I wish I could capture that poor ferrel cat and get her fixed. She is pregnant again *sigh* I guess in a month or so I will get her kittens and try to find homes for them. But then again, I don’t know if I will have time to take care of them with working 10 hours a day unless they will let me bring them up there. I doubt that, BUT then again, all the managers are really cool.
I bet I can find some of the staff to take home kittens. I should make a flyer to post up at work.
Speaking of work, I closed tonight all by myself and it only took an hour! When I was doing it up in Omaha, I could be there until 3am or so doing it. I am definatly getting faster. =) It is sad coming home to Dean in bed, but I got to see him for 3 hours at work today because he played in the Monday poker tournament we host. Wade, you should come up and play sometime!
Okay, so a brief note about the house stuff. As of now, we have three options. One is the town home we have been looking at for 6 months now. We have a $3000 check down to hold a certain one for us (end unit with bay window and room for the double deck and sunrooms). They just hold the check until we get a loan, so there was no “real” money spent and no contract at all (besides them holding the lot until we buy/change our mind). It would be in the $230k range. High for a first home, but it is EXACTLY what we want in the location we want (smack-dab in between both of our jobs which would be a mile away each AND across the street from the mall in a quiet and nice part of town) with the time frame we need (will be done in January). The only down side is that we can ONLY get appliances/finishes/ect that they have available.
The second option is another town home community that has not started going up yet. It is one block from Dean’s work and 2 miles from mine. If we chose that one, we would be the VERY first to have one and we would get the lot of our choice. It is about 50k cheaper at $179k but it is less than ideal spot (lots of traffic and in a semi run down area. It is also 500sq ft smaller, which is more of a size we need (about 2000 sq ft compared to the other at 2500). The big positive with this one is that we can do whatever we want. If they don’t have a tile we like, we can get our own contractor to do it and they would back out the price from the total. We can even just get them to build a “shell” and we can do whatever we want to the inside, pending city inspections ect.
The third option is to take Granddad up on his offer to build us a home. We would get exactly what we want for probably less money BUT we would have to find some property. I would love to do that because Granddad is not getting any younger and I would really love to live in a home that I designed and he built. I guess I need to talk to Granddad about all of this and utilize all the knowledge he has. Someone remind me to call him on my day off.
Speaking of days off, here is my schedule for this month.
Man, I am really turning into a night owl! I am not tired at all and it is 2am. Maybe I will go clean the house…
March 20th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
I kind of have a feeling Grandad may not really be all that keen on building a house — particularly at a distance — at this point in his career. He and Grandmom like to travel and be free to raise hell on political and environmental issues. And too, even with a family member doing it, custom building tends to be more expensive than “speculative” homes, for which the builders save money buying materials and contracting for services for dozens or hundreds of construction jobs at a time.
In terms of how much to spend, just remember the old rule of thumb — don’t spend more than 30% of your take-home income on housing, and that includes insurance and utilities. AND stay away from the high-risk financing deals with little or no down payment and/or adjustable-rate mortgages. Foreclosures are at an all-time high because of people who “took advantage of” those kinds of “opportunities”, which turned out to be traps.
March 20th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Speaking of kittens, I doubt the health department would want to see critters in a restaurant. Speaking of health department, do you have to go and get certified as a “food protection manager” or at least a “food handler”?
March 21st, 2007 at 10:13 am
Yeah at some point.
March 21st, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Hi Kaston … thanks for the support today, it is much appreciated.
Have to remember 1 thing girl … the more house there is, the more there is to clean. No matter what age you are … most people I know, both young and old, tend to get tired of stairs very quickly.
All in all, it sounds like you and Dean are rolling along quite nicely.