specifically. He oversees not only the Patriot Act issues that I work with, but also Bounce accounts, Deposit Verifications, Kiting, and some other stuff I’m not sure what is. I hope this week doesn’t suck. At least it’ll be short.

Saturday is Ohayocon in Columbus. This year, unfortunately, I won’t have a point-and-shoot camera to bring along, but there were plenty of people last year who posted pics online after the fact. So, I will once again be able to post about the weirdness that ensues.

You know, if I weren’t on the Atkins Diet, not yet to the point of adding alcohol back into my diet, I might have given this a go tomorrow night.

Sometimes, being a girl sucks. I’ll just leave it at that, and let you draw your own conclusions.

Had a nice long meeting with John from NOIC on Saturday. He explained a lot of the finer points of mortgages and first-time home buying that we really hadn’t known. Quite helpful.

John pulled our true credit report this morning, and called me at work about some stuff on Aaron’s. Seems that the bills he paid off through Consumer Credit Counseling Services way back in 2001 are still showing up as outstanding judgements. WTF? So, today was spent calling credit places and attorneys (on Aaron’s part) and calling John for information (on my part). Much more calling was done by Aaron than by me, though.

So, we have to fax John our W2’s for the past two years, and proof that the judgements were settled, once Aaron gets that proof. Eventually. Once Sears and Great Lakes Higher Education get back to him with detailed info.

I should have known it couldn’t be that easy. Blah. If John strings us along like Dan the Mortgage Man, I’m going to be sincerely pissed. I don’t think he will, though, since he’s paid by commission. 🙂

I’m going to go curl up in the recliner now and spend some quality time with my cramps.