August 05, 2004

Checking In

House hunting continues apace. We think that we've found our dream house, and we've been pre-approved for a home loan of mind-boggling size -- now it's a matter of contacting our agent and finding out how much he thinks that we can lowball these people by (or lower-ball, at least; I don't think we'll be getting any great bargains here in SoCal), while hoping that the house doesn't sell out from under us. And in the meantime, we're driving around to different neighborhoods every day and looking at other houses, searching for other good dream-house candidates just in case the house does sell out from under us, or in case the sellers counter our lowball offer with a counter $20,000 over their original asking price (or in case the house turns out to be termite-infested, and so on ...)

Nobody is anybody in LA without a cell phone and a car, and I'm halfway there: after some back-and-forth with AT&T Wireless (including one customer-service call that ended with the "service" rep dumping me off by saying "and if you have any problems, just go to our special website" -- a special website! I'm going to get the elite treatment I deserve! -- "W W W DOT A T T -- that's just 'AT&T', without the, um, 'thing' in the middle -- WIUUURLESS DOT CAWM. 'attwireless' is all one word." Gee, thanks!) But despite those initial problems, Shelby and I had spiffy flip phones with color screens delivered to us yesterday; Shelby's phone even has a camera. I'm sure that you'll be seeing lots of fuzzy Beagle phonecam pics on the Web as soon as we work out all of the hows-and-whats of phone operation.

I don't have a car yet, though -- my car failed its smog test. Its emissions levels were just fine, but the "CHECK ENGINE" light was on -- and apparently ignoring your Check Engine light is an unpardonable sin, an instant-fail transgression. So now it's off being repaired; soon I'll find out just how much an error code of "P0113 IAT CKT High Input" is going to cost me. Which is hopefully not very much -- my car has a special talent of needing expensive repairs at the exact time that we're most not feeling like spending extraneous money. I guess that it feels neglected and is calling out for attention in its own particular way ...

Posted by Kevin at August 5, 2004 11:30 AM