CafeChatNoir

I absolutely adore the little ones that don’t really quite know what’s going on yet, but they do know there is candy and dressing up involved, and HOW COOL IS THAT?!! Had 2 dinosaurs, Yoda & Princess Leia, a character from Half-Life (the kid said I was the only one that recognized who he was.), 2 Jack Sparrows, and the usual smattering of zombies, ghosts and other undead.

Nice weather tonight, and we had a decent amount of kids come along, which is somewhat unusual – we live at the bottom of two hills, so lots of times the kids turn around before they hit our place.

Will be getting dolled up for SportsCenter at the pub – past 2 years I’ve gone as a beach bum, which is basically just being me. :)  Tonight I am going to go dressed up as a girl.  Let’s face it – I go there for sports and unwinding and pretty much never give a crap about how I look.  Skirt, heels, makeup, hair, the works. :-D

Britney Spears’ mother is writing a parenting book! Because, well, really now – do I have to say anything?

Why I never want FEMA near me in an emergency: FEMA employees pose as reporters for press conference. Next thing you know, they’ll be interviewing disaster “victims” about how well FEMA responded to their plight…

Damn, I can’t remember the last time there were fires like these out there. I remember how bad the Santa Anas could get and that is what is driving these and it’s not pretty.

SignOnSanDiego.com has setup a Google map showing where the fires and evac centers are – I had to look. The Witch fire is abour 4K from where we used to live out there. It has 2 decent sized streets it would have to cross, but with the winds the way they are, I have to wonder if the neighborhood will still even be there in a few days.

Supposedly one of these fires was arson – nice work, jackass. I hope they find who did it and just let all the homeowners take a whack at him.

One of CNBC’s correspondents lives in San Diego and has been evacuated – he was saying that folks just keep calling their houses and if the answering machine picks up, then they figure things are still intact.

I’m just hoping that the numbers of houses destroyed that I’ve heard so far are too high and that when they can get back into these neighborhoods safely they’ll find that it wasn’t as bad as thought.

Couple weeks back I got one of the Donors Choose coupons via LJ and went hunting for a project to support.  I specifically looked for Virginia schools in low income/high poverty areas in need and found a request for triple beam balances for a science classroom.

Today I got a note back that the project has been fully funded!  It’s great to know that a donation actually did what it was supposed to do.

And the timing couldn’t be better since we just got the cable upgraded and fully functioning and ready for internet.

The DSL has been down all day and currently I’m dialed in at an impressive 26.4 Kbps.

They just called and said there is a short in the line and they want to send a Covad tech out. Sorry, I’ve already put in my order with Cox and I’ll be picking up my modem and connect kit in the next day or so. I’m not monkeying around with techs and $200 service calls for a service that I won’t be continuing to use.

Seriously, wasn’t it just Sunday night? The week totally got away from me to be sure. Not because of anything of any great import, it just seems that I blinked and it was already over. I hate it when days just run together like that.

I have discovered that when it rains for the first time in 34 days, people are afraid to leave their homes. Went out for the usual Friday night pints last night, and of all the late regulars, there were only 3 of us there. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the place that dead on a Friday night. Frankly, it was a little disturbing.

My Caps are now 3-4… And the season had started off SO well.

The champagne was popped open last night and I am now the happy owner of only 1/2 of one house. I cannot even begin to describe how NICE it is to not have this on my mind anymore.

Of course, this now begs the question – where to next? :)

Well, the closing is done, but guess who gets to go to the townhouse tomorrow and meet with contractors? Yup, that would be me. Sometime this week the thermostat on the heat pump went tango uniform and wouldn’t work on the final walkthrough this afternoon.

I can’t say I’m really surprised.

It seems I am continually underwhelmed by any and all service industries, so when someone actually does their job well or does something extra, it’s a really nice surprise.

My real estate agent has been completely on top of everything with getting everything done for today’s closing. Everything on our end is totally locked down and under control, and I’ve only had to do a very few things. Very nice. When I bought the place, I recall the seller’s agents were completely out to lunch most of the time.

Talked w/my grandmother’s broker this morning (first words out of his mouth were “nothing is wrong, everything is OK!”) and my grandmother is making a couple changes to an account and he needed some info from me on that, and when she needs to sign the papers, he’s going to go to her house for it. I know that will make my grandmother feel better cause she’ll know that she’s signed on all the right lines. It will also apparently keep her taxes simpler, and her broker knows how spooled up she gets at tax time and that was the big reason for the change. Good to know he’s looking out for her. (We’ve known him for years, this move doesn’t really surprise me, but it’s still very nice.)

Shame everyone can’t work that way.

Tomorrow I make copies of the various & sundry receipts from the past week’s repairs and empty out the townhouse once and for all. (Sorry buyers, I won’t be forgetting the good vacuum cleaner.)

Closing is Friday at 3PM.

Eep!

How to take care of the edginess that goes along with selling a townhouse and waiting for the other shoe to drop between now & closing:

- Get text message of: Beach?
- Call realtor to make sure you can disappear for 60 hours.
- Drive south for about 4 hours
- Drink beer and read books on porch since you beat your host to the house. Sleep. Go fishing. See sting ray*. Eat. Fish more. Eat. Drink beer. Sleep. Sleep some more. Putz around enjoying the salt air. Put up shelving. Drink beer. Eat. Watch movies. Read books. Sleep. Morning coffee on deck.
- Head north again with large chunk of sanity restored.

Amazing just what a little change of scenery for a few days can do for you.

*Coolest thing I’ve seen in a while – easily 4 feet across.

Good news: Got the replacements for the fans, discovered all I had to do was pop out the old motor and put the new one in. Much easier than having to remove the entire housing of the thing, which is what I thought I had to do, so that is done.

Had the termite inspection this afternoon. Passed. Yay! However, another company was there this morning and did a preventative termite treatment. I have no idea why. I’ve got a call into my realtor to figure this one out. If he put in the order, I do know there would have been a good reason for it, I just don’t know what, cause I don’t remember preventative treatment as part of the contract or why we wouldn’t use the folks that were doing the inspection anyway.

The bathtub has been caulked, the shower head is no longer leaking, the light in the master bath is working fine for me (can’t fix what isn’t broken) and I went over all the baseboards with a flashlight and can’t find a damn carpet staple to save my life.

My to-do list is complete.

So, yesterday my brother and I attempted to remove the bath fans… Got those suckers opened and realized we had absolutely NO idea how to remove them, much less replace them. Great. Called my go-to electrician first thing this morning and he’s booked until the end of the month. I’ll be making a panicked call to my realtor here in just a few minutes to see if his handyman can somehow handle this.

I can’t find the supposed staples sticking out of the carpet. I keep forgetting to look and figure out where the shower head is leaking.

Now, the good news is that the HVAC has been inspected and there is nothing wrong with it, the chimney has been cleaned, the vent flap that was stuck open is now closed, the smoke detectors have been replaced, and the aerator in the guest bath sink is clear and ready to go back on the sink. The bathtub will be caulked this afternoon, and the shower head either replaced or fixed today, and I’ll go over the floor with a flashlight to see if I can’t find these phantom staples.

I’m going to finish my coffee and then have a good freak out.

Thank you for all the nice words about my little buddy Snoopy. One day he was fine, the next I’m hauling him to the emergency vet and it’s all over. Good cat to the end, when it came time to make the decision to let him go, he made the decision easy for me. I had a really nice dream about him last night, so I know that wherever it is that good cats go, he’s there and OK.

You were a really good cat, and I’m gonna miss the hell out of you. It was an awesome, fluffy 14 years.

So, the home inspection was this weekend, which of course means a new freakin’ to do list. Nothing major, thank god.

Couple things we simply said weren’t going to happen. Given that I’ve not heard any bad news from my realtor, sounds like the buyer realized they were unrealistic with those requests.

Couple things that were totally reasonable and I’ve got no problem with handling them.

Couple things that just really annoyed me, cause if I was on the buy side, they’d be things I’d simply consider part of buying a house that is almost 30 years old and deal. When I bought the place, the only thing that we pushed on was the roof because it had defective plywood that would eventually cause the roof to collapse. The rest of it, well, it was a 20 year old house, I didn’t expect everything to be perfect.

But, it will get done.  Still don’t know how we’re gonna close next Friday, but we’ll see.