As you all know, last week was Rose’s birthday. So I came to visit her, and brought her main present with me: a 27″x51″ 1/4″ thick piece of glass so that we could finally build our display coffee table to put our awesome beads in. More on that later.

So I work a gig before I leave. In the first band, the drummer tells me his name is Pete. I tell him mine is Jeff. He says, oh, my middle name is Jeffrey. I say wow, my last name is Peters. !! The main, I guess, technical contact for the other band was named Chuck, which was my grandpa’s name. Then when the show’s over, I go home, pack the car, and leave. Now, there are some interesting thoughts you have as you drive at 3/4/5* in the morning after getting not-enough sleep the day before, and only having an hour nap. (* I noticed that I kind of went through 3 time zones while driving. Central Standard Time changed to Central Daylight Time, which then changed to Eastern Daylight Time, so I really time traveled that night.) As I was listening to “It’s All Been Done” by Barenaked Ladies, I started thinking, what if it HAS all been done? Jeff Peters? Pete Jeffrey? Chuck? Now, let me say here, I’ve, at different points in my life for different reasons, been called “Chuck” because of some similarity to my grandpa. Let me also say that Chuck’s wife’s name was, what else, Rose. And finally in this Lost-esque backstory, without going into too much detail, for those of you who don’t know, I’ll tell you that, before they died, they were both in the hospital, my grandma about to be released, my grandpa, who had been there like 2 months, maybe not so much. He passed, then within a matter of minutes, she did as well. It’s like he went upstairs to get her, we always said. So what if “Chuck” and Rose is some kind of continuance of Chuck and Rose? I know. Crazy, right?

And then another thought. There’s this guy, Randy, who was in this band, Zama Para, who recently passed (lots of death in this blog apparently). Read about him here. I wonder if all these “good die young” instances are because they’re actually angels on furlough, or something like that? I’ve actually considered something along those lines ever since The UnNatural episode of The X-Files. Angels, aliens, maybe the same thing? Hm.

Ok, good. Godaddy’s hosting control panel is finally back up, so I can upload these pictures of THE TABLE!!!

Yeah, on to happier things!

We’ve been wanting to build this table for a while now, but a) we had a lot of other house projects to work on, b) rose would be the main one building it and when would she have time, and c) we wanted to use glass instead of an acrylic sheet like the instructions called for, and that’s not exactly cheap, and has to be ordered, so we just kept putting it off. But with 95% of those projects done, and some time to work on it, and it being her birthday and all, I decided to finally get it.

So I gave her the glass when I showed up Sunday, cuz I didn’t wanna drive around with it in my car until Tuesday. Then Saturday we went and bought all the wood and stuff we needed. We actually lucked out because we found some wood for the frame around the glass that was already like we wanted it, and we didn’t need to use the router we borrowed. (Yeah I kept thinking about the internet thing every time she said router.) We borrowed another drill because there was a lot of drilling going on, and to buy another battery for my drill was just as much as buying a new drill, so between mine and the one we borrowed (that came with an extra battery and charger), we got what we needed done without having to waste a lot of time waiting for my drill to recharge.

I give Rose most of the credit for building this. I mean, I drilled some holes and screwed in some screws, and held it in place when necessary, but she did all the sawing and designing, etc, probably using all her surgery skills. And it came out pretty darn awesome.

So enough of my blabbing. Here it is already!

First, here’s how the dogs felt when we were “ignoring” them to build the table:

Making the “apron” of the table (I’m still waiting for it to cook us something):

Design notes and some tools:

Some wood, the legs, and some misc stuff not used in the project (unless you consider me blowing all the dirt and sawdust out of the garage with the blower the day after):

Math in action! (to cut the angles for the frame):

Making the frame for the glass:

A more complete “apron,” some tools, and Scrabble (also not a part of this project, but almost was when we thought we were gonna need to kill some time before the other drill showed up):

Jump ahead a little bit: base of table built, now being stained:

More staining:

And finally, the finished product!

The Endymion guy is happily celebrating with his Jameson (totally unintentional the way those landed, or so Rose says):

Yup, give 99% of the credit to Rose. Yeah, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’d never be able to pull this off. But I can make computers come back from the dead, and make a band on stage sound good, so I’m perfectly content with that. 🙂

I went to G-ville last week for Rose’s birthday. I did a lot of work around the house while she was at work, including hanging the cabinet doors back up and priming and painting them. I also ripped the carpet off of the patio, a job I thought would be WAY more difficult than it was. I put some adhesive remover on one corner, let it sit for a while, and went for it. I decided that if that corner came up easily, I’d use the rest of the adhesive remover on the rest of the carpet. But, once I started pulling, i didn’t have to. It was still a workout, but not the workout I expected. After trying to do some handscraping of what the carpet left behind, I decided to rent a machine to do it a lot faster and easier (still a workout). You can see the before and after pictures of all that below in the form of fancy morphs!

Rose had challenged me to make something vegetarian for her birthday. So I looked online and found a couple of recipes. One for creamcheese-stuffed olive carrot penguins, and the other for pizza.

Thankfully the other resident took Rose’s on-call status for her birthday…and then for Fri-Sun as well! On Friday Rose left work a little early and headed home, where we packed up the dogs and took them to Dogwood Park (yes, Dogwood…), where they sniffed a lot and interacted with other dogs. Really nice place.

Saturday we went to lunch at Pomodoro’s, then stumbled across this car show, before going to see 21 Jump Street.

Now, I leave you with cute pet pictures:

I’ve had DVR for 2-3 years, at the most. I’ve never deleted a scheduled series, even after it’s gone off the air. Let’s check out my list of scheduled series recordings since I first got DVR.

Lost
Smallville
Reaper
Jim Henson’s Puppet Up
Eureka
Mindfreak
Psych
Burn Notice
Family Guy
House
Fringe
Chuck
Pushing Daisies
The Office
My Name is Earl
Ghost Whisperer
Scare Tactics
NUMB3RS
Without a Trace
Heroes
Life
Life on Mars
Sarah Connor Chronicles
Scrubs
Dollhouse
Important Things with Demetri Martin
The Simpsons
The Unusuals
Harper’s Island
Royal Pains
The Soup
Wipeout
Community
Flash Forward
The Cleveland Show
The Big Bang Theory
V
Modern Family
Men of a Certain Age
Archer
Happy Town
Tosh.0
I Get That A Lot
Warehouse 13
Regular Show
The Event
Running Wilde
Traffic Light
The Killing
Jon Benjamin Has a Van
The Glades
Falling Skies
Alphas
Haven
American Horror Story
Once Upon a Time
Billy on the Street
Alcatraz

I mean wow. That’s a lot of shows that aren’t on anymore. And a few I’m not sure of their current status. Maybe I should stop watching shows. It’s like I’m, or my dvr is, a curse. Nah. I blame all the reality shows and crappy, easy to produce, appeal to the masses stuff. Bleh.

Ok. I finally put together all the forum posts and emails that I made while the saga was going on, added some missing links, and slightly edited it for television. In the word document I edited it in, it ended up being 11 pages long. So sit down, grab your favorite beverage and snack, and enjoy the story. If you want, you can pay me $6 extra and I’ll make it in 3D.

Not so long ago, in a galaxy not too far away…..

After finally finding a place we liked, we discussed bank options with our realtor, since we didn’t have any in mind and since we weren’t familiar with the area. She suggested one that she works with all the time, who can turn things around pretty quickly. Ok, good enough. We talk to them on the phone, give them all kinds of info, and get pre-qualified. Great!

Rewind a minute. I had seen in the listing that buyers must obtain pre-qual from Bank of America, since the VA owned the house, and BoA handles the VA stuff. But, realtor never said anything about that, so I just let it go, trusting her “knowledge” and “expertise.”

We make an offer on the house, they make a counter. I don’t even remember anymore if we counter counter and they accepted, or if we just accepted at this point. Doesn’t matter.

Once we accepted their offer, our realtor sent us an 8-page pdf that both rose and i had to sign. It was a friday, and we needed to get it back to them in 24 hours. Why we needed to get it back to them in 24 hours, since the next day was a Saturday, and since the VA has taken and will continue to take their sweet-ass time doing things, I’ll never know. So anyway, since I wasn’t going to be going back to work, and since I had to be at the Station earlyish that night, I chose to download it to a flash drive, go print it out and fax it at kinko’s. Which I did. Printed it, signed and initialed, faxed. All told, it cost $21 b/c faxes are expensive as hell at kinko’s…er, I mean fedex.

Rose got it early the next morning (Saturday, mind you), signed, initialed, scanned, and sent back. However, she scanned them as jpg, which apparently wasn’t good enough for them. We find this out on Wednesday morning. Yes, Wednesday. Not the next day, nor even the next next day, nay, FOUR DAYS LATER. After some discussion, we decide that I will convert them from jpg to pdf and send. During that process, I decide to print them, and go old-school cut and paste style. Literally cutting Rose’s signature (although I’ve become pretty adept at faking her squggles) and taping it to one that I printed and signed from the original. I get it back to them later that day. No worries, right?

Wrong. Thursday we get an email saying that the bottom of one of the pages was cut off (which was cut off on my original that I was sent), and that another wasn’t initialed…note, however, we were never told to initial this page, as there was nowhere to initial…just “somewhere in the white space at the bottom.” Fine, fine. Printed at work. Initialed mine and Rose’s initials. Here’s the crux of this story. I scanned it, but never emailed it back because it was Holy Thursday, I was super busy with work stuff, and I just never had a free second to send it even though I was there til after 5.

Cut to Thursday night. 5 minutes before i’m on my way to work a rare non-fest Thursday at the Station. Realtor calls. Asked if I got it. I said oh yeah, I did, forgot to email it back, but I can access my work computer from home, so let me do that and send it to you. I do. She says oh but the page isn’t signed! Well, in the busy-ness of the day, and the ridiculousness of already going through this paper work several times, I completely skipped signing and fake-signing the one page that needed to be signed, and just initialed and fake-initialed the other page. Realtor is saying that seller is going to reject the contract because blah blah blah and they don’t have the full paperwork (even tho we’ve been immediate at getting them everything and they’ve take for damn ever) and if someone comes in with offer they’ll have to accept…blah blah. I freak out. Say this government stuff is bullshit. Tell her I’m not at work, I am already late for heading to my other job, and I won’t be able to get there before at least 1am my time. Which, seriously, at this point, is someone there waiting for our document which would’ve been 9:30pm their time?! So she says don’t worry, I’ll take care of it, I’ll copy the signatures from the one you signed onto this one, and hope they accept it.

Which, thankfully, they did. We now have the seller-signed contract in our possession.

But the story doesn’t end there!!

The seller tells us that they want us to get a pre-qual from BoA. Even if they reject us, we just have to show that we tried.

So I did.

We were approved for the vendee funding from BoA. It would be a way better deal than our original bank. Lower rate, no mortgage insurance, lower closing costs, lower down payment, the works. Would save us TONS of money. The only drawback would be that it wouldn’t be done by original closing date. We inform our original bank, and they did nothing but badmouth BoA, saying they’ve never heard of such a thing, and that they would take forever to do all the paperwork, etc. I don’t care, it saves us at least $5000 -$6000. So we filed an extension of our closing date. However, the VA (seller) decided to deny the extension, because they didn’t want to work with the VA (bank) because they felt it would take longer than they wanted to work. So yeah they didn’t want to work with themselves. Dudes, the house was on the market for 6 months, what’s another one? So in order to go with BoA, we would’ve had to cancel the contract altogether and start over…all the way over…new offer and everything.

So we go back to the original bank. Turns out, because the days have gone by, the rate is apparently lower, and they can give us the 4.5% rate! We’ll have to pay pmi, unlike the VA loan, which is $60-70 per month, but fine, whatever. Closing costs are higher, maybe, not really sure anymore, cuz updated closing estimate we got from BoA was tons higher than originally quoted, and we were going to ask about it, but then they declined our extension, so there was no need to ask. We have to put more money down, but the monthly will be about the same. Just have NEW closing date of June 10.

In the meantime, I start researching homeowners insurance. Here’s the cliffs notes for the end of May / beginning of June:

BoA insurance dept: “Hi Jeff, this is xyz with BoA. I see that bcd quoted an insurance policy for you. Are you still in the process of buying this place? Are you gonna go with us? Please let us know.”

Me: “Hi xyz. Long story short, VA doesn’t want to work with VA, but yes, we are possibly still interested in going with you for insurance, but we are shopping around still. Please send me the quote info again.”

BoA: “Ok. I need your new lender’s information please.” Note no info attached.

Me: “Ok. New info is this: blah. Please send me the quote info again.”

BoA: “Thank you. I faxed a proof of insurance.” Note: didn’t say to whom the fax went. Note2: Still no info attached.

Me: “Lender, please note that you’ll get a fax from BoA Insurance. We have not decided on them yet and are still shopping. Just wanted to let you know.”

Me: “BoA, could you please, PLEASE send me the quote info?” Note: That’s exactly what the email said. Except I didn’t include BoA.

BoA insurance is nearly $1400/year, which is $500-600 more than other quotes i’ve been getting. However, insurance companies suck ass. See below.

The “prior conditions” referenced below are a couple of leaky spots in the roof, which were fixed in april or may of this year, as well as a drippy faucet and a couple of other minor things we will fix when we get there. Nancy is the, for lack of a better phrase, insurance broker.

Hi Jeff, I just got this response from the underwriter after reviewing the inspection:
We will have to try another company.

Hello Nancy,

I am sorry about the delay in responding. This was reviewed by a Senior Underwriter and although the insured getting [sic] the repairs done, we will not be [sic] to grant approval for this to be written. Some of the prior conditions, especially with water, are a concern to us. Therefore, the risk will be ineligible to bind coverage.

Sincerely,
xxxxxxxxxxxx

My “unable to hold back” responses:

Ridiculous. Rejected because of FIXED prior conditions? Do these stupid companies realize that no place is perfect? What is insurance even for?! To screw us out of money, that’s what.

There are plenty of other companies I’m sure will take our money. As long as they have reasonable costs. I just really don’t want to go over the $1000 mark.

Whatever. Just let me know what we need to do.

Thanks.
jeff

And an almost immediate follow-up:

Nancy, I am so fuming right now and I just don’t know what to do with it. Are all insurance companies going to be this idiotic? Are they all going to look for a freaking leaky faucet and say “sorry we can’t do this” even though the place is in pristine condition otherwise? Even though neither of us have had ANY claims on ANY homeowners insurance IN OUR LIFETIMES?! The only claim I’ve ever been a part of was when I lived with my parents after KATRINA, for crying out loud, and that was on their policy. Wait, maybe I shouldn’t have said that, they’ll probably find a way to use that against me.

I really want to just give these people a piece of my mind. It’s despicable what insurance companies do to their over-paying, non-claims-making, customers. Or potential customers. I understand that they have to cover their you know whats from people who are making claims all the time, but the honest people shouldn’t have to suffer for that.

I’m sorry you’re on the receiving end of this…it’s not at all directed at you, you’ve been nothing but helpful. I’m just sick and tired of all this bureaucratic crap we’ve been putting up with for the past two months that i just can’t contain myself anymore.

Anyway, someone had given me a quote from Universal Property. I’m not sure if you deal with them, or if you wanted to check them out. I just thought I’d put that out there. Since I’ve been working with you on this, I’d like to continue to do so, and get this junk done by next friday…if that’s even a possibility still.

Thanks again
jeff

So I’m speaking with our lender on Monday, June 6 (or maybe it was Tuesday the 7th) and she mentions that she had spoken with our realtor the week before (I think Wednesday) and wanted to file for the free/definite/easy 7-day extension, since we’d be closing from different states, and wanted to make sure we had the time. She asked if we had done that, and I said, well um, considering this is the first I’m hearing about it… no. Well, lender had to talk to realtor about other things, so she said she’d ask about it. Later that day I got the form, signed it, forged it, and sent it back. So we now must close by the following Friday, June 17. But we’ll have it by the 10th. We just want the safety net.

June 10 comes. For whatever reason (was it the insurance issue?), not our closing date. The update to the insurance stuff was, some insurance companies changed the way they insure foreclosures. As I like to call it, it’s the “grade school detention-for-all policy”…you know. Like when one kid shoots a spitball and no one will admit who it was so the whole class has extra homework to do. So we found another company, that will come out and do an external-only inspection after we close, and we binded with insurance to get the ball rolling. About $100 more/year than the first company, but who cares at this point.

I hoped that they would overnight everything at the latest Monday, June 13, to Rose. She gets them signed and overnighted on Tuesday, to me, who gets them on Wednesday, and either goes to a lawyer friend to sign and get notarized, or just bring with me, when I leave Thursday to stop in Gainesville on my way to Isle of Palms. I’d leave buttcrack early Thursday, go to G-ville, get the keys, go to the house, rip up some carpet, maybe put in a microwave and do other productive stuff, and then head up to IOP.

Realistically, they can’t send it out any later than Tuesday, cuz there’s no way, even with overnighting, to get that back to them by friday. I was hoping they’d send it June 10 and get it all done back to them by Wednesday, have them leave the keys in a key-hiding-rock, so I could leave NOLA Wednesday after work and have all day Thursday to do stuff. But NOOOO.

It’s Monday, June 13. No word from anyone. I email lender, asking what’s up, we’re cutting it kind of close here. She says it’s still at underwriting, and should be ready “momentarily.”

Seriously. How f’in long does it take “underwriting” to sign this f’er? Our paperwork “recently went to underwriting” on June 8…that was in an email on June 8, I mean…so who knows what “recently” meant. But dudes. That’s at least Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and today that “underwriting” has had that ish. I repeat. HOW F’ING LONG DOES IT TAKE TO SIGN A FEW DAMN PIECES OF PAPER?!

Why do we have to do everyone’s job for them?

Since when does “momentarily” mean at least 3 days later?

How can you bitch about how crappy BoA is when it’s taking your underwriting people way too long to move along the paperwork for a house you swore would be closed by June 17?

Tuesday, June 14. i’m leaving for gainesville on wednesday to save them an assload of time in package mailing. after not hearing much of anything, and really, since i was leaving buttcrack of dawn thursday, tuesday would be the last day for them to overnight me something. at this point i don’t care anymore and don’t care about being subtle, so i send this email to the realtor, title, lender, and rose:

subject: just wondering…

……who’s got two thumbs and is freaking out about closing because he hasn’t heard anything yet and, honestly, today is the last day our packet can go out if we want it returned by friday?

Got two answers right away, basically the reatlor saying don’t freak out, and the lender saying “I was told earlier your file should be underwritten today. I have been stressed myself. Libby and I have a backup plan. I can’t send a package until I have a loan approval.” the backup plan was “to have Jeff sign here on Thursday and overnight to you for signature on Friday. Generally when the closing date is Friday the VA would not have the docs in their hands. If it has to be done that way you may have to scan or fax a couple of documents to Libby. There is always a possibility it can come together tomorrow and we can scan a package to you Rose.”

This is when i suggested rose go create a power of attorney document to give me the right to sign for her, so we can save time (and their asses…again) by skipping that step. Title company writes it up, emails it to rose, she goes and gets it notarized, and has to suck two people from work out of work because the document needs 2 witnesses, which the notary can be one of, but no one else there wanted to be a witness..

So, basically, nothing happens on wednesday. Thursday i leave for gainesville on my way to IOP. Keep in touch with realtor, they say it should be ready today, and title is just waiting on the documents. she’s gonna go get the key and make a copy so i can have one and so i can go in the house, drop off the microwave, and get measurements for laminate. Tells me to call when i get to tallahassee. I would’ve called from tallahassee half an hour earlier than i did, if it wasn’t for the blowout. So i call, and she tells me still waiting, let me know when i get to i75. I do, and she tells me meet at the office, title just waiting for documents, we can walk over there and see what status is.

In the meantime, i get a call from rose, who had thought that i would stay overnight. if i don’t own a house in florida, i’m not staying overnight. anyway, they were asking where i would be on friday so they can overnight to me. i told her the place we’d be staying. later call from rose. they’re saying they should be able to get it done today, and if not, first thing in the morning. i said no. i’m not giving them until first thing in the morning. they don’t get that. i’m bending over backwards with the power of attorney thing, and with driving here in the first place. i will stay in gville til 7 or 8 tonight if they can finish it by then. but i am NOT staying overnight. they need to get this shit done now. i’m not giving them any more time. because i know what will happen. i’ll stay overnight, go there first thing in the morning, and the shit still won’t be done til 2 tomorrow afternoon. no. they do NOT get until the morning. besides, that’s stupid. if they’re gonna overnight it to get it to me somewhere on friday, it *has* to be done before tonight anyway. so tell them they have to get it done today.

in the meantime, i get this email from rose:

Rose to me: amazing. called and got taken care of, but amazing…..

Forwarded message from someone with the “underwriters” (now our archnemesis, since they’re the ones that have been holding this up for a week and a half):

The borrower’s letter explaining her places of residency still does not match the employment. Her letter says she lived in Louisiana from 2008 to 2010 but she worked in Virginia in 2009. Can you get her to clarify if she means she lived in Louisiana until June 2009 and then moved to Virignia?

Rose to underwriter idiots:

No I did not work in VA in 2009. I worked in LA from 2007-2010. Then I took an internship position in VA from 2010-present. My last day will be June 29th this month. Then I will start work in Gainesville, FL at a residency in veterinary Neurology July of this year (next month). I will have two weeks off between jobs to move into what I hope will be our new house. My paychecks statements should reflect all of this.

Fast forward an hour and a half. i’m almost at realtor’s office. literally less than a mile away. call from rose.

“you’re not going to believe this.” “what?!” “we can’t close today. the bank screwed something up, and has to redo everything, and now they’re saying tuesday.” “WHY THE FACE?! (if you want to know what I really said, check out this sound-department-planned outtake from the yet-to-be-released Who Do You Love: Meatpies from about 31 seconds in until about 39 seconds. Warning: language.) you have got to f’ing be kidding me. no f’ing way. I’m less than a mile away and i am gonna march in there and kick somebody’s ass. time to be nice has come and gone…went a long time ago…time to be the super a-hole now. i don’t care anymore what any of these people think. i’m tired of being stomped on.”

get to the realtor office. “hi can i help you?” really disguised-pissed serious voice: “Yeah i’m here to see milo.” “ok is she expecting you?” “yeah.”

realtor comes up. we go in office. she talks. i sigh, exhale, shake my head, and say “uh huh” a lot. wanna know what the bank screwed up? Well, when we went back to them after saying we were gonna go with BoA, the rate had changed…in our favor…to a lower one that actually matched the BoA one. But when they did all the figures and paperwork, they did it with the higher, original rate. NICE. so realtor tells me that she has a key for me, and that the seller called her while she was out with the key making copies and asked if she had a key. oh well. neither of us care anymore. we go to the house, drop off the microwave, and take measurements. back to the office to sign the extension. i go to home depot to talk about installation stuff, and pep boys to replace my tire. back on the road to iop.

monday. june 20. no word. i had thought we had extended to tuesday, because that’s when they said it would be done. thankfully rose told them every time they extend it and swear it will be done by them, it’s not, so let’s just go ahead and take the whole week. i didn’t know that until later monday or tuesday.

i think it was tuesday that i found out the lenders had gotten everything to the title. title person’s computer crashed that day, of course, but they were still expecting a day or so turn around time. sure. whatever.

wednesday. driving to work. get a call from title person. she has our stuff from the lender. she’s gonna put package together, and email it to me today, probably by 1pm EST. i will sign it, get it notarized, get a certified check, and send it back to them overnight. i will also call her when it’s printed for her to point out a few things and give me some instructions.

great!

at work Wednesday. someone fr. stan picked out to maybe take my place is coming to eat lunch with us.

at 12:30, i get 2 pdf’s emailed to me. at 12:35, guy shows up. i am happy to have our pdf documents, i start printing one, and will start the other as soon as that’s done, but probably after lunch. you see, one file is 31 pages, the other, 46.

i excuse myself in the middle of the lunch to deal with something that came up. after handling that, i look, and it’s taking forever to print, and the computer printer status says error. (later found out it’s not an error, it’s just taking so long to eventually print that it thought it was an error.) eventually the first 28 pages of the 31 page pdf print. i tell it to stop. then i print pages 29-31 and all is well. call my lawyer friend who’s a notary who has agreed to take care of all this for me. tell her i have it, i’m just printing it all out and have to finish a meeting. she asks if i can be there by 330, cuz she does a radio show on wednesdays from 5-6. i say 330? i’m hoping to get there by 3 at the latest. ok that’ll be great. then i explain what it is, and tell her about the power of attorney thing. then she asks if we can do it thursday morning instead, just so we can take our time and NOT RUSH THINGS to make sure it gets done right. seeing that our closing date is actually friday, i say sure, that’s fine, i’ll do it all in the morning and fedex it overnight and they’ll get it on friday, OUR CLOSING DATE, and all will be well and right with the world. ok, thanks, see ya tomorrow.

i go back to the “meeting” part of the lunch, where fr talks to the guy, then leaves for me to talk to the guy, which is basically me telling him the tips of the iceberg lettuce of everything i do. which turns out to be so much that by the time that’s over, it’s 330.

no biggie, right? plenty of time before tomorrow morning. just have to go get the 46 pages printed, 10 at a time (and not all that quickly, mind you), and go home, look them over, highlight what needs to be signed to be ready for the morning.

get back to my desk. grab the printed out one, open the to-be-printed-out one on my computer, and call the title lady. she explains stuff to me, i ask some questions, tell her I’m having some issues printing but it will be printed it will just take some time.

now we’re at about 4:15 or so.

so i tell the title person that i’m gonna get all this done first thing in the morning, and they’ll have it by friday.

oh no. you can’t do that. we set all the dates of signing for today, and disbursement for tomorrow. um, WHY THE F WOULD YOU DO THAT?! closing date is friday! why put us in this position?? what if rose and i both had jobs where we were tied up from 830am until 830pm and couldn’t even try to make it work?? so what are my options? either get it done today, or we have to redo all the paperwork and send it. knowing that it takes forever for them to change anything, i say, i’ll do what i can.

stuff finally prints out by like 5:15. by this point, i won’t be able to get a certified check cuz banks are closed. most notaries are closed, and mine is on a radio show til 6, and we’re calling parishioners who might be able to. some aren’t, others we’re leaving messages for. fedex’s last pickup is 7:30.

i send the following 2 emails:

I’m working on it. As I told Libby, I am very much past the end of my rope right now. I have had a long, crap day that has kept me away from just about everything that I’ve needed to do today, and now we’re pushing 4:30 my time. Our closing date isn’t until Friday. Our lawyer/notary friend was going to take care of this with me first thing in the morning, and I was going to overnight it back, and it would be in Gainesville’s sweet little hands by Friday, which is our extended extended closing date.

But apparently, that’s not good enough. Apparently, even though we have been pushed back and delayed and extended numerous times through no fault of our own, and have been kept on the edges of our seats time and time again chewing our nails down to the cuticles,WE can’t take and sign this in the morning and overnight it to you then. WE can’t have a several hour extension, even though WE’VE been the ones getting everything back immediately. One day, no, several hours, cannot be extended to us, because everything is dated today, and disbursement is set for tomorrow, whatever that means, and in order to change that, in order to simply move this back one day, we’d have to go through a process of changing everything. And we’ve all seen how long this takes. No, to delay this 18 hours, would, in all likelihood, end up taking several days.

We’ve already gone out of our way twice. Once for me to drive to Gainesville to try to get stuff situated, and once to get Rose to give me POA so that we can skip that step of mailing it to her and to me and back to you. Just to expedite this process so we could close on time. And it’s finally our turn to say we need a few extra hours on this, and that’s not even possible.

So yes, I will go to a notary tonight, if I can find one that’s open, and overnight it to you. And I will spend at least $10 a signature/initial to get this notarized, and HOPE AGAINST HOPE that someone there will be a witness, and that the notary will be a witness. Because when Rose went to do her POA, the other people at the site would NOT be witnesses, and she had to steal someone away from her job to come be a witness. So HOPEFULLY someone will be willing to do so. And I will spend at least $500 on getting this damn thing notarized, since there are at least 50 places to sign and/or initial.

And then we will be finished. I guess. I don’t know. I almost don’t care anymore.

I am up against the impossible here.

It’s currently 5:15pm.

1. Most notaries close at 5, and if I’m lucky 6. But I’m still printing out one of the documents, and who knows how much longer that will take.

2. Can I get a certified or cashier’s check if the bank is closed?

3. Fedex last pick up is at 7:30pm. Fedex, which does not have a notary. Neither does UPS. Even if I DO find a notary who’s still open, I seriously doubt I’ll be able to get everything signed and get myself over to Fedex before then.

So, while I’m going to try to get all of this done tonight, I am gonna be blunt and say, you’re pretty much asking me to be a superhero.

I’ll let you know the status whenever something happens.

so i call our realtor and ask her to talk me down, because they screwed us again. she tells me i can sign and initial everything that doesn’t need a notary signature, and just get the notary stuff signed with the notary.

ok. so i try to get something done. the least i can do is start signing and initialing stuff. around 6:15 i get a call from a parishioner. he’d love to help. he lives in metairie, i will meet him there after i finish signing stuff.

i get to his house around 6:35. get in, get everything signed and notarized, etc, and done around 7:05. get to fedex 7:15. employee tells me i have 10 minutes to get it in for delivery tomorrow. i realize i don’t know where to send it. i call the lender, who thankfully picks up her phone. she said it should be on page whatever…which i found. she asked, didn’t the title send a fedex label to have it shipped? nope. so i get it in the envelope and seal it and fill out the form for where to send it and pay my $45.73 and send it on.

the realtor had told me that we should be able to wire the money in the morning. so i called title and left a message for the title people telling them to call me first thing in the morning with instructions to wire money.

all is well?

not yet.

email thursday morning with wiring instructions. gonna go there before work and get it done.

headed to work. title calls. i forgot to sign a few things. i wonder how, maybe it was because you gave me no time at all to even be careful with it and forced me to rush it?! maybe.

2 of the things i missed didn’t need notary. so just sign again, scan a copy back, and overnight the originals. one, however, did need the notary. or a notary. and, here’s the critical part, needed to be dated the day before, or else … the whole “create a new packet” issue. well, no notary in their right mind, even my friends who are notaries, would ever date a signature on a date other than when the signature is being signed! so, pretty much the only thing we could do would be to try to get in touch with the original notary, because he actually DID witness me sign it on that date, so maybe he’d be willing to just do that page over again, since technically, he wasn’t lying. problem is, i left a message for that guy at 9:30 and 10:30, and hadn’t heard from him by noon. title had told me that if i can initiate wire by 2pm EST, they’d get it that day. told title person i hadn’t heard from them, so what should i do. she said go ahead and wire. BINGO. i go to chase and wire the money. now, you bastards have our money, MAKE this shit work. you owe us that.

well, by end of the day, still no call from notary (he’s a lawyer, so come to find out he was in court and prison all day. as i figured he might be). they wanted to know by 4pm CST (and this is 3pm CST), or else they’ll HAVE to redo the whole packet. i said ok let me see what i can do (nothing), and if i can’t get anything done, let’s just warn the lender to start working on a new packet.

get a call from the lender a little later. she says what they will accept, rather than having to go through the trouble of making a new packet, is to overnight the one notary signed and sealed page back to me, i get it first thing friday, sign it, scan it, email it, and overnight it back to them. finally. an easy solution to something. AND they’d pay for the overnighting. damn right you will.

so i get to work half an hour early to make sure i don’t miss fedex…they actually beat me there, but one of our employees was thankfully there and got it from them. i got it, opened it, signed it, scanned it, emailed it, and walked over and dropped it back off at fedex.

at 3:02pm, i get a call from our realtor telling me congratulations.

thank god.

I just went to Frenchman to see a friend playing with fire with a couple of her friends. And by that I mean like fire-eaters and fire-dancers and stuff like that. While walking around waiting for them to start, I saw someone else I know playing at another bar. And a little further down the street, Andrew Duhon was playing at dba. Yeah. I’ll miss that. Being able to go anywhere and see someone I know. Having whole streets of places to go see good live music. The big consolation of course being that I’ll finally be living in the same city with my wife. 😛

If you somehow haven’t heard, yeah, Rose got a residency, and it’s in Gainesville, so she’ll be moving there in July. I’ll be moving there probably in the fall if I can find a job, and in January if I don’t…I’ve set that limit for myself. I’ll be leaving my comfort zone and living outside of the NOLA metropolitan area for the first time in my life. But hey, like I said at least I’ll be with Rose, and at least I’ll be 2 hours from Disney World, and at least we’ll be able to get cheap resident annual passes, and at least we’re getting a really nice place (pictures here) for a really good price.

I was just thinking about this recently. While I am comfortable here, and making money, and all of my jobs pretty much come from knowing people (hey, that’s how it works), I am kinda sorta up for the adventure this year. Several years ago when I used to do a lot of road-tripping with (ok, following) certain bands, i’d meet lots of people…other fans, tech people, crew people, venue people…I loved it. But now some of those bands don’t tour as much (or at all), and I don’t have the time, or money, or inclination, or any combination of the three, to road trip as much any more. So maybe this will be my chance to just go out there and start trying to be social like I used to sometimes do. We’ll see how that goes.

One final note, I’m not sure of my jazz fest status this year. You see, my main connection at Munck Mix, the guys who do the live recording, as I found out last week, is no longer with them. And the other people who would be in such a position to maybe give me a position, well, I just don’t have their contact info. I got in touch with one guy who works with them, who’s the one who told me that guy is no longer with them, and he told me someone to email. Which I did, and almost a week later, I still haven’t heard back. So, could last year have been my last year? Maybe. I don’t want to sound snobby, but if I’m not working, I’m not going. And it’s not just a money thing. I can’t go from super awesome everywhere access doing what I love to being just in the crowd. Cuz honestly, I don’t care to be “just in the crowd” anymore. I’ll try a little bit harder this week to get in touch with someone, but we’re kinda getting down to the wire, so we’ll see what happens. I am working just about every night at the Station, so at least there’s that.

Anyway, yeah. I’m sure I have more to say, but I guess that’s enough for a Sunday night. Have a hoppy Easter.

I know what you’re saying. It’s supposed to be “if jeff WERE” a coach. I don’t care what grammar says, I’m not a plural entity, therefore it’s if jeff WAS a coach.

So as I was saying. If I was a coach, I wouldn’t kick a field goal on first and ten. Trust me I know all the arguments FOR doing so. And to that, I say, screw it. We’re superbowl champs, surely we can practice super ball control and get it closer or even in the end zone. Practice for the post season, cuz that crap won’t necessarily seal the deal when the time comes.

Second…let’s make icing the kicker illegal. It either doesn’t work or completely backfires most of the time. It backfired for (I think) the redskins last week, and it backfired for us this week. Let them play!! We coulda used that one and only time out if they missed it anyway, so leave it alone!

Ah well. How one game changes the dynamics this early in the season. At least we have 13 games left, and hopefully we get some injured ppl back. And at least I had a great weekend with rose.

Now I get to take an earlier flight that is delayed to a time later than my original flight in order to at least have a chance to make my connecting flight. And where is that connecting flight? Why, atlanta, of course. Langoliers, I’m looking in your direction.

As promised, here are the videos from the wedding reception. I left out the first one cuz it was mostly us dancing, and that doesn’t need to be on the web. 😛 😉

But first, this commercial break.

Alrighty, here you go. Enjoy! Rea, a couple of those feature a Dancing Jackson!

Be a Threadhead:

I’m a Believer:

The Rain The Park and Other Things:

Everafter:

All You Need Is Love:

I just felt like updating the site. What’s funny is that the thing that prompted me to change the site was actually something different altogether, and I still haven’t changed that. Oh well. No biggie. I can deal with it for now. (For the geeks wondering, custom menus aren’t supported by this theme.)

On a side note, for the 5th anniversary of that b!£¢4 Katrina, I posted a selection of photos. “Enjoy.”

I’ll be posting some better photos later. But these won’t be of Katrina. They will just be a bunch of my favorite photos over the years. And when I say, “over the years,” I mean, over the past 7 years or so that I’ve had a digital camera. I’m not going back into the archives and scanning any physical pictures…

Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce my, to steal a partial phrase from beatinpath, “brand new old” car. After looking at several cars, this is the one I went with. Sure it’s a year older than mine was (it’s a 2004), and had the most miles of the ones I looked at (95k), it was the one I liked the most. One owner, who obviously took good care of it, all leather, sunroof, jbl sound system, very clean w only a few knicks. Here’s to hoping it lasts many more years. I’m not really one to name cars,…well I kinda name them but never call em by name….but I’ll be takin suggestions for this one. Caravan was The Hooptie, stratus was Figment (it was a dark purply eggplanty amethyst color), camry1 was Blue (it was light blue…you’re my boy, Blue!). So camry2…hm. let’s see what name it falls into.

On another note, why do I have so many rogue socks??? I have FIVE pairs of unmatched socks. All black. I think I have a racist laundry gnome living in my washer or dryer.

Btw, go see Star and Micey at the Neutral Ground at 11:00 tonight. And go see Leo deJesus at the Allways Lounge before that at 10.

So it starts off on Saturday night/Sunday morning on the way home from Carrollton Station when my car slipped on something, fishtailed, slammed itself on the right side of the on-ramp, then the left. And no, I wasn’t speeding, nor was I drunk (I passed the “follow the pen with your eyes and only your eyes” test!), and I wasn’t texting, or playing with the ipod, or anything else. So who knows why the face. Long story short, I got it towed back to the collision center 2 blocks from home and dealt with it on Monday. The cops couldn’t give me a ticket for speeding, nor for being drunk, but they HAD to give me one for something (??), so it was “Reasonable Vigilance.” Yeah, buddy, here’s a ticket for being Reasonably Vigilant. Nah, I guess it means I should’ve been more reasonably vigilant. 😛 Anyway, I’m physically fine, thank God. I’m sad about my car though. The guy at the shop told me on Monday that once it gets past 75% of the car’s value to fix it, that they total it. I didn’t get my hopes up about it being fixed, really, b/c I didn’t want to be disappointed. I got the call on Wednesday from State Farm. As soon as I saw the caller i.d., I knew what they were going to say. What I didn’t expect was that they were gonna give me a total of $11,2xx for the NADA value of the car plus TTL, minus my $250 deductible, minus the $350 final payment (!!), for a total of $10,646.xx. So now I’m looking for a car that that can completely pay for. I’ve narrowed it down to a few, but haven’t decided yet. I have the rental car til Wednesday, so I’m hoping to make this work out where I don’t have any payments to make, and even have some money left over.

So then I get sickish on Wednesday night. Throat and nose and chills and all that. I sleep with Nyquil and feel betterish on Thursday, but rest most of the day, and sleep for about 2 hours in the middle of the day. Thursday night I head out to see beatinpath play at Chickie Wah Wah. I go to leave, even before they’re done cuz I’m tired and not wanting to relapse, and…..my car is gone. So first I panic and think it was stolen. Great. It’s a rental. Then I see tiny “24 hour towing” signs on the dark wall on the other side of the parking lot of the CLOSED chiropractic clinic that I was parked in. And yes, I realize that’s a dangling something-or-other and that I wasn’t actually parked in the clinic but in the parking lot, but I’m leaving it like that. Anywho, I call and sure enough it was towed. So was someone else who was at the show. Because, apparently, neither of us saw those signs. Still pissed, but glad it’s not stolen, I wait for my parents (who I told not to come pick me up but did anyway, THANKS!), end up talking to the guy again, and he says since I was nice, and not rude like the other people who were towed, who i didn’t know but met b/c they were out there screaming and cursing, that he would give me a tip, that it’s better to get it in the morning than overnight. But I ain’t one to gossip, so you ain’t heard it from me.

I go pick up the car this morning, and there’s a note on the counter that says so-and-so productions is filming in the area for “Untitled New Orleans Project” and that by entering the premises you are consenting to being filmed,  blah blah. So as I’m paying, this guy with a video camera comes up and starts asking me questions. Where were you parked, what was going on, blah blah.  Greeeeaaaaaaat.

The guy working at the towing company tells me that the owner (of chickie) “won’t pay the owner of the chiropractic clinic to use the lot,” and “is usually out there telling people not to park there.” I said of course, this is the first time I’ve been there where he wasn’t there until later. I also said that they need more signs in that lot b/c you can’t see the ones on the dark wall, and there are none at all on the side that I parked on. He didn’t comment on that. Of course he didn’t. Because if you can easily see the signs, that cuts down on their business. But I digress. I mean, I understand that parking can be premium down there. And I understand that maybe the “contract” that you enter with these towing companies don’t have options like “only b/t the hours of.” Well, actually, I have trouble believing that, but I’m sure it’s a possibility. But seriously, Hardy Chiropractic, at 2912 Canal Street, which I will never ever patronize, even if I did feel comfortable going to chiropractors, why do you have to be such Cod Shoe Nuzzles? (Feed the singular into an anagram creator and figure out which one I meant. Here’s a hint. It’s the second one. :P)

But at least it’s Friday!