We Love The Stars Too Fondly

You know who’s really going to miss having these two PODS units out in the street and in the driveway?

The lizard folk! Since about two minutes after this unit got put into the driveway, they’ve been loving it!

I’ve noted in the past that they love to lay on the warm concrete in the shade under the car since it also gives them a bit of cover from hawks and crows.

This huge thing is all of that and more. I don’t think the neighbors will mind their departure next week, but our favorite lizard dudes will be sad!

I like Tetris. I’m pretty good at it.

Packing and moving is like the world’s biggest 4-D game of Tetris. Trying to get all of this…

and this…

into this while also trying to keep track of what’s where so that when we get it all delivered back to us next Friday we can unload it and start living in our new house as quickly and easily and efficiently as possible.

Why 4-D Tetris? Because there are plenty of things in the house that I really don’t want going into these bins out in the 90º sun and heat for a week, so they’re getting piled up in the living room for loading in the last couple of hours. And I have to leave space for those items in the PODS units. There are also things that have to go up in the cars on Monday or Tuesday when we close escrow and get the keys, because at least one of us will be living there for two or three days before all of the furniture and boxes arrive. And we have stuff that the movers are taking, and stuff that’s going into the PODS units.

4-D Tetris.

Not a fan. But I can see it being a new competition on The Ocho. We could have 4-D Tetris, Slippery Stairs, Cornhole, Omega Ball, and the Cherry Pit Spitting Championships as sort of an Ocho Pentathalon event! Sign me up!

The worst part of buying a house and being in escrow? Being forced to turn off the “Silence Unknown Callers” feature on my phone.

Remember?

I have inspectors, vendors, insurance agents, utility companies, etc all calling me and I really need to take those calls ASAP. So all calls are allowed through.

It sucks. About half of the calls are spam.

The other thing I’ve found is that these days, as soon as you say something witty and snappy that indicates that you’re fully aware that they’re lower-than-whale-shit spammers, they start insulting and swearing at YOU, and then they hang up before you can start insulting and swearing at THEM. How is that fair?

The chandelier in the entryway is nice – wait until I install the lasers!

Dare we even hope that we’ve solved the last two big issues that could have potentially held up our close of escrow next week? Dare we??!!

Maybe. Still more paperwork tomorrow, but it might be that we’ve slain a couple more dragons.

My biggest lesson from this experience (the first time that I’ve really bought a house – when we bought our Pomelo house back in 1992 or so we had been renting it and living there since late 1990 and we just worked with the realtor who had been managing it for the owner to do paperwork) is that you absolutely must have a really good, competent realtor or real estate agent who can guide you through the pitfalls (there WILL be pitfalls!) and having a great loan officer will be invaluable as well. Unless, of course, you have $800,000 cash to pay and don’t need a loan, in which case, why are you reading my drivel?

We have a fantastic realtor, a friend of The Long-Suffering Wife, and we literally could not be doing this without her.

Before we close we’ll have to double check the area between the palm tree there and the driveway – one of the issues we’ve been dealing with is the state of the septic tank and I think that’s where they’ve had to dig to inspect it. And no, that’s not grass next to the house and over by the front door, it’s turf. As hot and dry as it gets out here, keeping any amount of grass that green requires more (expensive) water than a small, third-world country uses. Only the golf courses and country clubs can afford that.

We’ll need to find someplace out here for a nice “sitting rock” or bench. Preferably in the shade.

We’re at about the halfway point (-ish!) of our escrow, trying to iron out a couple of questions that came up at the end of last week, but assuming that gets done (inspections, insurance, loan docs, etc) this upcoming week we’ll move into the final phases of getting the Seller’s remaining stuff out, crossing I’s, dotting T’s, stuffing our stuff into PODS and getting on the movers’ schedule, and trying to stay more-or-less sane in preparation for the actual escrow close and move next week.

And you’ve got a ringside seat to the madness!

Ceiling fans are almost mandatory in most homes out here, especially if you’re in the desert like we will be. Not just for the heat! Yes, in the summer there will be weeks at a time when the daily highs will be 100ºF or higher, but in the winter there will be weeks at a time when the daily highs will only be in the 30’s and 40’s, with occasional snow! Hesperia is surrounded by the San Gabriel Mountains and several of those peaks go up to over 12,000′ and have ski resorts.

No matter the weather, ceiling fans are a low-power, efficient way to keep the room air circulating and mixed and more comfortable. Our rental house of the last seven years has one ceiling fan in one bedroom – the Forever Home has them in all bedrooms, plus in the living room, kitchen, dining room… And they’re not the inexpensive (but functional!) ones from Home Depot or WalMart, some of them actually look fancy and interesting! Yet another nice little touch that separates the houses we’ve looked at from “Okay, I guess we could live here” to “WOW! We’re putting in an aggressive offer first thing on Monday morning!”

Sooooooooooo many boxes. Boxes everywhere.

Boxes filled with smaller boxes, which in turn go into bigger boxes, which then are placed in the PODS units out in the driveway and on the street. Which will then be taken 100 miles away, where we’ll reverse the process.

Physical media, baby! CDs, DVDs, VHS tapes, books, printouts, hard disks, floppy disks, backup tapes! And working drives/devices to read them! NEVER, EVER have your only and/or final copy of your data or information be on some cloud server hosted by an international megacorp!! (The question is not whether or not I’m paranoid. It’s whether or not I’m paranoid ENOUGH.)

Crisis averted? Maybe? Possibly? Probably?

We’ll know more on Monday, but things are most certainly more hopeful than they were yesterday, even if certain aspects are more confusing. We will get through this. Hopefully with our Dream Forever Home in eleven days.

Good, solid bones and lots and lots of insulation. We think of the desert as being 100º+F all the time, and during the day in the summer that’s true. But in the winter, it’s often barely above freezing, and even in the summer it will cool down rapidly after sunset.

Insulation is your friend!

And then we hit the speed bump at Mach 9. This has large amounts of suckage.

The next day or so will hopefully have a good resolution, but the Dream Forever Home failed a major inspection. This has the potential to be a true deal killer, but we’re trying to find a solution.

Two other far more minor questions seem to be getting resolution.

First, among other things that the agent’s junior assistant had wrong when we saw the property the first time, the second tree in the back yard is not giving us persimmons. These are apples. Google a picture of a persimmon – not even close. Come the end of September, we’re gonna have a bushel (or more) of apples and pears.

Secondly, we might be in Oak Hills instead of Hesperia. It’s sort of like how West Hills used to be part of Canoga Park, but neither is an actual city, they’re both actually part of Los Angeles. So while technically we’re in the city limits of Hesperia, where Oak Hills is an unincorporated area of San Berardino County next to Hesperia, most of the paperwork on the house says the zip code is 92344, which the Post Office says is Oak Hills, so who are we to argue with the US Postal Service? In the end, it doesn’t matter. Whatever gets escrow closed!