House Hunting Progress
I mentioned last week that our offer on a nice condo had been accepted. We've since gotten the basic house inspection report back. Just a few things wrong with the place. The sump pump is entirely busted, to start with. For anyone who (like me) really had no idea what that is, it's basically an anti-flooding machine in your basement. If water starts to build up in the ground under your house, the sump pump turns on and pumps it away.
This particular house is on such a steep grade that it almost doesn't matter, but it's a detail I'd rather not find out later that we do need, so after an annoying amount of discussion back and forth between us, our realtor, his realtor, and him, the seller has agreed (finally) to fix the thing. It's not an expensive fix, and he's walking away with tons of money, so I'm not really sure why it took this long.
The other thing the inspector was concerned about is the garage door. Or specifically, the complete lack of any safety features whatsoever on the garage door. Y'know how most garage doors have an electric eye or a pressure sensor on them, so that they don't crush small children or animals? Sometimes they even have both. This garage door has neither. This garage door will crush you under it and not care.
Now, Chris and I don't have pets or small children, so we're not very concerned about this. But we'll probably fix it within a few years, because it's probably bad form to have a death garage in a neighborhood that might have children.
Beyond those things, the house is basically in excellent condition. We're somewhat peeved with the situation at present because the seller had initially said he was getting rid of all the furniture in his home except for a few pieces in the basement bedroom. Since it was nicely matched furniture, we got excited and put a reasonable offer on the various pieces we were interested in. Next thing we heard, he basically said, "Oh, just kidding, I want everything upstairs too," and then amended it a few days later to, "and you can't have any of the pieces in the basement that you really wanted either." So we've basically just thrown up our hands and said, "You just keep all your crap, 'kay?" It's not that we won't have any furniture to put in the place, but it's going to be a bit sparse for a while.
We'll probably go furniture hunting at a later point. There are lots of secondhand shops in the area, including a Habitat for Humanity ReStore. So we'll probably make a list, prioritize it, and then go hunting after that.
The last thing we have to worry about is the mold inspection, which I'm hoping will come back on Thursday. We're still juggling paperwork and financial annoyances, in the meantime, but due to the generosity of my family, we'll be able to make the full 20% down payment instead of a lower payment that requires a bunch of fiddly extra complications. (It'll involve an extra "loan" that the bank won't be privy to, but whatever, we're happier paying back family than we are paying back a bank.)
Other News
House hunting has kind of consumed my life, as the above paragraphs probably tell you. But in other news, my back finally seems to have recovered. I strained it on the car trip home, and it stubbornly refused to finish fixing itself. I had to readjust my bed to be firmer, in the end, but I'm pretty sure when I woke up this morning, my back didn't hurt, and there's only the slightest pulling sensation now when I crane my neck forward. So yay. This sort of thing makes me feel old, so I hope this was just a really impressive strain, and not a harbinger of things to come.
Yesterday the official press release for the DC trip (Autism Research Program) hit my inbox, so that got posted on the blog. It tastes, to me, like well-oiled publicity machine, but my gentle readers should probably keep in mind that the experience itself was a great deal less scripted than this publication. A more personalized and in-depth account of the trip was posted last Friday. As far as my "do important stuff for/in autism" goal for this year goes, I dunno if I can top this trip. But I can certainly try!
Next up on my list is following through on a recommended reading list I got from an advice column, though. While most of the books I've reviewed for this blog have been whatever was in the library that looked interesting. Sadly, most of what's in the library is "scientific approach to autism" or "my family's story with autism (written by the mother)". The books I'm going to be digging into soon are written by autistic people, about tough subjects like dating and sex. Additionally, a couple of them deal with autistic women. A lot of the emphasis in current research is on autistic boys, with girls just assumed to be similar. That is not true, all too often. So that's something to look forward to.
On the exercise front, my spouse and I have resolved to buy a recumbent exercise bike. Probably a secondhand one, because we like things that work but that aren't expensive. So something like this will probably be ours, soon, and shortly thereafter, I'm going to be spending a lot less time in front of the computer and more time in front of a TV, or with a book in hand, or with my tablet in hand while I cycle. I've been feeling like I haven't done enough listening to podcasts or watching the occasional TV show that I'm trying to catch up on, so this would be an excellent way to do that.
Mostly people would do those sorts of catch up things in their free time, I expect, just flop on the couch or whatever and do that, but between the noisiness of my apartment complex and the fact that I can't process two streams of words at the same time, I pretty much just opt for silence in my free time. I can't focus if I'm trying to write a blog entry and listening to a book on tape at the same time, or listening to music with words, or someone's screaming across the parking lot because they're an ill-mannered lout.
So, good things on the horizon, hopefully!
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