Well, we punched those last two sonofabitch sharks square in the nose.  We are cleared to close on the house with only minor details to wrap up between now and September 8th.  At last, we can drift for a while.

*heavy sigh*

Lady and I scheduled some time to go and take measurements at the house yesterday.  We originally intended only to measure the windows so we could order wood blinds while they are on sale and obscenely inexpensive, but we ended up measuring the entire interior of the house, making notes as to the positioning of the doors and windows.  Then, being the OCD duo that we are, we immediately sat down and created a computer-generated scale drawing of the house so we can figure out where all of our scale modeled furniture will fit in the floor plan.  That will save us a tremendous amount of time moving crap around when we go to put it all in the house.

I told you, we’re very detail oriented people (aka, obsessive).

We’ve got our colors picked out for painting, and I’m not looking forward to removing the existing wallpaper that’s up first.  I.  Hate.  Wallpaper.  Fortunately, it’s not on every wall of the house, just a few.

I’m am, however, looking forward (oddly enough) to wiring the place for phone, Ethernet and cable tv.  The elderly couple didn’t have cable tv, and only two phones in the entire house with hideously antiquated wiring leading to them.  I get to pull it all from scratch.  I am going to wire the house in a logical and high-tech manner utilizing the fanciest of telephone and video distribution technology, as well as a patch panel that will allow me to switch my lines between telephone and Ethernet as needed.

There are a handful of other things that need doing before we can move in, but no really major projects — just a little updating.  The kitchen and bathroom need modernizing, but that can come later – everything works just fine for now.

The time creeps closer, my children.  We will actually be able to have people over to our place for a change, and believe me, our place is designed for having fun.

I’m going to give everyone who has never been through the Machiavellian process of buying a house a little tip to prepare them for the experience:

You will never, ever be fully prepared for the experience of buying a house.

At the beginning of this foray I was operating under the misguided assumption that actually finding a house that I wanted, in the right neighborhood, the right size and at the right price was the hardest part of this little venture. We spent years mentally and financially preparing for this, going so far as to move back in — for as long as it took — with my mother in order to eliminate as much of the extra financial baggage we’ve gathered up over the years. Anyone who knows my history will realize that this was a "trial of Job." Once we were in a better spot and the interest rates had plummeted low enough, we set out to see about a loan and to find the perfect domicile.

Getting a loan estimate is easy. Any homeless guy on a street corner can give you one. Our debt-to-income ratio was dandy, so we qualified for a decent sum right off the bat. "That wasn’t so hard," I said to myself. Fool!

We then proceeded to spend a helluva’ lot of time looking at houses. Our tastes being what they are, we saw a lot of nice places that didn’t suit us. We continued to search. The hunt went on. And on. We looked high and low, the whole while the interest rates dropped further, and then silently crept back up without making so much as a peep. We were starting to get a little worried that we would never find a place to our liking, much less before the rates were high again. Still, we weren’t going to compromise and settle for a piece ‘o crap just to keep our interest rate low.

Then we got a lucky break. Our agent told us about a house in one of the nicer neighborhoods we had been sniffing around and it hadn’t even been put on the market yet. We would have a chance to snipe this place before anyone else had set foot in it… provided it was to our liking. We got the address and drove past it two days before we were slated to see it officially. We were pleased with what we saw, considering what they were asking for it. Holy smokes, it looked great on the outside, if not a teensy bit small. Here’s hoping it’s nice inside.

It was.

We were supposed to go look at five houses that night, this one being the first. We never made it to the other four, we had however driven past them a few days before, and so had a partial opinion on them. What, you think we don’t do our homework? C’mon, this is Stuff and Lady we’re talking about here.

One foot over the threshold, and the good vibes struck instantly. The place was immaculate. The old folks living there now (the original owners, by the way) took spectacular care of the house and property. It was a little dated, but in great shape. We can always modernize the place as we go.

At 5:30pm we were shown the house. We went back to the real estate office, wrote up a bid on the house and submitted it at 7:30pm. By 9:00pm the bid was accepted, and we were under contract. Talk about fortune smiling on us.

That was when life got difficult.

There are so many things to accomplish in the thirty day contract period between the acceptance of the bid and closing. Our house owning friends gave us lots of advice, but they didn’t prepare us for everything. I will find myself in the middle of a discussion with them about our latest home purchasing nightmare, and they’ll interrupt and say "Oh yeah, I remember going through that, it was rough." and all I can reply is "Gee, thanks a lot! You could have mentioned that when you were giving me your self-proclaimed ‘comprehensive report’ of what pitfalls to expect. Fuck! Would have been nice to see THAT one coming".

In the beginning I started likening the whole experience to taking a walk and getting stones in your shoe. While it doesn’t keep you from reaching your destination, you do have to stop, take your shoe off and shake the stone out before you continue.

Fuck that. I was very, very wrong.

My new, and more appropriate analogy is that the boat you willingly boarded has sunk in the ocean and you have to swim to shore. There are fins circling in the water ahead of you. You don’t know which of them are sharks, and which are dolphins. The sharks will take a chunk out of your ass, and the dolphins will, at best, look at you with a great deal of indifference. You can, if your will is strong, punch a shark square in the nose to drive it away with no guarantee that it will not come back more pissed off than before.

We’ve knocked the crap out of our share of sharks on this little swim. Our fists are getting sore, and it’s getting harder to keep our heads above the water. There are only two fins directly ahead of us, and if our luck holds out, they’ll turn out to be a pair of friendly dolphins that will leave us the fuck alone. After that, all we have to do is cling to a piece of flotsam and drift to shore.

There are so many things to do, get, sign, arrange and pay for before you can close on a house. You better make damned sure the funds for your down payment and closing costs are from an über legitimate source — monetary gifts do not count unless you’ve had them in the bank for a long while. Have an extra, extra reserve of cash on hand for the unforeseen expenses that are unavoidably going to surface. Get your debt as low as you can. Don’t jump on a FHA loan first thing; you’ll make out better with a conventional one. Put as much down on the house as you can at the time of purchase — the closer to 20% the better — unless you go FHA, then it won’t matter.

That’s just the few common sense details I can list. I don’t have the energy to go any further. I’m water logged, cold, and looking for the nearest bit of floating debris to hold on to.

Fucking sharks.

I’m exhausted.

Tonight, Lady and I submitted a bid on a house, which was consequently accepted. It happened that fast — about 2 hours. The house never even hit the open market, and had it, it would have lasted as long as a Black Angus steer in a piranha stream. Next come the inspections to make sure it’s not a clunker. Nonexistent deity, help me.

It’s a little smaller than we would have liked, but it’s perfect for our budget. The neighborhood is great, the house is immaculate — with the exception of some modernization — and the back yard & patio are made for entertaining and partying. All of our shit will fit in there comfortably, and it’ll be nice to get it all out of storage.

Crap, I hope we get this house. After months of searching, we’ve finally found a bona-fide winner. Both Lady and I got fantastic vibes from the second we walked in the door. It’s a warm and welcome house with New Orleans charm and has seen many years of tender loving care by the folks we’re buying it from, who are the original owners, by the by. This house has seen a lot of good times, and it’s going to see a heap more if we can get in there.

We’ll even have our own Tiki god to watch over us, if they leave him.

I’m exhausted. My brain is stew, and the stress is only beginning. I’m going to pass out for a while.

It’s been a busy-as-da-fuck weekend. Friday evening started at a luau party and ended with the previously posted party at Jabba Jaws that had me marveling at Krazy’s mixologist and bedside manner skills. As an update, Mensa got totally pickled and still has trouble remembering most of the evening at Jabba Jaws, so… money well spent, I guess. Thanks goes to Pounders for stepping up and keeping him from going toxic.

Had a nice Saturday afternoon tooling around Magazine St. with Pounders hitting Brew Ha-Ha for a fermentation bucket and a guided tour of the place. I think I’ve been bitten by the home-brew bug courtesy of that loveable lug, and I’m easing into it slowly by making several varieties of "bounce", which require patience but no actual brewing skill. Coming to a liver near you… blueberry, raspberry and cherry bounce — in honor of my dad who used to make a wicked wild cherry bounce. It’s all downhill from here.

After Brew Ha-Ha, we stopped as Juan’s Flying Burrito for a bite to eat, and let me tell you it was tasty as all get out. Unfortunately, Juan played two encores and made several curtain calls a few short hours afterward — Thirteen & Stirfry, I sincerely hope the contractor can rebuild your guest bathroom and get the scorch marks off of the porcelain. Which brings me to the visit to their house where the Lady and I played one enjoyable, but painful to my lower intestine game of Cranium (owing to Juan making several comebacks).

Sunday was spent shopping for cherries and booze to make the bounce. I spent more hours than I care to count pitting fresh bing cherries today. My fucking back is killing me. Do you know it takes a metric ass-ton of cherries and brandy to make cherry bounce? Holy crap! It’s for a good cause, though… World Domination Through Intoxication. Yeah, I’m fighting for Ponders’ cause.

There’s a bit of fun for you here. It’s a bunch of contestants on a Japanese talent game show performing a live-action Matrix type of ping-pong game. Very well orchestrated, and clever to boot.

Lady, Mensa and I went to the big bash at Jabba Jaws tonight, and it seems to have been a rousing success. Krazy was truly in his element, and I don’t think I’ve seen him this happy in a long time. He was busy — overwhelmingly so at times — but he handled the rushes with a grace and speed conceived from years of playing the perfect host during the Mardi Gras season. He seems to have found a comfortable niche, and the niche has found him.

I was asked if I enjoyed the party tonight, and I did, but not for reasons most would expect. I’m no party-boy by any stretch of the imagination. I’m more of a homebody kinda guy, but I like to have people in my home, so it all balances out. Going to this party for the party’s sake isn’t what stirred me. I went to support my friend at a time and place that was Important to him. Yes, important with a capital "I".

It was a landmark moment in Krazy’s new career, and I wanted to share that with him because it means a lot to him to have his friends around at times like these. It made me happy to see him gliding around like a whirling dervish behind the bar, pouring out drinks and popping the tops off of beer bottles with a deft flick of the wrist, never once looking at his belt when drawing or sheathing his opener.

Never did that satisfied half-grin leave his face, even when he screwed up his expression with confusion at something, or dissatisfaction with the other bonehead behind the bar who kept getting in his way and screwing up his flow. That is what made me happy, to sense the waves of glory emanating from Krazy and to know that I might have contributed to it a little bit by showing up and hanging out. Of course, I also wanted to make sure that I had a hand in him going home a few duckets heavier at the end of the night so I tipped as well as I could for the few beers that I had.

Congrats Krazy, and I’m glad Dame Fortune has finally turned her pretty face your way. Let’s hope she watches you for a while. Vincero!