We're in

Last Saturday, with the help of a caravan of massive manly pickups manned by manly men from the church, we got moved into the new place. Everything there is functional now, though some of it needs some work. There's lots of boxes to be unpacked, lots of cosmetic work to be done on the place, and loads of projects to be completed. But we're in the first house we've ever owned even a part of.

Sadly, we can't get the cable internet out there that we've had for years. This probably means the loss of the Vonage phone line too. I hate to return to the dark ages of paying for a land-line phone and dial-up internet, but we may have to go that route if I can't get DSL. Another possibility is satellite, but it's still expensive, and it's not as reliable (which can be a problem if we're relying on that for phone service too).

So until I get things squared away there, we're using the church's computer for internet, and wrestling with the unpacking of boxes at home. Fortunately, the new place is much larger than the old, so there's mostly places to put things (though my wife still proclaims the need for more shelving and such, in order to organize all these things). The place daily looks more like a residence and less like a warehouse, though.

'Tis Done!

We actually did close today, and the sale did actually get recorded with the register of deeds. There was a final monkey wrench or two, but all monkeys were successfully wrenched out of the way by the end of the day. The house is finally ours. (Well, okay, a teensy bit of it is ours, with a big bit belonging to the bank -- but it's more than we've ever owned before.) For the record, any transaction involving two law firms, a huge lending institution, an arm of the United States government, and professionals in two different fields simply cannot go smoothly and according to plan for the poor normal people caught up in it. It is impossible, I believe, the probability of such an event taking place being on a par with purely natural abiogenesis. In other words, somebody said it happened once, but I don't really believe it.

Closing Day

It looks like it might finally be happening. HUD threw their last monkey wrench or two at the process, and we managed to get past them. The paralegals goofed a time or two, but it's been corrected (we hope!) Virtually everything that can go wrong to delay this process has already gone wrong and been fixed. We're supposed to close on the new house this morning. Well, it'll take probably well into the afternoon before it's all done, because I have this annoying habit of actually reading and trying to understand the things I sign. Drives people nuts -- but if something is legally enforceable on me, or if I sign my name to something giving my word, I at least like to know what it is. But barring any final problems, by the end of the day, we should be partial owners (the bank having the lion's share) of our first home.

Post-holiday debriefing

It's been a turbulent couple of weeks here, and it doesn't look like things are likely to slow down much over the next few. But hey, that's not just life in the ministry these days, I suspect -- that's life in these United States, likely the norm for life in the developed world these days, and quite possibly just plain old life. So here's a quick update.

We took a three-day trip up to my mom's just after Christmas. Though it felt odd to have Christmas there without Dad, it was still nice to have all the siblings together for a little bit. The trip went safely and well, and I think everyone had a good time. When we came back down, all but one of my siblings (and my sister's fiance) came with us for a few days. We'd planned to be in the new house by then, so we ended up having to split people up between our current house and the church.

The visit also went well; we ganged up on the church services on Sunday, with each of us three brothers preaching once, and everyone, including the fiance, pitching in for special music. That gave us some fun variety (various combinations of flute, guitar, piano, and vocals). We then went out to a watch night service at our cousin's church in Holly Ridge, where one brother preached, and the rest of us pitched in with music again.

At this point, all the siblings are gone, and things are back to more-or-less normal. We're still waiting on the mortgage company (apparently they wanted an updated title document from the lawyer -- the one he sent them originally is too old; I can't imagine how it got that way -- it's been sitting on their desks for the last month!) Our real estate agent is hopeful, though, that we'll be able to close the end of this week or early next week. We've heard this before, though.

I went out there today with a fellow from the church to replace the thermostat on the house -- temps here are abominally cold, for North Carolina, and we didn't want to risk having frozen pipes for lack of heat in the house. There's a little trouble getting the unit to cut out properly, but at least everything seems to function okay, which is a big relief.

And now, back to the work I should have been doing while I've been typing this quick update.