Crystal G

I’m insulted that Palin is the republican VP candidate, for many reasons.

She’s obviously a flippin moron when it comes to the issues that she should damn well be aware of. But she’s praised so highly by people desperate to have McCain win the election. It’s like throwing out all of your ideals and scruples just to get what you want. How can these people approve of this woman in a legit fashion?

And the people that are voting for her only because she’s a hawt woman, or even the women voting for her only because she’s a woman at all, I don’t get them either. If this woman sits in the VP seat, and eventually becomes president when McCain pops a cog, do you realize that she’ll make the U.S. look like a sheep for the taking? That we’ll never have another woman president for 10 bajillion years because of how foolish women will look after that? The jokes will be abound, “Can’t let a woman be president, you saw what happened last time.”

Not to mention if she can’t handle giving interviews, I’d hate to see her negotiating with intimidating foreign leaders. I imagine she’ll run home and cry or polish her 12-gauge.

I guess McCain’s stupid decisions lately just boggle me. Palin as VP, I just can’t see it. It’s even worse to imagine her as President. I don’t want this woman representing the initial step of women in the White House. We’re better than that.

Comcast turned off my internet two days early, the bastards. But they do have me on the schedule for new service on Thursday at the new house still. I can’t understand why customer services fails so bad with them. It literally honestly does. I’m on dial-up tonight, and probably won’t be on tomorrow at all since we’ll be sleeping at the new house.

Dad and I settled on the new house today. It was actually very painless, and the previous owners are super cool. I was fairly intimidated going into it, and I could sense tension in the room when they first walked in. But then they started talking about the history of the place and their family and things lightened up quite a bit. They seemed to take to my dad, since he’s an old farmer like them. I think they may even stop by now and again.

We immediately went to pick up a load of belongings to bring over and changed the locks. I actually took a nap on the floor after I was laying there staring at the horrible paint job on the ceiling. I took tons of photos, which I can’t upload now because of the current internet debacle. And I’ve taped up most of the living room for painting tomorrow. I do need to spackle and sand a few minor areas.

We took Bastian with us, but he’s not feeling very well.

Dad already started loading tools into the garage, I think he’s tickled pink at having one. I may post more details later, but dial-up seriously sucks. I remember these days, but it must be one of those repressed horrific memories.

Countdown: 1 day till settlement, 2 days till move-in.

My total closing fees will be $4830 which will leave a little over $2k for us to put into the house and start paying a few folks back. Payback will be faster when the car is paid off in February.

That is good news

They have also left some work-benches and grinders behind for my dad. So more free stuff.

Tomorrow’s schedule:
9:15am – Walk-through of the house to make sure everything is as it was described for settlement
10:15am – Meet with lawyer to go over paperwork for settlement
11am – Settlement appointment with attorneys and seller
Afterwards – Change locks to all 4 doors of the house (already purchased and keyed the same)

If it’s past 1pm by that time, I will not be going into work as it takes an hour to get to work and it’s not worth going in after 1pm.

In which case I will:
- Smudge entire house and garage with white sage
- Tape up the living room for painting.
- Examine for any holes, flaws, etc for painting.
- Roll around in the grass and on the floors and giggle like mad

Wednesday’s Schedule:
7am – Start painting living room (maybe bedroom first, depending on when my cousin-in-law wants to come over)
9am-10am – Grandfather drops off storage trailer
Afterwards – Alternate between painting and unloading trailer the rest of the day
12pm-3pm – Electric company is due to turn on electric
10pm – First night sleeping at new house (albeit without internetz)

Thursday’s Schedule:
8-12pm – Cable installation
Afterwards – More unloading and unpacking, which is pretty much my schedule until Sunday.

Several folks coming over Friday and Saturday to help unload and paint.

Saturday’s Schedule:
- Pick up furniture from bosse’s pad

I will be taking lots of before and after pictures. Expect picture spam.

Dad and I went and had breakfast at another old country restraurant called “The Country Kitchen” in Taneytown today. It was very small, much like the Book and Table we went to for his birthday. Service was faster and the food was good (though my cinnamon bun must have been heated up in the microwave because half of it was hard as a rock).

These country restaurants crack me up. I really do love them because you see all the old farmers sitting outside chatting and gossiping. One of them was talking to my dad for a bit about diabetes. I just want to sit with them all day and listen to stories.

Afterwards we went to Lowes to buy paint, where I also promptly forgot to use my coupon. I’m sure we’ll be going there again. I bought Olympic paint because it’s one of the more eco-friendly paints, and I have a caramel/beige color for the living room, and a dark chocolate brown for my bedroom. I also bought a can of primer for the bedroom since the walls are fairly light right now and I don’t want to have to put on tons of color.

The local town here, Fairfield, is having their annual Pippinfest festival this weekend. We may be walking through there tomorrow, I don’t know yet. But apparently it’s like a huge flea market and is a big deal around here. I saw some furniture I wouldn’t mind looking at.

My uncle has also invited us over for breakfast tomorrow morning, but I’m still deciding whether or not to drive down to the Grove or start packing things up here for the move on Wednesday.

Since PA does inspections every year, dad and I are going to have trouble with our trucks. Mine I planned to take off the road anyway and start working on it (they want no rust at all, wtf?), and Dads we’re probably just going to tear the bed off of and put a wooden flatbed on it.

But a guy my dad knows just bought a new Chevy and wants to give us his old Ford. Apparently it’s in pretty good shape, not sure what year it is, but dad says it will pass inspection, so that’s good We also might have a buyer for the blue bronco, but only for $500. I don’t really want to get rid of it, but I’m not going to do anything with it anytime soon. My bronco is always first priority.

Also I’m trying to work it so I can vote in the state of PA during this next election since it is a swing state. You have to have proof that you’ve been living here for a month, so I’m trying to sort that out. I will be living here as of October 1st, even though I’ve been living here literally since the end of July. The only bill I get that comes here in my name is the cable bill, and I don’t know if that would count. Our driver’s licenses are all still in the state of MD.

It says a piece of identification is required to vote, and that’s the only one I have. I guess I’ll have to get that switched over sooner than later. Anyone have experience with dealing with identification while voting? Is it different in every state, I assume?

I took off today for dad’s birthday so we could spend some time together. I took him to this very tiny restaurant in Fairfield I’ve been wanting to try out called “The Book and Table” for breakfast. By tiny I mean probably no more than 10 tables.

It was crowded and they are only open from 6am to 2pm. It appears their main focus is to cater to the older crowd, and nearly every single person in there was in their golden years. And nearly every single person in there new each other as regulars. Old women church groups, local farmers, grandfathers taking their grandchildren to breakfast. It was quaint and small town, and I loved it.

The food was good from what I could tell, and their devote customers led me to believe it’s well liked all around. I had the sausage gravy on toast with homefries on the side and an orange juice. The gravy was very richly flavored and the home fries were perfectly seasoned and cooked in onions.

Their service was lacking, but from what I can tell they were in need of more help and had a help wanted ad in the window, so I can only assume they were just short-staffed.

The decor was a mixture of children’s fairytales, local Gettysburg pride, and 1950’s toys. I had thought by the name of the restaurant it would be more of a coffee shop style, but it is definitely country kitchen.

In other news, I think my fathers leg is getting worse. I’ve convinced him to start going to the Wound Care center on Friday, which will be a regular thing for several months and put even more of a strain on our budget. I am going to try and get a picture of it later today so we can compare the before and after.

I’ll be very relieved when this moving mess is over with so he doesn’t put so much strain on it. The lack of circulation in his leg is what causes it because there’s no oxygen being carried to the skin and bacteria builds up in the wounds. In some ways I wish I could do that maggot treatment I read about where they clean out the bacteria from skin wounds like this.

But as I said, whatever he needs. I hope that the weekend after settlement we can get almost everything if not everything moved out of that trailer with extra help so it’s not this huge month long process of him unpacking during the day and me unpacking when I get home from work. He took the brunt of the move in July, I really don’t want that to happen again for October.

Tonight my Aunt and Uncle are taking us to a chinese buffet for dinner for dads birthday.

The water test came back with a minor amount of bacteria. They said verbally that they would be treating the water and then retesting.

The lawyer called me yesterday to let me know the title search was complete, or rather they were finishing it up. There are no liens or anything on the property (they search back 60 years), but there are two right-a-ways. One of which I knew about, the driveway to the left of the property. Apparently a right-a-way for that driveway was created initially as a 20 foot right-a-way in April 1986, and then another 30 feet were added in July 1986. So in total, there’s a 50 foot right-a-way, most likely starting in the center of the driveway with 25 feet on either side.

That’s a pretty big right-a-way, and was probably initially done for a development. However this was in 1986, and dad thinks that they probably couldn’t develop the woods behind us because of the two rivers there making it wetlands.

Still, it’s a shared right-a-way, so it shouldn’t interfere with our garden. However I am still going to research what our rights would be with the right-a-way, and if there’s any way we can get the amount reduced. I mean it -is- our property so I imagine we have to have -some- rights.

The other right-a-way is for the electrical company Med-Ed, which I assume just means there is some sort of electrical line on the property somewhere. The lawyer said those are usually only 10 feet or so, but that I can call that number where you have people come out and mark utility lines on the property for you and that should give me an idea of where it is.

Edit: Found this How to Amend Existing Property Easements. Should be fun *sarcasm*. I also emailed the lawyer to find out what my rights are with the land, or rather what -they- could do with the land potentially.

Last night after work I met with my friend Art and his wife from ADF for dinner at Brick Ridge Restaurant in Mt. Airy. Talk about more upscale than I am used to.

The restaurant was built from an old brick schoolhouse, but was beautifully done. Very capecod or “shores of Maine” decor with white walls trimmed with the old brick walls from the school house and wooden beams in the ceilings. It was extremely cozy and the lightning was very warm and ambient. It was definitely more fancy than I was expecting, but not so much that I felt too out of place. It felt more like a treat.

The food was more expensive than your usual restaurant, but not so much that you’d feel too intimidated to eat there. I had the cream of crab soup which was amazing. Very thick with a really intense flavor that, as Steph put it, just keeps going. I also had their homemade lemonade which was really sweet and a flavor comparable to what you’d find in an italian ice. Then I had their Chicken Delmarva which was a roasted chicken breast stuffed with blue crab, ham and cheese served with a very intense basil cream sauce.

We all tasted each others dishes which was a huge pallet of flavors I don’t even know what half of them were I just know they were all good. I think Steph had Venison and Art has steak with horseradish and both were very tender. They even had pomegranate soda.

The restaurant had little signs on the tables that talked about how their dining experience usually lasts 1.5 hours so you can enjoy the meal, but that if you needed things to be quicker that all you had to do was ask. Well, there was a couple there that arrived shortly after us that must not have read it because they started complaining to the waitress about the wait. They eventually said that they just wanted their food to go, which they got, but I really dislike it when people raise their voices when I’m trying to enjoy dinner.

Another older couple arrived later that I could tell were well off just by the way they dressed. The husband actually looked like he was dressed for some fancy affair with a cigar jacket (I don’t really know what it was called). They had ordered a bottle of wine (I don’t remember which) that the waitress said has to be ordered by the bottle instead of the glass. He said that was no issue. They also go their meal a -lot- faster than anyone else, which doesn’t bother me any, I’d probably do the same thing if I was serving rich people.

The woman was smiling at me a lot and they seemed really friendly and like they were just enjoying themselves.

When we got up to leave they commented on Art’s utilikilt, and it turns out they were from Scotland (they had cute little accents). The woman was also admiring my necklace and they were tickled pink to find someone wearing a kilt and curious about the style of it. When we left I saw an older modeled Rolls Royce parked right out front and knew it had to be theirs. While we were out chatting in the parking lot and Art was presenting me with a bottle of blueberry wine to celebrate my new house, I saw the couple leave in it.

All in all, it was a very special treat with very special people. Not something I could afford to do everyday, but I don’t think I’ve ever eaten somewhere that fancy so I’m glad I did.

“Hi Crystal, Just wanted you to know that I was able to improve your rate today, a full half point to 5.50% based on the same costs. See the attached, I can do this on occasion for clients when the market warrants. It was a rare day yesterday, seeing the market improve in such a manner. I hope it helps! Have a great day, Joe”

” Hi Crystal, Your appraisal came in fine at $165,000 and there are no repairs or additional inspection requests. Thanks! Joe”

That was the last big hurdle I was worrying about before settlement. As far as I know all that is left is the results from the water test and the actual settlement date. I’m slightly paranoid about the settlement meeting on the 30th, like someone is going to pull some mysterious fee out of a hat or something.

I’m going to put my foot down if that happens though. I’m fully prepared to walk away from this house and walk out on the settlement meeting if someone does something I don’t like.