Sheep Guarding Llama

I got up early this morning and went into my office before everyone else woke up and got started on some writing that I wanted to do.  It was actually a very productive morning for me.  Great use of my time.  It is beautiful here this weekend with temperatures in the seventies.  It is awesome being in Texas.

It was pretty early yet, before Dominica and Liesl were awake, when I heard a knock on the door.  Our contractor had arrived and it was time to get started on the garage conversion.

Almost immediately we went down to Home Depot to get the supplies that we needed to get a start on the day.  We mostly got the big items like the lumber as today’s project is mostly to get the framing done so that the electricians can take over shortly.  It was over a grand for all of the stuff that we needed just for today so that we could get started.  Ugh.  This is not going to be cheap.

We also had to get a new breaker box as ours is not legal, safe or appropriate.  The one that was installed in our house was an “add on” box, not a main breaker box.  So there was no main switch to safely cut off all of the house’s power at the same time.  That triggered a lot of other things that are going to need to be done to get the house up to code and safe as well as being more efficient and better to live in.

Right as we were getting started on the garage our next door neighbough, the one whose house we did not buy, stopped over to say hello.  I have seen him a couple of times outside but have never really spoken to him.  He was very cool and we are encouraged that the two guys who live next door seem a lot like the kind of people that we would want to hang out with.  And, to be even cooler, it turns out that today was their long-standing Dungeons and Dragons party that goes all day long!  That is awesome.  And they have owned the house next door for a long time so that is good for area stability since two houses on our very small street were for sale at the same time.  That can be very bad for a street like ours.  So some long-term, lynch pin owners in an area are very important.

The electricians took off pretty early, not much for them to do today while our contractor worked on building the main part of the garage structure.  Today’s goal is to get the back part of the garage conversion done so that the electricians can come back and have something to work with when they start doing the electric.

Souder came over pretty early to help out with the construction and to do what network wiring that he could get done around all of the other work that is going on.  Watson came over a while later to help out as well.

It was amazing to watch how quickly the center wall came down and how quickly the new walls were framed.  Wall framing is always an amazing thing even though I have watch it many times.  You really go from nothing to a good amount of stuff pretty quickly.

By the end of the day there was a tremendous amount of progress.  You can really see the house coming together.  There is a ton left to do but it is encouraging and we can start to envision what it is going to be like.  Much of the floor is in place too which is really good since the room actually “floats” over the old garage floor which is something that I had been having a hard time envisioning how it was going to work as I had never seen that done previously.

It is exciting to see the place coming together.  We have been really looking forward to this.  We are not looking forward to the bill, of course, but we are very much looking forward to having the house in a condition that we can really use.  It is obvious that we could be as little as several days away from being able to put books onto the shelves in the new office which means that we will be emptying out the living room, den, other side of the garage and other miscellaneous places of all of the “stuff” that has accumulated there awaiting an official home in the “office.”

Some additional work, but not too much, was done up in the attic today too.  That is going to be slowly addressed as we go.  It is a total disaster up there and needs to be fixed before other parts of the house are fixed to make it easier to work as we go.

It was a long day and a bit depressing to see the money just flying out of the window.  But it is great to see the house getting put into shape.  We felt much better about the scale of the work going on when, while just doing a little work on a door frame, the center wall in the garage collapsed as it was not attached to anything!  Wow are we glad that we are replacing that!

The work went until pretty late this evening.  There is just tons and tons left to do.  Tomorrow is going to be the electrical day.  In addition to tons of electrical work, Dominica and I have a couple of things going on tomorrow.  The first is a “mommy and me” play group that we are checking out to see if Dominica and Liesl want to join.  Then Dominica’s second cousin’s birthday party in the afternoon down in Mansfield.  So we will have a very busy day.

Thanks goodness for Souder who has been at the house doing a ton of work and orchestrating the work while we are away or whatever.  We’d be screwed if he wasn’t there.  He’s overseeing the entire thing.  Even when we are there he knows so much more about what is going on than I do and we really just need several people to be able to handle the trips to Lowe’s and Home Depot and everything else.  It is amazing how much we have going on all at once right now!

My work day started at six in the morning today.  After less than four hours of sleep, that was kind of rough.  Today is going to be a very, very long day.

I worked from home for a little bit this morning, just until eight, so for the first two hours.  At eight thirty I needed to meet up with the real estate agent to deal with paperwork for the new house.  Right as I left home the meeting was rescheduled to nine thirty instead.  So off to the office I went for an hour before going to Coldwell.

It is a weird thing, buying a third house.  In some ways, buying houses is getting to be pretty commonplace.  I’ve now bought a total of four houses (or well have by mid-February) which is nearly as many houses as I have purchased cars.  I only have purchased more cars because that number includes cars that I have purchased for Dominica, the car that my parents basically gave to me and the very inexpensive convertible that I bought just for fun.  One house in 2003, one in 2008, one in 2010 and now one in 2011.  Definitely since 2008 we have gone through more houses than cars.

Work was quite busy today.  Just running from one thing to another all day.

I went home for lunch.  I had leftovers that Dominica prepared for me.  We talked over what was going on with the house, made some plans, talked about when people are coming to visit us and when we are traveling.

Dominica was about to put our fridge on freecycle when we realized that we now have another house that needs a fridge!  So, in the interim between now and May we are going to lug the fridge over from the garage to the new house so that it can be put to use there.  Awesome.  Now we don’t have to worry about buying a fridge for over there for several months.  That is good because that is the single largest expenditure that we know has to be done there.

Liesl was already asleep when I got home for lunch which is very, very early for her to be taking a nap.  The caffeine last night really messed with her schedule.  She doesn’t know what is going on now.

I got back to work and walked into a small disaster.  Dealt with that for an hour and a half while, apparently, everyone was trying to reach me.  Then I had to run out to get the earnest money to our agent so that she could get it to the selling bank to wrap up our house stuff for the day.

And after that… back to the office for the Friday night deployments which were of epic scale tonight.  Doing deployments tonight was on the same scale that it used to be like years ago.  Four hours of deployments for me tonight.  Of all nights for it to be like this, on a night when I had started work so early.

So it was nearly eight in the evening when I was finally able to get on the road and drive back home.  At least traffic has died down considerably by that time, especially on a Friday when most people leave work a little early.

Watson came over this evening to do some work.  He got to the house long before I did since I got stuck at work so late.

Dominica made dinner tonight – homemade pizza.  Her first time ever, I believe.  Certainly the first time that she has made pizza for me.  It was pretty good.  She is not used to the ovens yet so it got burnt some because it ran on pre-heat the entire time instead of going to the normal cooking mode.  Good for a first attempt.  We will be having homemade pizza more often now – healthier and cheaper.

Watson and I did a conference call and didn’t hang out too long.  Tomorrow is probably going to be a busy day.  The garage construction has been being held off but we expect that it will start tomorrow so that will keep us very busy indeed.

Today was crazy, completely crazy.  Nothing that we expected happened.

I got to the office.  I called our real estate agent.  She was thinking that it was time to follow up as well and set about contacting the selling bank to see what was going on.

Our agent called seconds after the decision was made to give us the house!  We can’t believe it.  We were so sure that after more than a week since we put in the initial offer that there would be no way that we would be getting the house now.  This doesn’t seem possible.  (At this point “too good to be true” should have occurred to us.)

We were very surprised as our bid was pretty lean.  We found out that there were four offers on the house but ours came out on top.  We actually were not the highest bid but we had the most stable funding and had a good offer and an early one so, in the end, we won.

So it is turning into a crazy day.  We were so sure that we were not getting the house.  Now we are.  Now there is a lot of planning and stuff to do.  I ran home for lunch which gave Dominica, Souder and I time to talk about what was going on with the other house.  Souder was up to start doing the work on the cabling that he didn’t manage to do last night because the electrical issues arose.

While we were there the electricians arrived and were working on things as well.  We are getting prepped for the fact that this work is going to cost a fortune compared to what was predicted due to the enormous amount of electrical work that is cropping up.  This is going to be rough.

I went over to the real estate office to sign the paperwork for the new house.  It only took a minute before we discovered what had happened: they put in the wrong bid.  They had been trying to convince us to put in a higher bid initially for this house because they were concerned that we were not going to get it because we were not high enough.  We had said “no”, that we had already made our best offer and we were going to stick with it.  This explains why we won the bid when we knew that we had been so long.  How could we have been high enough with so many people trying to buy that house.  Now we know.  Truly too good to be true.

So so much for the house that we were going to get.  Now we are disappointed.  And obviously upset.  We are not very happy that after we were so clear with our agent not to put in this price that it went in anyway.

It would be easily to be really pissed at our realtor for doing this but, after talking to her several times about it, it is very clear that she honestly is confused about the amount of money involved and does not, even now, understand that what she put in for us is as much money as it is.  She somehow thinks that we are getting some big reimbursement from the bank at the last minute or something crazy like that.  I’ve been over the numbers with her over and over again and she just can’t figure out why this isn’t the number that we had agreed to.  It is very frustrating but she certainly didn’t do it on purpose, she doesn’t even know what she did.

We decided that we at least wanted to discuss the offer.  The upside to the mistake is that, according to the selling bank, our “real” offer would not have gotten the house.  So we are now, because of the mistake, in a position to get the house that previously we would not have been able to get.  So, in reality, it is kind of a no harm, no foul situation.  Even as it is with this higher than expected bid we are still not the highest bidder, just the best bidder.

At least now we have the real numbers to work with.  This isn’t a bidding process now, it is just us accepting or not accepting the standing arrangement.

So Dominica and I talked about it for an hour or so.  I talked to our future tenant.  I talked to my banker.  We have everything approved should we want to go forward with the house.  We have until ten tomorrow morning  to make the decision.

Our final decision was… to get the house.  We ran the numbers again and decided that it still made sense.  A “house in the hand”, we decided.  We still got the house for a great deal – less that someone else was willing to pay right now, for example.  So the risk is very low.  It appears that we could easily sell the house if necessary at some point.

So we called the agent and she called the selling bank.  We have a house and we have all day tomorrow to wrap up the paperwork for it that we had started, and then stopped, today.  Our closing date is now set on February 18th.

So, while it was all crazy, we have decided that it is for the best.  We really do want the house and feel that it is a very good, long term property for us to have.  We are planning on staying in our current house for a long time and owning that house makes that that much easier.

We feel at peace about the decision.  People often think of the Lord closing doors to protect them from things that they should not do – like the car they wanted being sold before they get there or their offer not being accepted on their house.  “Oh well, the Lord is protecting us from something.”  Well, we feel that this is that, just the opposite.  Our offer wasn’t enough to get the house and so, to make sure that we got it, the offer was “wrong”.  Now we have it.

We watched a little BattleStar Galactica 2.5 tonight before Dominica went to bed, sort of, and I headed to the office to work.  Dominica failed to get any sleep, though, because Liesl had caffeine (not my fault, Dominica gave it to her before I got home from work) and was a terror.  She was visibly exhausted but could not go to sleep.  One moment she would be passing out and the next as wide awake as could be.  Very unlike her normal self.  She was almost acting drunk, banging her head against the wall, lots of screaming, not communicating well.  It was a rough evening.

I was up until two in the morning working.  I managed to get an article written just before Dominica fell asleep.  So I made her proofread it.  I submitted and then it was off to bed.

I have to be up at six in the morning so tonight is going to be a very short one for me.  Four hours at best.  And boy is there a lot to do tomorrow!

And yet another day and no word on the house.  This is getting to be a bit crazy.  We are moving forward with our usual spending rather than holding back funds for the house.  We can’t completely stop our lives while waiting for someone to bother to make a decision about this.  This is just silly.

I finally got paid today.  Haven’t been paid for a month which is a bit nerve-wracking.  We have a lot of bills coming up this week – it is the end of the month when everything is due.

There was frost on my car today, which was surprising, as it is pretty nice out.  My car was out front in the sun too.

I got into the office early today, around eight.  It is a little chilly here early in the mornings but by midday we are in the high fifties which is awfully nice.

Today was a very busy day.  FOMC Rates announcement is today so that takes an hour chunk out of the middle of my day.

This morning was Liesl’s doctor’s appointment.  She got three shots and some other stuff like a finger prick which I think was her blood lead test.  She was not very happy but she was a really good trooper and was great for everyone.  Once she got a lollipop, though, everything was okay.

I had to go to a really early, and short, lunch today.  That’s fine.  I generally take long lunches so I’m the last person who can get to complain about having to rush.  I ran over to Rockfish at eleven forty-five and ate very quickly.  As I was alone and clearly didn’t have a lot of time, they had my food out in about five minutes.

Brian and Tara joined me for the last few minutes of lunch before I had to jet back to the office.  I was back by a quarter after noon.  Very fast lunch.

I had hours of conference calls that, for some reason, were all during lunch today.

This afternoon the contractor was up at the house doing some additional work.  Brian went up to do some cabling as well.  Lots going on in that garage.

I was supposed to do some shopping at Home Depot today with the contractor but he ended up being sick so we postponed that until tomorrow.

On my way home I stopped by at Walmart to pick up baking soda for Dominica as she was baking a cake for dessert tonight.  What a madhouse it was there.

I got home and discovered that there was no power in the garage.  Brian had been doing some work out there on something else and touched a wire and an outlet exploded.  So this was destined to be a lot of fun.

Brian ended up working for like six hours just trying to get the electrical fixed in the garage and kitchen.  What a pain.  The wiring is a mess and we discovered one thing wrong after another.  There was very little for me to do since I don’t know much of anything about house wiring.

Finally, after midnight, the electrical started working.  Pheww.

We are pretty sure that tons and tons of electrical work needs to be done on the house for safety purposes.  The electric is a total disaster.  This is going to cost us a fortune and that isn’t going to be fun.

No, we did not hear anything further about the house today.  We were told either Monday or Tuesday and today is Tuesday and we have heard nothing.  It’s been six days now since we put in our bid and no information.  Rather rude.  You would think that they would at least want to keep their potential offers in the loop.  If we were the winning bid we could easily have been out looking at other homes too since this one doesn’t seem very interested in selling the place.

In reality, we are pretty confident that the house went to someone else and that the bank just isn’t bothering to inform us as much.  I’m very surprised that absolutely no one has called us to at least discuss us not hearing anything.  Our bank emailed me yesterday just to get a status.  Apparently they haven’t heard anything either.

I ended up working from home for a bit this morning.  It was just a really busy day.  It was around ten when I finally managed to get into the car and get off to the office.  I started work pretty early this morning, around eight, but there was just enough going on that I was never able to leave.  It happens once in a while.

Work was pretty busy today.  We have some server migrations going on this week so there is a lot of coordination required for that.

For lunch, Souder and I went to La Cima.  There was mahi mahi on the buffet again today so I didn’t want to miss that.  It was a short lunch, though, as there was so much going on.  Didn’t want to be away from the office for very long.

Dominica said that the contractor showed up around three and started work on the garage.  He was quite impressed that I had managed to clear out so much stuff.  He didn’t think that I was going to pull it off so late at night.  So the demolition has begun.  We should, in theory, have a new garage in no time.

I didn’t stay late this evening, there was much to be done.  Demolition had been completed by around four thirty and supplies are needed for the garage.  So I left at normal time, met Souder and he followed me up to the house on the surface streets so that he could bypass the parking lot that is the President George Bush Tollway northbound in the evenings.  It can easily take over forty-five minutes to get home while taking only eleven minutes to go south to the office, both during rush hour.

Brian and I got there and the contractor and electrician were there minutes behind us.  We put in an hour or two working on and looking at the garage.  What a mess we discovered once those walls were down.  Live electric wires just shoved into the walls, tangles of power lines, electric outlets that were not attached to studs, just hanging in the middle of insulation, no insulation on the outside walls (but insulation on the inside ones!), the inside wall was freestanding and not attached to the house, etc.  What a mess.

The biggest thing that we discovered, though, was our fuse box.  We had been thinking that we probably only had a one hundred amp service.  Thankfully that was not the case and the house was actually fitted with two hundred amps which was good forethought for 1978 when the house was built.  We definitely need that much power.  What is bad is that there is no main breaker, so no way to fully cut power to the entire house.  But the really bad part is that the two hundred amp box contains six hundred and forty amps worth of breakers.  That seems rather excessive.  There is no way that we would ever flip a breaker.  The box would explode and the house burn down before the breakers will flip!

Tomorrow is the shopping for the garage supplies.  I think that they are planning on having the garage done by the weekend.  The electrician is hoping to be in on Thursday to do all of the wiring.  He and Souder also went around the house and looked at the electrical situation there as well as up in the attic.  They are formulating a plan on how to deal with the electrical disaster going on up there, which is pretty significant.

After the contractor and electrician left, Souder and I hooked the Internet back up so that there is at least some minimal communications with the outside world while this work is going on.  Our house phone is off until the weekend, though.

Dominica made a late dinner and we ate veggie riblet sandwiches and watched some Disney channel shows while Liesl was still up.  We can’t watch anything from our own collection since the server had to be taken down, as did my garage movie conversion system, to make way for the demolition.  So we are down to Netflix only.

While we were watching, Liesl showed up by the bed holding a shrink wrapped movie that I had not seen before.  It was one of her kids shows.  I was like “where did she get this?” and Dominica had no idea either.  So we opened it for her and she watched that while I went and worked for a while.  Always something to do.

We were off to bed at a good time.  Dominica has to take Liesl to a morning doctor’s appointment.  I can’t make it with them as I have a “numbers” call during lunch tomorrow and I have to be in the office.  I also have to be ready for when I need to run to Home Depot to pay for a large number of supplies being purchased for the garage.