Golden

I'm enjoying my last half hour of being 28. For tomorrow is the golden birthday.* We celebrated at work this afternoon, and as I pointed out to my coworkers, 29 may seem young to them, but it sure feels old to me. At least I took the day off tomorrow so I can sleep and shop.

On the bright side, I can now match my adult age with an adult lifestyle. As of this afternoon, hopefully, I'll have a purchase agreement in place to buy my house. The line starts here for all those wanting to help me move and paint. And does anyone know anything about buying refrigerators?

*A golden birthday is the one where you turn the same age as the date. i.e., I'm turning 29 on the 29th.

Beware of the Potential Homeowner

All of the sudden about 2 months ago, I decided that I might like to own a house. So I started looking into new construction and quickly realized that was not for me. Then I started looking at a variety of houses and narrowed down to the qualifications I wanted. The other night, my realtor and I went to see a house, and I fell in love. Literally, I got the feeling that this was my house.

The parents were kind enough to come up yesterday to take a look at it as well. I don't need their approval, of course, but I trust their judgment. My dad is the one to notice things such as location of air returns and whether the outlets are grounded. I'm more like, "ooh, pretty". To my astonishment, BOTH of my parents also liked the house. It happens to be in my price range, no homeowners' fees (a big plus) and low taxes. It's not perfect, but it's darn near close.

I bit the bullet and put in an offer.

Now, I hate bartering. I truly do. I'm an impatient person who impulse buys a lot. And I want things to finish quickly and resolve. Housebuying is not that simple.

The owner countered my offer. Except it wasn't really a counter since they reiterated what was already on the listing sheet. In other words, they countered agreeing to pay closing costs, but didn't lower the list price. I now have until the day after Christmas to accept or counter myself. I'm in a rough spot since I think the listing sheet isn't a bad price. If push came to shove, I'd probably pay it. But I also don't want to pay list price if you can get it cheaper. All signs point to a motivated seller. So I'll probably counter and split the difference between my first offer and his or her counter. Maybe we can meet in the middle. The problem is that I always fear that someone else will come along and bid full price while I'm still negotiating. And that would suck. Then again, I don't think they will be receiving other offers during the Christmas weekend. Mainly because no realtor will even be working. But the fear always lingers.

And so those will be my thoughts for the next couple of days. I hate waiting.

When it Rains.

I began the day in court facing defendants who were calling me unscrupulous, a liar and a cheat. Not calling my client these things, but me. I was only slightly consoled by the fact that I won all my cases.

Then, later today, I had a fellow attorney return my call and blow me off in harsh tones even though I was not being confrontational. Oh, and then he hung up on me. Flat out hung up on me. In my letter confirming the conversation, I pointed out his unprofessionalism and stated what I would have explained had he not hung up on me. And then I proceeded to feel bad the whole night about calling his hanging up on me unprofessional. Not only did he offend me by his actions, he actually succeeded in making me feel bad about confronting him about it. I need to gow some cajones.

And to top it off, when I got to the parking lot, the parking lot attendant approached me to inform me that he had hit the back of my car earlier in the day.

Thank heavens the day is now over.

Legend... wait for it... dary

My favorite musical ever is Les Miserables. One of my favorite shows right now, as evidenced 2 posts ago, is How I met Your Mother. Imagine my ecstaticity watching a video of the cast of HIMYM singing Les Miserables. I really don't think I need to say anything else.