But I can't do that. Why? Because I'm trying to be responsible and do the right thing.

I just can't seem to make myself ask for help. I'm tired of being a burden on everyone I know.

I just love the people who tell me stuff like: go to a church, the state, your family for help.

NOT!

For the most part, they haven't walked in my shoes, and if they have, they've forgotten what not being able to live up to your responsibilities is like. Like the guy who "borrowed" money from me some years ago, promising to pay me back, and never did. When I ask him to help me by paying the money back now, he says he doesn't have it, and he'd give it to me if he could.

But you know what? He could.

I gave the money to him when I really shouldn't have, when I needed it more than he did, but like a dummy, I did it anyway, because I believed him when he said he'd pay me back.

Now I need it, and he's nowhere to be found. How convenienent, huh?

I've never asked him for anything before. Now that I have, he's gone to ground. Thanks, pal. Thanks a whole bunch.

=====

I was supposed to go up to Edmond yesterday to look at apartments near UCO, but when Chaz came over, he wanted to do other things, and by the time we were done with those, it was too late to see any apartments, and most of the ones I wanted to see are closed on Sunday.

GRRRR!

=====

Daniel asked me to get information about Cricket cell phone service last weekend, and I found out a lot about it. He and Jeff and I are going to go in on a plan together, because Daniel decided that he really needs a cell phone, I need a new service because I'm tired of TracFone, and Jeff just wants a new toy, I think.

Of course, he hasn't been available to tell him about this since we talked about it. It's either been too late, too early, he's not home, or the line is busy because his girlfriend has called yet again.

I think I will try to call when I'm done with this post.

=====

Seems that the Great Commonwealth of Massachusetts is going to pay to send Jon to school. To be an IT guy.

Now why didn't Jon do that years ago? He has the knowledge to do that kind of work. Why did he take a series of low paying jobs when he could have been doing this all along?

To get out of paying child support, I suspect.

But, that's another rant for another day.

=====

I wonder if Larry ever caught the possums living under his sister's house?

=====

Okay, I'm done.

For now (heh heh).

That's all from where I sit.

--MorelaterZ--

IRVINE, Calif. (AP) — Top-ranked Penn State won its first NCAA men's volleyball championship in 14 years, rallying for a 27-30, 33-31, 30-25, 30-23 victory over second-ranked Pepperdine on Saturday night.

Matt Anderson had 29 kills for the Nittany Lions (30-1), who beat UCLA in 1994 for their last NCAA men's volleyball title. Anderson, the national co-player of the year, was selected the NCAA tournament's most valuable player.

Teammate Luke Murray added a career-high 12 digs, tied a season best with 63 assists and had nine block assists. Max Lipsitz had 17 kills, and Max Holt added 12 kills, nine block assists and two service aces.

Penn State also became the second school to win NCAA men's and women's titles in the same academic year. Stanford accomplished the feat in 1997.

In a nice little online feature, you can stop by and congratulate the team here.

Raise a glass tonight for your fellow Nittany Lions. Don't try to keep up with this guy, though.

Weird. Wonder if my parents felt like this when we moved to the town where I grew up? Strangers in a small town, knowing at some point you would recognize almost everyone at the grocery store. I've lived in big cities for too long. This is all rather nostalgic, yet foreign.

Rented One House.

Bought 1 House.

Now I just need to move two houses into storage.  Move into a rental for 6 months and keep things as normal as possible for my kids and family.  And continue to build the new home from the ground up and not make too many mistakes.

Seems pretty straightforward right?

• 31 Days Till Moving
• 41 Days Till Closing

I originally started this blog for the stupid assed reason that I wanted to leave a comment on someone else's blog but it wouldn't let me without going through the bullshit of signing up to blogger.

My, we've come a long way in two years.

This is going to take awhile, I ain't the most tech savvy dude out there so bear with me.

I will probably keep posting at Blogger until I get the plastic tore off and get that new blog smell aired out.

I will leave the Blogger spot there as an archive with a link to here,just to challenge my mad skillz.

I am going to look like that fucking cat soon, I can just feel it.

• The 15-year-old septic tank has never been pumped. They should be tended to every 5-7 years, so depending on your preference, this should have been done 2-3 times already. It has not.
• Several drains are slow. The wife has long black hair (which she didn't bother to sweep off of the bathroom floor, but whatever), and we're guessing this is the issue. But, we're not plumbers, so a professional needs to get in there, snake the drains, and find out what's going on. I own a snake. I can do it. They're trying to sell, it's their funk, let them handle it.
• Two flashings on the roof need to be replaced. There is already a water stain on the kitchen ceiling that seems to be a direct result of one of the cracked flashings.
• Two of the windows aren't in their tracks. Needs to be addressed.

Apparently, this bitch is already feeling "beaten up" over the price we offered and that she accepted. As I told our agent yesterday, if she's that uncomfortable with the money, then she should not have accepted. And if she's offended, that's not really my problem. Drama queen deems none of the repairs necessary. Her opinion doesn't count for shit in terms of the legal contract. She is willing to shell out $250, but that's it. We asked that they just cut us a check at closing for $500 so we could have the repairs done to our satisfaction, but nooooooooooo. The husband was on board, but wifey is getting uppity. Our agent offered to cover the remaining $250, which is nice, but shouldn't be necessary.

The bottom line is this: we don't want to walk away over a measly $250. On the other hand, we don't want to bend over for this woman, either. We've been more than accomodating with her jacking us around with answers on the initial offer and now the repair issues. Both times, her agent was unable to reach her for hours. We didn't care about them keeping the refrigerator. We didn't bat an eye when she asked to take a butterfly bush that someone had given her when her SECOND husband (she's on number 3; red flag, anyone?) died. And yet, she wants to quibble over $250.

No home sale is smooth, I guess. It just seems ridiculous to get worked up over a few repairs. It takes all kinds.

Between 7 and 7:30 p.m., our agent calls. THEY ACCEPTED OUR OFFER. Holy shit! We asked that they throw in the refrigerator (strangely, the only appliance they wanted), and they rejected that portion. Um, no problem. The day was exhausting, but I still woke up wide-eyed yesterday at 3:30 a.m. Couldn't go back to sleep, so I gave in to spinning gears and made coffee.

Yesterday, the hubby began working out the financing, and we decided to go with a local guy that our agent referred us to. We met with him a couple of weeks ago, and he gave us a worse-case scenario monthly mortgage payment based on $10,000 less than we are buying this house for. Okay, so he does his little financing magic, and since the county we live in (the house is about 10 minutes from where we live now...of course) has some of the lowest taxes in the area, the mortgage is a mere $3 more per month than he initially quoted. We'll get the super-duper final number today once he locks in a rate.

I am taking care of the inspection end of things. By god, we're on the books for 9 a.m. tomorrow. There are a lot of tense moments when looking for and subsequently buying a house. You kill yourself to find something you think you can stand to live in. Then, you decide to pull the trigger and make an offer. Next, you wait to see if the sellers accept. There's the money aspect. The inspection is the really scary one for me: it could all fall apart, and already, I'm gonna be a mess if there's something major that could cause us to walk. Once we clear that hurdle, then it's on to worming our way out of the lease on the current dwelling. On and on and on.

Keep your fingers crossed that the inspection goes really well OR that if there is a big problem (or 10) with the place, the inspector finds it before we move in and get bitten in the ass 6 months down the road.

Grow up. Crikey.

We pulled the trigger and made an offer on a house today. The sellers have until tomorrow to respond. For the first few hours, I was cool. Now, I'm a-frettin.' Yes or no. That's all I need. Until they say yes, then the appraisal/inspection/actual moving part of the process kicks into gear.

Oh dear god.

26 - the yard was too small. And there were holes in the walls so doorknob locks could fit into them. FOR REAL. Hey, genius, spent 50 cents and buy one of those door stopper things.

27 - the yard was too small.

28 - the yard was awesome. There was a fucking WINDOW UNIT AIR CONDITIONER in one of the rooms. For $250k, I expect central air and heat. Am I wrong?

29 - the yard was too small. The upstairs was awesome, though. Apparently the owners are total stoners. I have never seen so many snacks stashed in a bedroom before. On the nightstand's exposed shelf and tons of eats in the closet.

30 - it fits all of the criteria, but we weren't excited about it. You should be excited about a place before you start paying $1500 a month to live there for 30 years. Am I wrong? We didn't even ask our agent to show us this one. We're almost embarrassed to call her at this point, so we called the listing agent and she met us as at the property. Considering it's been on the market for 6 months, wouldn't you think she could answer "who is the cable provider?" off the top of her head? Nope. She also wasn't sure if the flooring in the entryway was laminate or hardwood. I said, looks like laminate to me. She agreed. Uh huh.

31-40 - we just drove by these. It's amazing how little you have to see to say no.

We've actually driven by at least 50 houses and eliminated them, so these numbers are quite conservative. If I stop to think we've already put 100 houses in the "no" pile, I'll probably start crying right now.

The End

Don't hold your breath on this one, kids.

Yes, yes. If it's meant to be, it will. We will find the right house. We will not overpay. We will find the right house. We will not overpay. We will...ah, fuck it. Stay tuned.

The hubby and I talk about it, and I slip into full-on devil's advocate mode. Believe me, it's not that I don't like their home. But, I don't want to compete (she's one husband, two houses, and one child ahead of me, but who's counting?) with my friend, either. We've been looking at houses very different from hers, and the last thing I want to do is change my mind based on her fantastic abode and a ridiculous keeping-up-with-the-Jones' mindset.

Let's talk money, too. Her house was $259k, and her taxes are around $2500/year. That's a lot of dough. I didn't even think to ask what their utility bills must be to heat and cool such a large home. The bottom line is, the hubby and I decided to stay the course, but maybe scale back on our desired yard size. He's now thinking of how many hours a week it will take to maintain an acre lot. This summer was definitely an exception since we had very little rain, and therefore very little grass to mow.

I'm very happy for my friend and her obvious financial success (did I mention they purchased the house less than 3 years ago, and it's already paid off in full?), but I'm also happy that the hubby and I can objectively talk about what our family's needs are and not be brainwashed into buying more than we truly need.

The funny thing about house 24 is that the sellers bought it in February of this year and paid $192k. They did some upgrades and have it priced at a whopping $239k. I can assure you they did not spend $47k on this place. Being generous, they might have put $20k into the home. MAYBE. Moving on to house 25.

House 25 is in a killer neighborhood. Priced at $249k, it is by far the cheapest place in the entire subdivision. The next highest home on the market is well over $300k. From an investment perspective, WOO HOO, right? We really liked the floorplan and the 1.29 acre lot. However, the home is 13 years old, and the roof, heating system, and A/C unit are all original. At that age, you're flirting with replacing three very expensive items. A new roof would probably be around $9k-$10k, the heating and A/C each around $5k. Yikes.

We figure a reasonable offer is around $220k, but even at that price, it's too much to pay for a home if we have to shell out up to $20k on a roof and climate control. Who would have thought that finding the right house would be such a colossal pain in the ass? Not me.

We looked at house 22 again on Saturday, this you know. We decide we want to move forward and make an offer. I contact our agent on Monday via e-mail to tell her this and ask several questions, one of which is, where is the septic tank? A reasonable request, especially since the current owner claims it's never been pumped. We would like a freshly flushed out space in which to deposit our waste, thank you.

The agent calls, we discuss the questions and a fair offer because there's a discrepancy with the square footage total, but that's really a smaller issue...we find out later. Because the current owner is so obviously a freakishly lonely and somewhat odd guy, our agent decides to call him after she speaks with the original listing agent to get the skinny on the septic tank. Thank god she did. The former listing agent (the house is now a For Sale By Owner) tells our agent that in his entire real estate career, he has NEVER dealt with such difficult sellers. He goes on to say that the real estate company is about to go into litigation with the home owners. Whoa, sally, what does THAT mean? He's pretty squirrelly on the phone because of the legal issues, but he keeps saying that the sellers were a nightmare. Then he clams up.

The agent and I talk, I call the hubby, and he wonders if this puts us in an even better negotiating position. We all question whether the home will even be available for sale if there's pending litigation and probably a freeze on the owner's assets. So, per my request, our agent calls the former listing agent again to ask if the house will be available. Apparently, he's much more forthcoming during this call. For legal reasons, he didn't want to share any gory details about the sellers, but now he unloads on our agent. You see, the seller told us that they'd had one offer on the house for $5k over asking price, but the deal fell through when the seller's wife was involved in a bad car accident, slipped into a coma, and was unable to sign the paperwork. Tragic, no doubt. Heartbreaking, even. Well, that may or may not be the case. The former listing agent says that there wasn't one contract on the house. There were FOUR. Why so many? The sellers, who are both a bit too friendly with the bottle, it seems, would agree to an offer, then try to back out of it when a better offer came along. I asked our agent why the home was still on the market if an offer had been accepted. She said you do that in the event something falls through with the contract. In this day and age, I can see how that behooves everyone involved. Anyhoo, the sellers accept contract #1 the first day the house is shown. A day or two later, offer #2 comes along for more moolah, so they try to get out of contract #1. Meanwhile, other houses on the same street are listed for a lot more money, so the seller thinks he is leaving cash on the table, so now he's really getting greedy. He seems to forget that every other home around him is larger, but WHATEVER. Within another couple of weeks, two more offers are presented. Before it's all said and done, the seller employs not one, but two different attorneys to help him get out of previously signed contracts. The listing agent tells our agent that the sellers are both irrational drunks. Nice. Almost every day, they tried to renege on some aspect of the currently signed contract. He said he'd never seen anything like it.

Our agent makes a point of not mentioning the wife's (she and the husband are mid-divorce, by the way) car accident and subsequent coma to the listing agent. Strangely, he makes not a single reference to it, either. Our agent and I think it was all a complete lie to cover why the house is now unlisted and still for sale, or a disgusting embellishment based on some shred of fact. The seller told our agent that the wife had pending DUI charges and several other possible charges associated with her accident. Great, eh?

So, do we risk dealing with crazy drunk seller and his drunk driving soon-to-be ex-wife to get a house we really like, but don't love? Or do we walk away?

We walked, bitches. Swiftly.

Underwhelmed, we proceed to house 22. Despite the fact that the seller agreed to vacate the premises so we could tour it unencumbered, the sonofabitch was there. He seems on the verge of some sort of breakdown, and I can't tell if he's a weeper or a rager. Did I mention he's a retired postal employee? Upon seeing him, the hubby and I are so put off that we almost leave. The seller holes himself and his three mongrels (everyone has dogs but us, apparently) into the office so we can look at the house without having to make idle chitchat with this guy.

We like the house. The hubby is satisfied the living room is big enough. We can both live with the stairs. We are going to make an offer. First, we need the actual square footage (we have two different totals at this point), then we need to figure out what our initial offer will be and what our top end is. Most importantly, we are willing to walk away. Now that this might be happening, I'm half scared we'll get it.

Developing...

And so we mull.