House: Closing on November 20

Posted October 16, 2009, 10:50 a.m.

I just realized that I neglected to mention we now have a date set for closing/settlement on the house. It will become officially and legally ours on Friday, November 20. This is good, since it’s (as they promised) before the $8,000 tax credit goes away on December 1. We really want that tax credit.

We’ve been warned that we should begin our wrist exercises now, since settlement apparently requires us to sign more paperwork than all previous life events combined. I found that hard to believe (do you have any idea how much paperwork is involved in buying a car?), but friends and acquaintances who have been through this process confirm it. I think I might just have a signature stamp made ;-).

We’re also embarking on all kinds of other fun (sarcasm). We have to get quotes for the windows treatments, for the security system, for the move itself, arrange for utility hookups, make sure we have Internet access arranged for, put in change of address forms, get a new UPS Store mailbox, and probably a lot more things that I’m forgetting. We’ll also have to change banks (there is no Wachovia in a reasonable distance from where we’re moving . . . go figure). For the record, I really hate moving. It’ll be worth it though.

Tentatively, we’ll have all the utilities and stuff ready to go before the twentieth so they’ll all just click on at the right time on that Friday. The weekend will mostly be getting stuff installed (blinds, security system, etc.) and moving some key items we want to do ourselves (like the cats; they dislike being packed in boxes and moved by movers). Then on Monday and/or Tuesday the real move will happen and that will leave us a few days to get everything buttoned up at the apartment.

Of course, any and all of this can change. It’s exciting, but it’s also very stressful and a lot to plan.

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

Men talk most about health when they are unhealthy. So too they talk most about freedom when they are in danger of losing it or when they are enslaved.

One of the most basic elements of western-style democracies is freedom of conscience, which is necessary for achieving true consent of the governed.

We work for praise, and dawdle once we have it.

No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it.

Freud had a point. He was, after all, a genius. You can tell that because people still hate him.

In a word, the true morality of Christianity is love. And love does admittedly run counter to self-seeking—it is an exodus out of oneself, and yet this is precisely the way in which man comes to himself.

The more you read and observe about this politics thing, you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other.

We reason deeply, when we forcibly feel.

No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.

Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin—a fact as practical as potatoes.

There is no shortage of oppressors among the downtrodden, even if, given their lowly positions, many of them are only tyrannical wannabes.

No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.

You are, on the one hand, the most complex thing in the entire universe, and on the other, someone who can’t even set the clock on your microwave.

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.

A society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members; and among the most vulnerable are surely the unborn and the dying.

But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile.

No honest man becomes rich overnight; he has to wait for the reward of his labors.

If you ‘don’t get anything out of church,’ you don’t understand the reason for going to church in the first place. We go to church to worship. Worship is not like entertainment: worship is not getting something but giving something.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.