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January 05, 2007

Friday Shuffle - The Falling Into Place Edition

I love nothing more than when life falls into place, which means I am beyond giddy today. Let's recap, shall we?

This time every year, I start getting a little nuts. All the togetherness of the holidays, as much as I love it, wears me down, and I find myself craving some alone time. Two years ago, on the orders of my therapist, I spent a night by myself at a hotel and it did wonders for my disposition. Last year, on my own orders, I did the same thing.

I've really been craving my now-annual hotel night for the past month or so. On Thursday morning, when B. slept through his alarm, causing me to wake up at 5 AM to kick him out of bed, I realized I'd reached critical mass. I hauled my exhausted ass out of bed, went to Priceline, and named a low-ball price on a room for Friday night. Hooray! They took the bait! With my room purchased, I relaxed a bit.

You know what happens when you are suddenly awoken at 5 AM and, in your sleep-deprived state, you buy a hotel room? You screw up. That's what happens. After I became slightly more alert and took the time to look at my non-refundable reservation, I realized that I had booked the room for Thursday night. Not Friday night.

Because of my stupid mistake, B. had to take off work today so as to not completely waste the money I spent on booking a room for the wrong fucking night. Nothing like a big dose of guilt to take to the hotel with me.

After my booking snafu, I took Clara Jane to daycare and headed for Prettytown. I had no reason to be there other than I was tired, cranky, frustrated, sad, and simply wanted to be there. I drove around, looking for houses. Lo and behold, the the house we love is back on the market. Someone had put a contract on it two days before we were scheduled to see it last month. Apparently, the deal fell through.

This is the house whose price was recently reduced by $15,000, putting if comfortably in our price range.

I celebrated this discovery by treating myself to lunch at my new favorite restaurant and paying my respects at their Uncle Tupelo/Son Volt/Jeff Tweedy shrine, as I always do.

When I got home, I did one last email check before leaving for the hotel. What timing - an email from one of my Prettytown friends with info about the real estate buyers agent they used last year. On the way to the hotel, B. and I discussed how we need to get moving on finding a seller's agent so we can get moving, already.

Of course, I had houses and moving on my mind while checking in. The desk clerk and I were talking, and somehow we got on the topic of housing, moving, etc. I mentioned that we were preparing to list our house.

That's when the heavens opened up and dropped a business card onto the front desk before me. The desk clerk's father owns a well-established real estate agency and the desk clerk works there as an agent. Since the hotel was only two miles from my house and my address was on my hotel registration, the agent/clerk told me that he's familiar with my neighborhood and what it takes to sell a house in this area.

Before the night was over, I had the county records of my house in my hands, along with a 15-page comparative report of all the houses that have sold in my neighborhood in the past year, and how my house stacks up.

Agent/clerk isn't licensed for Illinois yet, but his father is. By the end of the night, his father had a list of the houses in Prettytown we want to see. We start looking with him tomorrow at 10:00.

Late last night, I was sitting in my cushy hotel room, relishing the solitude and quiet while reading real estate reports when it occured to me: I'm not even supposed to be here tonight! I mentioned this to the agent/clerk. Had I not fucked up my reservation, our paths wouldn't have crossed. He doesn't work there on Fridays.

I don't know if anything will come from this. Of course, always the skeptic, B. and I are doing some research to make sure the agents and agency are reputable before we make any big leaps. I'm trying not to get too wrapped up in this being IT. But Jesus. In the course of twelve hours I fudged my hotel reservation, learned the house we love is back on the market, got the info of a buyer's agent, got the info of a seller's agent, had someone do a ton of the research we needed on our house (for free), and had someone make appointments for us to look at houses.

Oh, and another thing. You know how so many companies have had laptops with employee information stolen? One of those companies is a former employer of B.'s, and his info was on one of the stolen computers. Actually, this has happened twice. Anyway, because of this, we have all of our recent credit information, courtesy of his former employer. It arrived a few days ago.

It there's any Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, or Son Volt on today's shuffle, I'm going to start packing post-haste.*

Posted by Robin at January 5, 2007 01:07 PM

Comments

Posted by: Dixie at January 5, 2007 02:34 PM

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