Madness In My Method

I *STILL* do not have a working pool. The pool guy FINALLY talked to me Thursday after two weeks of dodging my calls and text messages and said he had previously purchased the wrong valve and now has the correct one. I'm thinking he's one of those that lies his ass off to cover it and he's just been too busy and forgetting outright to finish getting my pool completed. The water is green again, so I need to go put in some more chlorine. He said they should be able to finish the install of the valve and the reconnecting of the return pipes this week, but I seriously doubt that will happen anytime before next weekend, if I'm lucky.

I sent over the property survey Thursday to Lowe's so they could get it to the city for the fencing permit. Roommate reported that someone was out yesterday who appeared to be taking measurements, so I'm hoping they will be ready to install that soon. I still need to talk to the backyard neighbors that I haven't met yet and inform them of the installation. I've been bad at putting that off.

The solar panels got installed mid-November, but it's been mostly cloudy days. That's just rude. I wanted them installed back in July when I first moved in. Not only am I starting off still getting energy from the electric company, but I wasn't able to switch to a net-metering plan back then, and in the past few months the cost has jumped quite significantly, which means I'm going to get locked into a more expensive plan.

I do finally have all of my staff at work rooting for the changes I'm going to be implementing. However, I'm still constantly behind on things and still in need of a lot of training from Predecessor on things that I probably don't know I need training on. Again, I have the systems knowledge and she has the institutional knowledge, so she knows to be expecting certain types of payments that I know nothing about. A lot of that will change as I get the systems under my control, but as the Treasury Manager going on a month now, I still don't have online access to our primary bank. *headdesk*

Because I'm now in charge of the department that was causing all the other departments headaches, I'm still solving all of the problems that I would have been solving had I gotten the Sr Director position, but I'm not being paid that pay rate. I can't tell you how frustrating that is. I figured I'd just be in my department, handling my own things, but so much was taken away from the other departments that they should be handling that I'm still effecting change across multiple departments. I solved a Payroll issue earlier in the week having to do with the company going to a new bank, which they did back in January, so I'm not sure why it's only just coming up. However, I'm pretty sure it's because the Payroll Manager knows I'm in charge now and knew she could bring it to me, which she still would have done had I been her boss instead of her equal co-worker. We solidified a new processing procedure for A/P with the goal of giving them back some of their previous duties that never should have been taken away from them and hoarded within the Treasury realm. And I've already worked out similar processing changes for A/R that the manager over that department is in agreement with.

Overall, I'm kicking ass, but I'm getting worn out in the process.

Or not...

Pool repairs were delayed, although the guys did appear again this morning to start on laying the new tiles. I informed the pool company owner that my insurance is requiring pictures of an operable pool by Sept 5th. He assures me they should be done by then.

And now there's a 15ft tunnel under my house for a sewer line repair. The images below are of the cast iron pipe that was removed between my laundry & kitchen and the gigantic GASH running through it that used to be the bottom of the pipe. The other picture is the mound of dirt in my garage that it took to get that much pipe pulled out and replaced.

I'm giving them the go-ahead to replace all of it. That's about 15ft of digging pictured. They have to do about 75ft total for the full replacement. It's a VERY good thing I know plumbers and diggers that feel sorry for me having to replace my sewer before I've made my first mortgage payment.

Needless to say, the housewarming will be delayed.

So, I'm buying a house, and it's my birthday!

Woot!

Leave it to me to wake up at 2:30 in the morning with the sudden realization of figuring out a conundrum that has been plaguing me for a while.

( Of course this is long )

I'm glad I got these thoughts out, but shit, did it have to come up in the middle of the freaking night?

One of the things my home inspector liked about me was that I actually read the sample report his wife sent me, and I looked up terminologies regarding the stuff we would be looking for. He was impressed.

"Drainage swale" was one of those terms, and I keep forgetting the word "swale" so I'm putting it here to hopefully help remind me in the future.

Oh, and InspectAPedia can be your friend if you are buying or already own a home.

My inspector actually offered to cut me a deal less than 2 hours into the typically 5-7 hour inspection so that I would walk away from the house without him having to write up a 75 page report on how bad the house is.

I took it.

By the way, this inspector is freaking awesome, and he will most definitely get my business when I finally find the right home.

( There were bees. )

I was expecting to eventually sink money into some remodeling to get the house feeling like me, but I'd be better off building a house from scratch.

I really hope the bees are in fact properly removed, but already there are some getting into the guest bathroom and dying while trying to escape back through the closed window. It was so horribly sad.

The sellers want to retain the mineral rights. I don't blame them, as there's gas drills all over the damn place, including one no more than 1 mile from the property over on the nearby college campus. For all I know it may already have a lease on it and the sellers are already getting royalty checks. According to the Tarrant County Appraisal records, the value of the home jumped up almost $14k the year that drill was built.

I wonder if my lender appraisal will have anything to say about that.

Info links for my own reference:
Mineral Rights in Texas*
History of Mineral Rights in Texas
Horizontal drilling distances
(this last one tells me that the drill on the college campus could quite easily reach to the location of the house I'm trying to purchase, so chances of a royalty check being received are pretty great/probable for the owners of the mineral rights)
Texas Mineral Rights


*LOL - I accidentally first typed that as "Mineral Right sin Texas," which seems to give it an all new meaning.

I need alcohol. Or something.

I decided to withdrawal my house offer.

( Minor details )

Looking back - I think the hiccups should have been a dead giveaway. I only get hiccups when I'm having serious anxiety over something.

Yep, I need a drink.

The current owners didn't reject my offer and have authorized their agent to forward it through to their bank.

Now I have to wait for the bank to approve it before the owners can officially sign it.

Still, this is good news in the positive direction.

( Also )

The house I'm putting the offer in on is a short sale, meaning the bank has approved for the owners to try to sell it for less than what is due on the mortgage in order to avoid foreclosure. It also means my offer has to be approved by the owners, then it gets sent over to the bank and they also have to approve it. I could get an almost immediate response from the owners, but it takes on average 3-4 weeks to hear back from the bank on a short sale, because they are so inundated with work.