The waiting, she is killing me
Aug. 30th, 2007 11:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
voxwomanThis latest buyer presented us with his laundry list of borked things in the house. But I think he's looking for a concession at closing, which will eat into even more of the pittance we're going to walk away from the house with. We are now discussing how large that concession is going to be. I think I'm going to have to be content with just paying back the family loans and the credit cards, and saving up for any/all renovations. I just hope that work continues to come in for both of us so we can manage this (we also have to start putting money away for retirement, and the kid's college... I have no idea how we're going to pull all this off).
I realize I should have played much harder ball when I bought this place. I'm suffering from "nice guys finish last" disease, I suppose.
On top of that, the body shop put the wrong mirror on the car, which is why it doesn't remember my setting when I get into it. Now I have to go back to them and complain and make them replace it/fix it. Grr.
Add to that some gastrointestinal issues that have cropped up in the last 18 hours, and I'm having a wonderful "vacation". I'm hoping these are completely stress-related and not Chinese restaurant-related; I don't think we have a fall back Chinese place to eat at if we cross this one off the list. At least it has excused me from having to go to the mall for back-to-school shopping. I did my part on Tuesday, R is taking A now. I'm hoping that they don't go over budget.
I realize I should have played much harder ball when I bought this place. I'm suffering from "nice guys finish last" disease, I suppose.
On top of that, the body shop put the wrong mirror on the car, which is why it doesn't remember my setting when I get into it. Now I have to go back to them and complain and make them replace it/fix it. Grr.
Add to that some gastrointestinal issues that have cropped up in the last 18 hours, and I'm having a wonderful "vacation". I'm hoping these are completely stress-related and not Chinese restaurant-related; I don't think we have a fall back Chinese place to eat at if we cross this one off the list. At least it has excused me from having to go to the mall for back-to-school shopping. I did my part on Tuesday, R is taking A now. I'm hoping that they don't go over budget.
Yesterday was our trip into NYC. First to the American Museum of Natural History, where we only had time to visit the North American Coastal Indian exhibit, where I took many photographs of totem poles (almost entirely Tlingit - there were no Haida artifacts anywhere - and look at me, being able to discern what tribe these things come from now!).
There was also a really cool headdress/crown, attributed to the tribal shaman. R and A asked about the bones making the spikes on the crown. R thought they were skinny rib bones from some animal or other. I recognized them as oosiks, which makes some sort of sense for a tribal shaman to have as a headdress... penis bones probably pack some powerful mojo in them, after all...
Anyway, we didn't have time to visit the Mythological animals or frogs exhibits running now, because we had to get back downtown for lunch and catch the matinee performance of Rent. I like the band the best. They were awesome. Also the singing was amazing. Most of the audience were teenage girl wannabe theater people. I like a lot of the music, and it was fun to watch. It's not my favorite play. I think I enjoyed Wicked the most out of all the plays I've seen since Mom died. But I want to learn the song with the lyric "five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes" in it... at least the piano riff, so I can play it at my gig at the end of the month to tease the audience.
The play is better than the film of the play, in any case.
No rickshaw ride this time - the subway entrance was right outside the theater, so we went 1 stop down to Penn Station and promptly got on the wrong train for NJ. The conductor told us we were on the wrong train and to get off at Newark and change to the correct train. Apparently, 90% of the trains don't stop in our city, so we were standing on the tracks for an hour, asking a conductor on every train that stopped "Does this train stop in Rahway?" To which the reply was inevitably "No". This was strange - both R and I have commuted into the city for months at a time over the course of years, and we have NEVER gotten on the wrong train before. Either of us.
There were these enormous double-decker commuter trains (heading to the upscale cities of Princeton and the like) that I had never seen before. I wish we would get them, but I guess that we don't have enough traffic to justify them?
There was also a really cool headdress/crown, attributed to the tribal shaman. R and A asked about the bones making the spikes on the crown. R thought they were skinny rib bones from some animal or other. I recognized them as oosiks, which makes some sort of sense for a tribal shaman to have as a headdress... penis bones probably pack some powerful mojo in them, after all...
Anyway, we didn't have time to visit the Mythological animals or frogs exhibits running now, because we had to get back downtown for lunch and catch the matinee performance of Rent. I like the band the best. They were awesome. Also the singing was amazing. Most of the audience were teenage girl wannabe theater people. I like a lot of the music, and it was fun to watch. It's not my favorite play. I think I enjoyed Wicked the most out of all the plays I've seen since Mom died. But I want to learn the song with the lyric "five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes" in it... at least the piano riff, so I can play it at my gig at the end of the month to tease the audience.
The play is better than the film of the play, in any case.
No rickshaw ride this time - the subway entrance was right outside the theater, so we went 1 stop down to Penn Station and promptly got on the wrong train for NJ. The conductor told us we were on the wrong train and to get off at Newark and change to the correct train. Apparently, 90% of the trains don't stop in our city, so we were standing on the tracks for an hour, asking a conductor on every train that stopped "Does this train stop in Rahway?" To which the reply was inevitably "No". This was strange - both R and I have commuted into the city for months at a time over the course of years, and we have NEVER gotten on the wrong train before. Either of us.
There were these enormous double-decker commuter trains (heading to the upscale cities of Princeton and the like) that I had never seen before. I wish we would get them, but I guess that we don't have enough traffic to justify them?
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No Rickshaw?
Date: 2007-08-31 09:43 am (UTC)(Would you really dare your whole family in one of these?!)
That's quite nasty, about the trains. Are they changing schedules around all the time, too? Maybe you could subscribe to some sort of online or sms information? We can, here. I'm told it works, even.
Plus, the stations do a remarkably good job with barking out that "train 18, which was supposed to be on lane 1 about now, will be stopping on lane 3 in a minute, while train 6, which was supposed to go there, ends up ten minutes late, on lane 2, thank you."
I had the fun of joining that underground commuter ballet - a rather hasty and crowded version - on wednesday, when I changed trains to the main station. Hilarious, if you don't need to do it every day ;-P.
Re: No Rickshaw?
Date: 2007-08-31 01:25 pm (UTC)Re: No Rickshaw?
Date: 2007-08-31 02:02 pm (UTC)Crikey. What if you end up on an "intercity"? At least you still have people in there who can tell you where to get off ;-). I kind of liked that system there. Still - poor tourists!