GW Micro Blog

This blog entry is the second of a few regarding my new job with GW Micro. In part 1, I mentioned that one of the things my family and I had to do for our move was take care of our Denver home and find a Fort Wayne home. Well, as of Thursday April 5, 2007, we have officially closed on our new house in Fort Wayne.

I wish I could say it was easy and smooth and that everything went well without any problems. How's that saying go? "If wishes were horses." Anyway, now that the house situation has been taken care of, I can share some of our experiences. The events in March can be best summarized with a little recipe I've concocted.

If you follow this recipe closely, you will get a lot of stress, headaches, and chaos. So, because of that, we are going to call it, "The Chaos Casserole."

Ingredients:

1. 1 married couple.
2. 1 6 year old girl. (drama queen is preferred)
3. 1 2 year old toddler.
4. 1 1.5 year old Labrador retriever. (yellow, black, or chocolate is ok)
5. 1 hotel room.
6. Zero privacy.
7. 10 DVD movies.
8. 20 toys. (mostly for the children)
9. A couple of less than reliable mortgage people.

Directions:

1. Place married couple, children and dog in Dodge Caravan for 24 hours, and drive from Denver to Fort Wayne. Make sure to stop every 2 to 3 hours for potty, water, food, and sanity breaks.
2. Arrive at extended stay hotel at nearly midnight so that the married couple is dead tired and kids and dog are full of energy. Make sure that kids and dog make as much noise as possible when going into the hotel room, especially concerning the hour.
3. Spend the next 2 days looking for your new house. This usually works better if the married couple has not fully rested from the 24 hour trip.
4. Locate the house of your dreams on the second day of searching and give the earnest money to your realtor, showing that you are serious about wanting this house. Make sure to do this, knowing that your mortgage officer back in Denver has promised you that your mortgage will be setup no more than 2 weeks after arriving in Fort Wayne. Also, make sure to not have any idea that it's going to in fact take one month before you actually close on the house of your dreams.
5. Wait 1 week, thinking it's half of the time before closing before finding out that your mortgage officer you have been working with has passed you on to someone else whom you have no relationship with. After that, you hardly ever hear from him and instead, you are dealing with someone completely new.
6. During these first 2 weeks, make sure to go through the 10 DVDs you brought about 5 times each. This will insure that your children and even the dog are starting to hate the movies. Not only that, but you are starting to say the lines of the actors in your sleep.
7. During these 2 weeks, make sure to enjoy the zero privacy so much that you find yourself realizing why people like spending many hours in the bathroom with the door closed and locked.
8. Make sure to not be able to close on the house at the end of the 2 weeks. This is due to the new mortgage person not being able to find the proper financing for you. He keeps telling you he'll only need x number of documentation when in fact; he needs 3 times that amount.
9. Start your six year old in Kindergarten. This will insure that at least during the day, you only have a dog and a toddler to take care of. STOP!!! You find out that Kindergarten in Fort Wayne is only half days. Well, is half day better than nothing at all?
10. Place dad at the work place starting on the third week. This is so that you actually start making some real money even though you still have no home to live in. This of course leaves mom alone with the kids and the dog in the spacious 1 room hotel during the day.
11. Make sure to have problems with the twenty toys you brought. After all, twenty should have been enough for only 2 weeks, but since you are into the third and fourth week, these twenty toys are fast getting boring. Even the dog does not want to chew them up.
12. After 3 weeks have gone by, finally get things settled with the mortgage company and set a closing day of March 30. During all this, deal with a huge problem with the moving company you hired to move your belongings from Denver to Fort Wayne. This of course, is a story for another blog entry.
13. On Wednesday the 28th, find out that the seller has disconnected every utility known to man and left town. Apparently it's better if she uses the excuse that she did not know you wanted to close on the house that Friday the 30th. This of course means that you need to reschedule the closing for the following Thursday.
14. Monday morning of week 4 is here. Get a call from wife telling you that the closing will not happen because one of the lenders who were going to do part of your loan filed for bankruptcy. Make sure to want to strangle wife over the phone because you think it's a joke. Then when you find out it's not a joke, make sure to want to strangle every mortgage person alive.
15. Spend the rest of Monday chewing your nails for added flavor. During the afternoon, get a call from your main mortgage person (who was thankfully not part of the company that filed for bankruptcy) and hear that the closing will still happen on Thursday. Turns out he was able to work some magic and do the proper financing for your new house and not have to use 2 lenders.
16. Close on your new home on Thursday April 5, 2007.

If you think I'm exaggerating, think again. Although I skipped a lot of the details, this is pretty much how this happened. I neglected to mention the fact that three weeks after arriving, the supposed kid and pet friendly hotel we were staying at told us that people were complaining about the dog barking and the kids being too loud. This of course is a story for another day. Let's just say that we found another hotel for the remainder of the time.

In short, I'm not sure what the worst part was, living out of a hotel for a month, or not knowing what was going on with the purchase of our home. The renting out of our Denver home was by far less of a headache. We found a property management company who handled all the details of advertising and dealing with the prospective tenants. After some minor maintenance issues, the Denver home was rent-ready in no time. Currently, we have renters living there now and things are going smoothly.

As for our home in Fort Wayne, we are deep in a new adventure. At the time of this writing, we now have Internet, phone service, satellite TV, and all utilities active.

Stay tuned for more as the days and weeks progress.