So, I note that again it’s ‘been a while’. This is not for want of trying to get around to writing. I’m meant to be doing my MSc, but as usual house stuff has taken up my morning. The bank is far enough away and open late enough that I did the bad ‘killing time’ this morning before going and then there was ‘the queue’ which mean that by the time we got to ‘now’ I’ve not had time to work.
Anyhow, enough grumbling at myself. At least I’m done reading the story I’ve been reading which had sucked me back in surprisingly successfully to it’s little world. That means I’m less inclined to spend ages staring at it, and hopefully more inclined to actually write the damn essay I’m meant to be writing.
So. What’s the world been up to? Well, theoretically, the house is sold, we’ve sent back a signed contract and just need our buyer to sign it. He’s apparently “got a few questions” – but we don’t know what they are yet, and no one’s rung me yet – mind it is only 1120 on a Monday. Hopefully they’ll ring, but I’ll be checking mail midweek, so either/either/or I’ll get those questions soon. We’re *hoping* for a completion date on that sale of mid December. Frankly, tomorrow would be good with me, but it looks like we’re going to have to struggle through another month of the fun-and-games that we’ve been doing.
The house we’re buying, the mortgage is lined up, the survey done, I’ve sent off the payment to start the land/everything searches – so hopefully we should be able to get that going quickly. And then we will have somewhere to move into. I have this faint, faint hope that it’ll be the same day – but it’s really a ridiculously faint hope. Moving house, it turns out, is a nightmare straight from the seventh ring of hell. It’s made more fun and entertaining by money that Kathryn freed up for this moving process taking the longest time possible for the bank to actually process her cheque from the States (they said ‘five days’, and then…said well… it might be more ‘weeks’). And because I thought about – but wholly failed to really consider thoroughly – whether I should bring my savings account information with me. Now my savings account is a laughable name for what is, usually a few hundred quid put away over the last few months. It’s a bizzare idea considering the debt in which I continuously seem to lurk, but I do occasionally find myself in these moments when I just need ‘a bit of cash’ and lo, there goes my saving account (again).
Unfortunately, the 40 quid’s worth of fuel it’ll take to *get* the damn account info, and the lack of time, meant I had to put the payment on my credit card. As a cash advance. Which means I’m paying 17.5%APR or something ridiculous, thanks to a stupidity on my part.
As usual at the moment, the money’s there, it’s just in the wrong place. I really can’t wait until all this is over, because once all this is over finances will go back to being something I’m generally quite useless at as opposed to something I’m proactively and effectively making a hash of.
I have this distressing feeling that we’re going to put money into this house, which is actual real money, and my usual level of financial acumen will come into play and we’ll get none of it back :-/
I’m assuming that I’m wrong on this front. But there we go. It still lurks in the back of my head and goes “Hey! Kate! You suck at this! You’re sure to be wrong!”. My head can be helpful like that.
The upside is that we have the potential to have an enormously cool house. Well, frankly a fucking freezing house when we move in; but a house which is cool in the relevant and interesting ways, and not so much in the ‘ah, I’m living in an icecube’ ways, which it will be at first. I’m really hoping that we can get planning permission and afford the works we want done on the house, because they’ll make the house just such a great place to be.
In other news, less positive, I got a speeding ticket. On bloody Wells Road, which is mostly dual carriageway – and is on the section on which I was caught doing an awesome 37mph in a 30mph zone :(
The frustrating thing is I’m *normally* very good about urban speed limits (20/30/40/50s) – while I’ll whine about them – but it was just after we’d move down here, and I’d forgotten that we weren’t in Slough where all the duals are 40mph. Accelerated up – then remembered and started braking – and then saw the bloody speedcameravan. Annoyingly, they don’t send you a copy of the speed-camera-picture, either, which would at least be slightly more worth it. And they say moggies are slow.
Anyhow, I’m going to go eat lunch and head to work… Hopefully we’ll have more news for you soon and then normal service can be resumed.
