Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Planning...

I have had the past two days off. I had three days of vacation I needed to use prior to the close of business on 24 December. Thus, I have had plenty of time to plan the menus for the next few days as well as to procure the items I need to make the meals I plan to make over the course of the next few days. I was fortunate to have the ability to takes these days off as I have been able to purchase everything I need for our Christmas Eve and Christmas Night. Tomorrow, I will drive Deirdre to work, pick up a fresh loaf of bred and wait for her day to end at noon. I will pick her up and then we are having lunch here.

Life is good here in the Enchanted Mitten, just East of the Equator.

Christmas came a little early for us

So, there I was, wandering around D&W picking up the food we need for the next couple of days when my cell phone rings. Pam, our loan officer from NFCU, called me to let me know that the appraisal recently done on the cottage we are hoping to purchase had been sent from underwriting to the mortgage department. The appraised value of the property is $11K more than the purchase price and no repairs are needed prior to closing. This is fantastic news as now we can set a closing date. Yep, Christmas came early for us this year!

Amateurs discuss tactics...

... professionals discuss logistics. I am off the clock with the General until 4 January, 2010, so I am back to being a house husband. Today, I am driving Deirdre to work, then I will be a busy little shopper. Updates to follow as conditions warrant.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Cottage inspection and pulltabs at the VFW

Well, this was quite a day for us here just east of the equator. Deirdre and I dropped Samson off at Whiskers a little after 7AM and he was howling with excitement when pulled into the parking lot. We handed him off to the able and capable Amber and Samson never looked back at us. We went back home to get clean, dress and then we hit the road for Oscoda at 8:30AM.

The drive east from Grand Rapids was a little sporty. We were hammered with over a foot of snot the past 24 hours and then the temperature dropped to the mid-teens. So we were driving over packed snow and ice until we were just west of Lansing. The I-69 was pretty clear and by the time we got to I-75 there was hardly any snow on the ground.

We arrived in Oscoda at 1:30PM, checked into our hotel and met with our realtor at 2:30PM. We left her office a little while later and arrived at the cottage at 3PM. Our home inspector, Dave, showed up a few minutes later and he went right to work. This cottage was a lot older than the first one we tried to buy but after his inspection Dave was happy to report that he had no major findings of problems. There are a few little things we will need to do once the weather gets warmer, but this cottage is in great shape and we will now order an appraisal so we can move forward with purchasing the property.

We got back to our hotel around 6PM and relaxed for a while and then we headed to Tait's Bill of Fare for dinner. We enjoyed a meal at a truly local place and then headed over to the VFW for a pint of Killian's Red and some pull tabs.

For those who are not familiar with pull tabs, they are sort of like an instant lottery ticket issued by the Michigan Lottery Commission that is sold by private clubs as a fund raiser. They are called pull tabs because in order to see if you won, you pull tabs off of the back of the ticket. I bought $10 of pull tabs, and we promptly won $10. I took the $10 we won to buy ten dollars worth of more pull tabs. Here is where things got interesting. From the $10 of "new" pull tabs we bought, there was a $100 winning pull tab! We also won an additional $3, so I bought more pull tabs. I regret to report that those last $3 of pull tabs did not have a winner. I am, however, happy to report that at the end of the evening we are $90 in the plus because of my $100 winner. An image of my winning ticket can be seen to the right of this text.

We are thrilled with the possibilities of this cottage. The home inspection found no issues with the property, so now all we need is for the appraisal of the value of the cottage to be at least as much as the purchase price. I am optimistic that this will be the case and that we will be able to close on the cottage sometime in January.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

We have a sales contract

I am happy to report that we have a signed sales agreement for the cottage we put an offer on at the end of last month. Details to follow, soon, but it looks like we will soon close on a cottage on Lake Huron.