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Rest in peace, Ugly Dog Sam

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At long last we’ve finally moved into our new place. We signed our paperwork on Friday of last week and the movers moved just about all of our stuff that day. We used Graebel Van Lines. These guys weren’t cheap but they did an excellent job. You get what you pay for, really, and the moving industry is full of crooks. It took them nine hours to move our stuff and I didn’t see these guys taking too many breaks along the way. Our agent was Jim Potterfield and he was actually our agent when we bought our last house. Our loan broker was Kenny Rosenthal (also the same as the last time). I recommend all these …read more »

He’s his mother’s son, that’s for …read more »

We’re really now just playing a waiting game; all offers have been accepted and all paperwork has been signed for both houses. We’ll be moving in two weeks and I’m sure moving day will be upon us before we know it. We had a few surprises with the house we’re buying; for instance, there were high levels of radon in the basement, they did not refinish the bedroom floors, and they did not put doors on the closets upstairs. We’re going to go ahead and take care of the radon problem ourselves; it actually won’t cost that much to do it. The floors don’t look that bad so we’ll probably just pay to refinish those later on. We’re also going to take care of the closet doors upstairs ourselves after we move in. All in all we got a great deal on the house and we’re not really going to have to do much work on it after we move in. That was the whole idea since we already did tons of work to the house we currently live in.

So we’re now getting estimates …read more »

Well, it looks as if Abner has pulled through. A month ago I was convinced that it was the end for him; we thought he’d had a series of strokes and he’d have to be put down. I was surprised when our vet diagnosed him with meningitis and we began treating him with antibiotics and steroids. Sure enough, within days of beginning the drug treatment he began to show signs of improvement. He became progressively better and better each week and now he’s almost back to normal.

He still has a slight head tilt and his balance isn’t what it used to be but he’s functioning at probably 95%. He can now get up and down the steps with little difficulty; he can even run up the steps when he gathers enough ambition. The vet said that he might …read more »

We had the inspection done today on the new house and there appear to be no show-stopping problems with it. No evidence exists that unusual settling or foundation issues have occurred in the past (or are currently occurring) which is a huge relief. That’s what we were really concerned about; everything else is pretty insignificant in comparison. The crew has made considerable progress …read more »

We were offered a contract on our house this past Sunday. Our house was on the market for only one week so it went faster than any of us imagined. It is a nice house and we really did a lot of work on it so I guess it’s not too surprising. The couple who put the contract on it are so young; it makes me feel old.

So basically now we’re going through inspections, assessments, and the nightmare of paperwork involved in buying and selling houses. Luckily it seems the buyers are reasonable so it hopefully won’t be a painful process. I hope not because we’re going to be …read more »

The contract has been signed by all parties and our house goes on the market Monday. The rehab crew is still finishing up the house on Potomac; we’re hoping that it takes them a while to complete so that it’ll give our house more time to sell. So, if anybody is …read more »

We put an offer on the house on Potomac Thursday night. It’s owned by two partners; we had a signature from one of the partners and we had a verbal agreement by the other as of yesterday. Our agent is supposed to get the signature from him today and then we’ll sign and accept. After that our house goes on the market on Monday and we begin this complicated and nerve-wracking process of selling our house and buying a new house. We’ve only bought one house before this and we’ve never sold a house before. I guess …read more »