chaos and noise

A milestone slipped past me unnoticed on Wednesday, while I was heading home from Brisbane...

As of the 25th of August, aeliel and I have been paying off our house for a year :) We haven't actually lived in it for that long, but we've now been home-owners for a full cycle around the sun.

That feels significant, somehow - there's still a long way to go, but we now own about a thirtieth of the bricks in our walls...

Painting weekend contained much painting (of houses, this time!). And pain, though I think that's necessary when spelling it out. I have several newly discovered muscles, all of which can clearly say "Ow!" when requested to move.

aeliel and I stayed at the lovely umbra_mentis's house on Friday and Saturday nights - replacing long drives back to Somerville with good company and good food. We had some help from Em (Saturday & Sunday morning), Wally (Saturday and half of Sunday) and Robyn (Saturday), and got a fair bit of work done.

Yesterday was a long, long day. aeliel and I got home after midnight, after painting for a little over thirteen hours. We still haven't finished everything, so I guess we'll move the furniture into the middle of each room... there are two wallpaper borders to go up, and a few rough patches to fix. Still, pretty good for two days of work. Borders will probably need to wait until we have extra hands to help - even if we hadn't been exhausted and needing to go home, I don't think the two of us could have put them up last night.

I still like painting, despite it eating my weekend. I think the rest of the house will gradually get some more colour over the years - like a big cherry blossom mural on the bedroom walls, 'cos we can :)

Bad: The bank (St George) claim to have never received the original copies of our FHOG application form. They also didn't mention this until yesterday; too late to get a replacement to them in time for settlement. This means they didn't approve the loan in time, and we will not be making settlement on the house today.

Good: Our conveyancer has rescheduled settlement for next Tuesday, and the mortgage broker has express-posted a new copy to the bank.

Bad: Currently waiting to hear back from the vendor about whether they'll charge penalty interest for the overdue payment. Two days doesn't sound like much, but interest charged on the cost of a house is painful - especially when we've tapped out our finances getting this far.

Good: My team made it through to the finals of the RMIT Business Plan Competition. We now have four days to revise and update the document. The finalists then give presentations on September 21st, which are used to determine the winners.

Bad: I'm not due to arrive back from Brisbane until 15min after our presentation starts. I need to find out whether I can re-schedule my Virgin Blue flight, or if I have to buy a new ticket... unfortunately I bought the cheapest ticket option, so all options are going to be expensive.

Good? I'd like to do some kind of birthday-ish thing next month, as my 30th conveniently falls on a Saturday. Organising something amongst the raw elemental chaos of the next few weeks will be a bit tricky, but I'll figure something out.

I'm beginning to realise why I've had so much trouble sleeping over the last two months.

Here's hoping we win the Business Plan competition :) I think my share of the prizemoney will go on medical bills and a bottle of Bushmills. Some time in 2010 I'd like to schedule in a quiet moment to lie down for a bit.

After almost a month of waiting and 40+ pages of supporting documentation, our mortgage application has finally been approved!

This means several things:

1. Aaaaarrrrgghh!
2. House!
3. Aaaaaarrrrrgggghhh!
4. Phew!

Settlement is on August 21st, and we'll also need to give the tenants 90 days notice to move out. While we'd like to move in as soon as humanly possible, having someone else pay the mortgage for a few months will be nice... If they want to move out earlier, though, then we're happy to move in faster.

For the curious, there's an archived realestate.com.au page with some photos here.

It's been a long month. Now that house-related things are moving again, it's time to get onto all the things that have been put on hold recently...

Louise and I may be moving down to Somerville next year. I still have very mixed feelings about it, but the benefits currently outweigh the drawbacks.

Distance is going to be an issue. I've spent ten years living in walking distance of just about everything, so it will be a bit of a shock to move an hour or two down the penninsula. Things like Tai Chi won't be possible, at least through Zi Ran Men. If I took a bus/train/tram in to the morning classes I'd need to leave home at 5:30 each morning... Working from home shouldn't be affected, though quick meetings to discuss things with clients would be replaced by a whole lot more phonecalls.

Being miles away from friends is another big one - probably the biggest, in fact. Though with a handful of exceptions I doubt I've seen many of you more than 2-3 times this year. It's been busy, and nobody ever seems to be free on weekends these days. Living in the city gives no real guarantee that I'll catch up with people, though it's comforting to think that I probably could if I really needed to.

Living in Somerville means being close to family though, and that's important. Even if we stayed in North Melbourne I'd want to spend as much time as possible with Mum. From a purely practical point of view, there's too much work for one person to do on the property. It's not a huge place, but all three acres are covered in garden and a lot of it produces fruit or vegetables that need to be picked regularly. It's also a big house, and needs people to help fill it.

aeliel and I would still be driving up to the city to see people whenever we can - probably on weekends, and Wednesday nights.There's about eight years of tradition going in the Wednesday night games, and it's a habit I'd rather not break :)

We'd also be able to save some money at last. I love the area I'm living in at the moment, but we're slowly being squeezed out of the rental market. Four years into our lease, we've had our rent go up by $45/week since January. Buying a place around here is impossible at the moment, but should be more possible if we can spend a year or two putting money away.

There's still lots to think about, though the end of the year is rushing up quickly. Louise leaves for France next week, and the wedding will be a few weeks after she gets back to Melbourne. With so many things happening over the next few months I suspect that December will be along before I've had a chance to notice Spring.