Inspector Livingston I Presume

When we last left our heroes, they were accepting Bank of America's counter offer.  Since then, they have gone back to American Savings to redo their mortgage application to reflect the new price.

With the new price and new application comes a new set of conditions to fulfill to get the final approval on the loan.  When the Teacher received the email with the set of conditions, he went into full stress mode.  It played on his mind so heavily that he had a hard time teaching his next class.  When he got home, he waited for the Botanist to return from work to share the news.

The Botanist seemed unaffected by the stress of paperwork.  "No problem," she said, "we have it all under control."

That night, the Teacher graded papers while the Botanist searched and found nearly all the paperwork we needed to complete the loan application.

*****

What happened is this:  when we decided we were going to try to buy a house, we immediately consolidated our savings into the highest interest savings account we had.  Then we started saving money like the ant who knew the grasshopper would starve.  By doing that, we easily increased our savings by over 100% in 5 months.  That's a big red flag for the government.  They want to make sure we're not terrorists or drug dealers, so they're requiring we provide evidence of our deposits... which Wendy had.  Yay!

The moral of the story is that Wendy is really kick ass with paperwork, but she cannot do the hole-in-hand illusion because she ran out of childhood.

*****

After dropping off our paperwork to American Savings this morning, we met the home inspector at the Tardis house.





I'm going to have to cut down all that stuff in the front of the house.



This jungle in the back yard is gonna take some work to kill.



The dining room viewed from the living room.



From the living room.



The Tardis with some guy who vowed not to cut his hair until he owned a house.

After the inspector was done, he went over the stuff he found.  No major issues with the house.  Just a bunch of TLC items such as lubing the window mechanics and fixing screens.  We also got a copy of the home inspection that was done for the previous owner.  Pretty much the same thing.  So to us, we see no reason not to buy the house.

Take Your Husband to Work Day and Short Sale Update

This last Friday was my last furlough day from school.  Wendy asked if I wanted to go with her to work in the Circle Bog.  Seeing as I haven't hiked since we got married, and that if I stayed home, I would have wasted the day playing video games, I followed her to work.

After we drove up to Kokee State Park, which some of you may remember, it was another 45 minute drive on a 4 wheel drive dirt road.  Wendy made sure to hit as many ruts and potholes as possible to keep me shaken yet stirred.  We were really out in the boonies.



Here we are at the trailhead.  The start of the trail is a 10 minute climb up a 75 degree muddy incline.  I had my Camelback with a few snacks that weighed about 5 pounds.  Wendy had her work pack that probably weighed 20-25 pounds.  She insisted on carrying her own pack, I swear!  (Hey, I'm not supposed to do her job for her.)



Here Wendy tries to teach me something about compound leaves.



It was an hour and a half just to get to our destination.  A lot of snaking along, with several parts that could be shortened by straightening the trail.  But I guess that would take away from the accomplishment.



Lunch break.  Spam musubis and Korean style chicken.  Mmmmmm.



 This is the Circle Bog.  Funny finding bogs and swamps at 4000+ feet elevations.  Only in Hawaii.  Where's Wendy?



 This is why we came here.  This is a rare, endangered plant.  There were only 4 of these in the bog.  The plant Wendy is examining is flowering, so she came up here to pollinate it.  In other words, Wendy is manually stimulating the plant's sex organs.  Who would have though that botany could be so... savage!



On the way out, Wendy did some clean up.  The hike back wasn't so bad, but the steep downhill took its toll on my thighs.  I've been walking funny since.


When we got back to civilization, our cellphones went off.  I had a feeling that we would receive an update on our short sale offer right when both of us would be out of contact for the whole day.  I was right.  We both received messages from our realtor.

Bank of America finally responded.  We made our offer back in the beginning of February.  Took over 3 months.  Wendy thinks it's a ridiculous amount of time to have to wait, and I agree.  However, for BoA, that's actually a decent response time.  I've read stories where they've taking 8-20 months in some cases.

Anyway, BoA submitted a counter offer.  Their counter is within the price range we were expecting, so we're happy with it.  We did get conditional approval for a mortgage in the amount we originally offered, so on Monday we're going to go talk to our banker again and rework the numbers.  We'll also start scheduling inspectors this week.  If all goes well, we should be home owners in July.

Another non-update for the Short Sale

Our agent emailed me yesterday.  She emailed the seller's agent for an update on our short sale.  The seller's agent then called Bank of America to request an update on our file.  The customer service rep managed to get the negotiator on the phone.  The negotiator said that they just didn't work on our file yet.  Since it was past the normal processing time, the customer rep requested an escalation for our file.  Files that have been escalated are supposed to get a response in 1-3 days.

But what does that really mean?

That probably means that since our file was in a huge stack of files the negotiator couldn't handle due to incompetence/overwork/understaffing, it will be placed in a different stack of files.  All those files will be stamped Urgent and given to another equally incompetent/overworked/understaffed negotiator.  We'll probably get a response in 2 months.

Did I mention we looked at another house?  It was an REO, or bank owned property.  It was in a great location in a quiet neighborhood, at the end of a cul-de-sac,  with only 2 adjacent properties.  It had a great living room with 2 large picture windows and a sliding glass door.  There was a deck that went around 3/4 of the house.  It was a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom home.  The 4th bedroom was really small and would be better for an office.

The downside was the kitchen.  It was small.  Small like the kitchen in our rental cottage.  It would be OK for a couple, but really small for a family.  It was also shit ugly with coral colored ceramic tile counters and horrible cabinets.  But we could have made it work.  A bit of paint... pluck out an eyeball...

But the roof.  The roof was a big problem.  The house had a tarp on the roof and it had visible water damage in the master bathroom.  When I spoke to people, I heard numbers like $10000, $20000, $40000... Take Indiana prices for roofs and multiply that by three billion.  That's what we would have been looking at for repairs.

Oddly enough, a few days later, the house went contingent.  I hope whoever is buying the house is getting it for under the list price of $399.

Since Someone Keeps Forgetting...

You can find this movie on Netflix instant play, or youtube.

D&D 3.5 Adventures

I know Wendy was talking with Emily while I was gaming.  Wendy didn't know what was going on since I wasn't done yet, but I filled her in during lunch.

Unfortunately for Nick, I heard he had to go back to work.  He's missing out the nerdy fun and geeky goodness that is Dungeons and Dragons.

Here's the write-up from the DM of our current 3.5 edition campaign:


So what happened:  I try to only recap information that everyone would know, in case people want secrets.  I believe all events were shared with the party "in game" so I'll cover everything.  My summaries are always brief, so if anyone wants to embellish, please do.
Last game you guys finished being healed at Maral’s place.  Finding he wouldn’t be of any help, you decided to try and track things down on your own.
Our monk and gnome wizard went into the dense forest to search for missing children.  Shortly after, they were attacked by a black skinned, sickly-looking goblin.  The goblin would not reason and seemed to be crazed. The monk knocked him out and tied him up.  They left him behind, expecting him to eventually free himself and go on his way.  Not too far away, they found a huge dragonfly-like bug up in a tree.  It was eating part of the goblin they had left behind.  The bug was quickly squished.  A second one behind it got away and started flying back the way they came.  The adventurers let it go.
The group then came to a very small hamlet.  The resident gnome knew it to belong to a group of recluses that had moved out of the city years earlier.  The entire population was dead, eaten (and still being eaten) by giant bugs.  Seeing a single giant dragonfly, our monk ran to squish it.  On the way, he was ambushed by two giant beetles.  Poisoned, the monk eventually succumbed to the bugs sleep spell.  However, with the gnome behind him firing away his crossbow, the bugs were destroyed and all was well.
To their sadness, the two found Brother Silence’s friend, Thorn, dead at the site.  He had obviously been in a large battle with about a dozen of the bugs.  Before burying his friend, Silence claimed the magic gloves the Minotaur was wearing.  Known as the Fists of the Shadow Sun, the gloves allow a monk to inflict negative energy damage to an enemy target and follow it up with an equal amount of positive energy the next round (healing).
With a natural 20 search check, the group found more goblin tracks.  They followed them to a thin line of smoke in the middle of the woods.  Battle weary, the two went back to town.
In town they reunited with their elf and dwarf group mates.  They also learned that a way station town between the inner island mines and the main city had been completely wiped out.  Eldiana and Maral were heading there to investigate.  Silence advised that it could be the same as the giant bugs they had run into.
The next day, the rested group went back to the smoke in the woods.  On the way, they were attacked by more black goblins.  Reaching the smoke, they found a cottage in the woods.  It was surrounded by half a dozen of the little goblins.  Inside the cottage they could see a young boy tied up.  An old woman was forcing him into a huge cauldron, eventually pushing him in.
The group fought to the cottage to save the child.  When they reached it, they saw the child climb out.  However, now he was covered in a thick black skin making him look exactly like a goblin.
A fight with the witch breaks out.  Poor Torrin seemed a threat when he narrowly missed her, and got a scorching ray to the face (4d6 damage) taking him to -3 in one shot.  The gnome was next to be dropped.  But finally, our noble monk came running in and with a great pound to the face, took the witch out.  He then used the last of her hit points to heal the fallen allies.
In the end, the two wizards determined the witch had been performing a ritual of some sort.  She required the sacrifice of 20 virgins and was nearly complete.  With her death, all the children returned back to normal.  Unfortunately, the party had slaughtered all but one of them.  The cottage and nearby area was covered in dismembered, beheaded and disemboweled bodies of young children.

Berries and Cream

I've been toying with this idea for a while.  I wanted to hollow out some strawberries and fill them with a cream cheese filling.  A couple of weeks ago, we tried to find some fresh strawberries, but failed.  The only ones available looked really bad.  However, we found a bunch today.





It tastes pretty good.  The sweet cream really helps out the tart strawberry taste.  Try some!

The Art of Eating M&Ms

I couldn't believe it.  Wendy had no idea on the proper way to eat M&Ms.  She would just grab them willy-nilly, with no thought to etiquette or procedure.  Philistine.  I had to educate her.

First, for those that are not educated in the fine art of M&M eating, yes, there are rules.  Rules are what separate us from the animals.  You don't eat dinner with your hands, do you? 

Order.  It all comes down to order.  Like Darwinism and racism, some colors are more desirable than others.  In ascending order of importance:  blue, red, brown, orange, yellow, green.  The more important and desirable a color is, the more it needs to be savored.  You guzzle a Coke, but you experience a fine wine.  Eat all the blues and reds first.  They are the dregs of the M&M kingdom.  They are the least "sweet" of all the candy-coated chocolate morsels.  They are also the ones with the gaudy colors that look like a desperate cry for attention.  Blue with a pale-white M?  Please.  Those colors remind us of an old-fashioned police box.  Hardly a tasty treat.

And red with white print?  Maybe in Canada.  But here in the good old USA, that's the universal sign of the barber.  The red with white represented blood letting.  Barbaric and atrocious.  How can one imagine blood being a confectionery joy?

Once those two lower orders are removed from the M&M society, we proceed to the browns.  Browns lack class.  Browns are just ordinary.  What color is chocolate?  Brown.  Are we supposed to be impressed by an inability to dress up?  Since the browns insist on living a less-than-ordinary life, we should end that life as early as possible.

The remaining three colors, orange, yellow, and green, represent the top of society.  They are so well respected that they are imitated by the Skittle race.

Yet of the three, orange is the lowest and must be destroyed.  Orange still has too much of the red blood in them.  Unfortunate, but true, breeding is very important.  No matter how many generations pass by, their heritage is still that of the scum of society.  Euthanize.

The remaining yellow and green, besides being valuable due to social standing, become more valuable due to scarcity.  Like diamonds that are expensive because they are kept artificially rare, the powers that be (Mars), intentionally keep the yellow and green populations to a minimum.  Cherish them.

But cherish the green ones even more because the green ones make you horny.  Eat them last lest you never make it through the whole bag due to insatiable lust.

http://www.snopes.com/risque/aphrodisiacs/mandms.asp

By the way, the only reason to not eat M&Ms in the order I described would be deformity.  If an M&M is deformed, it is shunned by its peers and left to die.  However, don't do what Wendy does.  Don't lame the M&Ms on purpose just so you can eat them out of order.  That's inhumane.  (Lame can be a verb)