I was pretty behind with work today, and I was catching up pretty well but then… (insert sigh) what a day.

A car alarm started going off across the street at about a quarter of six, fifteen minutes before Amanda was getting up. I became aware of it very slowly. I was having some sort of dream, and the alarm became the name “Dean” repeating itself: “Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean.” I somehow turned that into an episode of Supernatural where Dean was near death and Sam was trying to bring him back. Okay, at this point I guess I should be a little worried that I was dreaming of Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, but aren’t they just, well, dreamy? Anyway, “Dean” gave way to my vaguely thinking the noise was the clock alarm until Amanda mentioned that it was a car alarm and wondered if it was hers. I got up and looked out the window (we’re still sleeping in Grandma’s room) and saw the lights flashing across the street. You know, we still haven’t heard the Jetta’s alarm, so we wouldn’t know what it sounds like anyway. I guess that’s a good thing. At any rate, the alarm kept going off and getting turned off over and over for quite a while.

I was making decent time in catching up on the falling behind I did with work for a while until I started getting a bunch of support calls. On top of everything, I forgot that the phone hookup was moved from today to Wednesday, so I was expecting someone to come out for that until I called at a little after noon to complain. I felt a bit like an ass. Then, as I was about to head out to the attorney’s office, just as I was putting on my jacket (a cold front had come through) I got a call saying that the signing was going to have to be pushed back again. Unfortunately, they called too late for Amanda to find that out, so she spent her lunch driving over to Racine from Third for nothing.

The good of it, for me, was that I was able to get a bit more work done. I then found out that nobody had sent the appraisal over to the insurance company, and that had to be done. So the proposed 3:30 closing got pushed back to just a little after that. A couple things with the paperwork had to be redone a couple times, so we didn’t get out of there until about 5:30 I think. I still have to take the money over to them tomorrow. It sure was nice having a few grand in the account. It was really nice seeing a six figure check too. Not that our bank account ever got to see that.

We were going to go by the house to get the last bit of stuff and clean a little, but after our ordeal we didn’t feel like it. Peggy Cannady, our landlady at the other place, called during the signing to say she had someone she wanted to show the place to tonight. I didn’t have her in my phone and it didn’t show up on the missed calls (because I had hit the decline button to keep the phone from vibrating annoyingly while I signed a tree’s worth of papers) so I didn’t get to call her until we got back to the house. I told her we had just about everything out and she said she’d just wait for us to get the rest out before showing it, so I said I’d clean it up tomorrow morning and we’ll be done with the whole deal. She sounded impressed and didn’t mind.

Amanda and I spent the night unpacking things and moving them around. Of course, we can’t do too much of that until the walls are all painted.

So that’s that. Despite all the trouble and the fact that we’re going to be destitute as of tomorrow morning, Amanda and I are really happy about things. That reminds me; I need to figure out what to do for her birthday, which is tomorrow. Then again, I would think officially owning a house would be a nice present. Man, she’ll be 26, the old biddy.

News of the last few days: One Lance Thomas has committed to Duke, giving them a top three recruiting class. If everyone sticks around, the Devils should be aiming for the national championship again soon. NC State got a coach in the form of Sidney Lowe, who played under Jim Valvano when the Wolfpack won the national title. He also holds some pretty decent records (like the second all-time assist leader for State, I believe), but I don’t know how happy the fans will be with him. Herb Sendek was unappreciated for not consistently beating Duke and Carolina, despite usually being ranked and getting to the NCAA tournament for te past five straight years. If they’re going to hold Lowe to these standards, well, I wish him luck.

France actually agrees with us regarding Iran, which says something. The UN may be getting involved in Darfur, where hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions are living in refugee camps. With all the crap that happens all over the world, I’m seriously glad to be in America. No, it’s not perfect here, but it’s much better than a lot of other places I could have been born.

I think I’m going to work now on importing more content from the old site into this blog design.