I've been keeping you hanging on long enough. Here's what happened: for whatever reason (everyone blames everybody else) the deal with Bank of America never happened. But somehow our agent managed to hook us up with another company (Countrywide) and their guy was able to sign a commitment letter thing without even seeing any of our numbers, just going on Raegan's spectacular credit score and the appraisal we already had. And he did the whole thing in like three hours.

So those of you who said everything would work out, you were right. A very nice, enormous man came by the house to pick up our tax information and said everybody in their office was going crazy all day working on our mortgage. So that's fun. Whether it's true or not is another thing.

Our blood pressure may be permanently raised as a result of the last few days, and you may notice a new nervous twitch or two next time you see us, but we are going to try to remedy that tonight. Alcohol, as you probably know, is not only a relaxant; it is also a peripheral vasodilator.

To break up the monotony of text-blocks, here's two quick pictures of Horn Pond (the one near our place). I shot these with my cell phone which is why they look like crap.


As rediculous as it sounds, I didn't want to risk jinxing things somehow by taking real pictures with an actual camera. I'm not normally a superstitious person, but in times of extreme duress I tend to behave irrationally. You'll never catch me knocking on a piece of wood, though, I can promise you that. That's just silly.