captbrando's log

Hey folks! Merry Christmas to all! I hope everyone is blessed this season.

Good gracious, its freaking cold out there Mr. Bigglesworth! We’ve accumulated about 2.5″ of snow so far, though most of it melts right away if you step in it. My car was pretty frozen when I went out there to make a quick FedEx run. Didn’t really want to start either. It started after about 3 seconds, but it sounded like it was going to give up for a second there. Oh well, thats what I get for not having a garage large enough to house my car.

Anyway…… I’m off to get warm!

Boy it sure showed up with a vengence! Its sleeting and snowing like a crazy lady over here. None is predicted to stick to roadways though thanks to very warm weather lately.

I’ve been working on work, and also in the evenings working on my syllabus for the spring term. I had a GREAT template to use and just populated the correct information into it. It still needs some fine tuning, but it will be all ready to go very shortly here. Now if I can just get into the system to start getting the class ready!

Christmas is rapidly approaching, and although I was able to get Chris things she wanted, there is one elusive thing that I have not been able to find in stores anywhere! Damn those badly prepared supply chains. I can fix it! OH well.

So business is winding down for the week. Tomorrow is our “Friday” and I’m taking next week off. I’m looking forward to a few days off to really get the house together. My office has not really been fully set up yet or fully organized due to me working in it every day (or traveling out of it). I really am looking forward to fixing that. I’m having trouble concentrating lately due to the craziness.

Anyway… Gonna pay a bill real fast and get back to work.

Yep, getting closer and closer. Mowed the yard this weekend (damn this Rye grass. Its going to die very soon…) and I just realized I forgot to put out the trash. Dag-nabbit.

Our alarm system was activated yesterday, and the smoke detectors showed they could wake us up in the middle of the night quite nicely. Damn those things are loud. Apparently, they were dirty. Fixed that.

Today our new mattress arrived. Quite excellent! We can’t sleep on it yet tho, but our furniture arrives tomorrow. Unfortunately, Chris may have to coordinate its placement without me as I have a 10:30am meeting downtown to handle. Fun.

Leslie may stop by tomorrow, and she’ll be able to see the finished product! Good Stuff! Also, I should have her pictures for her. Hopefully.

ANYWAY…. Running off to bed now. XMas at Meema’s this weekend and the first weekend with the sweet new furniture!

Welp, its looking more and more like a home. Tomorrow, appliances get delivered and the are installed on Saturday. We are also heading to take some niece-related pictures on Saturday after haircuts, so it will be a tightly scheduled day. Once we get back, we are finishing the house. I’ll put up a very sad display of Christmas lights and we will do the tree.

I have word that our furniture will be delivered before Friday of next week. That is excellent news! We’ve been dying to get it all in and settled. Our nightstands are boxes at this point and all of our clothes are on shelf closets.

Oh, one thing this house has taught me is the greatness of the shelf. Man, the folks before us did quite a bit with shelving in most of their closets. We had SERIOUS closet space issues in our old house, but things are looking pretty good here. I’ve almost got my office unpacked, and once I do, I’ll have my pile of people to contact with new addresses, etc.

I also just noticed that my little office carpet protector slidy thing is not centered under my desk and I am falling off to the right. Bummer.

Oh, we heard from Jerry and he said that the new folks that bought our place do not appear to have moved in yet. Weird. Actually, what he said was he did not think they had spent the night there yet. I do know they had a couple of family related issues to tend to, so maybe moving in was put on hold. I wish them the best and the same to Jerry & Sharon, Dave & Kim, Rick & Keri, Todd & Melissa, and Brian & Toni. Oh and of course to our old house! I certainly will miss firing bottle rockets into the air only to have them awkwardly skew in a direction leading it directly towards another house. Fun times.

Anyway, I’m gonna finish this b33r and head to bed.

PHEW! We’re finally starting to get settled and the nightmare is over! The buyers of our house made some bad choices which caused things to be delayed. Here are a couple of those.

Their realtor was Tom May of Remax. He just got his license back in August which was the first major problem. Secondly, he works with Remax which provides you with NO training what-so-ever (how many people realized that School != Reality?). Finally, their mortgage company was H&R Block. That is a company that needs to stick to tax preparation and stay the hell out of the mortgage business. What a bunch of incompetent boobs.

Here is how great my side of the house was. Joy Beckner was my agent on the selling side and Liz Rourke was my agent on the buying side. My mortgage was through Kevin King of King Global Mortgage. Many of you who know me have met Kevin.

Joy kept Tom in line while he was trying to pull all kinds of tricks. He ended up kicking back almost half of his commission (thanks to Joy) due to his own mistakes. Liz kept the sellers of our new home patient while we worked out our problems with our old house. Kevin had my loan re-underwritten in 3 hours with new terms so we could buy the new house without selling the old one. This is important because H&R block took a FULL WEEK to underwrite the loan of the buyers of our old house. We funded our closing Thursday and the one on the old house funded Friday late (we were sitting in traffic in Austin on the way to San Antonio when it actually funded and the money showed up at the title co).

So most of our plants are either dead or mostly dead. Our stuff is now beginning to be unpacked, and Chris is being a real trooper. I can’t imagine how tired she is getting after organizing the entire kitchen while almost 7 months pregnant. Also special thanks to Nono, Teri, Wade, Travis, Brent, Dad, Mom and Ashley for helping us get things together. We could not have done it without your help (we unloaded the truck starting Thursday night at 5:30ish PM).

What lessons did we learn out of this? See this list below

1. Ensure that the realtor representing your buyers/sellers (or even your realtor if you do not have an agent) is experienced! Or at the worst case, works on a team of people that can bail each other out in a pinch.
2. Use an agency that provides training (such as Keller Williams or Ebby Halliday). Even though they are all independent agents with a company name attached to them, there are a few companies that spend a little more money on their agents to ensure snafu’s like ours do not happen.
3. Don’t use just any old mortgage person. Especially not your brother’s friend’s roomate just out of college. Use someone reputable.
4. ASK FOR REFERENCES IF YOU ARE NOT SURE!
5. Ask for closing dates far apart so that you can lease the house back for a week. Had we done this, chances are the situation we were in would not have been so bad.

Ok, I may update that list more, but that’s all for now.

In other GOOD news, I did get the adjunct professor position at UD. I am now Professor Brando!! Scary eh?

Ok, back to more unpacking etc.