Daddy's Takin' Us to the Zoo

We decided on the Tucson Zoo today for our escape from all of the craziness of home. CP was happy to be out and about. It started out a little ugly since there was some sort of car show going on in that end of the park and the zoo had some special event going on. Parking was a bit crazy, but we did manage to get lucky and someone was leaving just as we snaked our way up toward the front in the conga line. CP was off and running as soon as we entered the gate and knew where she was going - straight to the water play area.

She had a blast, but started taking her clothes off. The toddler nekkidness was stopped and the screaming began, so we took her into the grassy area and took her shirt off to dry. We had some fun playing because it was full of kids, but soon she wanted to take the rest of her clothes off. Funny thing is, she started doing it while she was inside the plastic tortoise shell that they have. Once we saw the other moms and kids around the shell with the "what the ...?" look on their faces, we knew something was up. Sure enough, she came half tumbling out of the shell with her pants down at her knees.

After that it was downhill, so we headed off to lunch at jesuschicken where she could have a bit of bird and play in the playroom.

Out for Review

Got the news today that we're in for another $250 for a review appraisal. It'll be a drive by/office combo just to see whether or not the house will go for the agreed price. It should be done in 7-10 days and then we'll see if we need to move the closing date. If it comes back at 10 days, that would give us 4 days to get packed and get going. If it doesn't come back as we hope, we could be in for more $$ shuffling just to get us out of here. We've found a little duplex that we like in Overland Park, but are hesitant to get too interested because things could still fall apart here.

leadbelly vs lomax

We decided on no TV tonight and are listening to podcasts that the LW seems to always find. There's a really good poetry show called 'From the Fishouse' that's on now and being a delta blues fan, I was amazed to hear this poem and a discussion of it. It's a great piece and I enjoyed listening to it from each side and then together. Hearing it work all three ways was really something.

There was another one too that was written by a guy whose truck had been set on fire. Really good stuff.

DingDingDing

...and the winner is.....not me, although I think that I'm right about what's going to happen on this house deal and it does not involve a moving truck, a green grassy lawn or a birthday party for my daughter in Kansas City any time soon.

The buyer's lender asked for a review appraisal and our peeps decided it would be better for the buyer to look for another lender, so we're in for a 10-20(+) day setback while we wait on them to get their $hit together....again. The idea behind the new lender plan is that the foreclosure house next door with 500 more sf, another bedroom/bathroom, and an air conditioned office out back just went for a bargain basement (our original asking) price and could be thrown in as a comp on the review.

Windows XP Won't Recognize Firewire SP3

Not long ago I installed SP3 on our box. It was an upgrade, or in this case an U-P-G-R-A-Y-E-D-D since microsoft seems a bit like Idiocracy at times, and it seemingly went well until today when I needed to dump some DV off of the TRV480 handycam. I searched a bit and found this bit of advice on how to modify the Sidspeed parameter that got dumped in the aforementioned change. The string below will take you to the spot in the registry where the work needs to be done. The linked article doesn't give the full string.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI\1394_hc_hw_id\1394_instance_id\Device Parameters

I had to add a DWORD entry and set the parameter, but the link above walks you through step by step and if I can do it, anyone can. I restarted the box after this and it immediately picked up the camcorder and it's humming along now.

Almost Done

The Flipper Olympics is going on next door, but we got word today that as far as the contract goes, we're pretty much done. The remaining hurdle is the loan underwriters for the buyer, but they didn't throw up any flags when it got to them, so we think we're past that. We'll know by Wednesday or so. I'm tired of waiting and right now I'm just tired of this neighborhood. Looking back, we never should have bought this house. The looks of the area and the fact that there's a 3-studio apartment thing next door should have beaten us over the head with red flags.

The flipper that owned the house next door before the previous gomer who let it go back to the bank has purchased it again. He's talking now about taking in the utility easement and using that as part of the front yard. We discussed a gate, but now he's wanting to get cheap and put in chain link panels or something. Well, the city will have it down a few weeks after he puts it up, so I won't worry too much about it, but it still irks me that this clown does whatever he wants to do. Why don't I just move my fence over to his property line and take it in for me after he gets the rock done? Flippers like this give flippers a bad name.

Limbo and Bro

The buyer came back with $500 worth of roof repairs, bull$hit really, but we offered to split it just to be done. Well, it looks like the appraisal may be a sticking point. The appraiser from Old Pueblo Appraisals didn't really know that he was in Colonia Del Valle, so he took some comps from houses down south of 22nd street in Crackville (you know, the homes that have no dust on top of them because the police helicopter hovers over them regularly) and used those for the appraisal for this sale. He must have just stepped off of the bus from Iowa last week or something. It's funny the turnaround in appraisers - they were feeding the frenzy a few years ago, now they're adding to the ugly by spitting out low numbers. Anyway, the deal may require a review appraisal, and of course, we'll have to pay another $200 for that. I'm beginning to think that we may have to sell furniture just to get out of town at the rate this deal is going along. I figure that the buyer will ok the roof stuff, we'll get going along, the underwriters will balk, we'll have the review, they'll still balk, and then the deal will fall through. If it goes, I'll be shocked. If it doesn't, we're camping in Tucson until the market gets better in a couple of years. Just when we think we're done, something snags us.


We had a good weekend with J in town for a few days. We hit Sabino Canyon, El Charro, B-Line, Mt. Lemmon and spent some time just playing around with CP. Yesterday was a beautiful day and he got to call his workmates and rub it in a bit. When he left this morning the temp in KC was 19.

Home Stretch...

Today was buyer inspection/appraisal day. Even though CP and I have been sick for two days now, we were up and off to the mall while the house was being looked at. We'll know some time soon whether or not the buyer wants to play more $$ games or would just like to get the keys.