Business Trip Extraordinaire--Day 23

I made it home and all is well!

Details:

I checked out of my hotel Sunday afternoon and rode a taxi to the airport. One thing about Rio is that the taxi ride TO the airport is, or at least can be, a lot cheaper than the taxi ride FROM the airport. At the Rio airport, you get mobbed by drivers who insist that they are insulted that you would suggest they are trying to overcharge you. But returning to the airport, it's much easier to get a yellow taxi that charges a fair price. My taxi from the airport was R$90 (about $55), while my taxi back to the airport was R$52 (about $30). No traffic, despite yesterday's Niterói-Rio marathon.

I was very early to the airport. Rio actually has a decent amount of shops and food places in the international area, but you have to go upstairs and downstairs and all over to see it all. I bought some rapadura in the duty free shop. Rapadura is basically a block of brown sugar candy. Good stuff! I'll enjoy it with Tracy and the kiddodiddos one of these days.

I got a decent amount of sleep during my long flight from Rio de Janeiro to New York. It was probably the best night of sleep I have ever had on a plane.

Landing at JFK provided some interesting views of the pre-dawn city. New York is so huge that it's hard to get a sense of it until you actually visit. Even seeing it from the air doesn't give a fair picture. But the view was very nice. And as the plane touched down for a bumpy landing, I had a thrill as I thought, "I'm back." I don't have any connection to New York, but it's part of my country.

I am pleased to report that at JFK there were as many CBP officers helping Americans as there were officers helping foreigners. That was not true last time I returned to the U.S. This time, I flew through the line in five minutes. One of the highlights of my voyage home was what the CPB officer said to me sincerely when he returned my stamped passport:

"Welcome home."

Thank you, officer, for warmly welcoming a fellow American after a very long trip. You made my day.

By the way, simple math: CBP > TSA.

The flight was early, and I spent a couple of hours waiting for my final flight. Before boarding, they asked for volunteers to be bumped to a later flight, not because they were oversold, but because they were overweight. They offered a $250 voucher. I really wanted to get home to my family. Plus, if I had to get home late, I wanted cash, not vouchers. So I stood my ground. Fortunately, they got enough volunteers, and I boarded the regional jet that took me home.

We were early, and my luggage came right away. I tried calling Tracy, but no answer. I went to sit outside and look for Tracy, as well as breathe that American air. Mmm, freedom. I went back in to the baggage claim, and there were Tracy and all the kids! I went up next to them like I was watching the baggage claim with them, and after a few seconds one of them noticed me, and soon I was smothered in hugs and kisses from all my kiddodiddos and my darling wife!

After such a long trip, I thought the desire to travel would be completely gone. However, this was a very successful and in some ways enjoyable trip. The work in California stressed my limits, but my team and I came through and slew the beast at the Main Event. My visit in Manaus was delightful and I would love to go back someday with Tracy. Rio is Rio, which I have seen before but was just as nice the second time, and the work there was low-stress. I survived 23 days, 17,099 air miles, 14 South American taxi rides, 19 nights in hotels, three nights on planes, one corrupted operating system, two sunburns, two motorboat rides, and whatever else the Lord protected me from that I don't even know about. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I'm glad I did it, and I'm glad it's now over.

Business Trip Extraordinaire--Day 9

Today was a wonderful day of work. All my demos work great and I was done working before 5:00. Finally, I'm going to get a good night of sleep.

At home they had a school holiday today. I don't know why, but it sounds like the kids were good. Tracy has been painting like crazy. She wants to paint our horribly colored bathrooms before I get home. She is so good to me!

Here in California, it's the night before the Main Event. I have worked very hard to prepare for tomorrow. They say you're supposed to be passionate about your work. I am, but mostly in the sense of providing for my family as one of my main duties in life. My Father in Heaven has blessed me with the talents I need to earn a good living, and I'm careful not to let those talents go to waste. Tracy and the kids deserve that and much more. I pray that it will go well, and I have done my part. Stay tuned.

Holy Thursday!

We just received Jonathan's Catholic kindergarten home school kit. He missed the kindergarten deadline by a few days, but he's ready. If we do accredited kindergarten for him, he will have the option next year of entering first grade or repeating kindergarten at school. The only accredited home school kindergarten in the area is affiliated with the Catholic church.

As you probably know, we belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Tracy called the school before we ordered the kit to find out about how "Catholic" the materials are. The man on the phone said not to worry; there may be an image here, a sentence there, but for the most part the materials are strictly academic and non-religious.

I'm sorry to report that the gentleman, perhaps unknowingly, broke the ninth commandment. Or the eighth commandment, depending on your denomination. Whichever one says "liar liar pants on fire." (Okay, I don't think he meant to deceive us. It's all about your point of view.)

Actually, it's not that bad, and we can substitute those materials that are not in harmony with the gospel with materials of our choosing. And we have had a few good laughs already. For example, if you're Catholic, you might not find anything funny about the term "Luminous Mysteries," especially when appearing in a kids' coloring book, but believe me.

As another example, there was a rosary in the box. For our non-Catholic readers (which I believe is all of you), a rosary is a bead necklace that helps Catholics count the prayers that they recite. It has a crucifix at the end of it. We focus on the resurrected, living Christ so we don't even use crosses, much less crucifixes, so Jonny may or may not have seen one before. His reaction to the rosary was priceless:

"Why did they send me a dead Jesus necklace?"

The Short Sale Shimmy (Part 6): The Beginning

< The Short Sale Shimmy (Part 5): To the Brink



It worked! We finally own our house.

It almost didn't work when the title company couldn't figure out how to open the documents that the mortgage company sent. But the title company's office in another town figured it out, printed the documents, and drove them in the snow to our town so we could close.

The Short Sale Shimmy (Part 5): To the Brink

< The Short Sale Shimmy (Part 4)

If everything goes well, we are less than five hours away from finally owning our house. It's about time:

• Ten months ago we decided to get a bigger house.
• Seven months ago we offered to buy this house.
• Five months ago we sold our condo and moved to this house.

Is this really going to happen? We'll see. We were already delayed from yesterday because of the weekend's giant snowstorm. If we don't close today, we might be delayed again by today and tomorrow's nor'easter. We're so close that it would be really sad not to make it.

Meanwhile, we're dealing with the snow. School is closed for the whole week, but work is as busy as ever. It's a busy time to close on the house, but at least we don't have to move this week too!

The Short Sale Shimmy (Part 4)

< The Short Sale Shimmy (Part 3)

We are now approved on paper by both banks to complete our short sale purchase. It turns out that one of the banks did try to foreclose on the current owner, but her agent talked them out of it for now. Now we're getting busy signing things, copying things, and e-mailing things.

I guess it could still fall apart, in which case it would probably get foreclosed. So it's a good thing we saved all our boxes...either for packing or for building a new house, or both.

The Short Sale Shimmy (Part 3)

< The Short Sale Shimmy (Part 2)

Good news! Both banks have verbally approved our purchase of the home. I'm not going to rejoice too much until we see something on paper, but unless someone's flaming trousers are suspended from a telecommunications cable, we are going to own this house. Huzzah!

Green Thumb!

In Joy School, Jonathan planted some lettuce seeds in a cup. The lettuce has started to grow! It's hard to see the sprouts from these photos, but they're there. In the closeup photo, you can see one little white sprout.


Jonny wanted to give this plant to a cousin for Christmas. I told him that wouldn't work out since the plant would not survive being shipped that far. Instead of breaking down into a tantrum, he handled it like a big boy and resolved to give his plant to Mom instead. What a sweetie!

The Short Sale Shimmy (Part 2)

< The Short Sale Shimmy (Part 1)

"Act now! For a limited time, you can double your salary and quintuple your rent in only six years! Call 1-800-GRAD-SCHOOL to find out how!"

Today we learned some not-so-good news about our future home. Three weeks ago, the seller's agent was preparing the short sale packet to give to the bank. The title company helped with some documents, including the HUD-1 form. The seller's agent noticed some errors on the HUD-1 and called the title company asking for corrections. They said that their person who normally does the HUD-1 was gone and whoever was filling in made the mistakes.

The next action that was taken was yesterday--three weeks later--when Tracy called our agent to see if there was any word. We were curious because our agent said the soonest we would possibly hear back was three weeks. It's a good thing Tracy followed up, because when our agent called the seller's agent, she realized that she had failed to follow up with the title company. So nothing has been done in three weeks, there is no correct HUD-1, and the bank has not even seen the short sale packet or our offer yet.

<cry type="anguished" gratuitous="true">
AAARRRGGGHHH!!!
</cry>

The good news is that the seller is still amenable to renting the house to us, so we will probably move in on or about September 22. I have no idea when we will finally own that house, but if Hope and Change solve this problem like they are solving the rest of our nation's problems...then I'm going to need a few refrigerator cartons to build our next house.

The Short Sale Shimmy (Part 1)

Ladies and gentlemen, we have an accord. Actually we have two. Tracy told you about one of them, in which we sell and move out of our 3-bedroom condo in late September. That contract appears to be rock solid, except that we goofed the closing date and need to do an addendum (note to self).

The new contract is to buy our next home, a 4-bedroom house a few miles northwest of our current home in a town where we used to live. It will be our first single-family detached home, garage, and private yard since we were kids. The house is fairly spacious, and the yard features some nice trees, a jacuzzi, a gazebo, and a hammock stand, but no hammock. The seller can use the hammock but wanted to leave the large lawn stuff behind. The neighborhood has little crime and good schools. The kids will still ride the bus to school for now.

Now the fun and adventurous part is that the house we're buying is a short sale, meaning the seller is asking the banks to accept less money than is actually owed, in order to avoid foreclosure. Therefore, even though we and the seller have signed a contract, it's really no good until the banks approve. That will probably take about a month, according to our agent. But our agent and the seller's agent think the offer is good and the banks will probably accept it. Plus, our agent says that the other agent is really good at pushing short sales through. We'll see. The real adventure will begin if one of the banks is not happy with the offer. We have options, none of which are good if the banks don't accept our offer. So it will take nerves of steel, as well as lots of Tums in my case.

And now it's been ten years

Yesterday marked ten years from when I returned home from my mission in Brazil. Surprisingly to me, I didn't think much about it, good or bad. It's the same as if it had been eight years, or twelve. It was a defining period in my life, but I've had so many more wonderful experiences, and more trying ones, that I don't feel defined by it anymore.

Yesterday also marked the arrival of our new friend:


Shake, shake, shake your Roomba! The kids love it. Simon was a little nervous at first, but today he was watching it intently. The other kids love to watch and chase it. It also gives us a bargaining chip toward clean rooms: "okay kids, are your rooms 'Roomba Ready'?" What a great little robot! Thanks to Leslie and Jake for the suggestion (and for sharing a coupon to get Roomba for cheaper)!

Photography

Here is what our new house looks like:



If you follow the walkway in the foreground straight back, you see two doors. Ours is the door on the left. Unfortunately we do not have a garage with handsome barn door like you see in the photo, but at least we have assigned spaces for our car and van:



And here's a photo of cute Jonathan:



I showed him this photo and he said "baby!" It is brightened for better visibility. As I was playing around with the contrast, I bumped it up to 100 and it looked like this:



Jonathan's reaction was, "Uh-oh!"