If ever a Week Needed a Do-Over

Lots of things going on. Very stressful things. First, we had a glitch with our financing. Apparently my mortgage broker not only has blonde hair but works overtime to perpetuate the stereotypes to the fullest. When I was getting my pre-approval, I asked her to run the numbers under two circumstances:

• The first if we rented out my condo, covering most of the carrying costs of that expense.
• The second if I didn’t rent my condo at all. In other words, as if I were just going to continue paying two mortgages.

I expected two vastly different maximum ranges something like X if you keep your condo, X + a boatload more if you rent it and are able to cover mortgage, tax and HOA. What I got instead was a very large Y. Blondie cited my excellent credit and good salary. Turns out Blondie didn’t run two scenarios; she just ran it as if I didn’t have a condo to worry about at all.

Fortunately I had the foresight to figure something wasn’t right and I brought in my paperwork and had her crunch more specific numbers again in more detail. Suddenly she realized that I had a condo and obviously the price I was approved for dropped significantly. The lesson learned is you have to make sure that your mortgage broker is an anal detail oriented type who knows what they are doing and doesn’t flake out.

Second Stressor of the week: So Nightingale and I decided to test our commutes to the one house we like. The first attempt failed miserably though it wasn't a good test. She has a habit of driving her car until the gas light comes on, which it did during this test, while she was driving through the less desirable parts of town to get to the potential new home. Women take notice: Cars are designed to run out of gas when it would be the most inconvenient. In fact, if you are driving through a neighborhood where a young lady would likely get raped, just assume a full tank of gas will magically evaporate.

How hard is it to park closer to the sign?

As fortune would have it, when I got to the house there was a car that advertised home inspector on it. It turns out, someone had engaged an inspector to look at the home. So this could all be for naught if someone else decides they suddenly want this overbuilt and overpriced for the neighborhood home.

After my second attempt to drive there yesterday taking a different route I'm of the mindset that if we get the house, we'll deal with the sucky commute but if we don't get it, we continue to target our preferred neighborhoods and accept losing out on this home as a gift from the Realtor Gods.

The two motivating factors for moving out of this place is we are tight on space and we have no dedicated parking. Street parking is inconsistent at times especially with people parking like jerks.

Finally some good news: Work is slowly starting to get busier which is a good thing. Our fiscal year is Aug 1 - July 31 and the last few months have been painfully inactive for me. There hasn't been budget to do things or free bodies or other resources available if there were so I’ve had to keep my head down and hope no one noticed me. I've never been good at waiting until the 5 o'clock whistle blows to go home when I have nothing to do.

At the Low-Rent Consulting Company, there were lots of times I’d be in the office with nothing to do sitting there waiting for 5pm. Once I made the mistake of shutting down my laptop at 4:50 and my Menace decided to punish me by making me help another engineer who was frustrated he couldn’t figure something out – and wanted no help from anyone.