Welcome to the Neighborhood!

So we've moved into a condo and with a condo comes the homeowner's association. Lucky for us, we moved in just in time for the annual HOA meeting. Since we had no cable or internet, we opted to attend the meeting. Only about 20% of the condos were represented and we got to hear the president get on his soapbox about the owner's who don't care about the association and what's going on in their neighborhood. A hour and a half later, we understood why they didn't show. I think we spent 20 minutes listening to our new neighbor talk about the proper mixture of sand and rock to make concrete sidewalks that won't degrade with winter salt thrown on them. They also spent another 30 minutes on whether to number the parking spaces or not and whose dog is shitting in what yard. I'm not joking.

We simply wanted to bring up the fact that we were unable to get a loan due to the HOA insurance. The president said he'd heard from a few realtors about that and then proceeded to discuss how some programs require more building insurance than others but those are basically programs for people who can't put 50% down. What? If I could've put 50% down then I wouldn't be living here!

Needless to say, we will not be in attendance at the next annual meeting. Last night was an hour and a half of my life that I'll never get back.

Oh... and I think this place always smells like the back end of a cow. Nothing better than sitting on the deck eating dinner and smelling cows. I don't belong in the country.

The 30 year commitment

Closing. Finally.

After signing/initializing over 50 pages of repeated crap and financial non-sense today, I was just ready to leave. I may have officially given away a kidney at one point. Hopefully I don't wake up in a bathtub full of ice.

So less than a week after returning from a huge trip and two days after closing, we move into the new condo Saturday. Thankfully my parents are coming out to help. That should be a fun day or so. And as a major bonus, my Mom is bringing out strawberry shortcake. I think that may make all of this worth it.

The sleep of the innocent

Well, it's about 24 hours before we may close on our condo, but it's still not a sure thing. I'm all for procrastination, but not in this type of situation. We already had one loan fall through over $10 worth of home insurance the day before, so I'm a bit nervous.

The bonus is, I'm so freaking tired from jet lag (no sleep at all last night) that I haven't really thought about it. I had to go back to work today, so I just focused on that and reading the internet. Two weeks of work backed up? Meh, that'll keep. Actually, because I have an awesome boss and great co-workers, I didn't have that much to catch up on and I was able to go into work at 7 a.m. and leave at 3. My boss doesn't much care, as long as the work gets done and I keep my hours accurate.

So I'll just spend tonight worrying about the mortgage coming through. I'm guessing that's what the sellers are doing to. I feel a little bad for them, but not much. After all, we're getting screwed in this too. This new loan includes PMI, so we'll be paying more each month. Think anybody will pay me to blog or write?

Now I just gotta stay awake until a normal bed time to try and get back to East Coast US time. Damn New Zealand and your seeing into the future. Tell me what will happen tomorrow!

More Pictures

You can use the link below for some additional pictures.


Pictures

Back home again...

but not Indiana. We're back in lovely little State College. After we each slept for about 12 hours last night (a new record for me, I think), we drove back to our apartment. A mere 9 hours, thanks to construction.

Now, we have to see if anybody will let us purchase a house in 36 hours. It's still up in the air. No big deal. And if it falls through again, we get to search for a short-term apartment since we'll be homeless as of June 30. We're hoping for a little luck on the house front for once. But after the best possible luck during our big trip, we may have earned a little bad luck. I hope not, since we've had spades of bad luck on this house thing, but we'll see.

Now I have to go back to work tomorrow. Reality is setting back in and I really don't like it. I need to score a job as a travel writer. Anybody hiring?

Exhaustion

I knew what to expect from the return trip, but man I'm still just out of whack. It's 10:30 am on Saturday in Indiana, but it still feels like I'm on NZ time. That would 2:30 am Sunday. And I've had two consecutive red eye flights. I got about 4 total hours of sleep on those two flights. Ready for that eight hour drive home tomorrow.

But we didn't exactly rest on our 11 hour layover in Los Angeles yesterday. We took the LA Metro train (yep, LA has public transportation. Who knew?) down to Hollywood and walked around for a bit. Saw the Walk of Fame, the Kodak Theatre (home of the Oscars) and Gaurmans Chinese Theatre. Mostly though, it was a chance to look at freaks and weirdos. They were every where. I almost got in a fight with a crazy man at Virgin Megastore when my bag rubbed against his bag. He informed me I needed to be more careful, that he was from Morocco, that he had a problem with me and that all of his friends do heroin. Thanks man, good to know! I walked away laughing. No idea how else to handle it.

Searching for the Southern Cross

One of the things I wanted to see while here was the Southern Cross constellation, basically because it can only be seen south of the equator. At least, I think that's the case. Anyway, I'd forgotten about it most of the time. Then last night, I woke up at 5 a.m. and decided to go check. It was really clear, but no luck. Probably didn't help that I didn't really know what I was looking for or what direction it was. Oh well. Not likely I'll see it tonight, as we're in Auckland and it's hard to see the sky from the skyscrapers.

We've had a fun few days. After our rainy day, it was beautiful yesterday. We drove around an area called the Bay of Islands, which is just full of, well, islands. I guess it's great for SCUBA and snorkeling, but we didn't do any of that. Just drove around to see as much as we could. Which really worked out because we got to a kauri forest just before dark. I'd never heard of these native trees and they've largely been logged out of much of their natural growing areas. But they did preserve one large forest and we saw one of the big dudes.

The tree itself was about 5 minutes off the main highway and when we came to the viewing area for the star attraction, I heard E say "Whoa!" I hadn't seen it, so I turned and automatically let out a "Holy shit." Very understated. But then another couple came along and had the exact same reactions. I was paying attention. The tree is between 1,800 and 2,000 years old and has a circumference of over 5 meters. That's about 15 feet around. Just massive, and it was something like 100 feet tall. Really cool to see.

Today, we just drove to, then walked around Auckland. Interesting, major international city. We fly out tomorrow at 7 p.m. so we're preparing for a return to reality. Bummer on that one, that's for sure.