Mostly Done Moving Interlude

Update Interlude

Probably won't be much posting for a bit. I'm knee deep in preparing for the move - stage one begins tomorrow while the Mrs. and the little rug rats are out of town for the weekend. I was going to go with them, but thought it offered a great opportunity to move the kids' rooms all at once. My eldest has been pretty funny about the move. She's excited about the new house, but keeps checking to make sure I'll remember to move her bookcase, her toys, and, oh yeah, her bed.

Some good news - the buyers from hell backed down from their crazy, crazy, crazy position, so hopefully we will be mortgage free by the end of the month.

The Mrs. is a fan of Frightened Rabbit, and this tune reminds me of our state of the process towards FS-ness.

Little Girl Squeal

The FSOWannabe Housing Market

The Mrs. and I are currently in the process of selling our home in Charlotte. It's a beautiful (if somewhat dated) home in a Mayberry-ish neighborhood near uptown (for those familiar with Charlotte, our house is in Plaza-Midwood close to the Van Landingham). It's somewhat hard to say goodbye to that house. We were married in Charlotte and had our reception at the Van Landingham. It's where we brought our firstborn home from the hospital. We have a lot of great memories there as newlyweds and as new parents. We kept the house when we moved to Atlanta because we thought our time here in the ATL would be a short one with us returning to Charlotte within a year or two. Unfortunately, the tanking of the economy had an adverse effect on a lot of business plans (not just ours).

But sadly, keeping an extra home and dealing with renters was (A) a pain and (B) bleeding us bit by bit financially. And we're realists (at least when it comes to finance). It's pretty clear that Charlotte, more so than other parts of the country, has been particularly hard hit by the economy (official unemployment in Charlotte is close to 13% - God knows how bad it really is). There are entire neighborhoods in the suburbs that are now bank-owned because everyone was foreclosed on. Our neighborhood, which isn't that big a neighborhood, had over 90 homes on the market with a 12% under contract rate in January (no idea what the actual sale rate was). So we interviewed a lot of realtors, seriously assessed the housing market in Charlotte (two word summary - it sucks) and put the house on the market at a painful price. Three days later, we got an offer.

So now we're dealing with the buyers and I can't tell if they are naive or just jerks. We really gave them a good price on the house, but they are trying to nickel and dime us on crazy repairs. And I mean crazy. We have a kitchen island and apparently it has a wobble (news to us - it didn't wobble when we lived there - thanks sucky tenants). We've offered to fix it, but no, that would be too sensible. They want a new island. Their inspector found old raccoon poo on the roof. They want us to hire animal control to hunt down and trap the offending animal. Really. There are 5 places on the entire house where there is some wood rot. None of it is bigger than 2 inches in diameter. They want it repaired and...wait for it...a $3000 credit for new paint.

We've tried to ask their agent to control his clients. But apparently he's given up on talking reason to them. He just forwards their requests, I guess because he's embarrassed by them.

We've been more than reasonable. And the sad thing is, if we didn't want to sell the house so badly, we could be very, very, very good at being unreasonable back.* But enough is enough. So we told the buyers that we were tired of their crazy and they needed to find another house to buy. Hopefully, they'll crumble on their stupidity, quit wasting our time, buy the dang house and be happy that they are getting a great deal.

*Mrs. FSOWannabe has done a very good job at restraining my more vicious tendencies with respect to negotiating - I know, I'm all nice on the bloggity-blog, but I was a finance attorney for a decade and old habits die hard.

七転び八起き

My second favorite Japanese expression*, as many of my friends can tiredly confirm, is 七転び八起き (nanakorobi yaoki), which I prefer to loosely translate as Fall Down Twice, Get Up Thrice - the rhyming sounds better to my ears than the actual translation, which is fall down seven times, but get up eight times. I think this is a great proverb for the long, hard slog to joining the Foreign Service.

Following the yahoo boards can be great for insight into the FS life, advice on taking the tests, and especially for navigating the ins and outs of the process. But it's also a place where you will read about people's heartbreaks and disappointments after they fail to pass the FSOT, PNQ, OA, clearances, final adjudication or the register. Mrs. FSOWannabe didn't get through the PNQ's last year. I have an acquaintance that failed the OA twice (and received a lower score on the second go-round). And then there are, like the FSOWannabes, other couples that are hoping to pass the OA and get into the Foreign Service together. Some are successful, and some are not. I am truly sad for everyone that goes through this process only to be set back at some stage. I'm particularly sympathetic to those that fail and have no explanation for why (I'm looking at you, QEP and OA evaluators).

I sincerely believe that the tragic flaw in most people, including myself, is the willingness to give up or settle on your dreams. As I get older, I'm increasingly aware that life is too short to settle for 'almost' or 'not quite' anymore (Hello, mid-life crisis!). So if you want something bad enough you need to keep trying. Pick yourself off the ground, brush off the disappointment, and re-orient yourself back toward the goal. There's nothing wrong with failing, but I think it's a tragedy when you give up on a dream.
* The first is 秋茄子は嫁に食わすな (Akinasu wa yome ni kuwasuna), which translates as "Don't let your daughter-in-law eat your autumn eggplants. " You don't really need to know what it refers to to realize that's just hilarious all on its own.

More Bad Border News

Someone threw an explosive device into the consulate grounds in Nuevo Laredo. Thankfully, other than some minor property damage, no one was injured. More info here.

Just a coincidental, random act of terror, or is it somehow related to the murders of consulate workers in Juarez last month?

Titus Interlude