Thanks for stuffin

67 days. Happy Thanksgiving! Sorry I missed it.

In the world of Minnesota, we got hit with some global warming, and had about a 60 degree turkey day. Wendy made a great dinner (yes, I helped. Had to stick my hand up the turkey's butt). Had a good time after the meal with some cards, some Life (Pirates of the Carribean), and some living room beach ball dodge ball. Excellent!

Today, we're looking at apartments. We decided not to bid on the condo, cause an ARM interest only loan is pretty much the same as rent, and we'd be REAL tight on the budget for awhile. Didn't want to have to get a 2nd job to get a house, so, it's postponed. Both the apartments we've seen so far were balanced with a little good, a little bad. The first one was great, but a tad too small. Still in the running though. The second one was just like John's, which is great, but the stove is almost too small for two pans. That's a deal breaker in my book, despite it being across the road from a great restaurant and the grocery store... So, we'lll put that one into 3rd place. Out of two. Well, technically 3, but the one we saw earlier in the week is out unless we're flat out desperate. Hopefully the one this afternoon is sweet, cause it's 84.5 cents per square foot. Cheap as hell up here.

Anyway, that's all I got. Watch out for global warming.

73 days and bidding

Today, I wrote the letter notifying our land"lords" that we wouldn't be stickin around. Pretty cordial, as I got no real beef with the people that run the place, except they're mostly idiots and they have poor taste in tennants. Most the other shit isn't their fault initially, just that they're too slow to fix the crap that they inherited when they bought the place. I mean, we've been hearing since day one that they were gonna replace the carpet and wall paper in the community hallways.

Instead what have they done? Jacked the price of the laundry machines.

To avoid a repeat, we're on the verge of putting a bid in on a condo up on Snelling. There's a small list of things giving me an aneurism about it, though. Mainly, the fact that in order to afford it, we needs interest only loans. So the only equity we make on the home for the first five years is due to the whims of a fecally challenged housing market. Add in the fact that it's a 5 year adjustable rate mortgage, and there's the potential to go from bad to worse.

The plan, then, is that Wendy is gonna apply at all her favorite stores on Grand (cause they're within walking distance of the new place) to get a little breathing room in the budget. I'll either do the same or hit Fed Ex. What we need to do is make an extra $1000 (LOL, ROFL)a month payment on the small 20% loan we got to avoid PHI. This'll speed up the rise in equity on the home, so that in three years, regardless of what the market does, we'll have enough of the value paid off that we can refinance into a conventional fixed rate mortgage and avoid a big spike in our payments in 2011 or 2012 depending on how long closing takes.

That's all dependant on them accepting an offer that's $5000 below their asking price and $10,000 below what they supposedly paid for it... Oh yeah, and if our family loves us enough to loan us a couple months worth of payments that we'll just give right back after closing.....

If they don't, Wendy has a list of apartments for us to blitz.

73 days and bidding

Today, I wrote the letter notifying our land"lords" that we wouldn't be stickin around. Pretty cordial, as I got no real beef with the people that run the place, except they're mostly idiots and they have poor taste in tennants. Most the other shit isn't their fault initially, just that they're too slow to fix the crap that they inherited when they bought the place. I mean, we've been hearing since day one that they were gonna replace the carpet and wall paper in the community hallways.

Instead what have they done? Jacked the price of the laundry machines.

To avoid a repeat, we're on the verge of putting a bid in on a condo up on Snelling. There's a small list of things giving me an aneurism about it, though. Mainly, the fact that in order to afford it, we needs interest only loans. So the only equity we make on the home for the first five years is due to the whims of a fecally challenged housing market. Add in the fact that it's a 5 year adjustable rate mortgage, and there's the potential to go from bad to worse.

The plan, then, is that Wendy is gonna apply at all her favorite stores on Grand (cause they're within walking distance of the new place) to get a little breathing room in the budget. I'll either do the same or hit Fed Ex. What we need to do is make an extra $1000 (LOL, ROFL)a month payment on the small 20% loan we got to avoid PHI. This'll speed up the rise in equity on the home, so that in three years, regardless of what the market does, we'll have enough of the value paid off that we can refinance into a conventional fixed rate mortgage and avoid a big spike in our payments in 2011 or 2012 depending on how long closing takes.

That's all dependant on them accepting an offer that's $5000 below their asking price and $10,000 below what they supposedly paid for it... Oh yeah, and if our family loves us enough to loan us a couple months worth of payments that we'll just give right back after closing.....

If they don't, Wendy has a list of apartments for us to blitz.

78

78 days to go. Or not. The letter we got from our landlord saying our lease was almost up said the date was 12/31/06, even though the lease says we moved in up here 2/1/05 and we extended the lease for a year in '06. By my math, that means it's up 1/31/07. Dicks. I'll take care of that tomorrow.

Actually, I just had a thought. I'm gonna get some financial poop together. If we can get the place we really want in the next few weeks, I might let it go at 12/31 cause that'll save us a month's rent. I'll have to ask John to ask a lawyer friend if the termination notice supercedes the lease. john? ;)

ballot +5694030a3j10

Vote. It's your civic duty.

But first, I digress. Just to keep the countdown alive, it's 85 days til the lease is up. We found one condo that's probably a go, but I'm hesitant to get a pseudo wonky interest only loan....

Back to politics.

What do we have here in Minnesota? Ballotwise, there's the transpo thing, and that's about all I've educated myself on, let alone heard anything about. Then we've got governor, senator, representative in some districts (still don't know if I'm in one of those districts), mayor in my town, several state positions including Attorney General, etc..... Ironically, this year, most of my views are aligned with the Independance party. And let me tell you, I'm hip to that. Can't say I've been a fan of the two party system for quite sometime.

Hell, I still say we drop independant electoral funding, make ALL candidates split an annual election fund pulled from taxes on the federal, state, and local levels, ban advertising and campaigning by groups not associated with the party (or at the least, say that if one of them runs an ad, the candidate in their party loses that much from the tax fund, which just stays in there for next year), and put in a run off voting scheme similar to Europe. You vote for 1-5 in descending order and the guy that gets the most 1's wins. Second place is vice president.

How am I voting?
Governor - Peter Hutchinson. I hate the DFL candidate Mike Hatch, and while Pawlenty has done a decent job, he hasn't done a great job.
Senate - Amy Klobuchar. It's between her and the Independant guy pretty evenly on most issues, but he's got a snowball's chance in hell of winning. Besides, I can't get down with Kennedy's yesman style, and just in case the race closes tight, I'm voting him out more than anything.

Everyone else I can't remember their names, but I'm going mostly independant, except for AG, where I'm going Dem, because, while I can't stand Mike Hatch, his former coworker in the AG's office is really the most sensible of all the candidates.

But Now, Wendy needs the compy.