big week

...well, it’s been a busy couple of weeks here…just to catch up, we had lunch with my mom and bro last last sunday for jim’s birthday…i won’t tell you how old he is cuz quite frankly, i’ve lost count…it was a nice day for some red lobster (which was what my brother wanted)…afterwards, ted and i went to look at a couple condos in rogers park, and that’s how the craziness started…

…the craziness being our decision to buy a condo now rather than later…we’d been looking for a few months but we weren’t planning on getting serious until the end of the year, closer to when our lease is up in march…but things have been getting pretty bad in our apartment…the café in our storefront whose wall shares our bedroom wall isn’t getting any quieter, and it doesn’t help with the peaceful enjoyment of our apartment which we as chicago tenants supposedly are entitled to…ted actually talked to the café owner to try to find out what all the ruckus has been lately, and the owner was a beeyatch…he got all defensive and he’s like, ‘i pay my taxes and i can do whatever i want.’ he is so lucky that cadence and i were waiting outside when ted had this conversation with him because i probably would’ve chewed his head off for being an asshole in general and ESPECIALLY for being rude to my dear husband who was just trying to protect the interests of his family…it would be one thing if they actually had decent musical acts there and if the coffee and food were any good, but they just suck all around…

...so anyhoo, here’s how things flowed:
sunday 10/09—viewed open houses…saw HUGE condo for pretty cheap…
monday 10/10—decide to get serious NOW…call mortgage person and make appointment for that thursday night the 13th
tuesday 10/11—email real estate agent and declare our intent to buy now
thursday 10/13—find a very promising listing that hit the market just two days prior and email it to agent; get preapproved that evening
friday 10/14—agent schedules showing of the the promising property and we see it that evening; WE LOVE WHAT WE SEE!!!
saturday 10/15—we make an offer; seller counteroffers
sunday 10/16—we accept the counteroffer and celebrate all day long!!! we find out that evening for sure that it’s a done deal!

as you can see, it all happened so quickly! but we really got a great place…it’s in rogers park, 4 blocks from the metra station, there’s plenty of street parking PLUS we get our own parking spot, it’s in a 6 unit building, almost 1500 sq feet, it’s got a 10’ mantle and built in bookshelves, a walk-in pantry, there’s an enclosed porch, a wood deck, a storage ROOM (not locker) in the basement, a shared tool room, a huge space in the basement for doing any projects like wood work or art or whatever, in unit washer/dryer (woohoo! no more running to the laundymat or down to a creepy basement to do laundry!), and it was built the year jack kerouac was born! we got it for a really great price, so there’s still room for appreciation, which is important because so much of what’s in the city is really overpriced…most importantly, it’s got soul and character, which all the gut rehabs with their marble bathrooms and granite countertops were missing…c’mon…could you see me and ted in one of those cookie cutter places?

...everything is happening so fast…today’s the inspection…hopefully everything will be okay, and we can go forward with the contract…the only iffy thing is that we have to coordinate getting a subletter with when we close…i’m not too worried though…the way everything has come together so smoothly, it really seems like there’s somebody up there orchestrating everything…i sure hope so, because i’ve never had to sublet before…i just hope there’s someone out there who won’t mind living in a building with a café…we’ll just advise them to make one of the other bedrooms their actual sleeping room…or if they don’t go to bed at 9pm like we do, they probably won’t mind…

on saturday night we went to a family celebration for cathy and john’s marriage…cathy is ted’s godmother and his mom’s cousin…it was really nice to see everyone again, and cadence had a blast crawling around the whole house…it was so hard not to say anything about the condo because we didn’t want to tell the family until after we had an accepted offer…ted’s dad asked me a lot of questions during dinner about what we were looking at, and it was really hard to give general answers without blurting out that we already had a place picked out…we survived the night without giving away the secret, but it wasn’t easy…

whew! that’s it for now…let’s hope today’s inspection turns out okay!