Am I busy? Oh, but let me tell you how.
Saturday was a crash course in house hunting. Imagine: Fifteen houses in approximately 6 hours. We (or I rather as Dr. Man is still in Residency State) put in an offer on a house. Talk about stressful. I signed us up to agree to pay a very large amount of money. I call Dr. Man to tell him and say, “I bought a new closet. It was very, very expensive, but the house was free.”
Sunday morning I get a phone call from the realtor telling me that the owner has asked for more time. So, I agree. The rest of the day consists of angst, housework, and lab stuff.
Monday I find out that the owner has countered with something (that I consider) extremely unreasonable. This is, after all, a buyer’s market and I offered her full list price (but I did ask her to pay closing costs). Owner countered with “How about you pay your own closing costs?” I countered with, “Take it or leave it.” Most of Monday is spent with me getting things ready for hosting a seminar speaker on Tuesday. Monday evening I find out that the speaker has missed his first flight, then his connecting flight, then his rescheduled connecting flight. He decides to fly to NearbyLargeCity and rent a car to drive to Public U. I find this out from my fellow committee members and have to figure out the logistics of how Public U will pay for these detours.
Tuesday is the big day. I spend most of the day chaperoning the speaker to and from meetings with various groups of students. To explain this unusual circumstance (a visiting speaker speaking with students?!?), this speaker is being hosted by the Biochemistry Grad Students. As such, we decided to have a variety of students meet with the speaker as opposed to faculty members. We did have a time slot where various faculty members could speak with him, but for the most part (since we were doing the work) students met with him. He gave a good “big picture” talk. Then there was dinner and taking the rented car to the airport. (I’ll have to blog more about this later.)
Today has been less stressful. I took the speaker to breakfast and then to the airport and pointed him in the direction of the plane. I went home, took a nap, and went back to work to finish things up. Now, just recently I got a call from my realtor telling me that the owner of the offer-house has just raised her asking price. She can consider my offer withdrawn.
Sigh. But on the good side all the reagents and things I need came in today. Including the construct that another group promised us several months ago. So, the next few days should be very eventful in the lab (and this weekend there’s more house hunting).
I’m sorry to hear about the house stuff. Must be stressful to deal with largely on your own. I bet you’ll find a great one from a non-loser seller soon enough. :o)
that seller is so unreasonable, I’m glad you are holding your ground. Good luck figuring out the travel expenses for the speaker.
what a bummer about the house. The seller really doesn’t have much to base that on given this crappy market.
How very cool that you confined the speaker’s time mostly to students since the students invited him. Way to show that you are (future) colleagues and not anything less.
Wow, that sucks about the house. Just watching all the HGTV shows about buying houses stresses me out. I hope you find a perfect fit soon!
Sorry to hear about the house buying stress – I know it was insanely stressful when I went through it. Sounds like you should be able to get a good deal in the end, so just hang in there until then…
Wow, that seller is crazy. I know at least 4 people that would kill for full asking price in this market!
Very cool about the speaker. We always send our speakers to lunch with students but neither the host or interested students have a say in who is invited. The all powerful adminstrative assistants decide who they want to send without concern to our interests.
It’s a seller’s market here in Vancouver, and I still would have been pissed off by that seller raising the price! Mind you, we got outbid on 4 different places before we got our own (one of them by more than $100,000, sight unseen by an overseas buyer). So no-one needs to go raising their prices here.
Hang on in there, you’ll find the right house!
We bought our house a while ago, but I still remember what a pain in the ass the process was. After a while, all the houses you’ve seen just sort of blend together, don’t they?
If you really liked the house you bid on, keep tabs on it. I bet the seller thought, “Hey, someone offered full price. Maybe I can get even more!” Perhaps that seller will come to realize the error of his/her ways….