Title courtesy of Semisonic. Remember them? Remember this tune? It was awesome... about a decade ago. I think HBO resurrected it for a commercial for their Sunday night programming, which prompted me to dig out the CD from somewhere and add it into my iTunes. Great song.
Anyway, as the title implies, I'm thrilled to report that Missy and I now have a closing date! We will officially become homeowners, and go into debt for the next 30 or so years on December 30th, 2008. So one week! I'm really psyched. Its been a long time coming with this thing, so I'm beyond ecstatic to finally have a firm closing date in hand! Yeah!
We had a walk through on the house last night and it was a little weird to back in there after not being in the house for almost two months or so. But the walk through went fine, there were a few little things that needed to be fixed, but nothing major. Aside from that, all the lights worked, the ovens, the burners, all the toilets flushed and all the showers turned on. The ancient washer and dryer functioned, although I think we're going to replace those as soon as we can. Missy cashed in a ton of her credit card points last night for like $760 in Best Buy gift cards, so that'll go towards at least one new appliance. The rest of the money that we have left over after we close is definitely going towards a new kitchen. Obviously we'll repaint, redo some floors and carpets before we move in fully, but the kitchen needs to be redone, and bad! We knew that going in, but we were completely reminded of it last night. I know those can get expensive, so hopefully we'll have enough money to do it within the year. Other than that, its all good. I got the spot on the wall all picked out for my TV already!
That's about all that's going on. Big news, I know. Other than that, Missy and I are going to the Ranger game tonight, which is excited. I basically begged and pleaded that we needed to go to at least one game this season, and it seems like spending money before we get the house on entertainment is OK, because we won't be able to as much, or at all after we close! We have some company coming over for Christmas Eve to the apartment, my brothers and sister-in-law and Brett and his wife. Hopefully we'll break out the Rock Band 2 and party down like we did last year. Then its Christmas in Connecticut and a few well deserved days off.
Alright, enough for now. Happy Holidays everyone! One week to go and then we're homeowners. Scary!
Title by Cracker. Great band. Whatever happened to them? Kerosene Hat was an awesome album, with Low, Get Off This, and Eurotrash Girl? Great stuff. That makes me want to listen to it right now! And in fact, now I am. You have to love the power of iTunes, or Pandora. Greatest things to happen to music in a very long time.
OK, so the point of this point? It's many fold. There are a number of topics I would like to address, with you, the dear reader. And for some reason, I'm feeling way too chipper on a Sunday morning, I know. Maybe it's the Cracker I'm listening to right now:
"Be with you girl, is like being Low, hey, hey, hey, like being stoned!"
Awesome lyrics.
OK, so enough babbling. The point of the title is that this week I, and my lovely wife, have felt like movie stars. Why, you ask? We got our wedding video on Tuesday afternoon, and its been a non-stop marathon of it ever since. I picked it up Tuesday afternoon on my lunch break, and grabbed a bottle of champagne and some Chinese on the way home so Missy and I could eat and drink while we watched it. We already had a bottle sitting in the fridge since right before the wedding (a gift from one of our favorite spin instructors, thanks Lou!) so I figured one more would be adequate... then we had to crack open the one and only bottle of wine we had in the fridge... and then it was the bottle of Limoncello we had in the freezer that we brought back from Capri, on our honeymoon.
Anyway, I'm getting way off topic here. So, on Tuesday night, in an alcoholic haze, we watched our wedding video, and I don't know if it was the alcohol or not, I don't think it was, but the video was awesome. It was so expertly done, I feel like it was worth every penny our parents spent on it. The first 10 minutes of it we had shown to everyone at our "rehearsal dinner," and everyone loved it. The rest was just amazing, the way they intercut interviews, sound bites and the music we selected into the action of the day was just awesome. We proceeded on Wednesday to watch exactly two out of the three DVD's of raw footage we were given. That was interesting, since it had everyone's uncut interviews, so we got to see everything that hit the cutting room floor. We finished up the raw footage on Friday, and that was the disk that had almost everyone's interviews, so it was really interesting to see what everyone said, and funny too. Because in my mother's interview, and this part made the video, she said I was a wonderful child (true) who did everything asked of me (so totally not true.) Because in the next interview with my dad, which he started by lighting his pipe, which was just hilarious, he goes on to say just how a stubborn a child I was, the worst of all of his three sons, and that is so true. I still am stubborn. Just ask my wife anytime we get into any kind of disagreement, she'll attest to this. I just thought it was funny. I knew there was no way they'd but in someone calling me stubborn, or my own brother saying I can be a jerk sometimes, but I guess that's what the raw footage is for. And its definitely for our eyes only, and no ones elses!
So the wedding video viewings were next. Friday night we went to my parents to watch it, along with my brother Randy and his wife Beth, and my brother Mark (the one that called me a jerk). Its OK, in the raw footage you can hear me complain to Missy that I was trapped in a little f*$%ing room with him, and that his tux looked horrible on him, so touche! We got some more Chinese food and sat down and enjoyed the video. My parents really enjoyed it, although I had to point out the inconsistencies in their interviews to it. But everyone had a good time watching it.
This afternoon at some point we're going to Missy's parents to watch it as well. It's her brother's birthday as well, so it'll just a big celebration of a lot of things. But the video is awesome, and we're really happy with how it turned out.
Next topic I would like to discuss is how Missy and I would have better luck waiting for Godot than waiting for a closing date. The house buying drama has also been a dominant force in our lives this week as well. It actually all goes back to a two weeks ago when I got a call from our lawyers paralegal that closing would probably be at the end of the month, because the seller, while in contract to buy a house, its a short sale, and she seems to be having issues with the bank approving it. So she's delaying closing on her own home, big time. So it looked like the end of the month, and then I get a call from the paralegal that the seller would like to close by the end of the month, but stay in the house another few weeks, all the time paying our mortgage and other house related expenses. We were OK with that, as long as she'd have a firm exit date of January 15th, which I was told she was agreeable to.
Then, on Friday, I get a call from the lawyer who said that every time he gets close to getting us a firm closing date, he gets another e-mail or call from the sellers attorney with a sob story about how it needs to be delayed. This time she's looking to pay for us to extend our mortgage commitment. I had already extended our rate by 60 days on Tuesday, at the low, low, carzy low rate of 5.125%. But to extend the commitment wouldn't cost us anything, we'd just have to go through the whole process of re-applying, including two months of bank statements, W-2's, pay stubs... all that stuff. And while its not that big of a deal to put together, it is a pain in the ass, and there's always the risk that we may not get a commitment. Who knows, in this lovely economy, if the bank would even give us a commitment now. So our lawyer wanted to know if we wanted to pursue getting a closing to the full extent of his legal abilities, meaning, start being a hard ass, or if we'd be willing to be a little flexible. Seeing as how in the previous agreement we were willing to enter into in the beginning of the week wouldn't get us into the house by mid-January anyway, closing in January wouldn't be the worst thing. So that was the other option, closing in January, but it must be before the commitment expires, because we're not trying to get it extended. And that's where we stand. Annoying, huh? Why she can't just get a temporary rental, put her stuff into storage and just close on the deal already is beyond us.
And that is all for now.
Title courtesy of Nine Inch Nails off their album Year Zero. Good stuff. I had an image from the CD booklet as the background on my laptop for well over a year, and only recently did I decide it was time for a switch. I know that has absolutely no entertaining value to you whatsoever, I just wanted to share.
Anyway, its been a rough week back at work after having four days off for Thanksgiving and my birthday. Mostly because I've been in pain since Sunday night. I started working with a personal trainer at a Gold's Gym by the apartment a few weeks ago and the guy has been great, but for some odd reason I pulled a muscle by my ribs the day before Thanksgiving. It was really irritating me on Wednesday night, so much so that I couldn't get much sleep. By Thursday night I was fine though, and continued in that same state of fineness all weekend long. Until Sunday. Missy and I were at WalMart and I was carrying a big box to the car. I put said box into the trunk and got in the car and all of sudden my ribs were killing me again, and about a million times worse than they had a few days earlier. Missy was all paranoid that I might have a hernia and was seriously contemplating taking me to the hospital. I did go to the doctor on Monday though, and was told it was nothing more than a pulled muscle. So I've been taking it easy and taking plenty of Advil in the meantime. It still hurts a little, but its gotten better, so I'm going to attempt to hit the gym again tonight with my trainer. Although I'll have to be sure that we don't do anything to further tweak the injury. I'm feeling better and I'd like to keep it that way.
In other news and in reference to the title of this post, Twilight and all things Twilight related have dominated my little sphere in the world for the weekend before Thanksgiving, the entire week of Thanksgiving and the following weekend. I read the first book a few weeks ago because the movie looked interesting and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I hate to admit it, because it implies that there is something seriously wrong with my Y chromosome, but I kind of really enjoyed it. I don't want to say love it, because I'm definitely not attached like my wife is, but I found it entertaining enough. So after reading the first book I dragged Missy to the movie, and she absolutely loved it, so much so that she started reading the first book, and managed to finish it in about a day. I had already ordered the second book from Amazon and started it while she read the first. I finished it up in about 24 hours as well and passed it onto her. It took her less time to read it, as she was up until 3:30 in the morning on Monday night/Tuesday morning finishing it. It affected her so much that she was crying at times. I went out to Barnes and Noble that Monday and got the last two, just so we'd have them on hand, because waiting for Amazon to deliver stuff isn't worth it sometimes. I had finished up the entire series before my birthday party on Friday, and Missy followed suit by Sunday. At which point she got very depressed about it all. She fell in love with it so much, that she was really sad that there were no more stories to read. And while it was entertaining, I wouldn't go so far. My main issue with the whole series, is that despite reading over 2,000 pages, it seemed like very little happened, yet I was still compelled to read. My major issue over everything, is that even though it has a happy ending, there was no sacrifice made by anyone to get to that happy ending. Mostly, no one died, which kind of sucks. At least in Harry Potter, you could tell it was serious because she started killing off characters pretty fast and furious starting in the fourth book, and the death toll just kept rising. The death count in the last book alone is pretty astounding, and I'm talking seriously major characters. But nothing like that in Twilight. Whatever. It was fun while it lasted, and I'm kind of glad to have my life back now. Missy too, I think. We kind of both disappeared off the map while reading the books, and now that we're done, we can resume life. Playing Rock Band has now replaced our Twilight addiction, Missy sings while I play guitar, and its pretty funny to hear her butcher some popular songs.
In house news, we're still waiting for a closing date. But, after hearing from our lawyer on Tuesday, we're probably looking at the end of December, which kind of sucks. We were hoping to have a lot of the work, like painting done by the end of December so we can move in then, now it looks like that's not the case. So we'll probably have to pay rent in January and slowly move in then. It sucks, but what can we do?
That is all for now.
