False Alarm!

So, I was up and at'em at 7:30 this morning! :-/

Brian and I woke up to incessant beeping; we actually both thought that it might be the fire alarm on our security system because the sound was exactly like what we heard when the technician demonstrated it for us yesterday.

Fortunately, our house was not on fire (which would not be a good thing).

Instead, it was my stupid alarm clock that was still packed that evidently has a really good battery backup... Go figure! :-)

I couldn't go back to sleep after that so I spent the morning watching all the Saturday morning news shows and changing our address with our banks, retirement accounts, credit card companies, insurance, DMV, etc, etc, etc.......

Brian went to meet some of his friends in Clayton for a ROAD GEEK thing. (He returned with 2008 maps of Kentucky and South Carolina...so I don't know what they talked about, but it's probably a good thing I didn't go because I don't care too much for Kentucky or South Carolina...) While he was out, he also picked up our new cordless phones. We're both quite excited about them because we are tech nerds! (I'm also the luckiest girl in the world because my answering machine message was recorded by a HIGHLY TRAINED RADIO PROFESSIONAL.)

While B was oot-n-aboot, I started organizing and unpacking. I pretty much got the office completely done (except there aren't any pictures or pretty things yet, but all the essentials are there...). We have our printer and server all set up (yay, for wireless printing!). Also, because I am pretentious, I have changed the name of the office to the study because I think it sounds cooler and because when our furniture arrives, our recliner is going into that room, which makes it more like a reading room. And, I think study best encompasses all that. :-)

While all that was getting done, I also found all our Christmas decorations and found a closet in which to store all those boxes...

This evening, Brian and I started on the kitchen stuff and we got about halfway done with that....we should have it finished up tomorrow.

And, after all that, I went up and took a bath in our pimp-daddy garden tub, which is the greatest thing ever.

Oh yeah, and someone has sold our address already because we got an ad for Express Blinds and Shutters today via USPS. (At least we're getting mail--we still haven't gotten our paper because the N&O's circulation department is horrendous.)

Too tired to type!

Movers came.

Boxes moved.

Movers left.

CPI came.

Security installed.

We have many, many boxes.

More tomorrow.

Oh yeah, and WE ARE SO EXCITED AND HAPPY!

Checkin' in from the homestead!!!!

WE ARE HERE!!!!!!!!!!

YAY!

Today has been a great day! :-) Closing went fantastic this morning; only took about 45 minutes and all the paperwork was correct. If anyone needs a recommendation for a good closing attorney, let us know and we'll hook you up with our lady's name.

We had a nutritious breakfast at IHOP :-) and then laid down some cash-money at the K-town Wal-Mart. We are now the proud new owners of a 75' hose; hose holder; hose sprayer; and various bathroom hardware items (towel racks, etc.).

Since our foray at the Wal-Mart, we've been hanging here with the various services that we ordered. Bell South was here when we got back from closing and our phone works (Drop me an e-mail at lsleblanc82 [AT SIGN] gmail [dot com] to get the phone number.) [Presented in lame format so that I don't get spammed...]

Budget Blinds was also here and all our blinds look FANTASTIC (I am so excited about them!). The only bummer is that the panel-track shade that we bought for the sliding glass door didn't get delivered to Budget Blinds like it was supposed to be, so they will have to come back to install that. Oh well. It should be delivered soon!

I should have pictures sometime this weekend of the blinds!

Time Warner Cable was also here and our Internet is up and running (as evidenced by this post!) and DirectTV should be in the next 5-10 minutes to hook us up WITH THE MOST HD CHANNELS EVER! YAY!

Also, our trash can and recycling bin were delivered this morning and Brian has spent the past 30 minutes or so registering all our appliances and everything for our warranties. We are so on top of things :-)

Our newspaper was supposed to start today, but the N&O couldn't find out street (it isn't on any maps yet), so we're hopeful that it will start tomorrow or some time this weekend. Traffic Man Brian gave them all the info that they needed.

Oh yeah, and I don't think I ever posted this before, but Centex did lay our grass seed in the back and side yards, but not the sod (which will come in the fall). So, this afternoon we're going to water our trees and tomorrow we'll water the backyard (we actually have a few cute pieces of grass!!)

James Taylor Rocked!!

In my mind I'm goin' to Carolina
Can't you see the sunshine
Can't you just feel the moonshine
Ain't it just like a friend of mine
To hit me from behind
Yes I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind

We all had a FANTASTIC time! Next weekend is JIMMY BUFFETT!!!! :-)

B and I are very excited about tomorrow morning!

16.5 Hour Weather Watch

I am glad this crappy weather is today and not tomorrow or Friday! I got quite a bit done today amidst various phone calls from Centex, the attorney, and others. All is well and I think everything is completely set for tomorrow morning! USAA wired out the money we owe this afternoon, so now we're a lot poorer! :-)

Off to James Taylor and our walkthrough!!

Interesting Mortgage Tidbit

Remember the fiasco that was CTX Mortgage way back in April?

I pulled out the "I can make it up to you" Good Faith Estimate that we got the day after we walked and ASSUMING the GFE was actually what we would have paid at closing (which I know isn't true), after normalizing the insurance and property tax escrows, we would have saved $1/month with CTX. Seriously.

The catch--we would have had to pay $1,000 more at closing compared with what we're paying USAA. Granted, we would have had a slightly larger down payment (~1.25% more down, but that extra down payment money was necessary in order to keep the monthly payment in our budget).

Here's the sad thing...that $1,000 more to CTX is on top of the $5,000 in closing costs paid by Centex. So, CTX was $6,000 more expensive with respect to closing costs!!!!!! Talk about lenders with junk fees!

Definitely another reminder that if it seems too good to be true, then it is. I'm really glad the loan processor made that mistake that day and I'm even more glad that we didn't take the bait.

Brian & Laura - 1
CTX - 0

As a quick caveat, I don't think this means that CTX is a bad company or has bad business practices and I truly believe the mortgage guy just made an honest mistake. But it does show that you really do have to shop around. I think CTX is probably comparable to other lenders--just not USAA.

35 hours and 28 minutes!!

Yup! It's getting kind-of-a big deal now :-) We got our final HUD-1 from USAA today and everything is looking good. I am really impressed with everyone from the builder to the real estate agent to the attorney to the lender. Everything was correct on the form! The form was even sans the $55 pest inspection fee that we had to pay out-of-pocket. I had already printed out my copy of the check that I sent to take it to closing to prove that we had already paid it! :-) I love it when people are one step ahead of me with this kind of stuff, because it very rarely happens!!

I'm also officially off work now until next Tuesday (Hallelujah!!) Tomorrow I have to get up at a decent hour to put the finishing touches on the packing and to do some cleaning. At 4:30, we're meeting Chris at the house for the final walk. My parents are also going to go to the walkthrough because they are in town. The four of us are going to the James Taylor concert tomorrow night!! (In retrospect, I am very glad that we're going to this concert because it will be a nice break away from the house and we'll be able to keep busy tomorrow night!) Speaking of Family Samuels and concerts, they are also going to be our first house guests in two weeks when mom, dad, Cal, and Clay come up for the Jimmy Buffett concert!! (I foresee MANY margaritas that night!)

Also, Brian's dad wins father-in-law of the year for 2008 because he came and chilled at our apartment for 45 minutes today waiting for Goodwill to pick up the couch (Brian was planning to do it, but he had a work lunch to go to with all the CMG bigwigs.) Evidently it was really something watching the guys figure out how to get the sleeper sofa down the stairs. (I'm kinda glad I wasn't here to see it, honestly.) I am just really, really glad that none of us had to move it!

Oh yeah, and Happy Two-Year Anniversary to Brian and me. I cannot believe it's been two years!!!! Two years ago at this very moment I was very happy to be done with the wedding stuff! May is like the super month for us!!

OFFICIAL 35-Hour Weather Watch:



Did we pick the best dates ever or what??? I LOVE NORTH CAROLINA!!!

THREE DAYS! (ALMOST TWO!)

Today was more packing!! :-) We've made a lot of good progress. We have a few more things to pack, but nothing too bad. On Wednesday, I'll probably spend the day cleaning (yuck!) because I know that we're not going to want to come back over here and clean after everything has been moved out. Fortunately, we have our Roomba, so after everything is moved out on Friday, we're going to set it to vacuum-until-it-runs-out-of-battery-power and then swing back by to pick it up when we turn in our keys next week!

Tomorrow, Goodwill is coming to pick up our current couch, which is fantastic because it's a one-billion-pound sleeper sofa and it would probably kill any of us if we tried to take it down the stairs. We did not come all this way just for death-by-sofa!

Tomorrow morning I have to call the attorney to get the exact amount of money that we have to pay at closing and then have USAA wire that money to the closing attorney. Everyone cross your fingers that the amount she tells me is what I *think* she's going to tell me! :-)

Also, here's the three-day-out weather watch:



Still looking pretty good!!

Lots of racing today: Indy, NASCAR, Laura's mind...

12:25 a.m. on Memorial Day and I am definitely still awake. Last night, I couldn't fall asleep until a few minutes after 4:50 a.m!! I'm not crazy (OK, maybe I am); instead, my mind is just racing like crazy with the millions of things that we need to buy or do (bath rugs, trash cans, cordless phones, sprinklers, etc.) :-)

Today was a good packing day. We're getting a lot of the last minute odds and ends put in boxes and we'll have time to do some more tomorrow. I'll also have plenty of time on Wednesday to work because I'll be at home all day. Brian had to go buy some more boxes today because we ran out; we've figured out that the best selection is at U-Haul and another good thing is that they will buy back the boxes that you do not use. We just keep piling stuff in our spare bedroom to keep it out of the other rooms. This is what it looks like now:





Pretty crazy, huh? It's hard to tell from the picture, but that door leads to a walk-in closet (approx. 6 ft. by 8 ft.) and that thing is packed to the hilt too!!! It's crazy how much stuff we have!! :-)

I am really looking forward to getting through closing on Thursday morning--I'll feel so much better when all the papers are signed and we have our keys! I'm also looking forward to this weekend and unpacking the stuff. Although I loathe packing, I LOVE unpacking and finding a place for each thing (probably because I am crazy-OCD)! The countdown is definitely on!!

Weather Watch!

It looks like we could not have asked for better weather for closing day (Thursday) and moving day (Friday)!!



And, even better, Saturday will be a fantastic day to be hanging out around the house organizing stuff. Our apartment tends to get so dark (because our living room is on the east side of the building), so I am really looking forward to the fact that our kitchen, master bedroom, and great room will be facing west at the house (even if it does mean that it will be hotter in the afternoons).

ONLY 5 more days (if you still consider 1:35 a.m. Sunday morning to be Saturday) or ONLY 4 more days (if you consider anything after 12:01 a.m. to be Sunday). I tend to only count the day if I've already woken up that morning! :-)

#10

Which arrived promptly Friday morning:



It really was the lamest of them all; I'm kinda sad that is the last one!!

2.1 picoCuries per liter of air (pCi/L)

That's our radon level.

This is a good thing because THE DANGER ZONE starts at 4 pCi/L. And, this is what your lungs look like with >4 pCi/L of radon:

As you can see, that would be bad.

YAY! No lame-ass fan thing in our pantry :-)

This day keeps getting better!!!!

If any of y'all are interested in radon, this is a cool site all about it:

http://www.epa.gov/radon/pubs/citguide.html

LAST WEB SITE UPDATE!!!

I hope couriel nombre dix is the lamest of them all!!

It's been ONE WEEK...

...since you looked at me
Cocked your head to the side and said "I'm angry"
Five days since you laughed at me saying
"Get that together come back and see me"
Three days since the living room
I realized it's all my fault, but couldn't tell you
Yesterday you'd forgiven me
but it'll still be two days till I say I'm sorry

We close in ONE WEEK! You know it's getting close when the closing day makes it on to WRAL's extended forecast:

Thursday looks to be gorgeous; so I'm hopeful that Friday will be equally awesome!!

Today was our walkthrough with Chris. It went really well. We started in the attic and he went over our two HVAC units and told us how to turn off the gas lines and explained all the required maintenance and warranties. After the attic, we went through each room and put blue (painter's) tape on anything that needed paint touchups. We had A LOT of blue tape because we were pretty picky. In fact, our house kinda looked like it had blue chicken pox by the time we were done! :-) It was actually a lot of fun. Chris is an extremely nice guy and was so receptive to all of our questions or comments. After we went through all the rooms, we walked outside and went over all the stuff that's out there. All-in-all, we were at the house for about 3 hours. Next Wednesday afternoon at 4:30, we have to go back over there to quickly walkthrough with Chris to make sure that all of our concerns were addressed.

We also discussed the siding issue that our inspector had brought up and (after a phone call between Chris and the inspector), we determined that the siding was actually installed correctly. Evidently it's some type of vinyl siding that the inspector hadn't seen before. After the phone call, the inspector was convinced that nothing horrible will happen with the siding, so there are no more repairs to make from the inspection. We're still waiting on the results of the radon test, which we should get tonight. We also got the results of the pest inspection and were happy to learn that no termites took up shop at Lot #127 in the 3 months that the house has been built! :-)

According to USAA's Web site, our closing paperwork was sent to the closing attorney today, so we should be in great shape. I'm planning to call the attorney on Tuesday to see if they have the exact amount of money that we'll need to pay. If what's on USAA.com is true, then we're coming in about $1,100 under our budget, which is FANTASTIC because we have to pay off our blinds by November to avoid interest!

I love it when a plan comes together!

In other, completely unrelated, exciting news, my dad booked our plane tickets to New Orleans for Labor Day! We're going to Baton Rouge for the App. vs. LSU game--even Brian is going with us (although he's skipping the football game in lieu of driving around Louisiana all day Saturday...) Brian and I are leaving on Friday around 11:20 a.m. and getting to NO a little after 2 p.m. We'll have all day to hang out around the city (Brian has never been and I went a really long time ago) and then my parents and Callie and Clay will get there later Friday night. We're leaving late Sunday night to come back to Raleigh, so we'll have all day Monday to relax and chill... I am really, really excited for football season!!!

Word Nerd

Everyone knows that I am a total English nerd and an even more ridiculous nerd when it comes to word etymology, language evolution, and dialects. Anyway, I've always kinda found it funny that the word mortgage uses the French word mort (meaning death) as the first part of the compound. So, I decided to look it up and impart the result to all ye faithful readers:

ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English morgage, from Old French : mort, dead (from Vulgar Latin *mortus, from Latin mortuus, past participle of mor, to die; see mer- in Appendix I) + gage, pledge (of Germanic origin).

WORD HISTORY:
The great jurist Sir Edward Coke, who lived from 1552 to 1634, has explained why the term mortgage comes from the Old French words mort, “dead,” and gage, “pledge.” It seemed to him that it had to do with the doubtfulness of whether or not the mortgagor will pay the debt. If the mortgagor does not, then the land pledged to the mortgagee as security for the debt “is taken from him for ever, and so dead to him upon condition, &c. And if he doth pay the money, then the pledge is dead as to the [mortgagee].” This etymology, as understood by 17th-century attorneys, of the Old French term morgage, which we adopted, may well be correct. The term has been in English much longer than the 17th century, being first recorded in Middle English with the form morgage and the figurative sense “pledge” in a work written before 1393.

Source: http://www.bartleby.com/61/2/M0430200.html

On a completely unrelated note, I've never been able to substantiate this, but I'm pretty certain that the English word Jesus is related to the French Je suis (which translates to English as I am).

The grass is always greener..

Well...at least at our house it is...

Because you'd have to be an idiot to lay sod or plant seed in May in North Carolina, we won't be getting any grass until the fall. As such, we have a ton of green gunk on top of our mud to help prevent runoff and erosion. It's really rather nasty looking...it kinda looks like we cheaped out and decided to dye our mud to save money :-)



They also cleaned the house today and it looks so awesome now. We are SO EXCITED!!

Dining Room


Fireplace


Front (see our pretty little house numbers!)


Mailbox


On Thursday we have a walk through with our construction manager to go over our warranties and for us to point out anything that we want fixed.

Yesterday we had our inspection and it went well. There is one squeaky door to be fixed and an issue on the front of the house where our brick doesn't completely match up with the side of the house. The only semimajor thing is that the worker who put the siding on the front of the house messed up and did it backwards. The last piece of siding is supposed to hang over the bottom lip of the house and ours is backwards (the lip hangs over the siding), so they have to redo most of the siding on the front. If not, there could be issues with the water getting behind the siding. The construction guy said that it would be no big deal to have it fixed in time. We also got gutters yesterday and will get screens tomorrow.

The radon test should be finished tomorrow or Thursday, so everyone cross your fingers for NO RADON!

Have I mentioned that we are SO READY to move? We're also about done with all the packing and SO READY TO MOVE.

DIX JOURS!!! OUI!

Truly I say to thee!!!

Brian also got lame e-mail no. 9 on Saturday morning:




We had a really nice weekend. We took Brian's parents and grandma out to the house on Saturday and everything is looking good! (Doofus me forgot my camera...so I'll have to snap some more pictures tomorrow!) We got a cute little tree in the front yard and three little trees in the backyard, plus some flowers in the front. It's basically builder grade and I know that we'll do some more landscaping in the fall, but it looks cute for now! Very suburbia.

We also got a lot more packing done this weekend. I spent about 3 hours organizing all our important papers and filing them away and we each spent a few hours yesterday packing up our winter clothes and getting rid of all the clothes that we no longer want. Brian took three HUGE bags to Goodwill this afternoon and he also cleaned out the fridge/freezer (gross!!). The bad news is that he found a bag of REALLY moldy cheese in the back. The good news is that he found some liquor buried in the back of the freezer (some super cheap vodka and a fifth of Bacardi 151). Does that stuff ever go bad? I am fairly certain that Mandy and I bought the vodka to preparty for my 21st birthday...

...in 2003.

Which means that it's already been moved twice! :-)

And I'm pretty sure that the bottle cost all of $8. Yes, it's that cheap (and that nasty). On second thought, I think we'll trash the vodka and keep the 151...

Tomorrow is our house inspection, so I'm going to meet our realtor and the inspector out at the house at 4 p.m. I'm hopeful that not too many things will be wrong!! We also noticed on Saturday that they've done a lot of paint touchups and it's really looking nice. Tomorrow they should deliver our fridge and stove!!! I can't wait to see them! :-)

WE ARE SO READY TO MOVE! Case in point--we were woken up early (to us!) at 10 a.m. on Saturday because some jackass was bumping "No Scrubs" by TLC at our apartment complex pool.

Not cool.

Nine Down, One To Go!!

Yes, indeedy, we close on our house "a week from Thursday." YAY!!!

Lame e-mail forthcoming...

Web site and E-mail No. 8

Only two more to go!

16 DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Really!

It was a busy, house-free weekend. Brian's brother Kevin graduated from N.C. State on Saturday and we spent Sunday with Brian's family for Mother's Day. (Brian cooked baked spaghetti for everyone and we watched the Bee Movie on DVD, which looks HOT in Hi-Def.) It was really nice to take a break from thinking about the house and worrying about packing!

We really don't have a ton of stuff left to pack, but it's just a pain! We're planning to go through out closet one night this week and get rid of all the superfluous crap that we never wear! I also have no fewer than 95,678, 478,547,123,669,632 sheets of paper to file away (bills and other important paperwork) that I have been putting off for six months. One day I'll actually get it done.

Maybe.

Since my last post we've had some good action on the house. All the electrical is done and actually works! We rang our doorbell for the first time last night and watched the garage door go up and down. It was all very exciting! :-) Today they put in all the carpet, but they still have some touchups to finish. Other than the arrival of the appliances next week, all of the major stuff is done!! Everything else is just finishing touches.

I cannot believe that we'll be homeowners in 16 days!!!!!

Doorbell


Front door light


Breakfast nook light


Living room carpet


Stairs carpet

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO WITH LOCAL CELEBRITY!

At first, we were foiled today! We arrived at our house and we were locked out.



Not so good.

So this is a photo that I took of our dishwasher through the soon-to-be deadbolt:



And a picture of the sink through the kitchen window:


HOWEVER:

My husband is genius and rode up to the office and they gave us a key, so we were able to get in and look around. Here is what we saw:

Master bath:


Washing machine drain pan:


Pedestal sink in half bath:


Hot water heater:


Dishwasher and sink:


There are also some more pictures up on Facebook Album #5.



EXCLUSIVE WEB VIDEO WITH LOCAL CELEBRITY!!!


Yes, indeed, folks. Your trusted blogger now presents an exclusive Web video of the CEREMONIAL FIRST FLUSH OF THE MASTER BATHROOM OBLONG TOILET narrated by a highly trained professional: former RADIO personality BRIAN LeBLANC!!!!

Nothing but the best for my loyal reading audience.

Good day, fair reader, good day.

Official Progress

Because it's not true until you read it on the Internet:

Appliances and Packing

As promised, we went by the house today to snap some pictures of the progress.

Garage Door Opener (option money well spent--because we don't have to find someone to install one for us! Thanks, Centex!)

Garage Door Window (the reflection of my arm is so awesome--very abstract!)

Dishwasher and garbage disposal

MICROWAVE (fermer)

MICROWAVE (ouvert)


Brian and I also spent the vast majority of the day packing. It's amazing how much stuff you can accumulate in two years! Our walls are so sad now! We packed up some kitchen stuff, a ton of knickknacks and picture frames, and some electronics stuff. I also packed up my fine china and crystal and snapped a quick picture of it (for your viewing pleasure...) before I wrapped it up...

I also have to take this moment to laud the uberness that is FreeCycle. (I know that I mentioned it briefly yesterday...). Basically, the way it works is that you join an e-mail list (there are about 7,000 people on the Wake County list) and people post e-mails of stuff they want or things that they want to give away. One of the downsides is that with so many people, it's also a ton of e-mails (about 700 each week!), so you have to be pretty good about managing your e-mails. So anyway, because we've been packing so much stuff up, I've had a ton of stuff to offer to the list. Today I offered up some books, DVDs, our crappy microwave, and a lot of other stuff. All I had to do was set the stuff out on the back porch once someone claimed it and that person comes and takes it away. A HUGE box of books and my DVDs were picked up within two hours of my post! It's absolutely fantastic! Tomorrow, I have a guy coming to pickup some other things that we no longer need. I highly recommend it if you have some stuff that you no longer want!

Tomorrow we have some more kitchen stuff to pack up and probably our winter clothes. I think that we're going to be in pretty good shape when May 29 rolls around!

While at the house, Brian had an artistic statement that he wanted to make to the Raleigh City Council regarding one of its more recent rulings (since overturned).

DISCLAIMER: This image is solely the opinion of the photo subject and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Laura LeBlanc, Blogger, Google, Sony, Time Warner Cable, Linksys, Centex, Whirlpool, Sanitary Fish Market, Town of Knightdale, or any other implicated parties.

Rated PG-13:

Shotglasses and an ENGAGEMENT!!

I am fairly certain that I own every shotglass ever made...

Why, you ask? Because it just took me for-FREAKING-ever to wrap each one in newspaper and pack them up in a lovely little box...

On a positive note, however, through FreeCycle [http://www.freecycle.org](an e-mail listserv where people offer and ask for free things), I got a TON of boxes for packing today! This is a good thing because Brian and I are going to be super packers this weekend!

We also went by the house and our dishwasher and garbage disposal were delivered today. They weren't installed yet, but they are in the house. The microwave-hood was also delivered today and was installed and the garage door is hooked up! I forgot my camera this afternoon, so I'll have to take some pictures tomorrow when we go by the house.

And now for the MOST exciting news of the day--my baby sister Callison is now engaged to Clayton!! I am SO excited for the two of them. To make the day even better, Clay was offered a social studies teaching job (in Morehead City) this afternoon! YAY!!

Are they the cutest couple ever or what??

Laminate Floors!!!

YAY!











Tomorrow is garage door, dishwasher, and GARBAGE DISPOSAL!!