I had a new bookcase delivered yesterday morning so I got busy unpacking all my books and all of the junk from my office.  It took all day, but I got it done (it was something like 30 boxes).  This morning I unpacked the rest of the stuff in the garage and cleaned up out there.  As soon as I can get rid of all those broken-down boxes I should be able to park the truck in there.  In the meantime I’m a bit tired and sore from all the lifting and bending.

When I submitted my mortgage application I included a voided blank check along with an authorization for the lender to direct debit my account each month.  At closing time, among the blizzard of papers I was handed was one that authorized direct debit and included a coupon for the first payment.  When I told the attorney that I’d already submitted the authorization, he said that I didn’t have to worry about that form since I’d already submitted it.  What I didn’t realize was that even with my previous authorization I’d still have to make the first payment myself.  This means that I was late with my first mortgage payment—and I only found out when I noticed that the ACH debit had never appeared on my online statement.  Arrrrrrrrgh!

I was able to go onto the lender’s website and arrange a direct payment, but it’ll still be 9 days late.  I’m quite unhappy with the situation, since I didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with my mortgage payments.

The guy from TXU gas finally showed up at around 5:00pm on Tuesday.  It didn’t take him long to turn the gas on and relight the pilot lights for me.  While he was doing that we talked about what had happened (he said he’s had lots of problems with my subdivision in the past because of the similar street names) and he told me something interesting.  In the past TXU would leave a tag on the door of a house before turning off the gas.  This was because in some cases the new owners didn’t know they needed to contact the gas company (I thought this odd, but he said that sometimes new homeowners didn’t know they had gas furnaces or water heaters).  However TXU changed their policy and no longer gives any warning before disconnecting service.  He wasn’t sure why they changed, but he said he didn’t like it because it wasn’t a very customer service oriented policy and it made the field reps like him look bad.  I could certainly understand his concern, since he’s the public “face” of the company and has to deal directly with people who have had their service disconnected.  I reserved my ire for the incompetent person on the phone who entered my service address wrong, even though I had pointed out the difference in addresses and asked her to make sure she had the right one (she even managed to get it right as far as the bill was concerned).

I think one of the things that made me so angry about the whole incident was that having one’s service disconnected feels like a hostile act has been initiated against you.  Usually, having the gas cut off happens because of non-payment, so you feel like you’re getting the deadbeat treatment.  Which is infuriating because you paid the bill on time (which is further infuriating because they managed to get the address right for that).  And on the subject of the bill, I worry that they will not credit my payment correctly and they’ll think I didn’t pay the bill.  This is because they had to change my account number when correcting the service address (I don’t understand why this is necessary, but they claim that it is).  They claim that a notice will be sent to the billing department to transfer my payment from the previous account to the new one.  Given my dealings with them up to this point, though, I don’t trust them to get it right.  I just hope they at least send me a past-due notice before cutting the gas off again…

My shower this morning was unexpectedly cold as I got the last of the hot water.  Thinking that something had gone wrong with the water heater I went to check and discovered that I had no gas.  I just called TXU Gas to discover that while they had the right billing address (i.e. the bill got to me), they had the wrong service address.  Since they don’t think anyone is actually living at my correct address, they cut off the gas yesterday.  The confusion comes from the fact that there are two streets with the same name, one of which is a “Court” and the other is a “Street” (and the Court and Street are connected).

I’m on the phone with them now (so far it’s taken about 10 minutes for them to pass me around and figure out that I’m really right about the address).  If they can’t get out here today and start the gas back up I’m going to be very, very unhappy.  I do not look forward to another cold shower tomorrow.  I guess I’m just lucky that it wasn’t so cold that I needed heat this morning.

Update:  They’re supposed to be sending someone over today, although they didn’t specify a time.  In the meantime I’m working from home (it’s a good thing I finished setting up my office last night; talk about timing…).

I told myself the other day that I’d wrap up the painting in the living room on Saturday.  I’d done most of the walls and a little over half the trim.  I estimated that it would take about 7 hours or so to finish.  I got started a little after noon and realized that I’d need more paint around 3:00pm.  I finally wrapped up a little after 3:00am (2:00am after adjusting the clocks), and spent Sunday regretting it.  I still have a few little areas where I need to touch up (like where I replaced the thermostat after painting the walls), but I’ll deal with those when I do the dining room and kitchen (probably in a few weeks).  I’m hoping that those areas won’t take as long, since there’s a lot less trim to deal with.

I’ve finally got everything out of the old place and moved over here.  Of course that doesn’t mean that everything is done.  I’ve got a garage full of boxes and a bunch of boxes in the dining area and living room.  I suppose I’ll be slowly unpacking over the next couple of weeks.  I also need to finish painting the living room and dining area.  I wasn’t able to finish painting because it was so time consuming due to all the trim.  Until the painting is done, I can’t put in my bookcases and unpack the books. 

My new gun safe was delivered Friday afternoon.  The delivery guys had a heck of a time getting it into the house.  They had to bring it around through the back yard and take the back door off the hinges to get it in.  Anyhow, the main thing that bugged me was that a number of people in the neighborhood were out and about and took quite a bit of interest in it.  It was kind of hard to miss, since they had to unpack it in the driveway to unbolt it from the pallet.  I had hoped for a discreet delivery, since I didn’t want to advertise it to the neighborhood.

Anyhow, for now I’ll be taking it slowly and unpacking a little bit at a time (mainly so as to let my aches and pains subside).

This house business has definitely kept me busy.  I was over there until after midnight on Friday piddling around with various items.  The house had a different key for every lock (which meant having to deal with six keys).  I bought a package at Lowes that had a full set (knob and deadbolt) of locks for three doors.  So now I can use a single key for all doors (although I now have twelve copies of that key). 

On Saturday my refrigerator was delivered.  Interestingly enough, the delivery men were early and were there waiting for me when I arrived (they gave me a time between 2:30 and 4:30 but they showed up around 2:00).  They got it hooked up, but we couldn’t turn on the water to the icemaker.  It appears that the previous owners closed the valve using pliers, making it impossible to open.  So now I have to get a plumber to come out to replace the valve (I can do a number of home repairs myself, but plumbing is one of those things where it’s worth it to me to get a professional).

I also bought a workbench at Sears on Saturday.  It felt like it took forever to assemble the darn thing.  I’m getting really tired of assembling stuff.

In the comments to my last post, Full Auto asks about what software I’m using to visualize the paint I’ve chosen.  Last night, I went looking for software that helps you visualize how the room would look after painting.  Aside from the deceptive search result pages (i.e. stuff that uses a seemingly relevant domain name to lure you into some pop-up laden trojan-installing site), I came up with the following:

• Benjamin Moore: Personal Color Viewer.  This is an online application that lets you try out various shades of paint on their example photos.  There is also a professional version available for $10.00 (online download, CD-ROM is a little more) that lets you import
  your own pictures.  I got the professional version this morning and played with it some.  The only problem was that the color samples I liked yesterday were from Glidden and I had trouble finding ones in the program that matched well (mainly because my ability to remember colors isn’t very good).
• Glidden: Color@Home II.  This is a CD-ROM based application that lets you try out Glidden paints on your own photos.  It’s only available in stores.  I remember seeing it in Home Depot for $5.95 but I didn’t pick it up at the time.  I’m going to buy it this afternoon and give it a try.
• Virtual Painting is an online application that lets you try paints from a number of different companies.  The free trial version works against two sample photos.  If you want to upload your own photos, it costs $9.95 for 30 days of access.

I also bought Total 3D Home Deluxe 4.0 over the weekend but I haven’t figured out the program’s interface yet (and I didn’t feel like playing with it for long last night).  I may come back to it later, since it should also help me figure out room layouts.  It’s supposed to be able to let you import a photo and try out paint shades on it, but it requires you to have created a home design project first (and created the wall layouts, etc).

There are a number of other products out there, and other paint companies have their own programs.  I found this stuff by doing a Google search for interior paint software.

It wasn’t my intention to neglect this weblog, but I’ve been doing so many things lately that I didn’t get around to posting.  On Friday I visited the du Toits in their new house.  They were kind enough to offer to let me have their moving boxes (and there was good food and good conversation).

On Saturday I engaged in a whirlwind tour of the metroplex.  And it seemed that I left money behind everywhere I went.  I bought a gun safe, a bed (and mattress set), an office corner unit, and a refrigerator. 

On Sunday I packed a few things (it turns out I had three boxes of books just laying around on the coffee table and in a couple of chairs) and mowed the lawn at my current place before taking the mower to the new house. 

On the positive side I discovered that what I thought was wallpaper in the dining room is actually some kind of faux finish.  This means that it’ll be a lot easier to just paint over it.  After work today I met up with a friend of mine at the house and we considered possible colors.  I think we may have a color scheme that will work.  I’m going to try to import some pictures of the room into some software I got over the weekend and see if I can try out the color scheme in the software to get an overall view of the new colors.  If that doesn’t work out, I may buy a little of each color and just try them over the weekend.

I went over to the title company this morning and signed a dizzing array of papers.  The sellers will complete the process this afternoon, after which I will officially be the owner of a house (or at least the mortgage company will let me use it until the loan is paid off in 2033 ).  I’ll meet the agent at the house at 5:30 to pick up the keys. 

Every so often since I’ve gotten back I catch myself saying, “Holy crap!  I’m a homeowner.”  It seems a bit surreal.

Of course, one of my coworkers here brought it all into perspective when she said, “Welcome to the club of being broke all the time.”  Heh.