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It's been quite awhile since I've written a real update in this thing. I'm not particularly sure why, but part of me wasn't really feeling the blogging urge. Part of me feels guilty about it, and part of me thinks that's the way it should be. On the other hand, some people actually read these to keep in touch with how things are going in life. So here's the rambling update on Q1 04.
Late last year we took a look at the finances. We'd calculated that our tax return would put us completely out of debt. (This has not quite happened, actually; we ended up using that tax return for other purposes). Being completely out of debt was an interesting kind of freedom. It was made possible primarily because![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
strider13 moved back in for a few months, intent upon moving out again in March when he could afford to live in the East Bay.
So I started doing research into what it would take to buy a house. Along the way I signed up on zipRealty's site to search through the housing market. I hadn't realized, at the time, that I would get a phone call from a realtor, nor did I realize that the search engine would email me updates when new houses came onto the market. At first I was irritated, but then I discovered that seeing new houses come onto the market gave me a much better idea of what the situation really was than just doing a search, because most of the good houses sell really fast.
So I continued my research. I assumed that I was looking at something a year or more down the road, after we'd put some money away for a down payment. Turns out I was wrong. Lenders were jumping at the chance to do 0 down loans. The loan I ended up going with we got because one of Lynette's co-workers has a sister-in-law who works in the lending business, and she had advertised amongst Lucent employees of a quarter point discount when getting a loan through her. So I checked with her, and she told me we were (just barely) qualified for a Low Income California Housing Fund loan (Cal HFA I think) with a lower-than-market-rate interest rate, and 0 down payment. Roughly 10% of the loan is deferred, meaning we don't have to make payments on it. The downside to that is that we have to pay all the interest on it, whether we pay it down immediately or wait 30 years. And if we sell the house we have to pay that loan off. So there are ups and downs to this particular loan. On the other hand, neither of us intend to sell any time soon.
We also discovered that there were very few places in the Bay Area we could afford a home onesmerel's income. The peninsula was right out--only East Palo Alto had homes and I just am not comfortable with EPA. That left Milpitas and East San Jose, and a couple other parts of SJ that I'm not quite comfortable with.
Once we got approved for a loan, we actually went looking. We ended up making an offer the first weekend on a place in Milpitas, but they didn't accept it. I really liked that place. It was a little smaller than the current one, but it had an amazing front yard. Milpitas is also closer to where Lynette works and a little easier to get to from a number of places, since there is a Light Rail station there and a BART station in nearby Fremont. But it wasn't to be.
The second time we went looking we were almost done; we hadn't found anything we really wanted (though we were considering an offer on another place in Milpitas but were a little but dubious about the place) when we saw this place. Now, the thing about this house is that it's officially 1,000 square feet. But it has a 33 x 29 addition that adds a LOT of space, and really mitigates the smallness of the place. Still, the kitchen and the bedrooms are too small. But those are the little things we deal with.
Anyway, the former owner was a nice, older lady who we later discovered is Hawaiian, which explained the odd mix of Chinese, Japanese and Christian decorations originally in the house.
The addition that was built on is, if you're looking at it from the front, on the left wall. The two existing walls were the garage walla nd the house wall, so only two walls and the roof were added. Everything that was built was done rather oddly. The roof is slanted just a little, theoretically to help the runoff, but this means that one side of the room is quite low--too low, it turned out, to put up a lot of the shelving we had that we originally wanted to put there. The bottom foot or two of the walls are brick, and above that is paneling. They were generous with the windows in these walls. They didn't carpet, though they did have a very thin carpet just lying on the concrete that was there. They did put electricity in the wall they added, and those were the only grounded outlets in the house. Even the main refrigerator was on an ungrounded outlet. (Was. We had that fixed upon moving in).
The other two walls of the addition were basically the original, outside stucco walls. The wall to the house had some paneling put over it; I think this is more because it has vents that lead to the crawlspace more than anything. The water spigot is still there. We haven't tested to see if it works yet.
Non House Ramblings
School this semester has been something of a disaster. It started out on 3 campuses to get the classes I needed. Upon visiting SFSU (where I'm no longer even going to attend) I discovered I didn't need 2 of those classes. So I ended up dropping them to make more time to deal with moving stuff.
That turned out not to be the best course of action--I could've used those courses at SJSU. Having researched it, there's several more courses for SJSU that I kind of need, so I'm going to have to spend one more semester in community college. Since I'm so damn far away from where I was, I also have to figure out what CC is close and figure out what classes work. This is going to be a pain in the ass.
Speaking of pain in the ass, my physics prof has this annoying grading scale. He grades on a 4 point scale--from 0 to 4. So I guess that's actually a 5 point scale. Anyway, 3.6-4 is an A, 2.6-3.6 is a B, 1.6-2.6 is a C...
Yes, it's so easy to get a C in this class it's not funny. The A on the other hand? There's not a lot of room in the A section, so a single low B can offset several low As and bring you down into the B section. And there's no real high A when your A range is 40% of your B range. Also, during the move I asked--well in advance--for a homework extension, but he wouldn't give it without a 20% penalty on the homework. After running the numbers, I discovered that could easily end up being the difference between an A and a B in the class. I may have a way out of it. We'll see.
After the move I ran an Altaia session. (The logs go up on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
village_people). It was probably the worst session I've run yet; I hadn't really recovered from the hectics of moving, and I'm not yet sleeping very well in the new place. It was pretty hard to get people into the mood, and I hadn't really prepared properly so I didn't have anything to push on people which is what usually gets people going. The next session is coming up in a week. Hopefully I'll do better. Still, it's been a very fun campaign up until this point. I will try not to be discouraged by one slip-up.
Speaking of Altaia, I'm actually very near to the point where I want to go through and redo everything into a more jazzy, published-looking format for printout. The web-stuff is nice, but what I really would like is a book form that's easy to print and bind. I have no delusions that I will ever sell it, but even if I can web-publish a PDF that might be nice. Though I do know someone who publishes games, if I give him a ready to go product he miiiiight be willing to take it on, though I doubt it'd be worth the printing investment. Fantasy games that are not D20 really just don't sell.
For those interested, Elwood's peeing mostly stopped when we moved. We've had two incidents, and both of them *seem* like they are likely because the object peed on either previously smelt of pee, or the cats, or something. It's just been the two. I'm praying he doesn't pee around the house. It was getting pretty bad at the old place.
Ok, I think I'm done with this one. Time to pay attention to my wonderful wife! And then clean things up a bit in preparation for dinner guests.
Late last year we took a look at the finances. We'd calculated that our tax return would put us completely out of debt. (This has not quite happened, actually; we ended up using that tax return for other purposes). Being completely out of debt was an interesting kind of freedom. It was made possible primarily because
strider13 moved back in for a few months, intent upon moving out again in March when he could afford to live in the East Bay.So I started doing research into what it would take to buy a house. Along the way I signed up on zipRealty's site to search through the housing market. I hadn't realized, at the time, that I would get a phone call from a realtor, nor did I realize that the search engine would email me updates when new houses came onto the market. At first I was irritated, but then I discovered that seeing new houses come onto the market gave me a much better idea of what the situation really was than just doing a search, because most of the good houses sell really fast.
So I continued my research. I assumed that I was looking at something a year or more down the road, after we'd put some money away for a down payment. Turns out I was wrong. Lenders were jumping at the chance to do 0 down loans. The loan I ended up going with we got because one of Lynette's co-workers has a sister-in-law who works in the lending business, and she had advertised amongst Lucent employees of a quarter point discount when getting a loan through her. So I checked with her, and she told me we were (just barely) qualified for a Low Income California Housing Fund loan (Cal HFA I think) with a lower-than-market-rate interest rate, and 0 down payment. Roughly 10% of the loan is deferred, meaning we don't have to make payments on it. The downside to that is that we have to pay all the interest on it, whether we pay it down immediately or wait 30 years. And if we sell the house we have to pay that loan off. So there are ups and downs to this particular loan. On the other hand, neither of us intend to sell any time soon.
We also discovered that there were very few places in the Bay Area we could afford a home on
esmerel's income. The peninsula was right out--only East Palo Alto had homes and I just am not comfortable with EPA. That left Milpitas and East San Jose, and a couple other parts of SJ that I'm not quite comfortable with.Once we got approved for a loan, we actually went looking. We ended up making an offer the first weekend on a place in Milpitas, but they didn't accept it. I really liked that place. It was a little smaller than the current one, but it had an amazing front yard. Milpitas is also closer to where Lynette works and a little easier to get to from a number of places, since there is a Light Rail station there and a BART station in nearby Fremont. But it wasn't to be.
The second time we went looking we were almost done; we hadn't found anything we really wanted (though we were considering an offer on another place in Milpitas but were a little but dubious about the place) when we saw this place. Now, the thing about this house is that it's officially 1,000 square feet. But it has a 33 x 29 addition that adds a LOT of space, and really mitigates the smallness of the place. Still, the kitchen and the bedrooms are too small. But those are the little things we deal with.
Anyway, the former owner was a nice, older lady who we later discovered is Hawaiian, which explained the odd mix of Chinese, Japanese and Christian decorations originally in the house.
The addition that was built on is, if you're looking at it from the front, on the left wall. The two existing walls were the garage walla nd the house wall, so only two walls and the roof were added. Everything that was built was done rather oddly. The roof is slanted just a little, theoretically to help the runoff, but this means that one side of the room is quite low--too low, it turned out, to put up a lot of the shelving we had that we originally wanted to put there. The bottom foot or two of the walls are brick, and above that is paneling. They were generous with the windows in these walls. They didn't carpet, though they did have a very thin carpet just lying on the concrete that was there. They did put electricity in the wall they added, and those were the only grounded outlets in the house. Even the main refrigerator was on an ungrounded outlet. (Was. We had that fixed upon moving in).
The other two walls of the addition were basically the original, outside stucco walls. The wall to the house had some paneling put over it; I think this is more because it has vents that lead to the crawlspace more than anything. The water spigot is still there. We haven't tested to see if it works yet.
Non House Ramblings
School this semester has been something of a disaster. It started out on 3 campuses to get the classes I needed. Upon visiting SFSU (where I'm no longer even going to attend) I discovered I didn't need 2 of those classes. So I ended up dropping them to make more time to deal with moving stuff.
That turned out not to be the best course of action--I could've used those courses at SJSU. Having researched it, there's several more courses for SJSU that I kind of need, so I'm going to have to spend one more semester in community college. Since I'm so damn far away from where I was, I also have to figure out what CC is close and figure out what classes work. This is going to be a pain in the ass.
Speaking of pain in the ass, my physics prof has this annoying grading scale. He grades on a 4 point scale--from 0 to 4. So I guess that's actually a 5 point scale. Anyway, 3.6-4 is an A, 2.6-3.6 is a B, 1.6-2.6 is a C...
Yes, it's so easy to get a C in this class it's not funny. The A on the other hand? There's not a lot of room in the A section, so a single low B can offset several low As and bring you down into the B section. And there's no real high A when your A range is 40% of your B range. Also, during the move I asked--well in advance--for a homework extension, but he wouldn't give it without a 20% penalty on the homework. After running the numbers, I discovered that could easily end up being the difference between an A and a B in the class. I may have a way out of it. We'll see.
After the move I ran an Altaia session. (The logs go up on
village_people). It was probably the worst session I've run yet; I hadn't really recovered from the hectics of moving, and I'm not yet sleeping very well in the new place. It was pretty hard to get people into the mood, and I hadn't really prepared properly so I didn't have anything to push on people which is what usually gets people going. The next session is coming up in a week. Hopefully I'll do better. Still, it's been a very fun campaign up until this point. I will try not to be discouraged by one slip-up.Speaking of Altaia, I'm actually very near to the point where I want to go through and redo everything into a more jazzy, published-looking format for printout. The web-stuff is nice, but what I really would like is a book form that's easy to print and bind. I have no delusions that I will ever sell it, but even if I can web-publish a PDF that might be nice. Though I do know someone who publishes games, if I give him a ready to go product he miiiiight be willing to take it on, though I doubt it'd be worth the printing investment. Fantasy games that are not D20 really just don't sell.
For those interested, Elwood's peeing mostly stopped when we moved. We've had two incidents, and both of them *seem* like they are likely because the object peed on either previously smelt of pee, or the cats, or something. It's just been the two. I'm praying he doesn't pee around the house. It was getting pretty bad at the old place.
Ok, I think I'm done with this one. Time to pay attention to my wonderful wife! And then clean things up a bit in preparation for dinner guests.
