Eleventh.
A hill of work with Gary about who knows what, specially some sixes. Each artist was to be represented with six of his best posters, which should show right away on his page. It also seems I was working on the commercial part, where he'd sit at home and edit the database, put things in order, set the prices and whatnot, and then send all of that to an SQL server, into the database from which the web server pulled data. Which eventually worked, and was fast.
Busy with the house. A heap of papers arrived yesterday, so we dived in and studied them whole afternoon. On top of that, we bought a DIY book, how to do things around the house, to see what's new in tools and how things are done over here, so we peeked into that and started making a preliminary list of things to do before the move. Being some ten years out of the swing of it, we need to get back in shape. Also, Go called yesterday, just when we were getting ready for the beach (around six, afternoon), so we stayed with her too. Furthermore, Lena arranged with some girl from school, who lives across from the 9th street garage*, to meet her at the beach, but the girl thought we'd pick her from home, and sent the address when we already left.
In light of all that, I decided to keep working this weekend, because on wednesday we'll (supposedly) have that closing, keys etc, so we'll lose time on that.
The appraiser's report, and the contract from the CU. He set exactly the same price we offered. Found some history in his report - the house was built in 1977, last two sales were in 2001 (by unknown seller) at 61000, and april this year (when HUD bought it off from his lien, because mr buyer stopped paying the installments and the house was foreclosed) at 63000. So the department is even with us, sold it at cost, except that our agentulja's firm gets three grand.
The estimate takes fifteen pages, what with pictures, blueprint, street map etc. Though, I wouldn't give him more than 100$ for the whole thing - but he's authorized, and costs 300$, take it or take it. He did his job, and must produce so much paper to look serious. Then someone has to check all that to look equally serious. Makework, makework.
As for the loan, it needs the employment check and our signatures on the contract. Luckily, I can email it scanned, though the miss who is our case officer has a weird email account - can receive, can't send, and also the messages with attachments get delayed. Once it took a few days.
For the employment check she faxed the form to UniJewel, but Izaak, our kadrovik (i.e. HR, from cadre), was away this week, actually the whole firm was away. Collective vacation, and since the average Amer has 10 days vacation altogether, pulling that together with a public holiday is rather common. Actually, it's encouraged, it's consumption, increases turnover. Accidentally I called on thursday, when a few did show up for work, but he didn't. I only hope to get this finished by monday, signed and faxed back.
The rest of the paperwork is, to best of my knowledge, complete - at least agentulja didn't mention any - and then on wednesday at 14:00 at the seller's representative, which is some Slugworth and three associates, a legal firm. When I count how many of them take part in one house sale, and they all take some kajmak**, it almost seems cheap what we'll pay.
There's a kick that doesn't show up in the plans: the back alley. Not drawn. (here in serbian I explain the back alley, because „aleja“ in serbian means only the VIP row at the cemetary). Unlike the cobbled backalley in Richmond, full of overflowing trashcans, this is a wide paved road, parallel with the street, and beyond it is some public space, a playground belonging to the builidngs further on. And we have two parking slots there, and one on the street.
Thirteenth.
Work notes... Set near on. Ouch. In fox, when a record is sought by index, the near defaults to off, so if a nonexistent value is sought, it neatly returns false, not found. There's a function which would return the number of the record with next greater key, if needed, which is rarely so. So if we seek „Bostan“ and it's not there, it returns false, but this function would return the number of the record containing key „Boston“, if that's the alphabetically next one.
When the near is turned on, then fuck, it will return true and sit on the next record, the Boston one. Which nobody keeps on, it lands you on a record which is obviously wrong, except in some special kinds of searches. But no, David keeps it on. Which took me a couple of hours to discover, when I was debugging some weird results I was getting. Discovery was inevitable, it was just costly in terms of time wasted. Errare humanum est, but for big achievements we need computers.
Fourteenth.
The closing was supposed to be today, but the turkey at the CU needed the employment check. As if she couldn't have asked for it three weeks ago. And of course the shmuck at UniJewel wasn't there on thursday so we left it for monday; on monday he didn't notice that paper yet, so on tuesday I called him. Good that I did, because it would cause another day of delay, because he was asking, now that I mention it, that I sign the release for my data (so I wouldn't sue them for unauthorized access to my data by third persons). Then I told him I already did, it's the same CU as last time, he has it... so reluctantly he did send it, less than two hours later - then the CU sent its paper to the seller's representative and that was finally complete, as far as the CU was concerned.
Well no, yesterday it turned out the turkey at CU removed the flood insurance from the specs, but it may be required. Of course it will be, more than half of the town is in the risk zone of centennial flood - by some coordinated combination of rain water coming down both Potomac and James, combined with a hurricane rain and wind pushing the sea inward, so water may rise sufficiently in all those canals, puddles and creeks. There's the London Bridge Creek right behind the other side of the street, some 4-5m wide. The centennial flood may reach to our ankles - on the street; a corner away it's already above that and the street doesn't have much of a slope. The lawn is also sloped, to the treshhold (yes!) is half a meter above the sidewalk. Found the map where it's all there on some city's site within ten minutes, enlargeable at will.
Nevertheless, this caused another delay, this time by seller's representative. Because one can't just take any flood insurance, the geometrist must come to measure the exact elevation, which will take another 2-3 days. We eyeball it for monday. And yes, the guy will cost another 220$ or thereabouts.
Of course, it never crossed anyone's mind to regulate construction in floodable areas to have tall foundation like we do. The foundation is a flat concrete slab, elevated less than a pedalj. Why? Cheaper that way. If the cost of construction would rise, the investors may take their money elsewhere, and the development of the city would suffer, which is not in the best interest of anyone in the chain. So all the delayed cost arrives at the final customer.
We already stopped losing sleep over all this. We saw that these guys were worse than ours, and since we can influence the course, we just gave up the futile work. We will move when and how we can. Yesterday we once more, with agentulja (she's got a skeleton key), went through the house. There's work ahead.
Sixteenth.
Went to see Go in Richmond. This is tenth day of alternating sun and rain, mostly sun. It got cloudy. When we went to the ATM to pick some cash for Go, it started as a drizzle, promising to get serious, so we took the umbrella from the car and walked the four blocks. We opened the umbrella only last 100m; on the way back, not at all.
Ricardo became very verbose, I guess to make up for all those times when he was learning at night and sleeping when we come. It started with pickles, for which he asked for a recipe, then went all the way to mention Timişoara (subject of his paper on economy trends), american comedians, movies and... as if when you pull a thread from a sweater, and everything ends up wound on a spool.
Seventeenth.
My folks report: „Though mama called me on mobile I now heard in more detail how Nina and Danilo visited this morning. The two of them and three other friends went to party in Novi and this morning, on the way back, took a long turn and ended up here instead of Belgrade. They sat a while, were treat destilate of grape (except Danilo) and some juice, water, then went on to Belgrade. Couldn't miss the exit from here.“
While we're at it, two news from home: after Kale shooed his wife away and took the secretary, the next victim of the syndrome is Vasa, though, at some five years older age. Though, the former's wife, as we heard many years later, didn't go too far away - they still take her on vacations, too.
Meanwhile we had yet another chance to go through the house - this time per procedure. We were supposed to check for utilities, what works and what not, which was futile as the water and power were off so we couldn't test them, and pointless, as the house is sold as is, so even if we found things to fix, they wouldn't do it and it won't influence the price.
So we started making a list (mental only, for now) of stuff to do and buy. We are already cruising Walmart and Lowe's (the other one being a lumberyard, but mostly under a roof, a huge hangar), checking out the prices. We bought a on-tap filter for water, on Lena's insistence, and really the water tastes better. Also bought a pitcher with a cork, to keep in the fridge, and for drinking that cooled mixed half and half with fresh from tap turned out the best. We use that water for coffee too. Even the smell of chlorine vanishes.
(... 43 words...)
And I treated myself to a new camera, cheaper than the old Agfa but about twice as strong. We had fun all morning bidding - on yarn we got outbid twice but caught the consolation, and I was outbid on two cameras, on third the price went too orbital for my taste, and the fourth one was right: price 250$ (same costs 350 in Walmart, and list price, when it was new, was 600).
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* later we met the girl, she also visited a few times. Amazingly, those apartments were even worse of a project than the low rent ones behind the house, while being on an elite address, boulevard next to boardwalk. Must be the building is older than tourism (even though it's just planks, I've seen sheds more solidly built), and the american legal... wouldn't go so far to call it a system... strictly respects grandfathered rights.
** take kajmak off - to skim; not even slang, it's a regular expression