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jklbruin
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Name: j
Country: United States
State: New York
Metro: New York City
Gender: Male
Interests: volleyball, dragon boat, basketball, football, golf, softball, rock-climbing, sky-diving, kayaking, camping, cooking, wine, geeky gadgets
Expertise: making an ass of myself
Occupation: Computer related (Internet)
Industry: Medical
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  jklbruin97
Member Since:
8/15/2002
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| so the home inspection went well. the inspector found no major issues, but did make note of several items which should be addressed at some point. as a result of the inspection report, the sellers agreed to provide us with a credit. i was expecting to go back and forth, haggling over the credit amount, but they agreed to our first request. makes me wonder if i shouldn't have asked for more. oh well. it's probably best not to get too greedy anyway.
and this morning, we just got our mortgage approval. appraisal, property survey, title and then we close.
it's all moving pretty fast. luckily, so far it's also been pretty smooth. i just hope things continue to go just as smoothly.
thanksgiving at our house this year. wow!
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| have you ever read a book, where the entire storyline, leading up to the finale, took you down a long and winding road. then after hundreds and hundreds of pages, you finally get to the end, when everything comes to a climax. then in 2 pages, it's all done. not that there was anything wrong with the ending, it was just so quick and so small, compared to the journey.
right now, life is feeling like that, kinda, sorta, maybe...
about a year ago, the wife and I started tinkering with the idea of maybe buying a place, somewhere, but we weren't sure where. then around december, we actually started going out to open houses and looking around in jersey, mostly at condos in hudson county.
sometime in january(?it's all so long ago, i've forgotten a lot of the details), we ran into a real estate agent who was having an open house, and we began to use her as our exclusive agent. we've been looking at single family homes in north jersey, mostly bergen and passaic county ever since.
people say the housing market is great for buyers, that the prices are down and there are lots of homes to choose from. those people are only 1/2 right. yes, there are plenty of homes for sale, and the prices are good. but for our price range, out of every 30 for sale listings, maybe 1 or 2 would catch our interest. and that's just through the online descriptions and pictures. then once you actually go out and look at these places in person, that's a whole other story. yes, there's a lot of inventory out there, but i dare say that 95% of those houses, are crap!
ok, maybe those homes aren't really that bad. maybe we're just being really picky. i guess in this market, and since we're not on a set timeline, we can afford to be really picky. granted, we are being frugal with our budget, but it's not like we're looking for a 10-bedroom mansion at a 2-bedroom condo price. our requirements are pretty reasonable, i think. safe neighborhood, good schools, garage, back yard, good size rooms. you know, standard stuff.
our agent told us, on average, most home shoppers look at 10 - 15 homse before finding the one they want. seemed like a reasonable number. well, get this. since we started working with this agent, we've physically gone out to look at close to 75 homes. out of those 75, we really liked 5 of them. and out of those 5, we actaully put in an offer for... guess how many??
2. we've put in a whopping 2 offers, out of 75.
after such a long-winded journey, we actually went into attorney review on Monday. came out of review today. scheduling the inspection for thursday, and planning to close on the house by end of July.
5 months of open houses and appointments, and everything is just all rushing to an end in a month and a half. crazy!
just imagine, 7 more weeks and i'll be in debt to my eyeballs. *sniff* *sniff*
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| yesterday, i attended the 3rd funeral in a week. not sure how many other people can say the same, and i hope they don't have to. but if nothing else, these events just serve a a kick in the ass and allow me to appreciate the important things and people in my life.
i hope it doesn't take such drastic events for each of you to see and appreciate the important things/people in your lives.
smile and live each moment to the fullest. carpe diem! | | |
| so it's been over 4 months since my last post, wow!
not too much has happened since then. i got a new job, in times square. so that cuts a good 40 minutes off my previous commute (oh yeah!). they're keeping me pretty busy, but that's a good thing. better than being bored.
dragon boat season ended a few weeks ago, so now it's time to rest a bit before starting some off-season training.
over the weekend, the wife and i had our 1-yr anniversary. to mark the occasion, we celebrated by going to lunch on sunday and dinner on monday. lunch was at peter luger in brooklyn. mmmmm, steak! she'd never been there before so i thought it would be a great place to go. then, on monday, we tried out morimoto for dinner. we both had the omikase ("chef's choice"). yeah, it's pricey, but the food was damned good. the only part of dinner that i didn't think was amazing was the dessert. it was kinda just plain. but overall, definitely an amazing dinner (with an amazingly high bill to match).
mitchell's doing well. the little guy is so lovable and even when he's not the best behaved, it's tough to stay angry at him. which is saying a lot, since he's probably chewed through over $300 worth of shoes. now we gotta keep the shoes in the hallway outside the apt. we're thinking of maybe getting another cog, so he'll have someone to play with during the day, but that probably won't happen till early next year.
we're flying out to l.a. to spend xmas with my family this year. it's an extra $150 fee for bringing a pet on the plane. so having 2 dogs would be double that. ouch!
and finally, even though the market still seems to be unstable, we might be starting to look for a place to buy. with the sky-high prices, we'll probably be looking at condos or co-ops, in either queens or jersey. i'm hoping it'll be fairly painless, since we're not on any schedule and can look around as long as we need.
ok, ttfn.
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| today is my last day here at work. i've sent out my goodbye emails and will be walking out these doors, quite possibly for the last time, in about 15 minutes. It's an interesting feeling, leaving after 5 years. i look back, and honestly, aside from some personal friendships, i really don't see what impact i've made here in terms of the business.
i guess it's all a little anti-climactic. oh well. time to mosey on outta here. | | |
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