Dominica and my day today really revolves around our house inspection taking place in Peekskill this afternoon. I had to be up at six thirty to cover the early morning shift today. Then, at a quarter after seven, I drove Dominica to work in Totowa so that I would have the car later when we need to go to Peekskill for the house inspection.
Driving Dominica to work really cuts into my day. Her commute is pretty rough as it is and when I take her in it requires me to do her entire commute twice plus deal with getting the car from the valet in the middle of the afternoon which never goes smoothly.
Dominica’s morning was so busy that she didn’t even have time to hop onto her instant messenger to talk to me. Normally we are on IM all day long. It is really nice; it makes it seem like we see each other all day. Really makes both of us working full time not seem so bad.
My day was absolutely crazy as well. I worked like mad all morning trying to stay on top of things so that I would be able to leave for the house inspection this afternoon. I was so busy that I did not have enough time to get myself a meal all day.
Yesterday I finished reading Mark Twain’s “A Murder, A Mystery and A Wedding” and today I began reading “The Hacker Ethic.” Much of the book is material that I have read before in other forms but I have never actually read this book.
The house and mailbox keys that I had left accidentally at the Tocco’s home last weekend arrived today by the post. Now we can get to our mail again and I no longer must prevail upon the concierge to lend me his keys so that I may lock and unlock the apartment. Having keys of my own is most convenient.
In order to make it to Peekskill in time for the house inspection I had to leave Newark at one thirty. Oreo was most lazy today and spent most of his day sprawling lazily upon the couch, practically pouring himself from one cushion to another. While he is very sad to be home alone, today is most certainly a perfect day for him to have time to himself to sleep. He is seldom this sleeping – especially after just a single day of daycare.
I picked Dominica up from her office just a little after two and from there we made wonderful time up to Peekskill arriving almost a full half of an hour earlier than our appointed time. Everyone that we were meeting arrived quite early as well which worked out perfectly so that we were able to begin the inspection by a quarter after three.
Dominica and I were laughing about the fact that we have now made a purchase committment on this house and as we drove to Peekskill we had almost no idea how to get to the complex, and when we had arrived there I still had very little idea what the inside of the house looked like or how it was laid out. Getting to see the house in the light of having already purchased it made going to see it especially exciting as so much of it involved “discovery” and not just a simple revisiting.
The real estate agent representing the sellers of the first property on which we had made an offer, that is the house at 11 Villa in the Woods III complex also in Peekskill, called our agent today to attempt to justify their incredibly high asking price for the house. We suspect that this was in the hopes that we were still pining for the property and might somehow be pursuaded to spring for it even at the atrocious asking price. Our agent was quite happy to have the opportunity to inform the sellers that not only had we had an offer accepted on another property but that we were currently en route to have it inspected!
The inspection went very well. No major items were found. Much to our surprise we found that the house has a brand new, quite large and very expensive (and extremely fuel efficient) hot water tank. Total bonus!
Things that we learned that we are very happy about that we did not remember for sure from our first visit include: there is a good amount of “under the stairs” storage in the basement, the utility room is larger than we remembered and has enough space for a baker’s rack to be placed in there along with quite a bit extra, there is a wood burning fireplace and there is a quite large, pull down attic with about two-thirds of the space already set up for storage. We will be able to store most of our “where is this supposed to go” stuff up in the attic. That attic is going to make all of the different to us between having and not having any space. Our camping stuff and holiday stuff alone will make a major dent in what we have to store around the house. We are already planning to convert into into total storage up there. We have just a tremendous amount of stuff that needs a home.
We were both starving when we left the inspection. Dominica had barely eaten today and I had not had a single meal. So we ate at our customary Burger King on the Garden State Parkway on our way home.
Dominica spent the evening playing Paper Mario on the Nintendo Wii. I had to do work for the office to make up for my time away this afternoon. It was an exhausting evening. Tomorrow I have to be awake especially early as it is Wednesday and I am traveling out to Warren for the day as I try to do most Wednesdays. I should be home at a reasonable hour.