AC Capehart capehart

Yay! Spring visited Altoona today. I don’t know how long it will last, but today was glorious. It got up to close to 70. It was sunny. The snow is gone from all but the highest and shadiest parts of the area. I went for my first “real” bike ride of the season today (on the road bike, not the bike in the picture). It was good to get out. I went through town, out (and up!

We were in Florida for a conference of Carolyn’s last week. She gave what I thought was a kick-ass close reading of a French novel I’d never heard of. Unfortunately, the audience was the same size as the panel itself (not including the moderator!) It was sunny and in the 80’s. I went walking along a nice, paved rail-trail. I soo wish I’d thought to bring my roller blades. We went to Cedar Key.

Now that that bit of info (Carolyn is pregnant) is out there, I can talk about it. I was playing with gizooglebecause I was updating my home pageto include searches. Gizoogle’s just another dialectizer, but more closely coupled to Google’s searching. While adding Gizoogle, I tested it with the phrase “something fun” and came across http://www.kneebouncers.com. I’m (mildly) embarrassed to say how much fun I had there. I imagined my child on my lap slapping at the keyboard and watching the guitar play, or the drums.

Carolyn and I have news that we’ve been starting to share. What’s most interesting about this process is people’s reactions to it seem very personal, and certainly all over the map. The news is that we’re pregnant. Well, Carolyn’s pregnant. I’m just cranky, gaining weight and nauseated (nauseating?). The reactions, as I’ve mentioned, have been all over the map. As an artifact of who was home when, we told Carolyn’s parents first.

Well, after much back and forth, we have an agreement to buy the house. It should be a happy occasion, and truthfully, it mostly is. But I’m still a bit pissy about $250.00. That’s right. We’ve come to an agreement on approximately $150,000, and I’m pissy about $250.00. Let me break it down for you. First, the seller is an old lady. A recent widow who’s lived in that house since 1973.

Well, as I said we would, we made an offer on the house — 512 28th Ave today. And we received a counter offer this evening. The asking price was $155K. We offered $145K, and asked for a late closing date (so we don’t have to pay a rent and mortgage the same month), and every appliance in the place (even the snowblower!). We got a counter offer — everything but the snow blower, $149,500, but an extra $3000 in that goes into escrow with her agent (we already included $1000 in what my mom called “ernest money” to show that we’re serious about the offer).

We re-visited house #1 today — 512 28th Ave(I took another huge batch of pictures this trip). We’re going to make an offer tomorrow. I’m scared. I don’t remember being this scared about Gateway circle, but I don’t remember emotions much anyway. I’m not exactly sure why I’m scared. I guess it’s just financial. I’m worried about failing to make payments, or having the C’ville house go un-rented and having to pay two mortgages when it feels like we’re stretched paying just our rent right now.

Well, we finally engaged a real estate agent. We met with her (and an associated mortgage person) on Thursday, and put together a list of houses to see which we did, today. We saw a total of 5. Of those five, it breaks down like this: #1 Nice, everything we need, more on it later. #2 Funky. Old. Sideways-looking. Awesome neighborhood. Awesome hardwood floors. Semi-renovated. Too expensive. Sucky closets. Only heat in basement was wood stove.

I got two surprises in my gas bill today. The first really pisses me off. The second confuses me. The first is that they “estimated” my gas usage. Though if they used anything as advanced as mathematics in estimating my gas usage, it would surprise me. Somehow, they thought that during the shortest (and albeit coldest) month of the year, I would manage to use 3.7 TIMES my average monthly usage; That the gas I used in February would some how be approximately half of ALL of the gas that I used from July up until February.

I really didn’t expect this. We were going to a few open houses. That was all. We were going to see a few places to get a feel for the neighborhoods as well as what our money would buy. Who knows, maybe even find that exact gem of a house we are looking for. We saw a large and rambly 4 bedroom rancher from the 50’s. The only significant updates since then were some new appliances (the old ones were still in the garage) and a new roof.