2002-08-06 - 1:24 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Jennifer's Rabbit", Tom Paxton

This song, which I haven't heard in over 20 years, turned up in a dream on Saturday morning. My youngest aunt's then-fiancee used to sing it to me. I lay in bed when I woke up and tried to remember it all. Then today I went looking on the web. I was surprised that I remembered so much of the lyrics -- there were only a handful of lines I'd forgotten.

House news: We knew an appraisal was coming up, and we were worried about it. The other houses that are similar to ours still haven't sold, and advertised rental prices have dropped somewhat, leading me to think there's something of a slowdown in the market. That, plus the guy who did our home inspection (admittedly, his company is located in the suburbs) said, "What's this selling for, anyway, [80% of what we're paying]?" Poindexter groaned inwardly when he heard that.

Poindexter came home yesterday, and much to my surprise, reported that the appraisal was five thousand MORE than we're paying. Holy cow. I've only experienced appraisals that are below what people are paying. That puts my mind a little more at ease. After we discovered all the flaws in the house, I started worrying that we were really overpaying. It's still worth it to buy the house (versus renting), but it's annoying. Now I'm thinking it's possible that the realtor worked that stuff into the asking price a little. And there might be a real estate slowdown, but apparently the appraisers haven't noticed it yet. So there's that, for whatever it's worth.

In other house news, we've got a list of things to have done before we move in:

- Replace the roof
- Replace the HVAC
- Refinish the hardwood floors
- Replace carpeting on the bedroom levels

We can do the first two right away. They're the most critical, really. The others are cosmetic. Problem is, the floors and carpets look pretty bad. But if we do those as well, we'll nearly deplete our savings, and I like to have at least a few months' mortgage payments in the bank. On the other hand, before we move in is the best time to do floors, so I'd be kicking myself for not doing it.

So I'm thinking about getting one of those low-introductory-rate credit cards (some guarantee 2.99% APR for six months) right around that time. That way, if we need money in a hurry, we can use that and pay it off quickly as our savings build up. Less troublesome than getting a home equity line of credit, and the rate is much lower. I actually bought my Volkswagen that way. It was cheaper than an auto loan, and I needed less than a year to pay it off.

We also want to paint the walls, which we'll do ourselves, since the brand-new (weep) paint job is a horrible pale shade of yellow. Well, it's a nice shade, actually, but it's just all wrong for our stuff.

One of my concerns about moving in was home security. Right now I'm in a big building with hundreds of other people. In the new place, it'll be different. Since the house is off the beaten path, and there are sliding glass doors, I've been wondering what all we can do to tighten things up a bit.

Then I read about the break-in and rape of two women (in one incident) over at 11th and Spruce and that lit a fire under my ass.

So I've been scouring the web last couple hours, and found lots of good stuff. I'm going to make Poindexter crazy implementing all the ideas, but most of them are fairly inexpensive and at least I know I've done all I could.

Most interesting to me was how to secure the sliding glass doors -- screws in the top of the frame, plus a strategically-placed nail, can prevent it from being taken off the track from the outside. I guess the only thing to worry about is someone actually breaking the doors, which can't be easy. Not to mention, the doors are in full view of at least two of our neighbors.

If you're interested, there is good stuff here and here.

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