Leonard's Adventure

It has been brought to my attention that I have been quite lax in the posting of new entries, so here I am to catch up. We've got a house and a beautiful baby Teklo, both of which require tremendous amounts of care. Fortunately, Teklo is a happy baby. I find myself wondering what he's thinking of as he drifts off to sleep, laughing to himself. He currently has a milk allergy, meaning that Margaret can't have any dairy products. Once his digestive system is a bit more mature the allergy should just disappear and Margaret will once again be able to eat tex-mex. Margaret's mom is living with us during the week to take care of Teklo while Margaret is at work. It's a huge help and worth putting up with Mom-in-law for. She comes from a life of canned vegetables and bland meals. Our regular diet of fresh vegetables and joyfully prepared entrees is a constant wonder to her. As for the house, I've finished putting new wood flooring down in all the bedrooms. That just leaves baseboards, a new cabinet around a hole I punched in the wall for our entertainment equipment, curtains, shelves, hanging art . . .

We've found another house, made an offer and had our inspector out. Everything is going swimmingly until the bank's appraiser comes out. The list price was 120k, we offered 115k and it was accepted. We thought this a good deal for us compared to the other houses we had looked at in the neighborhood and the good condition of this home. The appraiser came out and said the home was worth 108k tops. He is out of his mind. I did a search for similarly sized homes in the same zip and found ONE listed under 110k (just barely) and its blurb read as follows:

GOVERNMENT OWNED!!!! For sale in AS-IS and WHERE-IS condition!

Anybody know what "where-is condition" means? Anyway, it didn't sound like a real winner. The owners of our future house had it appraised last year for $125k and all the appraiser had to say was "well, things change" what a chump! The seller's realtor wound up contacting him and showing 4 homes that recently sold in the area and what they sold for, then he was reluctantly willing to change. I have no respect for this guy. When he first refused to change his appraisal I thought "what an ass, but at least he's a principled ass!" When he changed the appraisal later I realized that this guy just didn't do his job. The worst part is, we paid him for the privelege, almost as much as we paid our kick-ass inspector. Anyway, the realtor says things are ironed out now and we'll get the final numbers today.

We had an inspector out to evaluate the house, best money we ever spent. The house is infested with rats. They've chewn through an unkown amount of electrical wiring and torn up the air ducts in the attic. The roof needs replacement down to the undersized rafters. The HVAC system is on the verge of failing completely or blowing up spectacularly and there is an asbestos lining the HVAC closet. The kitchen appliances don't work properly, water is creeping up the exterior walls. . . it goes on. The interior and yard were clean and in good condition but when you looked under the hood it was a completely different story. Needless to say, we're exercising the option to not buy the home based on the result of the inspection and we start looking again!

In anticipation of getting into our own house I've been checking out kitchen appliances. In the house right now is a Magic Chef oven and a similarly low end dishwasher. Unacceptable. I cannot get up each morning to be greeted by the suspiciously perky and evidently "magical" chef stamped on the range's console. After some thought and debate, Margaret and I have opted to go for higher quality consumer appliances, namely KitchenAid. We picked KitchenAid becuase it appears to be an excellent balance between cost and quality, and so that we could get appliances with similar appearance to give the kitchen a custom look. We've chosen a slide-in gas range, cabinet depth fridge, and sleek dishwasher. The prices are a bit steep, but the kitchen will look like a professional, custom kitchen and will perform like a dream. I so look forward to cooking in the new house. Look for your personal invitations to sample my wares, coming your way in late 2007!

Buying a house is quite stressful. Especially when it happens unexpectedly. We were considering looking at houses to rent while we built up a bit of capital to make a purchase, possibly using a lease w/ option to buy contract. The last house we viewed was quite nice, if a bit small at 1250 sf but with an outrageous 2 story deck. Instead of offering to lease we decided to give a low-ball offer that we could pull off the financing on pretty easily and the owner bit! Now all of a sudden we've got to get our financing set up and close. How exciting! This adds a few more items to our big list of things to do building up to Teklo's arrival.

We had the first of several baby showers yesterday. We had lots of fun, starting at Nickel Mania, moving on to Momo for superb Italian food and ending up at our hotel suite for Guitar Hero and karaoke. For dinner I got the Rotolo Verde, which was OK. I think I can improve it and plan on doing so shortly. We had a blast at each location, thanks to Natalie who planned it all out for us. As the gifts went . . . there just wasn't much magic there. Gift registries are great things for organizing large gift-giving events like weddings and babies but they take the spontaneity and originality out of choosing on the guests part. It was strange knowing exactly what everything was with a glance and not having to explore anything. We need some kind of balance between the specificity of current gift registries and the free-for-all of unorganized giving to make sure the recipients get what they need but can be surprised by the choices of the guests. Ah well.

We've decided to spell Teklo with only one "k" for efficiency and ease of use. The name is receiving good reviews so we're quite happy with it. What movies will Teklo want to watch as a young child? We made some good guesses and picked up a few titles the other day including: Mary Poppins, Wallace and Gromit and
Godzilla/Gojira. Margaret has never seen Godzilla movies so we had to put these in as soon as we got them. We watched the American release first and found it pretty boring. The next night we watched the original Japanese and were very pleased. Margaret has decided she really likes Godzilla movies now. Her favorite part was when Godzilla ate the train, we had to rewind it and watch that scene a couple of times while she made growling and stomping noises! I would never do such a thing myself. I so look forward to introducing my son to such wonderful entertainment.