Flippy - I Rant, You Read

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

mid-afternoon

The Fun of Losing Your House To Foreclosure - Part (too numerous to keep track of)

Last week, I received an email from the realtor who has been trying to sell our (former) house for the outrageous price of $194k (we’ve had one person look at the house in two months), telling me that the house was going up for auction on April 24th.  Great, another auction for the house.  They really want to get rid of us, I guess.  The fun part of that was that they were insisting on three open houses (12- 4p) before the auction date.  Yes, four hour open houses with an animal sanctuary in the house.  It sounded like tons of fun.  Obviously, it was just stressful finding out about the auction, but adding the open houses to the stress was above & beyond.  I received an email a couple of days later saying that a Fannie Mae inspector was in the area and needed to inspect the house that afternoon for the auction.  Well, since I don’t usually pick up my email until the middle of the night, he was out of luck.  Several days later, I received another email from the realtor telling me that the auction had been cancelled.  Could we really have been that lucky that I pick up my email so late and that the house wasn’t able to be inspected on that particular day?  Did they cancel the auction because it wasn’t inspected with a certain group of houses?

Our goal has always (well, almost always, I guess) to attempt to buy our house back with the help of an investor, and to then rent it back from them.  Or, we were hoping to be able to figure out some things to sell or to maybe possibly hopefully get my disability case finally settled (after about 9 months of waiting for them to get all the records they wanted, my case has finally gone to the medical examiner) and use the backpay as down payment on the house.  There is NO way that in this market that this house is worth almost $200k.  Not even close.  Fannie Mae paid $135k for it, and with broken pool pumps, flooring that needs to be replaced for someone else to live here (unless, they too, have a parrot room where they want linoleum), a leaking sprinkler system, a collapsed cabinet in the garage, and our big (granted, broken) hot water heater that was replaced with a tiny one w/o the recirculating pump that we used to have, etc.  Geez, I didn’t realize how long it took to get hot water without the recirculating pump - man, what a waste of water.  Anyway, for someone else to live here, the house is a big fixer-upper.  There are lots of extras that we paid for to upgrade the house, but those will just be our little secret.  They’re things that aren’t immediately obvious, and we’re not about to make the house more appealing to someone else.

We’ve been looking at houses in AZ, in an area that looks like it’s on its way to becoming what our area of Las Vegas is now.  Right now, it’s the semi-boonies in a suburb not far from Phoenix, where the houses are a decent size with large yards, and the prices are currently 85k-95k for a single story, which would be our preference now.  It would cost less than moving across the country, we’d still be able to avoid winter, my disability lawyer practices there in case I need to appeal (in general, most people are turned down on their first try for disability, but I’m hoping that my lawyer’s good reputation will help, so that the SSA won’t want to spend money on an appeal), we have a possible roommate set up to help with the rent, and we also would have help finding new doctors.  It’s not as cheap (housing-wise - although it’s not far off for non fixer-uppers, as we’re currently not in any condition to work on a house) as moving to the Mid-West, but it’s also not as expensive to move our stuff, nor would our aching bodies have to deal with freezing winters.  And hey, it’s cheaper to clothe yourself in t-shirts, shorts, and Crocs, than buying winter clothing and shoes.  Although, it blows my chances of fireflies in my back yard.  Oh, you laugh - I once almost moved to Georgia mostly because of fireflies.  Well, and it was pretty there, but mostly….the fireflies.

Our goal is to eventually move closer to Leigh-Ann’s family (it’s her turn to see the little ones grow up), and we didn’t want to get there in two moves, but if we can have an intermediate move to a place with an airport, an NHL team (that is actually doing well this season!), an NFL team, a MLB team, and some colleges nearby, that’s not too bad.  That’s one thing I dislike about Las Vegas - no professional sports teams.  Yes, we have some minor league teams, but it just isn’t the same…and they’re not televised either.  So, there are good reasons to stay (although, fewer and fewer these days) and good reasons to move.

Stay tuned for a zillion “30 Second Book Reviews”.  We’ve kept our library busy.  When you’re feeling crappy, books are not only handy when you’re in bed, but they’re a nice escape.  Then again, I’m not sure that I could call “Lovely Bones” a nice escape.  I prefer my fiction with less child rape & murder.

Friday, February 26, 2010

late morning

Oh, I’m Going to Miss the Olympics

It’s been a fun couple of weeks…on television at least.  There’s nothing Leigh-Ann and I enjoy more than a couple of weeks of Olympic viewing, day and night.  The last Olympics didn’t involve such drama away from our television, but it’s been a nice mental break to concentrate on the events.  I remember when we first met, we spent two weeks at our friends’ place watching the Nagano Olympics, rarely leaving to even get food.  It’s funny how so much has changed, but yet in some cases, nothing has changed.  We can still spend 24/7 watching the Olympics and never get bored, even when watching events that we’d never watch at any other time of the year.  Yeah, I’m talking to you, Nordic-Combined and Biathalon.

I miss blogging, but I’m not sure what to talk about.  I’ll try to think of some good news.  Wait, I know - Mack, the German Shepherd that we rescued, will now let me leave the bedroom without jumping over the baby gate to follow me wherever I go.  Man, this dog has the worst separation anxiety of any dog I’ve ever met.  We adopted him to keep Dante company after Eli died in June, but unfortunately, Mack won’t spend any time with Dante, unless we’re standing there with him.  So, poor Dante is still lonely and now we have a German Shepherd added to the already beast-full master bedroom.  He’s basically a really good dog, but he must’ve had a really lousy life before he ended up at the shelter.  I hope that someday soon he’ll be able to hang out with Dante for a few hours at a time.  Dante needs a big dog pal.

Here’s a picture of Mack, sitting in (15lb) Cricket’s bed.  He loves to “try” to curl up in Cricket’s bed.  He’ll eye it from across the room, and then he’ll literally run right over to it and start spinning his big body to get as tiny as he can, but he always ends up spilling over the sides.  It’s really adorable though.  If we had extra cash, we’d buy him a big bed with sides, but for now, he’ll have to settle for the two big Orvis beds that are in the bedroom.  Poor dog, suffering like that. LOL

Friday, June 05, 2009

late evening

...and now, I’m done

No more posts about family members accusing me of stuff or lying about stuff - I’ve addressed everything that I wanted to address and from now on, my blog will go back to just MY life, not the life that other people have made up for me.  I appreciate that my friends have slogged through my wordy explanations and I can’t promise that I won’t be wordy again, but I won’t be wordy about stupid accusations that really didn’t deserve my time or energy.  But, honestly, I was worried that my parents might be worried or be thinking some of those things and I wanted to straighten everything out.  After seeing them last week before my doctor’s appointment, I now know that they know what I’ve been saying all along is the truth.  So, if someone who married into the family is trying to stir anything up, I know it’s not affecting them.  They’ve seen me, they know I’m fine (well, as fine as possible under the circumstances), and I know that their only concern is regular ol’ parental concerns.

Ugh, my schedule is all out of whack and I’ve needed to go to bed for hours, but I’ve been wanting to get that blog entry written ever since I went to the doctor last Thursday.  At this rate, I’ll never get back to a normal schedule.  I’m just lucky that our grocery store is open 24 hours.

And, uh, GO PENGUINS!!!  What a relief that they evened up the series.  I hate the Red Wings.  Seriously, they’re the most boring team to watch.

Monday, November 24, 2008

evening

Another Sunday, Another Fantasy Football Loss

My team is good, but every time they score 100+ points, the team I’m playing scores more, even though just about every week I’d beat 7 of the other 9 teams.  I’m always playing one of the two teams that scores the most that week.  Ugh, it’s so depressing.  I probably won’t even make the playoffs at this rate, and up until two weeks ago, my team had the most points in the whole darned league.  I protest!

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

mid-afternoon

The Wranglers & The Leafs - Two Choking Peas in a Pod

My parents took Leigh-Ann and I to the Las Vegas Wranglers midnight game, which is generally a fun and festive affair.  Apparently, the Wranglers forgot to take care of the festive for us.  It was absolutely the same as any old game, which was disappointing.  Remind me to get around to complaining to them.  They were winning the game 4-1 at one point, and leading throughout the entire game.  They allowed three goals in the third period, then choked further (the goalie was pretty sucky - it was someone we’d never heard of before) in the shootout.  The easy victory snatched away by the jaws of stupid defeat reminded us so very much of the Maple Leafs, of this year and last, and the year before that, and the year before that, and so on.  We were kind of out of it, as we went out to breakfast after the midnight game, then went grocery shopping after that.  So, our schedule was all out of whack.  That meant that we missed last night’s Leafs’ game.

This is from the Toronto Star.  Does it sound vaguely familiar?  Like many of the games from the team we know and occasionally love?  After almost three periods of solid hockey, the Leafs’ top left winger made an incredible gaffe, leading to the tying goal and, ultimately, a 3-2 overtime loss to the Carolina Hurricanes before 17,045 at the RBC Center last night..  What a surprise.  Not.  The Leafs must constantly make winning difficult…or impossible.

That said, we had a good time at the Wranglers’ game.  The game had lots of action, we each got our pretzel & cheese (a deliciously fresh crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, warm pretzel), and except for the stupid classless woman sitting behind my parents who spent most of the game cussing at the players and the ref (the officiating actually DID suck), I think a good time was had by all.  Of course, it could have been better if the Wranglers had actually attempted to go out of their way and give the pre-Xmas crowd some entertainment.  Chuck-a-Puck and having two guys attempt to put on a frozen t-shirt at center ice?  Not really entertainment.  The best midnight game had Mini Kiss performing.  Last year had a crappy Billy Idol impersonator, but at least they tried.