The last few days have been a blur

I'm surprised that I survived the last few days, its been non-stop activity.

Last Thursday, I met someone after work to give him a tutorial session on using Apple's Aperture. It was easy enough to answer his questions, and show him how to organize his Aperture library, but it made for a long day.

Friday after work, we prepped the yard for our sod project.


Saturday we put the sod down, and realized that we didn't have enough, but we couldn't do anything about it. The turf farm was closed till Monday morning. Saturday night we went to the Websters' house for dinner to welcome Vin back from his recovery in Richmond.



Sunday morning, we met Dave at Avalon and went mountain biking. After that, we ran to the grocery store, stopped home to water the sod, and went to Vin's to watch the Redskins just beat the Cleveland Browns.

Monday morning, Jenn went to work, and I picked up the rest of the sod and put it down, then went to work around 11. I'm exhausted and I need a nap. But its done, and we have a real yard.

The thing about buying a house

Having just bought my first house, I've gone through several adjustment phases. Following the move, the first phase was of course unpacking and setting up house. This took a couple weeks, pausing for trips to furniture stores, home goods, etc. Following the unpacking was the adjustments phase(glasses should go here, because...)

You also develop this list in your head of all the things you need to do. These tasks may never be completed, but in your mind you feel like you're this close and just need to work a little longer. I've found the only way I can deal with this is to set a time limit when tasks will stop for the night.

The Drama

We presented an offer on Tuesday afternoon, and waited to hear back. Wednesday came and went, and most of Thursday. Thursday night, our agent called us to tell us that she had received a counter to our offer. They had offered to give us the closing costs we wanted, but had raised the asking price of the house. I was furious. I wanted to tell them to keep it, but instead we managed to put together another counter, raising the price we were willing to pay closer to the original asking price, and reducing the amount of closing assistance we were asking for. We also stated that this would be our best & final offer, and that the offer expired after 24 hours.

We submitted the offer to them at noon on Friday. At 4:00 we got a call from the seller's agent asking for an extension on the time limit. Apparently they were anticipating another offer and wanted to compare the two. This was too much, and I told the agent that our deadline was firm. We were also nervous that this deal was over, so we made arrangements with our agent to look at the other townhouse in the community that had come down in price during the week while we were negotiating. We would see that one Saturday morning.

When we arrived at the other townhouse, our agent notified us that our offer had been accepted.

The Offer

Jenn and I went out again Saturday and looked at a bunch of places, armed with new, improved pre-approval letters that raised the quality of the houses we got into by just a little bit. We looked at about 8 more houses, and ended with a townhouse. The townhouse came out as the winner, with a good combination of finish quality, size, and features. We wanted to be sure, so we saw a couple more houses on Sunday, and took another tour of the townhouse. We really liked it and spent Monday afternoon preparing an offer.