Day 24: Sign Here, Here, and Here and Date Here

So.  Tired.  We made it though, we are home owners. 

This was an eye-opening experience; not bad, mind you, but eye-opening into how careful everyone who has money is not to lose it to anyone who has less, even if it could conceivably have been said to have been their fault (buyer's title insurance, anyone?).  What's more, even if they're not covering their assets in every conceivable way, passing the buck to the customer at every turn, there figuring out some way to nickle-and-dime you to death.  Ten dollars for a cashier's check from Bank of America ("here's the money you lent us, that'll be ten dollars to get it back"), ten dollars to transfer city water service, a few hundred dollars here or there charged for "record's keeping" by the city and county and state and federal government and wash boy and governor's illegitimate son and, and, and. 

The cost of doing business, I guess.

Regardless, I'm overall very happy.  Things went very smoothly today at the closing and I couldn't ask for a better partner than Tabitha.  Not only is she absolutely beautiful, but she's smart as a whip and stays on top of things.  Most importantly, she calms me down when I need it.

I tried to keep count of how many times we signed our names, but I honestly lost count.  I estimate it was around twenty to twenty-five times.  That doesn't sound like a lot, and in fact, I hear a lot of people have had it worse, but it feels like a lot of trouble  while your doing it and the REAL time consumer is having to go over all the paperwork before you sign each one.  All in all it took around an hour and a half to finish. 

Admittedly, we could have moved along faster, but the lawyer we used here in town is quite a jovial fellow and knows many of the people we know both from church and from the college. (It's a small town.)  Also, he's a Tennessee grad and so we talked about that universal topic; SEC football.  We made him take a check with The University of Alabama emblazoned on it (it's the only kind we have, but that didn't lesson our glee).

After we finished Tabitha and I went to get Oliver, and we spent the evening at our friends Wendy and John Mark's house where they were hosting our annual department pock-luck to mark the end of the semester.  (Wendy is our administrative assistant and John Mark, her husband, is a professor in the English Department).  A great time was had by all.  Our entire department is very friendly and collegial.  Each of us has children whose ages range from a little less than two to eight or nine.  They all played with each other wonderfully and I think wore each other out, (a wonderful trick we parents play on kids of this age).  We played several rounds of corn hole (bean bag toss, to some) and had great food and conversation.  It was a quite relaxing and refreshing time.

I can, however, report that summer is rightly upon us because I've been bitten by quite a few mosquitoes.  The ones that are out now are big and fat and slow and I managed to kill a few... but the war continues. 

So, next is the long process of moving.  I think Tabitha and I have done well for ourselves by giving ourselves nearly a two full month overlap between now and when we have to be absolutely out of our current place.  I'm not convinced it won't take that long!

Oh well.  Excelsior!