Been a while
So, yeah. Much ranting ahead. Behind the cut, so I'm not cluttering people's LJ's with pages and pages of babble.
For starters, para-chan and I went into maintenance last week. It was time. After hovering around the same weight for ten weeks, I was loosing momentum. At this point, the main reason to go into maintenance was to have a greater choice of diet entrees. (You know, the ones in the freezer case at the grocery store.) It seems to be working out well, really, although with all the work I've been doing lately, I've also been really hungry. The nice thing was being able to go into Four Seas last Saturday and order dim sum.
Saturday last was the Chinese New Year parade in San Francisco. We go every year. The girls bought jade bracelets, I bought mala, and we had a good time all around. We'll have to go back and pick up some of the mini tea sets we saw in Chinatown to sell on Den of Angels.
Move-wise, things have gotten interesting in the sense of the Chinese curse. For starters, a little back story:
About a year ago (I'm not entirely sure exactly when), my father-in-law put his house here in town on the market and moved to Oregon. The real estate agent he hired behaved in a very flaky manner. She staged the house but didn't really pay much attention to it even though she lives right across the street. So the air beds she had in there regularly went flat (including one of them leaving a mark on the freshly painted wall). The yard was ignored despite her assurance that her son would be over to keep it looking decent. And the house sat vacant.
In that time, she got one offer on the house. From a client of hers. But somehow that fell through. I never got the whole story, but it seems irresponsible to lose a sale like that.
So, around Thanksgiving, Sean started talking to his dad again about renting the place. The decision was reached around Christmas to give the agent until the beginning of February. If the house didn't sell, we could move in. The house didn't sell. Agent fired. House is ours.
We began the work necessary to get the house livable: cleaning the yard, fumigation, re-roofing, replacing of the windows. Deposits have been made. Work has been scheduled and in some cases completed.
The agent came up with an offer. She contacted father-in-law. He told her that he'd commited the house to us, and he wasn't selling. Two questions: when did these people see the house? She was fired a month ago! What the hell is she thinking? She was fired, AND the house was taken off the market! So, what does she do? She comes back with a counter-offer that's $20K higher than the original offer. Hello?! People are moving in to this house!
This would all be well and funny, save that Sean told his dad to do what he felt was right. If he wants to, he can take the offer. At the moment, father-in-law is in Mexico and checking his email about once a week. So, while we're in the middle of moving in, the roof is scheduled to be done this week, and we're waiting for the windows to be built, we're also waiting to find out if the house is going to sell or not. Oh, and I forgot to mention, we've already given our current landlords notice that we're moving.
FRUSTRATED! Part of me wants to contact her and give her a piece of my mind, but I'm worried that Sean would be angry at me for doing something that bold. Part of me wants to lodge a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.
So, yeah, went from sitting in the future workroom plotting where to put the furniture to sitting in the current workroom bitching about real estate agents who have their heads lodged firmly up their butts. Not all of them do. We had amazing agents when we bought and sold our last house.
In other news, Sean started his new job this week. He's working in SF for the next two weeks, and he's thinking about working there regularly. There is the issue of getting to and from the city. CalTrain takes forever (about two hours). Driving means paying expensive parking. And here was no parking at the BART station when he got to Fremont this morning. Perhaps now he'll see why I offered to help with that part of the commute.
Kuma is growing like a weed. At eight months, he's almost as large as Oni. Regularly, he gets mistaken for her or vice versa. It doesn't help that they both have red collars. At least he has the bell.
Feeling like there's so much I have left to do. We're supposed to continue moving into the house as if nothing has changed, but it's hard to convince myself to commit the energy to it when I'm not sure if we're going to have to turn around and bring everything back or move it somewhere else. Morale is currently quite low. Maybe that will pick up when Xan arrives. He's coming from Canada. (Yes, I'm talking about ANOTHER doll.) I had been saving up for a very expensive doll, but I sort of fell out of love with the sculpt. Poking around, I found one that I actually quite like for the character for half the price. I snatched him up and am planning the changes I'll need to make to him to fit the character. He shipped yesterday priority (4-5 days) from Canada, so he should be here sometime next week. I don't trust Canada post, but since he won't be inbound through Canadian customs, the chances of him getting ruined/lost/damaged are much lower. I've heard such terrible horror stories about Canadian customs.
Wanna see the doll? Go here. Wanna get him those smexy nerdy glasses, too.
I should probably get to it. Plans for today are grocery shopping and another run by the other house to drop stuff off. Bleh.
For starters, para-chan and I went into maintenance last week. It was time. After hovering around the same weight for ten weeks, I was loosing momentum. At this point, the main reason to go into maintenance was to have a greater choice of diet entrees. (You know, the ones in the freezer case at the grocery store.) It seems to be working out well, really, although with all the work I've been doing lately, I've also been really hungry. The nice thing was being able to go into Four Seas last Saturday and order dim sum.
Saturday last was the Chinese New Year parade in San Francisco. We go every year. The girls bought jade bracelets, I bought mala, and we had a good time all around. We'll have to go back and pick up some of the mini tea sets we saw in Chinatown to sell on Den of Angels.
Move-wise, things have gotten interesting in the sense of the Chinese curse. For starters, a little back story:
About a year ago (I'm not entirely sure exactly when), my father-in-law put his house here in town on the market and moved to Oregon. The real estate agent he hired behaved in a very flaky manner. She staged the house but didn't really pay much attention to it even though she lives right across the street. So the air beds she had in there regularly went flat (including one of them leaving a mark on the freshly painted wall). The yard was ignored despite her assurance that her son would be over to keep it looking decent. And the house sat vacant.
In that time, she got one offer on the house. From a client of hers. But somehow that fell through. I never got the whole story, but it seems irresponsible to lose a sale like that.
So, around Thanksgiving, Sean started talking to his dad again about renting the place. The decision was reached around Christmas to give the agent until the beginning of February. If the house didn't sell, we could move in. The house didn't sell. Agent fired. House is ours.
We began the work necessary to get the house livable: cleaning the yard, fumigation, re-roofing, replacing of the windows. Deposits have been made. Work has been scheduled and in some cases completed.
The agent came up with an offer. She contacted father-in-law. He told her that he'd commited the house to us, and he wasn't selling. Two questions: when did these people see the house? She was fired a month ago! What the hell is she thinking? She was fired, AND the house was taken off the market! So, what does she do? She comes back with a counter-offer that's $20K higher than the original offer. Hello?! People are moving in to this house!
This would all be well and funny, save that Sean told his dad to do what he felt was right. If he wants to, he can take the offer. At the moment, father-in-law is in Mexico and checking his email about once a week. So, while we're in the middle of moving in, the roof is scheduled to be done this week, and we're waiting for the windows to be built, we're also waiting to find out if the house is going to sell or not. Oh, and I forgot to mention, we've already given our current landlords notice that we're moving.
FRUSTRATED! Part of me wants to contact her and give her a piece of my mind, but I'm worried that Sean would be angry at me for doing something that bold. Part of me wants to lodge a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.
So, yeah, went from sitting in the future workroom plotting where to put the furniture to sitting in the current workroom bitching about real estate agents who have their heads lodged firmly up their butts. Not all of them do. We had amazing agents when we bought and sold our last house.
In other news, Sean started his new job this week. He's working in SF for the next two weeks, and he's thinking about working there regularly. There is the issue of getting to and from the city. CalTrain takes forever (about two hours). Driving means paying expensive parking. And here was no parking at the BART station when he got to Fremont this morning. Perhaps now he'll see why I offered to help with that part of the commute.
Kuma is growing like a weed. At eight months, he's almost as large as Oni. Regularly, he gets mistaken for her or vice versa. It doesn't help that they both have red collars. At least he has the bell.
Feeling like there's so much I have left to do. We're supposed to continue moving into the house as if nothing has changed, but it's hard to convince myself to commit the energy to it when I'm not sure if we're going to have to turn around and bring everything back or move it somewhere else. Morale is currently quite low. Maybe that will pick up when Xan arrives. He's coming from Canada. (Yes, I'm talking about ANOTHER doll.) I had been saving up for a very expensive doll, but I sort of fell out of love with the sculpt. Poking around, I found one that I actually quite like for the character for half the price. I snatched him up and am planning the changes I'll need to make to him to fit the character. He shipped yesterday priority (4-5 days) from Canada, so he should be here sometime next week. I don't trust Canada post, but since he won't be inbound through Canadian customs, the chances of him getting ruined/lost/damaged are much lower. I've heard such terrible horror stories about Canadian customs.
Wanna see the doll? Go here. Wanna get him those smexy nerdy glasses, too.
I should probably get to it. Plans for today are grocery shopping and another run by the other house to drop stuff off. Bleh.