House Update

The pests have been exterminated, the rotted wood has been replaced, the deposit has been wired, and lots of other details have been figured out. I'm returning from Hawaii (another post to come) today, GB returns from his work trip Thursday morning, and we will be signing lots of paperwork that afternoon. Then I leave on Saturday for a week in Austin during which we officially become house owners in California. Nothing like cramming a few too many things into a few too few days.

Anyone have ideas for gifts for the many people involved in pulling this all together? My current list looks like this:

1. Our realtor -- Above and beyond doesn't begin to describe what she's done over the last seven months. Everything from updates during the nothing-is-happening part of this process to pulling strings to make a pest fumigation occur with 24 hours notice. She's gotten quotes on custom spindles for the front porch, and her contacts for various parts of the necessary renovation and repairs have been wonderful, professional people. I can recommend her whole-heartedly to anyone that needs a realtor out in this area -- just drop me a line! And some ideas on an appropriate gift!

2. Our mortgage broker -- GB and I are beyond financially risk averse. Any more afeared and we'd just cash our paychecks and keep the money in our mattress. Combine that with a sketchy mortgage market and a significant hike in real estate prices and you have a couple of nervous nellies that need a whole lot of assurance that we can really do this thing. He did more calculations and comparisons among different possible products and options and payments and craziness than any person should have to do. To make us comfortable with what we're doing would take superman, and that's what we got. (No worries -- we're not getting in over our heads...at least not too badly.)

3. The bank manager -- At the last minute, we needed to wire money from our bank account while we were in Hawaii. The bank manager, while indicating that she couldn't wire money without our original signature, came up with the alternate solution that we could do a cashier's check without said signature. Deposit crisis averted!

What great people we've had to work with through this process. Now I just have to figure out now to properly thanks them.