First night sleeping in the condo

The Real Estate deal finally closed at about 4PM on Monday, and I was then officially a condo owner. I was expecting the deal to be closed at about 1PM, so I was getting kind of impatient.

I've been trying to figure out how to refer to the cities that I am moving from and moving to. The city that I'm moving from, and will continue to work in, is "the big city". The city that I just bought a condo in is "the little city."

This is my first night sleeping, or trying to, in my condo. My bed arrived at 10AM on Tuesday and it's comfortable like a really expensive bed should be. Unfortunately, I can't sleep. It's very quiet at night in the little city and I'm not used to it.

In the big city, my apartment faces one of the busiest streets in town. At night the background noise consists of traffic, sirens and the occasional train. In the little city, I might hear a car drive by every couple of hours. In the big city, I can sleep through police, ambulance and fire truck sirens. In the little city, the wind blowing through the trees can wake me up.

It's so quite hear, that I now know that my laptop's hard drive makes an annoying high pitched noise. That noise is really annoying and I didn't know about it until I used my laptop here, in the quiet little city.

Less than a week

I'm going into the lawyers office tomorrow. I'll be signing papers related to the condo purchase and handing over a bank draft for the amount of my down payment. I thought that I would be doing all of that on Monday, which is the day of the closing.

After I'm finished at the lawyers office, I just have to wait until Monday to pick up the keys.

I'll officially be a home owner in less than a week. It will be nice to be paying off a mortgage, instead of paying rent.

Anti Impalement Protector

After almost impaling myself on that nasty circuit breaker panel at work, a few weeks ago, I came up with a little invention. It's called the Anti Impalement Protector. It works great.

This is the Anti Impalement Protector installed on the bottom right hand corner of a circuit breaker panel:

Starting school next year

After sending an email to admissions yesterday, asking for an update, I was informed that my deferral request has been approved. I'll be starting school in September, next year.

If I don't get a full time job, I'm going to have a lot of spare time on my hands until September of next year. Maybe I should look for a full time job. Maybe I should be "gainfully underemployed". I think I'll avoid the whole issue, until I've moved into my condo.

Two more weeks until I own the condo

I will take possession of the condo on the 16th. My bed should be delivered on the 17th. I'm looking forward to sleeping on my comfy new bed, in my new condo, in a couple of weeks!

Still waiting for an update

The college was supposed to get back to me, this week, about the status of my admission deferral application. They haven't gotten back to me yet!

When am I going back to school? I don't know.
Do I want to go back to school this year, or next year? I don't know.

Am I getting stressed out about this? A little bit.

A bad financial move

Well it finally sunk in, with full force. This career change is a really bad financial move. When I'm finished school and working as a Respiratory Therapist, I will probably be making about 40% of what I was making when I was working as a full time IT Professional.

Unfortunately, I'm not at all interested in continuing on as a full time IT Professional. Financial reality has left me open, grudgingly, to the possibility of being a part time IT Professional for an indefinite period of time. I've already started telling people that, "I'm going to go back to school, so that I can get a more stressful and lower paying job". I usually think that line's pretty funny, sometimes I don't.

I spent most of today, and a couple of hours last week, shopping for furniture for my condo. I've already thrown out most of my crappy old furniture. While shopping I decided that I would get good furniture, that I like, and wouldn't get caught up on how expensive everything is. I'm 36 years old and I'm tired of living with crappy furniture, that lasts about as long as a decent pair of socks!

The end result is that I spent $10,811.17 on new furniture. I'm probably going to end up spending about $15, 000.00 when I'm finished getting all of the furniture that I want and need. Next year, I'm going to make about $38,000.00, if I'm lucky. When I'm finished buying my furniture, I'll have spent 40% of next years income on furniture!

What did I get for $10,811.17?

• A bed: $2,265.02
• A dresser and night stand for the bedroom: $2,125.42
• A sofa and chair for the living room: $3,338.38
• A dining room table and 4 chairs: $2,956.96
• A floor lamp for the living room: $125.39

All of the above, except the floor lamp, was on sale. I saved about $1,500.00, because everything was on sale. I suspect that expensive furniture is always "on sale" so that people feel less depressed about how much money they spend on it.

What do I still need to get?

• A headboard for my bend. I have this odd fear about getting my head stuck between my bed and the wall that the bed's up against. I'm hoping that a headboard will prevent me from getting my head stuck between a wall and my bed.
• 3 big book cases (I've decided to get cheap ones, for a total of about $500).
• A microwave.
• A table for the dining room.
• A couple of end tables for the dining room.
• A TV and TV stand.
• A vacuum cleaner.
• A lamp for the night stand.
• A desk for my computer.
• A bunch of plants, to put in the empty spaces that I can't afford to put furniture in.

Things that i won't be getting:

• A new laptop.
• A new computer.
• A phone. I'm just going to have a cell phone.
• Cable TV. I have access to the Internet and know how to use it.