our halloween house is frightening

yesterday we attended the inspection for "our" house. actually, we missed 2/3 of it because we spent more than two hours (two hours?!) in a spooky office with an increasingly frenzied mortgage broker (to whom, i should say, we are deeply indebted, tho not literally, thank goodness). mere mention of the word "wachovia," and he nearly jumped out of his chair. no banking with them and applying for a mortgage at the same time! who knew? i think we understand now why people say this house-buying stuff is stressful. we submitted a loan application, which is good, but had to move back the closing from oct. 31st to nov. 4th, bleh. can we still be the halloween house?

14 cynthia is not scary, yay. built in 2000, it's as perfect as it should be. "sturdy," our inspector says, and well-built all around. whew. there's a bit of rot on one porch column, caused by gutters that are both clogged and slanted. eh? and a bunch of other smaller things that i should remember but can't. we'll start yet another negotiating process with the seller on those things today. yikes!

it was fun to be back in the house, though. we met the seller and his brother in law and, despite about.com's advice not to become friends with your seller, i feel sort of attached to them both. likely the feeling is not mutual, as we did little more than shake their hands, so we're probably safe.

we also met our new neighbors! crystal and jan, who, it turns out, are the same folks we saw jogging through pituresque chatham forest on our first driving tour through the neighborhood, and the same again as the young couple that we saw at the general store cafe our first saturday night in town. same, too, as jen & james' favorite hairdresser and her husband, and the "young couple" in chatham forest who bought their first house through mari. small world (small town). they seem quite creative and they have two cats, so i like them already.

that's the update. i'm still working on tracy, to get him to post here. i think he's upset about that picture i posted (sorry). c'mon, c'mon...