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September 17, 2008

Moving On Up

So we found a house. It's perfect--with a fenced yard for the dog, walking distance to a cute little downtown area, four bedrooms, and a completely redone kitchen. There is a two car garage, a bright and cheery room for my office, and even a little doggy door that Maya could squeeze through if she sucks in her tummy. Mr. MMB and I have been there twice in the last three days, and we are now in the "where would our bookshelf go?" stage.

Of course, it's never that easy. The renter that we thought was going to take my apartment fell through, and Mr. MMB's house has dropped more than 25% in value and now he owes more on his mortgage than the house is worth. We're moving out of my place next weekend, but don't have anyplace to put all of my stuff, and we're loathe to move everything to a secondary location (my parents' house? a storage location?) and then have to move it again in a couple of months. And because both of us are traveling on business every week between now and November, it's going to be challenging to find time to get all of the necessary things done.

So now I'm biting my fingernails, hoping that no one takes "my house" before we can make an offer. Which can't happen until we meet with the mortgage guy (early next week), who will probably tell us that we need to line up a buyer for Mr. MMB's place (close, but not final), rent my place (totally not done), and come up with $60,000 worth of down payment (difficult, since all of our equity is tied up in our existing real estate).

In short, it's a frustrating time. At least everything else is going well. Oh wait. The reason I'm able to write this is because we have all been kicked off the flight from DC to San Francisco because the plane is broken and they aren't willing to rebook anyone until at least noon (three hours after our expected departure), and that means I won't be getting into my tiny little Oregon town until late in the evening (it's a 2 hours drive from the nearest regional airport). Of course, I had planned to get in early and so hadn't really prepared for my audit tomorrow--and will now have to complete it sitting outside the C-8 gate. Oh, and Mr. MMB just found out he's going back to Yemen during the first week of October. In case you aren't up on your Yemen news, terrorists attacked the US embassy there yesterday and killed 16 people.

All of which is to say that the caffeine this morning must really be working, since despite all of these not-so-great things, I'm pretty chipper. Blessed, blessed caffeine.

September 08, 2008

The Craziness that is Air Travel Today

I don't know what I was thinking, choosing to do a DC to Dallas to DC trip All In One Day. After a sleepless night I rolled out of bed at 4 a.m. to get to my 6 a.m. flight, which happily connected in Atlanta on time to a flight that would arrive in Dallas at 9:45 a.m. Now I'm sitting in the terminal, killing time for a few more minutes until I catch a taxi and head off to a Big Idea prospect who is maybe perhaps but probably not going to hire us over some gigantic competitors. Then, after 2 hours of meetings for which I am woefully unprepared, I will get yet another taxi and return to the Dallas Forth Worth airport, sit around for another hour, then make the return trip all over again. If all goes according to plan, I will arrive back home at 11:30 p.m., a tired and poorer woman.

My life has been a lot like this lately. Crazy hours of working on the Big Idea (which is growing so fast I can't keep up), then frantically finding a few hours to go look for a new house with Mr. MMB. Yes, we've decided that a new house is definitely in the works (and Hawaii is definitely not), but so far the places that we've seen have been 1) too old, 2) too old, 3) too old, or 4) too expensive. Growing up (and by that I mean up until two weeks ago), I never thought that $750,000 wouldn't be enough to get a decent house. But apparently, to live in the neighborhood we like, with a house that has enough room to house my Big Idea office, a guest room, and two kid's bedrooms - and has a nice yard for the puppy - we would need to come up with about $900,000.

Which brings me back to the notion that I need to scale up the Big Idea so that I can reward myself with unreasonable luxury (if you can call a larger-than-a-matchstick backyard unreasonable). The tricky thing is that I think I probably could do that, but at the expense of the Life Plan, which involves not just working the same amount, but working substantially less. So I can have a baby. Or two.

Speaking of babies, is it not completely obvious that baby girls are better than baby boys? Of course we all love our children and I suppose that they are all equal in God's eyes, etc. But really. For the "baby" part of life, girls are so much better - the adorable clothes, the better decorating options, etc. This is completely and utterly clear to me. Mr. MMB disagrees. He thinks that if we could only have girls or boys, he would choose boys. I almost drove off the road when I discovered this about him. I'm assuming that because he was once a baby boy himself that he is prejudiced, but I thought he could rise about it to see the unadulterated truth. Girls rock.

But back to my airport travails. Once I'm done with this trip, Mr. MMB and I turn around on Thursday and go to Blacksburg for a Big Idea/Alumni trip. Three days after I get back from there, I hop on a plane to Oregon. And the week after that I'm off to Rochester. And the week after that it's Boston. And the week after that? Vancouver. And somewhere in between there is also an as-yet-unspecified trip to Chicago.

I fully expect to be upgraded to Premier GOLD on my frequent flier miles. Or else be put in jail for some air rage event that I can feel building at this very minute. A tip to you, dear reader. If you happen to be sitting in my row - ask to be reseated.