Fun at the Bark Park

Today we took our dog Brewster to a dog park. This park is less than a mile from our new home in South Windsor, CT. Brew was a bit hesitant to explore, sniffing at all of the fences, fire hydrants, and trees. He finally let loose and ran a bit. This was about as much excitement as the boy could stand as his little brain tried to take it all in. Hopefully, we will be able to take advantage of this free park many times while living in CT.

Driving to Vermont

I took about an hour to drive around this morning since I will be moving south tomorrow. I headed up I-91 to just over the Vermont state line. We’ll be heading back there when my Mom is in town in another week or two, but wanted to get the lay of the land. It was so green and full of mountains. It was easy to see why they call it the green mountain state.

At the rest area, there were many different activities shown from the state in a small museum. I have always thought that having a showcase for a state on a major highway, just as you enter the state is a great idea.

The most confusing event of my life

This week has been among the most confusing of my life. I have been dealing with, among other things, living by myself, assisting my wife with Richmond home sale activities, to the best of my ability from afar, managing a home inspection, well inspection, termite inspection, down payments, credit union communications issues, post office challenges, transferring funds, HUD settlements, and an ever increasing work load. It’s really too much. However, I am by myself again this week to deal with this. I’ve not been sleeping well, not eating well, and now am sitting in the dark. What a way to end the most confusing week of my life.

When I went to have the bank check written for the 2nd portion of the down payment on the CT home on Thursday, the bank’s network was down. Of course. It hadn’t been down for over a year. However, I will give all credit due to the credit union. They had every person possible jumping on the situation, trying to figure it out for me. The VP of Operations for the Credit Union walked the process through, wiring the money to the brokerage firm that is managing the sale in CT. No charge for the wire, of course, and everyone babysat the process to get it through. This is the reason why I have been, and will remain, a loyal credit union customer. The fact that my current credit union is literally 3 floors below where I sit helps make it so convenient. We are using them for our mortgage, even if we refinance when the market corrects itself.

It feels like I have worked little this week, when I have actually worked a great deal. One of my main co-workers left last Friday after several years on the job. I took over all of her open projects -- close to 25 of them. That, in addition to the 18 or so of my own, makes for a really big workload. It’s not that I can’t handle it, but it’s tough right now with all of the things going on (see the first paragraph). Tomorrow, I need to find a place to do some laundry, spend a few hours doing at least the basic laundry, drive 40 minutes to work so I can spend 4 hours or so catching up on my open projects, and spend at least an hour charging my work to various projects. Sunday, I need to pack what I am taking for a few days since my family will be in CT late on Monday, so I will have to get ready for work Tuesday in a hotel in CT. Tomorrow, I need to at least do enough laundry that I can make it through Wednesday or Thursday.

One additional factor is that the laundry service that we have in the office has been closed all week, so I have only a few things left to wear for work without ironing. This will be tough, considering I don’t have an iron! I found a local cleaner this week that has a few items of mine now, so will pick them up tomorrow (hoping that they are ready when promised).

To top it all off, about 3 hours ago, we had a storm rip through Amherst, taking down a tree that landed across all three of the power lines running on my street. So, I am sitting in the dark, with 46% battery, figuring out what I can do until the power comes back on. The rain brought some cooling, but without fans, this is going to be a long, hot night. I think I will conserve energy soon and hit the hay, getting up early enough to start the wealth of tasks ahead of me tomorrow. At least I have an iPod with a few hours of battery remaining!

thinking

thought for the day

The dollars spent smoking

I ran across an interesting calculator today. This calculator (http://www.healthstatus.com/cgi-bin/calc/calculator.cgi) lets you figure out how much you spend annually on cigarettes. You put in how many cigarettes you smoke each day, how many are in a pack, and how much they cost. At a 2-pack per day habit, with $6.79 per pack cigarettes, the net cost is just under $5000 per year. If you figure the cost goes up to $6.85 per pack, just a 6 cents per pack increase, you hit that magical $5000 per year cost. Of course, that is just for the cigarettes and not the $4 or higher gas spent picking them up!

I know that you know that smoking is bad for you, but it’s pretty staggering to look at this from a purely financial perspective. Calculating how much money one person can spend on smoking when the price is so high is an interesting financial study.

Maybe that is the scare tactic we ought to use with kids today: food or cigarettes - your choice!

Fate or faith, call it what you will

After two months of searching, we finally found a home. We had crossed the “more than 50 homes visited” without success until this week. Finally, we knew that we had to change gears, look south of Amherst into Connecticut and start the search again. We had a few locations in CT that we had looked at previously, but the feel of the community and, more importantly, the feel of the homes was not right. Of course, high school selection meant that we were not just looking anywhere, but in a limited number of locations. Finally on Tuesday, Sue was ticked off enough that she decided that she needed to head north and execute a plan herself. The Realtor that we were using in CT was on vacation and the back up was simply not able to execute within our ever constricting time frame.

Sue made reservations late Tuesday night, was on a plane headed for Boston at 6 AM, and took the bus to Springfield to arrive by noon. She had made a few calls on Tuesday evening, and received one from Donna on Wednesday morning, shortly after arrival in Boston. Donna found out the details, came up with an aggressive plan, and she and Sue hit 6 homes before the day was out on Wednesday. The extension of that plan was to visit as many homes as possible on Thursday since Sue had to leave first thing Friday morning. Six homes later on Thursday, and they hit pay dirt! The home is spectacular, has been owned and cared for by a lovely couple, and will make our family a warm home. Details to follow in a future post. I am so proud of Sue and how she took this into her own hands to fix. Oh yes, our wonderful new Realtor helped!

So fate or faith, whatever you want to call it... paid off. We didn’t find a home in Amherst because we weren’t supposed to find a home in Amherst -- not even with a fantastic realtor there. We found a home -- the home -- that we were supposed to and will be very happy there for years to come.