Home owner’s associations (HOAs) are such ripoffs! Casey’s pretty bitter about the whole HOA thing and would rather just shovel snow from our own sidewalk instead of paying $65/month for it. And if the pool is anything like ours is now (parents using it as a childcare center for their kids and them screaming and taking over the place) then we probably won’t be using that either making it an even bigger waste of $65.
Wendy, our realtor, told us that we have 3 days from the time we picked up the book to look over it and we could cancel our contract if we found anything in the HOA rules that we couldn’t live with. From what I read they’re pretty anal but it’s nothing we can’t deal with so we’re going ahead with everything. Wendy is out of town until our closing date so we don’t have a time scheduled yet but she assures me that we’ll be able to get in without problems.
I *think* that I finally have all of the paperwork sent in that’s needed for closing. I say *think* because everytime we send them what they ask for they ask for more. It’s a never ending process to leave an intricate papertrail to cover their butts. As long as it’s done that’s all I care about.
After sitting in the parking lot that is the 95 every Saturday for over an hour to get down to pick up the HOA book and sign more paperwork we decided to take the back roads home. Virginia’s planning for roads is seriously lacking and the same road can go north, south, east, and west. We looked on our atlas and saw how to get to 28 (the back way home) and ended up taking the long way around. To make sure we were on the right track we stopped at some podunk bait/beer store to ask the toothless man in the parking lot directions and were pleased to find after driving for 30 minutes we were only 6 miles away from this “shortcut”. Maybe it’s from living in LA or from dealing with stupid drivers but I’d rather be stuck in traffic on the freeway than on a two-lane road not going any faster with stop lights and other distractions that cause people to drive even worse. I like the simplicity of taking a straight shot from point A to point B with no lights and the possibility of going a respectable speed of at least 70 (don’t get me started on the ridiculous Virginia speed limits).
For dinner last night we met Kevin and Kathy at Bone Fish which is apparently a chain seafood restaurant owned by The Outback. I ordered the grouper and was pleased to find it fresh and properly prepared although the price tag was a little much for the casual environment – it’s still the best seafood I’ve had since we’ve been here.
We always feel bad whenever we have to leave Stoli cause she has to be in her crate. Starting Thursday when I was at Safeway for 20 minutes or so, I decided to test her to see what kind of damage she’d do left to her own devices. I shut all the doors and pulled out every toy she has and lined them up on the floor. She ended up being a good girl and we’ve left her out twice since then for 3-4 hours at a time. I’m surprised she’s doing so well and hope she can keep it up.
Another example of Stoli not liking things out of the ordinary is tonight she was standing in the kitchen and I was leaning over the counter and she could see my reflection in the stove and started freaking out cause she saw me with another dog (her). She got herself so worked up she backed herself into the trash can and ran over to me to make sure I wasn’t “cheating” on her.
We managed to get two movies in this weekend between the episodes of CSI and X-Files. They weren’t our Netflix movies and since we haven’t been keeping up with watching those because I’m always waiting for when Casey’s home I’m going to send them back for stuff I can watch while he’s working and then get ones for him and I to watch on Thursdays so they’ll get here on Fridays (the distribution center is only 23 miles away). We watched The Manchurian Candidate (the remake) and Million Dollar Baby. In my opinion, they were both only mediocre especially considering the raving reviews they got. At first The Manchurian Candidate seemed incoherent but managed to get slightly more interesting with the twist at the end. Million Dollar Baby while better than Mystic River was still not on par with the Clint Eastwood movies that I like from the 90s. After all of the buildup throughout the movie the ending was disappointing.