Beth's Contradictory Brain

Kitchen

Pics and comments here.

The unpacking is going very slowly. But that's ok. I'm still working on this work from home project, except they keep running out of work.

This is also the first day I haven't had somebody showing up to do something.

Before we moved in, I had a list of things to buy/do to the house and what I figured it would cost. So far it's all on target. I've gotten everything but some shrubs for the front of the house. With seven straight days and nights of rain, I can't do a whole lot outside anyway.

I had some people come and remove the 1980s satellite dish, an old dog house, and a bunch of termite infested fire wood yesterday (yes, it was way away from the house). It was certainly worth the money. It took them just over an hour, it would have taken me all day. The back yard has a huge slope in it, and we have that terrible red dirt, so not much grass grows. I keep joking we just need to put in a big slip-n-slide! I don't think we'll do much with it until next spring. If it becomes too much of a jungle we'll get someone to come deal with it. The front yard is tiny enough I just bought a weed eater to deal with it. Again, red dirt and a huge tree means not much grass. I looked at those manual push mowers, but they don't do well with twigs, which the yard has a lot of. I'll get some shrubs in, then maybe figure out what else it needs later.

Like I've mentioned, this is the quietest neighborhood ever. Seems to be a pretty diverse little cul-de-sac.

Tomorrow I've got a guy coming to install the last section of fence so Ramen dog can use his back yard! He's also going to install a ceiling fan, dimmer switches and a programmable thermostat. I could probably do a lot of that stuff, but without Nerdstar here to help, it'd be more hassle than I'd like. As it is I'm going to be assembling the new kitchen island when it arrives. Fun.

It's a lovely house. But it just won't be a home until my Nerdstar is here with me!!

So Grateful!

The closing is done, I've got the keys to our new home!

Our mortgage man called this morning saying that although there had been a problem with our loan being FHA due to the earlier appraisal issues, everything was fine, it was converted to a conventional loan instead. That lowered our monthly mortgage payment another $20 bucks or so. (From what I understand this is highly unusual and gracious on the part of BB&T.)

I just want to say how grateful to God I am for everything about this whole process. There were time things could have gone wrong, or cost us more money or something in this process, instead things worked out in our favor. I believe God's hand is in that.

I also want to thank all you wonderful people here online who also said words of encouragement and prayer for us. It means a lot. Truly.

Tonight is moving the cats into the new house, once I can get the second one out from under the bed. Then the movers show up at 9 am tomorrow. I won't have internet until Monday at the house, but I'll go somewhere and get some wifi over the weekend.

On The Verge

There's something that feels weird, yet maybe cathartic about moving. About packing and unpacking your life. It's been nice to have plenty of time to pack. I'm still at about 95% done. The kitchen is always the hard part. I've spent weeks visualizing where the boxes go, where the limited furniture we do have goes, unpacking things, getting a real feel for the house. I still haven't even ventured around the back yard.

So it's been really frustrating to not be able to feel excited about all of this because I'm worried there will be some last minute glitch. The closing is at 4 pm tomorrow and as of 4 pm today the people handing the closing don't have the instructions yet. I'm mostly sure everything will be just fine, but again, it's frustrating having to worry.

I'm also really sad Nerdstar isn't here for this. It's a big event and she's away. Now, yes, we could have delayed all of this until she was done with her Army stuff, but part of me also wanted to have this to do while she was gone. (See the title of this blog if you're confused!)

I'm really looking forward to not being in an apartment. The complex we've been in these two years has been really nice. We never hear our neighbors. It's safe. The people, when we do see them, are nice. But I'm tired of having people so close all the time. Poor Ramen dog wants to be social and he barks when he hears anyone outside. It's annoying. I'm looking forward to having the deck in the back yard, and sitting out there. I'm ready for some place that's actually home.

So tomorrow we do a final walk through at 3, the closing at 4. Then I'll come back to the apt. and get the cats and a few things to take over to the house. I don't want to have to deal with the cats the morning the movers come, so they'll be the first to spend the night in the house.

I'll find out tomorrow what time the movers are showing up on Friday. It always amazes me how it'll take them about thirty minutes to load everything we own onto a truck, and then another thirty minutes or so to unload it.

I think the weather's supposed to be decent for Friday. Keep your fingers crossed.

Good News

Word came back that the 2nd appraisal came in at 199,000. Thank God. Literally. Yesterday we told Him it was all in His hands anyway and decided to stop worrying about it all.

So, in essence, this took $20K off the price we thought we were going to pay, and should result in a slightly lower interest rate as well - we'll find that out tomorrow. That should bring our monthly mortgage payment to just about what we've been paying in rent for two years.

The new closing date is April 30, only a two week delay.

Now for the packing.

Scenarios

Looks like we're waiting until Monday to find out anything about the 2nd appraisal.

We've both got mixed feelings about it all at this point. I couldn't even tell you if we've got a 50/50 chance at the house now or not. It all depends on how the 2nd appraisal comes in and what the seller is willing to accept for the house.

It's all out of our hands for now, and the clock is ticking until Nerdstar heads to OBC April 4, and our lease is up April 30.

If the 2nd appraisal comes in at a number we and the seller can agree to, then the closing date is moved back - I don't know exactly how long - due to the house having been sold less than 90 days ago. Why our real estate lady was unaware of that is not clear to us, we think that's something she should have known. With any luck - which we don't generally have - the closing date would only be pushed back ten or twelve days before the end of April. If not then the I'm pretty sure I can extend the lease at a pro-rated amount for a few days, but if we have to extend a whole month, that adds a $400 fee to May's rent. Ugh. Yes, we can just chalk that up as part of the cost of buying a house, but still. So, going forward with the purchase is doable but delayed, which is fine really.

OR, if the 2nd appraisal comes back close to the 1st and the seller won't budge, then no house, and probably no house hunting until Sept. or so when Nerdstar is home from OBC.

Now, that could be a blessing in disguise. We're trying to view it as God looking out for us if this house doesn't come through. We've done everything we can. While there is some uncertainty in Nerdstar's future employment, 95% of the jobs in her line of work are in the DC area. But, there's always the option of her going on some sort of Army orders - as reservist - in some other part of the city.

I think we're both ok with whatever the outcome is. Although, the next six months won't be too much fun for me if the house doesn't work out. I was really hoping for some stability, for the house stuff to keep me busy while she's gone, and for a chance to know where I'm going to live long enough to find a real job again.

So if the house doesn't work out, I'll kinda feel like my life is on hold or another six months. Ugh.

A week from today I'm driving Nerdstar done to Georgia. :-(

House Math

It turns out the problem with an appraisal of $180,000 means we couldn't get a loan for more than that. So, even though we and the seller might agree to a price of $200,000, it still has to be appraised for that amount. Our real estate lady is trying very hard to get the appraisal either re-done, or a new one done. She says the appraiser dude based his amount on comparing the house to wrong houses.

It could take 48 hours to see if we can get a "better" appraisal. Ugh. Not sure what happens if that doesn't happen. Not sure how low the seller is willing to go. It's not like she can sell it to someone else at a higher price - the low appraisal will always be a problem. Well, unless there's someone out there with lots of money in the bank to make up the difference between the appraisal/loan amount and the asking price.

As for us if this doesn't work out. We're out the money we've spent on the inspection and appraisal. But more than that, we don't really have a back up plan. Nerdstar leaves for OBC April 4 and doesn't come back home until mid-Sept. Yes, I can extend our current lease for six months, but bleh.

One thing that looks certain - even if the appraisal is amended and the price agreed on - the move in date of April 16 will almost certainly be delayed.

House Buying Snags

I kinda felt things were going too smoothly.

The appraisal came in $40K under the sell price we'd agreed to. That's good for us, but only if the seller agrees to the lower price. At that price we'd have to pick up the closing costs - but that's trading about $3600 for $40K - sounds good to me! We're also willing to negotiate the price and such. Our real estate agent is pissed at the appraiser.

Then there's a second problem. Apparently, the seller is flipping this house. Good for her in this market! But, FHA requires the house be last sold more than 90 days ago. It was only sold on Dec. 30. Not a huge problem, all of the stuff that's already been done still stands - the inspection, appraisal work, title stuff. We just have to re-sign a bunch of docs and give the mortgage man new pay stubs - which I've been keeping just in case.

Our poor mortgage man and real estate lady are working late tonight sending emails and such.

We're waiting to hear what the seller says tomorrow. I'm still optimistic things will go forward. If not, well, what a pain in the ass.

New House

Pics here

Five weeks till moving day. Seems like a long time, hopefully time will go fast. I know there's much to do.

Oh My!

Our offer on the house was accepted! There were two other offers, we beat the closest by $2000 - our real estate agent was right on with the amount we needed to offer!

Now we do the appraisal and the inspection. I'm not too worried about either one. We've got a closing date of April 16 due to the banks being so busy with everything paperwork wise.

This means Nerdstar gets to help pack up her stuff :-) On the sad side, it also means I'll be moving in without her and she won't get to live in her new house until September. We'll spend a little time before she moves deciding what goes where and any small things that might need to be done. The house was recently renovated and we didn't see anything that we needed to change or fix anytime soon.

Keep your fingers crossed the rest of this process goes well!!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hard Choices

Well, we met with our real estate dude, he's cool, kind of a doofus. As long as he gets things done that's cool. We spent over an hour looking at listings and then we took those, weeded them out, and spent 3 hours driving around looking at the neighborhoods and exteriors. We're narrowing it down to three or four to go see interiors with him Thurs. evening.

Now, there were 3 about five miles from where we live now. They were all cool outside, but pretty shabby inside when we looked through the windows. Ugh.

There was a list of about 12 in an ultra suburban town 25 minutes south of here. South is not in the direction of Nerdstar's work :-( We looked at four and would be happy with any of them if the interiors live up to the photos.

But, I have a feeling the commute would end sucking after, oh, a month.

So, I looked at a bunch of listings for a city up in Maryland that we've heard is decent. There seem to be nicer, bigger houses for maybe $10K to $25K less. We're going to get up tomorrow and go check out the neighborhoods. Unfortunately, our real estate man doesn't do Maryland, but I'll call him Monday and get a name of someone who does from him.

It's kinda hard to prioritize things - most house for the money, location, commute.

We're only one day into this, but really, I feel pretty optimistic. All we need is one house that's right for us.

More Updates

Woohoo!! We got our pre-approval letter, for the amount we wanted, to take to the realtor tomorrow. What's good is that it's an amount we're capable of affording at our current income levels and this letter will help the realtor to hopefully not pressure us into more. In fact, I'd be very, very happy to spend at least $50K less.

Now, this amount in this area will probably get is a decent fixer upper. Not that we know how to do any fixing uping. But I'm setting very low expectations.

One potential irony right now is that if Nerdstar's medical stuff doesn't disqualify her from OBC - she'll be buying a house she won't get to live in for the first six months of ownership. Which also means it hopefully would look a lot better by the time she got to settle into it.

She did send off her medical info to hopefully the right people today. Not sure how long it'll take to get an update from them.

To really avoid all that - pray I knock her up soon!

Updates

Interesting developments this evening.

We had to take Ramen dog to get his wound checked out at our regular vet. We've seen this vet lady three or four times before, she's nice. I had on a Baylor University sweatshirt that she noticed - she went to Baylor, too! We overlapped, but I never really knew that many people there. Nerdstar went there, but at a totally different time. So we all got to talking about living in TX vs living here. She really likes it here, but has family in Austin and gets to go there more often than we do. (She misses breakfast tacos, too!)

Anyway. Come to find out she's just started the process of applying for a mortgage and looking for a house in the same areas and price range we are. So she gave us the name of her realtor! That's cool because we were just praying last night that God would provide people to help us with all this. Once we get the pre-approval letter, which should happen tomorrow, we'll make an appointment with the realtor dude.

BUT...

Nerdstar also got a phone call from a company who's been wanting to hire her for a while now, but couldn't get it all together. The job is located up in the north east corner of MD, between Baltimore and Wilmington, DE. We looked online at houses in that area and they seem nicer and cheaper than here, and they seem to have really big yards - which we would love.

The problem - well, although they're willing to pay relocation costs, which would help tremendously, the salary they're offering is $10K less per year. That's a big drop, even if our mortgage would be 2/3 of what it would be here. She's going to talk to them and see if there's anyway they could only drop the salary $5K a year.

Then there's my job crap. I emailed the boss lady last Thursday about working - didn't hear from her at all. I called this afternoon and spoke with one of the techs and left a message, but nada. What sucks is that I wish they'd lay me off so I could apply for unemployment, I'd make more money than working four or five days a month like is happening now. But I realized until this house/mortgage thing is finalized, it's better to at least be on someone's payroll. Although, my pay isn't really enough to be a real factor in our financing.

Anyway. We'll see what happens on all fronts this week. Trying not to let it explode my head.

Changes and Unknowns

I am sure that this year will end with life being different than it is now. But there are so many unknowns and lurking complications.

One thing we plan on achieving this year is buying our first house. When we moved here almost two years ago, we didn't plan on staying here long because there was no way we could afford a house - they were simply way too overpriced. Now, we're hoping they are in range.

We talked with a mortgage man this evening, and will give him the rest of the info necessary tomorrow to get a formal pre-approval letter. We're pretty sure we qualify for more money than we intend to spend.

The next part is finding a real estate agent.

But the tricky part is finding a livable house in our price range that isn't thirty miles from where Nerdstar currently works. She's currently working in Maryland, fairy close to DC. We're probably an equal distance from DC the other direction. Unfortunately, Maryland is a pretty liberal state and has really raised taxes in the past year and has dramatically fallen in it's ratings as a business friendly state. Not good. If a state can't attract and/or keep businesses, then the tax burden becomes even higher.

That leaves us looking in a fairly expensive county in Virginia. The more affordable neighborhoods are another twenty miles further from her current job.

Now, she's not happy with her current job and it's a safe bet she won't be there a year from now. But most jobs of the type she's in are located in let's say a thirty mile radius of DC. DC is not a city to buy a house in - for a lot of the same reasons as Maryland, plus more crime.

Our real estate agent is really going to earn their money with us.

Ok, so. Buying a house. One big life decision.

Add to that the possibility of Nerdstar still having to go away for a few months to Officer Basic Course. What sucks is that she's been putting this off for a long time when now it turns out it might have been better if she'd just gotten it over with a year ago. But still, if she has to, she has to - maybe in April. She's still waiting for all this medical review stuff regarding her back - but she can't get any answers about it. Now, our lease is up in May, so we're hoping for a closing date in April. It's not that I couldn't move stuff into the new house without her, it just wouldn't be any fun!

We're kinda torn about all of that, because we've decided if this whole house thing is a total failure, we'll take the money we've saved for a down payment and just head back to Austin and be poor and happy. I could get the same kind of job there, but the type of work she does in limited to the DC area. It's hard to give up the salary she makes.

We'll be happy here for a while if we get a house, and there's certainly still much I want to do and see here. But, you know how we feel about Austin.

As if all that wasn't enough fun for our little brains - we're also trying to have a baby. I don't blog much about it because there's nothing much to blog. We've had two tries at getting her preggers, no luck. What would suck most about her going to OBC is the delay in more tries, if she doesn't succeed before April.

So that's our life these days.