Updated from the home front

So the latest from the trenches is that we closed on Friday, to a mostly uneventful meet and greet. Actually completely uneventful. Closings are one of the more boring, things, and an attempt is made by so many people to make small talk when half the parties don’t want to be there.

I can honestly see why I’d make a terrible lawyer. (No offense to my love Abbey). The attention to detail and fine print involved is so important and the amount of things to sign and keep track of so vast, that it blows the mind.

The day started in Brooklyn, where Amanda and I met with our broker and the sellers and did our walkthrough. It was also non eventful, and kind of weird to see the place with the no furniture, but also awesome how much bigger the place really looked. Interestingly enough, we brought the camera to take pictures but decided against it…one of these odd choices in life, and I’m not sure.

Scratch that…my wife apparently took ‘some’ pictures of light fixtures and what not, but we didn’t get that many so I’ll leave it at that. We went through, tested the lights, the water, basically everything they tell you to test and it all seemed fine. I’m sure something will be off once we get there but that comes with the territory.

Then we had some time to kill with our broker so we got some coffee in Brooklyn and suddenly realized that everyone in the world has a baby carriage. Not that it should come as a shock the sheer amount of families and mothers here in Park slope, but I think this was the first time we were able to sit and relax and think about the area and see it for what it was. During the 45 minutes we had coffee, there were 10 different strollers coming in and out (which is tough when you find yourself always maneuvering and canoodling yourself out of the way) and at least 3 in the coffee shop kibitzing with friends.

Anyhow, the closing was uneventful…the seller was late which was fine since we were a little hesitant in meeting him since the whole ‘livid’ debacle. (We explained finally in detail to our broker what had happened and he said that if he had known then he would have conveyed better to them, but oh well). But he was actually very nice, cordial and quiet. The funniest part was that his lawyer didn’t come but sent an associate in his place, and the lawyer thought he was from a bank and didn’t let him set next to her at first b/c she was saving it for ‘her client.’ That was awesome.

So we signed a million papers, including some Talmudic law that said that since we were getting our mortgage from a Jewish firm, we weren’t allowed to be charged interest, so we weren’t actually getting a mortgage but actually going into a partnership for one day or something like that…a way of circumventing the rules of the bible. (I had forgotten to mention that our mortgage brokerage firm was very very Jewish…there were mezuzahs on the filing cabinets!). So it was very funny to say the least. Basically I think we were partners and paid them a $1 or something. Very odd.

And so the day went, rather uneventfully…Amanda and I had a lunch with our broker and then hopped on a plane to North Carolina for the weekend.

Thus, Part 1 of our adventure officially officially (intentionally repeated word) ends, and part 2 begins. This weekend we are going with our contractor and designer to pick out our sinks, toilets and other fun stuff, and hopefully we will begin renovations next week!