House Drama Update

First, let me say this… I love the business of real estate.  NOT!

Here’s the deal.  Some of this may be  recap for those of you who are regular readers.  I have had an offer in on a short sale home since June.  The banks are kind of just jerking us around and it really does suck.  I had a renter secured for my condo for September but ended up losing her because of this whole short sale fiasco.  So, three weeks ago the listing agent told my agent that the first mortgage holder would have a final written acceptance of my offer in two weeks.  Armed with this knowledge, I posted my condo on Craigslist hoping to find a renter.  After the first week past and I had no responses to my post, I was worried.  I stressed that I would not have a renter to take over my condo and that I would have a new house that I may not be able to afford.  Another week passes and I get a hit on my Craigslist post.  I meet with the perspective tenants and they end up wanting to rent my place.  They request a move in date of 1/1/10.  I figure that it will be all good since I’m basically days away from a written acceptance from the last lien holder.

Not so much.

Last week, my agent gets a call from the listing agent saying that the bank wants 2 to 3 more weeks to make a decision.  WHAT?!  No good!  That means that there is no way that I will be able to close on the house before 1/1/10.  Now, I have a renter that is most definitely coming in on 1/1/10 and I have no house to go to.  I just can’t win.

So, this is where we stand at the moment.  Now I need to figure out if I want to move back in with mom (not really liking that idea) or if I find some sort of temp housing to move into until I finally do close on the house.  Ahhh!

More updates to follow.

Blog FAIL

Okay, so I haven’t kept up on my daily posting. Sue me. It’s hard to come up with something to write every day and when I do, it’s hard to find time to post it! Anyway, I’m going to try my best to finish out the month in a way that will make all of my readers proud (I hope).

Just wait until you get my next house update post. It’s a doozy!

Beezus – 12 Weeks

Well, Beezus is now 12 weeks old.  She just went in for her next to land round of shots.  She loves everyone so the visit to the vet was not as big of a deal as it could have been.  I’m hoping that she continues to love everyone and doesn’t turn into the kind of scare-dee cat that Olive is.  We’ll soon see.

Next up is her final shots at 16 weeks, rabies shot and then she’ll be fixed in mid January.

In other puppy news, she hasn’t peed in the house in a week.  Crate training seems to be working well. She messes her crate more than I would like but I’m going to try a new schedule.  She poops at 1am and sometimes at 3 am.  When she doesn’t do it at 3, she usually poops in the create.  I’ve got to change that.  Also, this past week she only peed in her crate one day and that was Friday.  All things considered, she’s doing great on the whole potty training.

House Drama – More Updates

Okay, so here’s the house update.

The house I’ve had an offer on since June is still not mine.  The first mortgage holder told us back at the end of October that it would be 2 weeks and they would have the approval letter for us and we could start the closing process.  This week, my agent got a call from the listing agent saying that the bank told her it would be another 2 to 3 weeks before we got an answer.  I guess the person that was working on the account has gone on vacation?  Who knows what the deal is.  But here’s the kicker, I have a renter that is moving in to my condo on 1/1/10.  WTF!  I now have 7 weeks to close on a house and move in… yeah right.

So what’s going to happen?  I’m not sure.  If I can’t get into this house before the first of January, I’ll have to find some other place to live.  That may mean I have to move back home with my mom for a few weeks.  That’s not horrible but at the same time, it’s not ideal.  I’ll have to move all my furniture twice.  Once to storage and then again to the new house.  Ugh.

No 12 of 12

No 12 of 12 this month.  I wasn’t feeling much like taking pictures today and I always find it hard when it’s a work day to get 12 interesting photos.  If I had taken pictures today, you would have seen mostly photos of my desktop at work and the emails I answered all day.  Things at the job are going well but are also very crazy and almost too routine at the moment.

Let’s talk work for a moment, shall we?  Today was a very interesting day.  One thing I hate more than anything at work is when people don’t trust your judgement and second guess you for no reason.  Let me clarify.  If I had done something in the past that makes me less trust worthy, then I completely understand.  This is the second time it’s happened to me in the past 3 weeks.  Today’s episode was with a customer that is not very happy with my company and has actually ceased business until we fixed this issue.  I had taken the time last Friday to speak with the customer to make sure that I fully understood their wishes and wants.  I opened  a ticket to get the job done but nothing was worked on for this entire week.  I sent numerous emails and made various requests to get the ticket worked.  It wasn’t until today that it got any attention and that’s because a higher up was notified of the issue.  I try my hardest to make sure that doesn’t have to happen.

Anyway, the ticket I opened was very thorough and even so, more information was requested – but not from me!  Another person was asked to get more information and they ended up calling the customer to get it.  How do I know this happened?  I got a “nice” email from the customer asking why they were being asked for the information that they had already given to me.  Not only does this make me look stupid it makes the company look incompetent and unable to provide good customer service.  Maybe I’m just crazy but it really drives me nuts when this sort of thing happens.  Anyway, I sent a semi snarky email to the people involved but I doubt they’ll even care.  We’ll see what comes of it tomorrow.

Dog Food Snob?

Call me crazy but I only want the best for my dogs.  I have been feeding them Canidae but I have been reading some troublesome reports on the internet of bad batches of dog food making it into circulation with dire consequences for the dogs that ingested it.  So now I’m a bit freaked about the brand.  I was thinking that I should switch it up to something new, but researching high quality dog food is not easy!

Do any of you, my readers, have suggestions?

I was thinking of going with Orijin, Chicken Soup for the Dog Lovers Soul or Innova EVO.

Another House Update

So here’s the deal.  My real estate agent said last week that it would be one more week before we got the acceptance from the main mortgage holder to purchase the house.  My fingers are crossed so hard that circulation has been cut off and they are turning white.  Seriously, this has been a six month process.  Not fun!

In other house related news, I found renters for my condo!  Wooooooo!!  They want to move in on 1/1/10 so I’m going to be under the gun to get moved and have everything clean before then.  These last 7 weeks of the year are going to be crazy!

Anyway, when I get the new house, I’m having a party and everyone needs to come.  For those of you living out of town, I’ll have a real guest room now so feel free to visit whenever.

Grocery Store Strike?

Safeway and Fry’s (Kroger) employees are set to go on strike this Friday if an agreement isn’t reached between the companies and the Union. That’s all well and good but there are some issues that are troublesome for the Union and I’m wondering if they’ve really thought this whole thing through.

First, Arizona is a right to work state.  This means that you don’t have to be a member of the Union to work in a unionized workplace.  Given the fact that we’re looking at very large unemployment numbers at this time, there’s absolutely nothing keeping Safeway and Fry’s from hiring temporary workers or, in fact, firing every employee that is on strike and replacing them.  One Fry’s employee put it well in the Arizona Republic today.  She stated that working at a grocery store is probably more attractive to someone than working at a Taco Bell or McDonald’s.  She may be right.  It will be very interesting to see how the grocery stores react to the strike.

Second, the Union isn’t making many friends.  The Arizona Republic reported that a majority of the membership does not want to go on strike given the tough economic times we’re currently in.  Some are afraid of losing their jobs.  Others are wondering how on earth they’ll survive on the Union strike pay of $100 a week.  Top this all off with the reports coming out that the main sticking point from getting a compromise is that the Union does not want their membership to pay for any of their own health care costs and you have a recipe for disaster.  With health care in the news and on everyone’s mind, it doesn’t  make much sense to complain about the grocery companies wanting their NEW employees to pay $5 to $15 a week for coverage depending on their needs.  As an example, I am on my company’s health care plan as a single person and I pay almost double the family rate the grocery stores are looking to charge.

Last time we had a grocery strike all the strikers found their jobs replaced by temporary workers and, in the end, the Union caved.  The next few days will be very interesting.

Cleaning Up

Today, Mike and I cleaned up the garage. It was a huge undertaking but it will help in the coming weeks when I move. The difference is like night and day!