Good Lord. January's almost over and I only did one entry and it was on the first day of the month. My goodness.
Anyway, here's what I've been up to this month.
I started a new job, teaching a course at Bryant & Stratton called "Internet and Web Development". Kind of an awkward title, but basically we learn about the Internet and related issues, and then learn HTML. The big different for me here (with regards to teaching, anyway) is that it is not a graduate level course, and it's in a classroom instead of distance learning. It's been a big adjustment for me, having to prepare lectures and trying to figure out exactly what expectations I should have of the students. My graduate students in distance learning tend to be professionals who are trying to embark on a second career, so they are older and have a lot of work experience. My new classroom students tend to be right out of high school, for the most part. So it's a huge difference, and one I struggled with a bit in the beginning. But now I feel like I'm getting a better understanding of what they need. My other big problem was that, when I try to figure out what to cover in class, I always think, "What would I have wanted when I was a student?" Well, as a student, I was frequently bored, and needed to be more challenged. I also felt like if the professor repeated things, it was a waste of my time. In other words, I was kind of a snot. So I was making an effort to keep things moving and not repeat myself a lot, and I think some of my students were getting lost. I talked to my dad (retired teacher) about it, and he gave me some good advice. He said that I can't use myself as the model for a typical student, because people have different learning styles and paces, and just because I would be bored by something doesn't mean all students will be. I know that sounds super-obvious, but I just wasn't thinking that way. It helped a lot. Anyway, I'm enjoying it, and it's good to get out of the house twice a week and go somewhere. Plus, sometimes I get to have lunch with Mary, because she works there too.
My other big news is that I'm an aunt. You can check out the pictures here. My new nephew is named Maxwell Weston Reed, and we call him Max. My mom called me on January 10th and told me that Erin (my sister-in-law) was having labor pains, and they were just waiting for them to be closer together to go into the hospital. They all went in later that day. My mom wasn't sure if she was going to go to the hospital, even though my brother invited her to. Erin's mom, dad, and sister were going to be there. My mom just felt like she might be in the way or something. I don't know. I kept telling her that she really should go, because her first grandchild would only be born once, and she would regret it if she didn't. So finally, my mom did go, although my dad didn't. I think because he had a bad cold and he was worried that he was carrying germs. Or maybe he just wanted to sleep. So my mom went in around 10 PM that night. Around 11:40, the doctors cleared everyone out of the room, and Erin started pushing. And Max was born at 12:20 AM on January 11th. He's healthy and has a full head of hair. I went to visit them in the hospital the next day, and then went to visit again on Martin Luther King Day, when Max had been home for a while. He is super cute and I find myself going to that website about four times a day just to look at the pictures. I wish I lived closer!
In sadder news, my grandmother died on January 20th. She had leukemia for just under a year, I guess, and then she contracted pneumonia after Christmas. So while it was not unexpected, it was still sad. I will miss her.
In ongoing news, I'm still writing for (the newly renamed) Television Without Pity, and I'm still teaching distance learning at RIT. In house news, we should know about our mortgage next week, and then we just have to wait until closing on March 15th. That seems so far away, but if January goes as fast as February, it'll be here before I know it. In wedding news, I'm still getting married in October. I've booked the site, and a DJ, and I'm working on a photographer. And I'm going dress shopping on Friday! So that will be fun.
I guess that brings you up to date. Whew!
You know how when you haven't updated in a while, the longer you wait, the more intimidating it is to post an entry? Like I felt like I couldn't write about something that happened recently because I STILL hadn't written about my grandmother's birthday, or Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or the fact that my best friend is having a baby, or the fact that my sister-in-law is due any day now.
So my New Year's resolution is this: Screw that. I don't HAVE to write about things in chronological order, and I don't HAVE to write about things at all, if I have nothing to say. I do like to cover the major life events (listed above) because it is kind of a historical document for me, but an entry that's trifling is better than no entry at all. Right? Right. So anyway.
If you've been reading this journal for any length of time, you know that Jim and I have been looking to buy a house seriously for a few months now. We found a house that Jim loved and I liked okay, and someone bought it. We found a house that I loved and Jim liked okay, and it was bought after being on the market for two days, before we even had a chance to see the inside. We'd looked at a few houses since then, but nothing grabbed our fancy, and we were starting to worry that interest rates would rise, which would mean our potential buying price would get a lot lower, and our choices would become even more limited.
And then I got in a car accident. I'm fine, the other people are fine, and it was totally my fault. But it meant that we could either fix our nearly ten-year-old car, which would probably never run the same again, and had many problems even before the accident, or use the insurance money to buy a new (to us) car. And probably finance part of it. Which meant that our house-buying dreams would probably have to be put off for a while.
And then my previously extremely frugal father (and I say that with love, love, love) offered to loan us the money for a car, interest-free. He's already paying for our wedding, and now he's loaning us money for a car. God bless him. It's more than I ever expected or dreamed of, and I totally don't deserve such good fortune, but God bless him.
So, last week, I saw a house listed that looked kind of interesting. It was in the right area, and had all the right specs, and the price was a little higher than we wanted, but still in our price range. I drove by, and still liked it. But I figured someone else would buy it while we were sorting out our car issues. Regardless, I like to look at houses, because I'm, at my core, really fucking nosy. So I called my realtor and scheduled a viewing of it.
Cut to Saturday. We had a viewing of the house scheduled for 11 AM. We went, we viewed, we liked. A lot. Jim's parents happened to be driving by while we were there (no, really -- they didn't know when the viewing was scheduled) so his dad walked through the house with us and gave us all kinds of dad-type advice (which was mostly, "It looks really good! The mechanicals are all new! The roof is in great shape! I don't see any signs of water in the basement!" You know, stuff dads look for.) The realtor advised us that the house would probably sell pretty quickly (like, duh) so we should make a move soon, if we were going to. But we still didn't know what was going to happen with the car business.
Later on Saturday, we went to buy a car. Jim and I both wanted a Honda Civic. Well, actually, Jim wanted a VW Jetta, but they cost a few thousand more than the Civic, so I convinced him to go for the Civic. We looked around the lot, and only found one car that we could buy outright without any financing. And it was a Coupe, not a Sedan. I hate Coupes. Jim hates Coupes. So we started talking about it, and I rationalized that A) it's not like we drive our friends around all the time, so who cares if there are only two doors and B) even though it was a Coupe, the back seat was still roomier than the Saturn. Jim wasn't quite as convinced. We talked to the sales guy for a little while, and then decided to go grab some lunch and think it over. I think when we pulled out of the lot, we knew we were going to buy that car. We ate lunch at Burger King. I called my dad to get negotiating advice and he didn't really have any. Neither did Jim's dad. So we went back, negotiated the best that we could considering that we knew we were going to buy the car no matter what price we got, and then signed the papers. The car was ours -- and it cost exactly what we had from the insurance settlement and the money my dad loaned us. I think we had to pay tax and title out of pocket, and that was it. The car would be ready on Wednesday.
Sunday was a day of rest.
Monday dawned, and I needed to call our mortgage lady and find out how long it would take us to get pre-approved. I know I should have done that long ago. Please learn from my mistakes. Get pre-approved the second that you think you are going to buy a house. Anyway, she said it would take about ten days, and we set up an appointment for Wednesday, but she said she could pre-qualify us that day. I gave her the information that she needed, but the credit reporting system was down, so we had to wait for that. Meanwhile, I called my realtor and said that we wanted to put in an offer on the house, but should we wait until we were pre-approved? Or make an offer and see what happens? After a few back-and-forth phone calls, we ended up getting an appointment with her for 4 PM. It was about noon.
But. We had some other tasks to do before then. Namely, get rid of the Saturn, which had been sitting in our driveway, because we needed to take the license plates to the Honda dealer to transfer the registration. I called a few junkyards and talked to guys with names like Bubba and Bill, who offered me not very much money for the car. But I was desperate, and I just needed to get rid of it. Jim drove the Saturn, and I drove the rental car to a scary, scary junkyard downtown. Bill/Bubba looked it over, popped off the plates, and handed me a crisp fifty dollar bill for my trouble. Since I was only expecting twenty, I was psyched. Then we drove up to the Honda dealer and dropped off the plates and registration. It was about 3 PM at this point, and we'd already accomplished more in that day than I do in most weeks. We stopped for lunch and talked about how scary it was to put in an offer on a house, and wondered how long it would take to get an answer from the owners. We figured probably a week or so, especially since it was New Year's Eve and all.
We went to our realtor's house at 4. Her house is huge. Clearly, she's a good agent. Or maybe her husband is rich. Anyway. She showed us around her new house, and then we sat down, and she went through the offer piece by piece, asking us what we wanted to put in as contingencies, and what we were willing to let go. The owners had an open house on Sunday, so I was worried that someone had put in an offer on the spot, and we would get in a bidding war. I was willing to walk away from the house if I had to, but I was hoping that wouldn't happen. Our realtor told us there were no offers currently. We talked and talked, and she typed, and typed, and then we signed and signed and signed and signed and coallated. So I'm thinking that she would present the offer on the 2nd or something. She gets on the horn with the sellers' realtor, and says she'll be right over. She was presenting the offer that night! She told us to go home and stay off the phone. The offer that we had put together was for a little less than the asking price. Just enough less that the sellers might look at it and think, "Eh. Good enough." As mentioned above with regards to the car, I'm not a good negotiator. I like to cut to the chase. They had also offered the dishwasher, disposal, and stove with the house. We asked for the washer and dryer and refrigerator in addition. And the closing date was going to be February 26th.
Oh my God. I was freaking out. I was excited that they might accept the offer. I was anxious that they would accept the offer, and I would suddenly have a monthly mortgage payment that was higher than my current rent, and I would suddenly have this huge debt on my shoulders. Maybe we should rescind the offer. Maybe it's too much. Oh my God. What are we doing? What were we thinking?
So we got home at about 6:15, and quickly called our parents to let them know that we had put in an offer. Then we tried to pretend like we weren't dying inside as the minutes ticked slowly by.
The phone rings at 6:32. I grab it, exepecting that my realtor got there to find that they had already accepted an offer fifteen minutes earlier. It was Molly, thanking me for the pregnancy book I had sent to her. I'm sure she must have thought I was insane, as I was like, "Yeah, no problem, I have to go, we're waiting to hear about our house offer, yes, we put in an offer, yes, that one I told you about, I HAVE TO GO! I'll call you later and let you know, love you, bye." Click.
We waited some more. We joked about how nervous we were, about how we might throw up. I posted something to my weblog. What was taking so long? Were they considering other offers, and trying to figure out which was best? If only we had gotten pre-approved! If we lost this house, it was all my fault, I was sure. But maybe we weren't meant to get the house. Wait, this house has four bedrooms. What were we thinking? It's way too much house for us. I kind of hope we don't get the house. No, I love the house. I hate the house. I'll die if we don't get this house. I'll die if we do get this house. Why isn't the fucking PHONE RINGING?
Finally, finally, at about 7 PM, the phone rang, and Jim answered it. I stared at his face, trying to gain some insight into what was going on. He looked pale as a ghost. He didn't look happy. We lost it. We lost the house. But why was it taking so long for our realtor to say that we lost the house? All that Jim was saying was, "Uh huh. Okay. Uh huh." Killing me. I had my fingers, toes, eyes, everything crossed. Finally, he said, "Well, can I talk to Kim about it, or do you need to know right this second?" I'm still freaking out. He hangs up. The sellers had countered, upping the price a little bit (still below the asking price) and offering to throw in the washer, dryer, refrigerator, and window treatments. But they wanted to push the closing date to March 15th. I figured that if we had to buy all those appliances, and blinds or curtain rods or whatever, it would just about cost what they were asking for in price. I remembered that the appliances in question looked fairly new anyway. Could that be it? Could it be this easy? Our realtor called back in two minutes, and I pretended like I had a bunch of questions, but I knew all along that we were going to say yes. And we did. We said yes. She told us to drive over to the house (about five minutes away) and sign the papers.
On the way there, Jim was practically hyperventilating, and I was talking a mile a minute. More than usual. We arrived, and our realtor greeted us at the door. We went into the dining room, where the sellers were seated. They were a nice couple, middle-aged. They were so incredibly nice, and kept telling us over and over (even after we had signed the papers agreeing to buy the house) how much they had loved the home, how much they enjoyed living there and raising five childred there, how much they loved being so close to the walking paths on the Erie Canal and Green Lakes State Park. They were just so nice, and so parental, that it really calmed me down. They apparently built a new house, smaller probably, now that their kids are grown and gone.
Once everything was signed, we met with our realtor briefly to find out what the next steps are. I have to meet with the mortgage lady tomorrow, and we're trying to schedule the home inspection (when I hope to be able to take some interior pictures to show you all!). And the closing date is currently scheduled for March 15th.
We own a house. We bought a house two months to the day after we got engaged. And we bought a car. It's all happening so fast! And my sister-in-law is due to have her baby any day now. My best friend is having a baby later this year. I'm getting married in October. I just have a feeling that 2002 is going to be a great year. Nothing can make up for the horror and tragedy of 2001, but maybe 2002 will take some of the edge off.
Why do I feel like because I just said that, I'm going to have to file bankruptcy or something by June? Hope you all had a Happy New Year and that your 2002 will be awesome.