Beth's Contradictory Brain

Complete Suckage

Ok, army stuff first. Nerdstar passed her PT test stuff yesterday, barely. I'm like "you couldn't even fail." Bleh. So her heading off to OBC April 5 is pretty much a done deal. Fine.

But, it apparently throws a complete wrench into the house buying.

So after a month of house hunting, I finally saw two houses Thursday that I felt good about, were in good neighborhoods and had great yards. Nerdstar had time after her army stuff friday and we got to go look at them, plus one more our agent found in the meantime. Nerdstar and I didn't totally agree on which house we liked better, but we talked it over and picked one. Before we left the last house we were talking with our agent on what happens next.

Well, that's when things got sucky. In this area all of the houses we're looking at in our price range are what are called "short sales". This is where the owner is in trouble with their mortgage but haven't been foreclosed yet. This means the banks have to approve the selling price since it will be less than what's owed on the house. We knew that a typical short sale can take up to six months to close on. BUT, there are some that are further along in the bank approval process and can be done faster. I had been under the impression we were looking at ones further along.

Our lease ends April 30. Nerdstar leaves April 3. I am able and willing to handle moving everything if she's already gone. And we can do all the paperwork with her gone, by FedEx or whatever. But... I can't buy a house she hasn't seen. Then there's the issue of our apartment complex requiring 60 days notice to move out. Or, if we wanted more time by going month to month it adds $400 to our current rent.

The house we decided on yesterday was a situation where we wouldn't even have any sort of response from the banks before April 10, probably later. That's just for them to approve the price or whatever, that doesn't start the actual buying process. Then there's no guarantee we'd get the house.

There are just no good timelines with all of this.

For now we told the agent we've got three weeks to find a house that is a normal sale situation. I'm honestly not sure there is a house like that in our price range. Even with that we have to talk to our apartment management and see if we can tentatively give 60 days notice, but change to renewing for 6 months instead in 30 days.

Yes, we can delay house hunting until Nerdstar is back from OBC, but she'd be home Sept. 2 and our lease would be up Oct. 31. Who knows what the hell will be going on with the house market then.

I'm so frustrated with all of it. I feel like although the agent has known our timeline, we've wasted time looking at things that don't fit it. I know, it's not a total waste of time, we at least narrowed down an area to concentrate on. But still.

I'm also pissed that the army has once again screwed up our regular life and taken a six month chunk out of it.

I haven't totally given up hope, but I'm getting close.

UPDATE: I write all of that. Then we cook our Saturday breakfast of bacon, toast, scrambled eggs and coffee. Yummy. I check my email and get new listings from our agent and there actually are some good houses for normal sales. Good. Hoping to look at them Monday or Tuesday. Talked to apt. peeps. We went ahead and gave 60 days notice with the option to keep them informed and change plans.

What's Up?

Well Peeps... nada going on here. Still no luck with the house hunting. Am really hoping to go see several more houses the next few days with the gay lady realtor.

The fun thing is, if we want our lease to end in April when it's up - we're supposed to give 60 days notice, which is like, um, Friday. Fun.

I got to work today, out at the other, much more quiet, location as an MA. It's really just secretarial work except it's broken up by having to take someone's temp and blood pressure every so often. The chick is supposed to be out all of March, but I'm not sure when they want me to fill in and when they'll have someone else do it yet.

Nerdstar has to do a physical fitness test Friday for the army to see how her back is and stuff. It's all pretty retarded. Even if she fails the test, I'm not sure that guarantees she doesn't go to OBC. She could go with what is more or less a "note" saying she can only do X amount of physical training while there. And, even if she passes the one Friday, that's not to say she would pass the ones they do the first few days of OBC, and if you fail those they send you home. And we have no idea what getting sent home would mean for her military career.

If anyone's got a spare crystal ball - I'd be more than happy to take it off your hands.

Houses in MD

We had done some driving around in MD a couple of weekends ago, but today we went with the 3rd realtor and looked at six or seven properties. So not good. Most of them still had people living in them, which is different than those here in VA.

One of the many things we don't understand in our house hunting - WTF is up with these floor plans? Every single family home in our price range in a forty mile was built in the 1950s. Must have been some boom here then. And that's fine, we don't mind the age of the houses. From the outside they look like cute little houses with cute little yards. Then we go inside and the rooms make no sense whatsoever. I'm not sure how to describe it. There is no flow.

Another thing we don't understand is how the people in these neighborhoods can afford these houses. We can barely afford them, apparently, and they're not that great.

I don't know. It's like we can't afford the house we'd like here, and we still can't figure out an alternative place to live where Nerdstar can get as good a job. Hell, I'm even willing to entertain military options if it got us out of here and somewhere livable. It's so frustrating.

We haven't given up yet. But man it's depressing.

House Hunting in DC

I know the housing market in a lot of areas is in bad shape, but I don't see evidence of that here in DC. We're finding that even the houses we don't think are that livable are getting multiple offers. I'm assuming these people have refurbishing skills we don't have. Yes, mortgage rates for first time home buyers are low and you can do as little as 3% down. But housing prices around here, while lower than they were a year, certainly two years, ago are lower, they're still not all that low.

To get a decent 3 bedroom 1 and 1/2 or 2 bath house that's updated and has new appliances and isn't twenty to thirty miles from the DC area - prices are still starting around $350K.

We haven't given up yet, but we've decided it's not imperative to buy now. There's still an 80% chance Nersdstar will be gone for OBC from April to late August. We could renew our current lease for six months and see what's what then. We're still looking, and if we find something we really like we'll try to get it. I just wish we had a crystal ball and knew how much mortgage rates and/or house prices would go up by then. Call me crazy, I just don't see it all staying this low for long, in spite of our governments best efforts to screw it all to hell.

Just Another Update

Yawn. I shouldn't be tired. Nerdstar finally got home about 12:30 - 1 a.m. last night. Then we talked for a while and she took the dog out for a short walk. It was really nice not having to get up this morning, so we didn't. We were scheduled to meet with the real estate lady at 1:30 today, so I set the alarm for 11 a.m. - nice!

We're pretty sure we're done dealing with our real estate dude. I'm not sure we were seeing eye-to-eye. We've picked up doing more with our real estate lady found through the gay realtors web site. She's definitely working harder to find us a house. I met with her yesterday to see one house, it needed too much work.

There was another listing she had sent in her email, and I drove over to check out the neighborhood and such for that one. It was a little out in the country, but it looked really promising - until we met her there today and saw the inside. Ugh. Great floor plan, fantastic huge yard - although not fenced, two car garage, fireplace. But... it was kinda trashed. Someone had broken in and tried to steal the stove. They had dragged it down the stairs - breaking down the banister - but had failed to actually get it outside. Most of the bedroom doors were really broken. The carpets were disgusting. And there was some mold along the baseboard in the master bedroom. The best part was over one of the bathrooms was one of those first grade handwriting practice type papers that said "El Bano". Hysterical! Oh yeah, and taped to the door were warrants for the former tenants arrests. Fantastic. All this for $240K. The real estate agent was even more upset at the state of the place than we were.

I mentioned to her yesterday one of the ones I looked at last week and the concerns I had about it. When we were talking with her today that property came up and we decided to go check it out. It's the one with the detached yard and junk cars in the open space next to it. The house next door was built at the same time and has the same floor plan and it's for sale, too. We still think there could be some serious issue, we'll find out tomorrow. But she was very pro-active in finding out the zoning and how to get rid of the cars and stuff like that. The house next door has a lot more cosmetic issues, and the yard isn't fenced, but it's still so much better than everything else we've seen.

Anyway. It's still a horrible commute for Nerdstar. But the one couple we're friends with live out that way.

The general idea is that any houses up in Maryland in our price range would be in the needs too much work genre. It's so frustrating that I don't know how to install floors etc.

So, we'll see what happens this week. We still haven't looked at townhouses because the nice ones tend to have $300 - $400 a month HOA or C/C fees - and that's bullshit. Some have fees that are under $100 a month. We haven't ruled the option out yet, it's just not thrilling.

It just sucks so much that it's going to come down to a nice, livable house or a reasonable commute.

Routines

Our cat Little Man is a special kitty - short bus special. He has a blank stare like I've never seen on any other creature - human or animal. But he can hunt like no one else. He's also a very big kitty - about 19 pounds. Not that he's fat really, he's extremely long and tall.

He does love his food though. We used to keep the cats' food bowl full all the time, but we've cut back. And it seems to upset him when he can see the bottom of the bowl, even if there's still some food in there.

So between 5 and 6 a.m., when he decides he's waited long enough for breakfast, he has this funny routine. He jumps up onto my side of the bed, (closest to the door) walks up around the top of both of our heads, down Nerdstar's side, and then walks over the middle of us and jumps down. The funniest part is he repeats this at whatever interval he thinks works, until one of us gets up and puts food in his bowl.

One morning I guess that hadn't worked and he actually started just running under the bed, up on Nerdstar's side and simply running over the middle of us and back off the bed, kinda like a loop. That cracked us up.

Because I'm Bored

And the pets don't find me particularly amusing.

Thought I'd "live-blog" my evening.

7:50 pm. Nerdstar is up in the sky somewhere between DC and Houston. (Hence my boredom) Waiting for the new season of Survivor - but only because there's nothing else on at 8 p.m. (I still haven't gotten used to being on EST instead of CST.)

7:57 All day has felt like Friday. Which means it will seem even longer until Sunday when Nerdstar gets home. I'm tempted to pack the dog in the car and go play poker in AC. We'll see. Am still hoping to look at houses tomorrow, and if not tomorrow then Saturday.

8:02 Who would have guessed Survivor would be on this long? I'm a bigger fan of The Amazing Race.

8:09 Heh - what a great start to the Survivor season! The outcasts get the easy way to camp, which can only make them more outcast.

8:17 Watching Earl during commercials. Fun. "They even considered having sex with their husbands." Funny.

8:33 The cats decided to get off the bed and come join me for a while. They're so cute. The dog is asleep up against the sofa. (He only gets on the sofa while we're not home.)

8:45 Wow, I bore myself.

9:00 Woohoo time for The Office!

9:04 "There's always a theme."

9:16 I'm tired now, but would bet $100 I won't be able to sleep later.

I'd be twittering all this, but I think that would be obnoxious. Decided to try this instead. Am going to give up this endeavor and just watch 30 Rock and ER.

Interesting Question

Megan has an interesting question over on her blog.

What would make you feel poor?

I had already graduated college and had my own apartment, but not much else. This was when I was still driving my 69 Camaro I'd had since I turned 16. I got into donating plasma for gas and grocery money. That felt pretty poor.

My family didn't have much money when I was growing up, but the idea of poor never, ever occured to me. My mom was a stay at home mom, which I will forever be grateful for. When I was young they gave me a choice between pay as I go, or an allowance. Even then I knew I'd rather be in charge of my own money. I'd rather budget myself than take the chance of them telling me they didn't want to pay for something. If I wanted a $60 pair of shoes and they only wanted to pay $40, I could take the $40 pair or pay the difference. That worked for me.

Somewhere along the way I learned to stop buying things I wouldn't end up using in the long run.

Since Nerdstar and I have been together we went from getting by pretty well, to now when we don't have to worry about money. We eat well. Nerdstar's done her fair share of shopping the past few years. (That's slowed down thankfully.) We've got decent cars, a motorcycle. If we can get a house and not increase our monthly bills by too, too much I'll be thrilled.

Rambling along... what would make me feel poor now? If we couldn't afford even our current level of lifestyle and went into debt. We're not debt free, but we're getting closer all the time. I'd hate for that to change.

No Good News Yet

Still not having much fun.

My oh so romantic woman has decided this is the weekend she needs to go to Houston to visit her grandpa and sister. That's right - Valentine's Day weekend. She's leaving me home alone. Fun.

I actually got to work yesterday. It wasn't too busy and was kinda fun. It's certainly nice to get out of the house and interact with people. Now, my boss was wanting me to fill in for an MA in a different office. Um, well, that would be better if my job training was as an MA and not as a phlebotomist. (MA's are the one's who take your temp, blood pressure, weight, etc and get you ready to see the doc.) But, ok, I always figure I can do anything for one day and they found me a totally automated blood pressure cuff. So I spent yesterday at my normal place doing my normal job plus some training. Tomorrow I was supposed to go to the other location. Then my boss called this afternoon and said the regular person had come back to work and they don't need me. Ok.

This morning I went with the real estate man to see a couple of houses out in the new city we were hoping had better houses.

What he and I came to understand is that we're looking for houses that are considered "contemporary" - meaning the rooms are large and open. All of the houses in our price range are older and while they have plenty of square footage - it's all broken up into tiny rooms. We don't need tiny rooms. If we had $75K or so to knock out all the walls and create an open floor plan - well, cool. But we don't.

He did show me one newer house, built in 2004. But it was kinda strange. It's on a hard to get to street, and there's a small creek bed between the house and the fenced back yard. There's a small bridge to the back yard. Um, ok. It's a tall skinny house. Even with this one I would want to bust out a couple of walls in the basement to make it one huge master bedroom, bathroom, closet. Which would leave the first floor for the kitchen, dining room, and "library" and the top floor with three useless bedrooms. Now, he thinks we could get that house for about $180K. And it is a nice house - for someone. The other problem is there's a weird creek/jungle area next to it with three really old junked cars out there.

If I had to estimate - I'd say the houses we're looking at would be $100K max in almost any other city in this country. Maybe less in this market.

Friday the real estate man and I are going to look at some townhouses in our current city. It's hard to give up the dream of a yard, but... I'm not sure what else to try.

We are seriously $100K out of range of what we really, really want. A year ago we were at least $250K out of range any anything livable. It's crazy. We're beginning to wonder how in the world anyone living here can afford it.

Stimulus Bullshit

Ok, I'm not going to write a very long post about this because I'd end up cussing a lot more than Christian Bale!!

This is the biggest theft of citizens by our government ever. And no one is reporting or acknowledging that the American people are increasingly - with improved information - completely rejecting this spending bill.

Our government is scaring us into giving them the biggest government we've ever seen. This is a bold faced power grab that could bankrupt this country for decades.

I'm outraged. I've written all my reps. Wish there was more I could do. Hell, I'm tempted to make some big signs and go protest outside the capital.

Bleh

Ok, I know I'm going on and on about this house stuff. I'm just not encouraged by what I'm seeing in the listings. Every single family house in our price range was built in the mid 50s. Ugh. Not that they can't be nice, but...

I've got both real estate agents concentrating on one area for now. There's still Maryland, but I'm not seeing anything better up there. I'm not ruling it out though. It would require a third real estate agent.

Then there are townhouses. There are tons of them around here and they are newer. We just really wanted more yard and not to have to deal with an HOA. I'm afraid a townhouse would feel like we're still living in an apartment.

We'll see what transpires this week.

Complicated

Ugh. I'm so tired of life being more complicated than I'd like.

Nerdstar got her official orders for Officer Basic Course yesterday. If they stand, and I'm pretty sure at this point they will, she has to be down in Georgia starting April 5 for seven weeks, then has four days to get to Arizona for three months.

She went to base yesterday to find out what the hell is up with her medical stuff. She ended up going way up the chain of command because that's who she found in the office. Evidently all the paperwork she's been submitting hasn't been routed anywhere it needed to be. Hopefully this higher up will get some answers. BUT. I have a feeling that even if she get some sort of medical profile, it won't prevent her from doing OBC altogether.

All along, for the past couple of years, Nerdstar's had mixed feelings about OBC. It's something that would give her a feeling of accomplishment. If she's going to stick with the reserves and try to finish out her 20, well, of course this is necessary. As for me, well, I've been pretty clear that I would really prefer she get out of the army altogether. It interferes with our lives too damn much. A year ago, or so, I told her she could go to OBC and I'd move back to Austin and see what happened from there. But now we're trying to get a house and settle down and have a grown up life.

All I want is a house and a baby. WTF is that so hard? Yes, the house can happen even if she's heading out. But once again the army fucks up our baby plans.

Anyway. Nothing is set in stone yet. We'll see what the next six to eight weeks bring.

What You Get For The Money

We might be making slow progress in this house hunting. We looked at the interior of one house with our real estate dude last night. It was a really stupid floor plan and not in that great of shape. I really wish the info in the listings included floor plans, I can tell a lot from them.

What we're finding is that within fifteen miles of where were currently live, $250K will get us a house with a yard, maybe fenced, but they all need a LOT of work. Honestly, I'm not sure who was living in some of these houses, or how they were living in them. If I had the ability to refurbish a house myself, these might be good deals. But I don't, so they're not.

We're now going to concentrate on a city that's about twenty five miles from where we are - further from DC and Nerdstar's current job. Now, we're not as concerned with commutes right now, I'm hoping to find a new job closer to wherever we find a house, and she never keeps a job for long anyway. We're really trying to get the most house for the money.

It doesn't have to be perfect. Seeing the inside pics of some of these places, I know I'll be buying a lot of white paint just to get the place back to neutral so we can figure out what colors we'd like. But we're both kind of snobs and would hate to move into a house that's so much worse than our apartment is. Cosmetics are fine to deal with, remodeling not so much.

I'm scheduled to go look at interiors with real estate dude Monday out in the new city we're concentrating on. Hopefully things will look better out there.

Slow Progress

Or maybe not so slow, hard to say. We met in person with the mortgage man and signed our names a hundred times to formalize our application. The man seems like he's good at his job and isn't trying to nickel and dime us. In this house buying stuff we really have to trust these people.

We're not 100% sold on our real estate agent. We're supposed to go look inside houses with him Thursday night. I emailed him a list of properties to make sure they're still on the market and not short sales or something else weird - didn't get a reply. We'll give him a call tomorrow, see how Thursday night goes, and if we're sold I guess I'll make some calls Friday and see if we can find a new one.

We've pulled a lot of listings off online - and driven around quite a bit to get a feel for neighborhoods. I don't disagree with the real estate dude wanting us to do this - we've ruled out 85% of the places so far. But... we need to get going. I know this is not a fast process, but...

House Hunting in MD

Gosh it was a long weekend. Mostly because we went to a friend's house all day yesterday for the Super Bowl and got home very late.

Before that though, we drove up to MD to check out some houses I found listed online. We wanted to see if the city/neighborhood was good, get a feel for things. They didn't feel great. The pics of the interiors looked like these houses would be really nice. But the neighborhoods and the small feeling town were a little on the old/poor side.

I'm going to spend the afternoon doing more searches in both Virginia and Maryland. So far, we've got four houses to see with the real estate dude Thursday night. We did save five or so from the ones in MD yesterday just in case.

What makes this hard, other than our budget, is dealing with two states and probably a forty mile radius from where we currently live.

Huh?

Can someone explain this to me?

The Defense Department is forming a civilian expeditionary workforce that will be trained and equipped to deploy overseas in support of military missions worldwide, according to department officials.

The intent of the program “is to maximize the use of the civilian workforce to allow military personnel to be fully utilized for operational requirements,” according to a Defense Department statement.

Employees in deployable-designated positions will be trained, equipped and prepared to serve overseas in support of humanitarian, reconstruction and, if absolutely necessary, combat-support missions.

Is this a back door way to expand our military? I'm not saying I'm opposed to this idea - if it actually frees soldiers up to blow things up and kill people like the military is supposed to do instead of building schools and construction and social work. But I'm not sure I understand what all the article is saying.

Also, are these people you're going to send into places like Iraq or Darfur and not issue them weapons or train them in any combat skills?

Weird.

And yes, I am all for helping out other countries, just not sure it's the role of the military - but you can't send untrained/unarmed civilians into dangerous places.