Updates on Several Pending Items

We've had a lot of loose ends sort of hanging out there that we have managed to clean up in the last week. The biggest one was the house. Monday, June 25, we signed the final papers and got our check. No more $2,000/month payments on a house we don't live in. No more worrying about snow on the roof, frozen pipes, dead batteries, cranky generators, or if the angle on the solar panels was supposed to be changed this week or next week. We are done with the whole mess.

Life lesson: if you would like to lose seven years of your life and convert $100,000 in savings into $200,000 in debt, build a house.

But it's over now. We did hang onto the cabin and 17 acres so we still have some real estate in case we make any long-term visits to the area, but we are completely and totally out of debt at this point and even have a little cash left over to re-fund our sad little savings account.

While we were in Traverse City, we (very quickly) cashed the check from the house before anyone could change their mind. We also hit the office for the people that handle the gas royalty checks and got everything straight with them for the change in ownership. We needed to contact the township people about a couple miscellaneous items, but those loose ends are still dangling. And while we were in the same state as all our financial records, I got the last of the numbers I needed to be able to do the form for the sale of a residence on our 2007 taxes.

While we were in Michigan, we hit Tristan's open house. I have a bunch of photos, but I don't have them on Flickr yet. Mostly due to sloth; I find I'm pretty lazy when it comes to my time in the evenings. Probably because I was outside working all day today and it was around 100 degrees for most of the day. But it's a dry heat.

We also spent some time with Deb's mom. She is way ahead of the game recovering from her knee replacement surgery, so we didn't have much to do other than some shopping and being taxi drivers Friday and Saturday, which really wasn't much of a chore. We drove her to a restaurant on Friday where she bought both of us dinner, then drove her to Tristan's open house on Saturday, which we were going to anyway. We got off pretty easy all around. They really do things different these days. I remember people getting knee replacements back in the 1990's that were helpless for weeks, even months. Now they have you walking on the thing the day of the surgery. I'm not sure what they do different, but it certainly is different.

Another loose end was what department I was going to be working in. I started the process of moving to the foundry, but then a position opened up in ceramics. I had never really considered ceramic until the manager came to me and asked if I was interested. I put the foundry manager on hold and threw my name into the hat. I found out today that the position went to someone else, so I'm back on for moving to the foundry. I'll probably move on July 16 or July 23, depending on when I hear that I'm officially moving. There is a manager meeting tomorrow where is will be made official.

Well, that's enough for one post.