Random Access

Wednesday – 31 March 2010
SaraRules and I just got in from signing a bunch of paperwork this morning and….

We just bought a house!

That’s right, we’re movin’ on up, just like George and Weezie.  (The house is a little farther east than our apartment…) We’d been talking about taking the plunge for a while and when we decided to dive in, everything fell into place rather nicely.

Shortly after we got married, the original deadline for the new homebuyer’s credit was extended to April 2010. Around Christmas, we decided that we wanted to get in on that action. We started looking at the Utah MLS website for homes that we liked. (Oddly enough, there were a lot of them.) We started narrowing down our searches based on a number of criteria:

• Location
• Size
• Price
• Age and condition of the property
• Garage (okay… this was really much more my criterium than SaraRules’)
• …and I’m sure there were others.

put us in touch with a great real estate agent, Joe, and an equally amazing mortgage broker, Brady.  Our first “encounter” with Joe… wasn’t. He dropped off a sheaf of MLS listings for us to peruse in the middle of the night. Okay. We plowed through the listings and found a number of properties that we liked. We started looking at places on Friday, 05 March. (Yes, you read that correctly: We went from looking to closing in less than four weeks.  BLAOW!) The house we chose was the third one we saw; we both agreed that it had all of the elements we wanted.

We offered…
The owners countered…
We countered again…
They agreed to our counter… and the ball started rolling.

And three-and-a-half weeks later, we’re home owners.

And, as if that wasn’t enough: Today is also Comics and Sushi Wednesday. Win-Win-Win.

Stray Toasters

• For SaraRules: Gallery: Outrageously Complicated Rube Goldberg Videos
• Wired.com Buyer’s Guide: Choose the Right iPad
• There has been a lot of hullabaloo about the video for Erykah Badu’s Window Seat. Many of the comments I’ve seen have asked what were her thoughts behind making such a video. I did a little digging and found this interview, in which Ms. Badu talks about the reasons and rationale behind the video.
• By way of and the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Man fleeing Ohio police jumps fence — into prison
• Saint Peter, don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go;
  I owe my soul to the company store new mortgage loan….
• GOP fires Allison Meyers as strip-club scandal taints party
• I did some drawing last night. That was a nice way to spend the evening.
• Scale model of war-torn WWII town built and photographed by brian-damaged beating victim
• Also from the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Duct Tape or Duck Tape? 11 Intricate Tape Designs

Did I mention: “We bought a house!” yet?  I did?  Okay, just making sure.

Namaste.