I thought the customer was always right???

It seems that buying a house is not as easy as the news would have you think. My experiences have been mostly rude people making absurd demands and then trying to beat me (one special person I think would have liked to physically) into submission. I have never experienced a more consumer unfriendly market in my life! Obviously, with such high value purchases, all parties want the deal to be favorable to themselves and equitable at worst so when dealing with a seller you should expect some creative dealings, but outright rudeness? Well, here is the saga of me buying a house, which I did but lost 🙁

Sometime in May, Theresa and I were out looking at mattresses down in Apex. The one I have now has lost all springy-ness (unless you consider feeling springs in your back springy) and have had it since I was 11-ish (13 years). On the way home I saw a sign for new town homes and thought it might be interesting to drive through and see what was being offered. The homes were nice enough and there was a website listed so we went home and checked out the site. We weren’t too impressed with what was being offered for the price so Theresa asked me if I wanted her to look around at other properties. I told her “sure”, but I wasn’t very serious about buying anything just yet. Well, the next day when I got home from work, she had already contacted a Realtor (who we’ll call Bob) and Bob had already sent us some listings. Theresa, being pretty excited, wanted to go look at some properties that weekend. For the moment I was happy to play along and we looked at some listings from what Bob sent us and some others we found online. Friday night we went to look at a few on our own to try and decide some preferences early. As an anecdote, it seems there is a magic like in Apex that once you go south of everything turns to crime ridden (or so it looks) slums… it was frightening… and quite visible. We narrowed the list down to just 3 that we wanted Bob to show us. And so it began…

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New Site

I’ve been playing with a custom host and open source blogging software. I’m a little tired of Xanga and its limitations and the software I’m using (wordpress) lets me have a very dynamic page as opposed to just a blog. Check it out, let me know what you think. I should note that until I can afford a host or get my server upgraded (or someone offers to host everything for me) I’m hosting on a free site that sometimes delays SQL… so there may be occasional delays when accessing the site.

http://theascended.org

I also put up a forum, not that anyone will actually use it (since the one I currently host has been locked for 2 years without complaint), but it is http://theascended.org/forum

25-Feb-2008

My father has the emotional maturity of a 5 year old… and I choose the age of 5 because he acts just as persecuted as my 5 year old nephew. Somehow, every little thing that doesn’t go my father’s way is some scheme to hurt and insult him. Should he ever read this, I have to give you a bit of leeway right now given the past few weeks, but everyone isn’t out to hurt you and its pretty damn hard to keep you happy when the target keeps moving… (more…)

21-Feb-2008

I think I should preface this with a mild disclaimer: I don’t know the actual reality of the situation I am about to describe, but I know enough to have surmised my own understanding which is likely a very reasonable substitute. (more…)

“Five-hundred twenty-five-thousand six-hundred minutes, how do you measure, measure a year?”

If you could go back in time to observe your life, or someone else’s, would you? Just to look at things with a new perspective or reevaluate things with the experience you’ve gained? I had an interesting opportunity this morning to do something akin to that. I was just following a link from a page that I hadn’t visited in a while… there were some names I hadn’t looked in a long time and a couple I had no idea who they were… so I clicked… Its funny the things you forget over time… or perhaps to perpetuate and idea you don’t want to let go of.

Theresa and I have been together for over a year now. What can I say? I’m not sure I have the eloquence to put what I feel into words. Perhaps the words don’t exist or just aren’t in my meager vocabulary. It feels like we’ve spent so little time together but I’ve know her for decades. The ephemeral joys of a relationship being new have never ceased and I have yet the opportunity to be bored. One need not ask the question if I’m happy when I’m with her… only if my smile ever fades.