Countdown to Condo

This Thursday, Brandi and I hope to celebrate the next milestone in our ongoing steps towards maturity: land ownership. If all goes well in the next few days - and we've heard so many stories of just the opposite - we'll get keys to our very first piece of owned Chicago real estate. Mostly. As with most everyone in the middle class, we will own the property only so long as we make timely mortgage payments to our lender, since we didn't have the price of the unit laying around in our couch cushions. Also, since it is a condominium, we are in the curious position of owning a property and still paying rent, which everyone insists on calling assessments because, hey, why use one syllable when three will do. As near as I can understand, even though we own the unit, since it's on the second floor and would crash to the ground if the unit below it and the building holding both were to instantaneously disappear, we must pay homage the building in order to make sure it doesn't. It seems a lot like idol worship to me, but I say that about everything.*

At any rate, there are about a million details to attend to, which can add a lot of wear and tear to an already stressful holiday season. Friday, we tried to take advantage of Black Friday deals for gifts and managed to walk away with everything except the LCD TV and the set of cordless phones we decided we didn't care for. We set the alarm for 4:15 and managed to get up on first snooze, but it still wasn't enough to snag the $99 (after rebate) Meijer LCD TV, nor the pricier but larger 32" deal advertised at Micro Center. This may not be a popular opinion, but I blame the rest of Chicago, if not the world, for taking up the retailers on their deals before I've had my chance to suck them dry like a cash vampire. We have to schedule a walkthrough Tuesday to make sure the owners haven't made off with anything vital like toilets or furnaces since we first saw the condo. This would be far more relevant if the owners were a) crooks or b) living there now and moving out, possibly scratching up the walls in the process. Since we never heard cackling and the dry-twig-like rasping of evil palms rubbed together in glee at our deception, and since the owner was already moved out when we first saw the place, we think we're nearly in the clear there. For our first night of occupancy, we packed several bins of supplies, including bedding, toilet paper and candles and matches just in case something goes horribly wrong with Commonwealth Edison and our electricity doesn't go through. Between Thanksgiving and cleaning out the Superfund site that was my office, we threw out seven bags of garbage this weekend, including the turkey carcass, irrelevant leftovers, electronics too old to use or install Linux on, and shredded receipts and credit card offers that had somehow shoved themselves in every free nook in my office shelving. Though the rats may feast, they will not learn my social security number!

It seems odd that this week is the last week in November because we've been living most of the last two months at the start of December. As much as remains to be done around the apartment to turn us over to the condo, it looks like most of the heavy intellectual work is done, making room for the brute force, time plus muscles plus the occasional inclined plane and fulcrum approach. I look forward to it. I am thankful for the opportunity and the vacation time to handle it. I am grateful to have a wonderful, hard working wife to support our dream and share in it.

* This week's idol worship includes: video games, teleconferencing, corporate logos, bars, skinnydipping, bowling, status reports, chrome fenders, bowling bars, NASA, peanut butter and anything other than jelly, Rogaine, green bowling balls, lay ups, Amish furniture, red bowling balls, bowling shoes worn outside the alley, juggling more than three items of varying weight and geometry, TMX Elmo, and video game bowling. I should add LCD TVs and Black Friday, but like professional wrestling I love them too much to condemn them.