A King's Folly

So the closing date on our home was Tuesday, October 6, 2009.

The day before I was at a bank in Northern KY right across the border from Cincinnati. It's about an hour and a half drive from Lexington. Torrie came along and we were getting a bite to eat at a Burger King near our hotel. We were pretty excited to eat a couple of Whopper, Jr. sandwiches (The Whopper Jr. is, in my mind, the best $1 fast food hamburger out there and is actually a very good deal at a $1) After eating, we put our food on the tray and threw it out.

Fast forward to the next afternoon. I worked in the morning and was picking up Torrie at the hotel to drive back to Lexington to buy our house. We had our schedule planned to perfection. However, as I jumped back into the car, I felt my pocket and then the panic hit in. I did not have my wallet.

A frantic calls to the bank confirmed my fear. No wallet. I ran up and performed a frenzied search of our hotel room. No dice. As Torrie and I traced our footsteps over the last 12 hours in an attempt to answer the ever-present question when something is lost, "Well...when did you last have it?" our conclusion came to the little vignette at the beginning of my blog entry. Burger King.


We rushed back to the Burger King. We had little room for error. I raced inside. "Has anyone found a wallet??!?!?" I yelled at the top of my voice. (Actually not, I asked the lady behind the register politely.) The lady told me she would look in the safe, and a quick search revealed no wallet. I asked if the trash had been taken out, desperate that perhaps I had thrown it way with the Whopper, Jr sandwiches. "Yes," she replied. "This morning. I'm afraid your wallet is gone."

I, however, had no time to lament my loss. We had a house to buy! So I climbed back into the car, and drove (which, now that I think about, was illegal because I did not have my driver's liscence) back to Lexington to buy our house. We were probably about an hour late, due to the missing wallet fiasco added to the unfamiliarity with downtown Lexington fiasco, the incorrect Mapquest directions fiasco, and the construction and one way streets fiasco (a plethora of fiascoes) but we made it and signed the papers. Bought the house. Thank goodness for knowing exactly where my passport was, so I could prove my identity.

One of the first things we did in our new house was call my credit card companies and report the loss of my credit cards. While the movers were moving our stuff in, I get a call from an old coworker of mine at Boeing. After the movers leave, I check my voice mail. "Hi Logan..um, we just got a weird call here saying that someone has found your wallet in Ohio..what are you doing there? Anyway, here is her information......"

TURNS OUT that my wallet was turned in at the Burger King after all, and they had delivered it to the corporate offices in Cincinnati. We're going to pick it up on Friday.

I'm really hoping that I come up with some clever way to finish this little blog entry, to perhaps distract you from how stupid I was for losing my wallet at Burger King. Some pun with "King" involved, perhaps. I'm going to go with this picture of "The King" and hopefully that will suffice.

Torrie and I have been living in this extended-stay hotel / studio apartment since our move to Kentucky, and so little things like putting pictures onto the computer are very difficult. (Where's the camera cord? I don't know!) So I am unable to give pictures of the fun things that Torrie and I have been doing here in our new Kentucky home. :) So I will put a couple pictures of Torrie and I at the top of the world! (or, at least, Longs Peak). The first picture is at about 14K feet, the second quite a bit lower.

However as you can see below, our house search has finally concluded in a success!!!

More info on the future Logan and Torrie Schultz house to come. This is the only picture I have right now, but knowing that Torrie was involved in buying it means that it is a very cute house, and that we got it for a good deal.

HGTV

So Torrie and I have been living in an extended-stay apartment since our arrival in Lexington, KY. We got it for a great deal, it’s this newly constructed place (we are probably the second people to stay in our room) so it’s clean. Clean and cheap. Perfect. It also has a TV, internet, little kitchen (no oven), utilities are included in the price…it’s really a great place to stay while we look for a house.

That’s the overarching task for us right now. Looking for a house. One of the main tools that we have utilized while looking for a house is HGTV.

Home and Garden Television. That’s right. They have all these shows about buying a house, first time home-buying, fixing up houses, designing renovations, selling houses, it’s all house stuff all the time. Perfect for me and Torrie. We watch it pretty frequently.

So a lot of these shows consist of a realtor taking some home buyers around to look at houses, and then they pick which one they buy. Pretty simple. Well, it’s been very interesting for us to see what OTHER people think as important in buying a house. Let’s take a look at the most ridiculous priorities.

1. Look at that ugly wallpaper!!

Are you kidding me? How hard is it to take care of wallpaper?

2. Oooh! Nice big kitchen!!

Oh yeah, like you are actually going to use your kitchen. You’re going to be like so many other people in this world and go out to eat 4, 5 times a week. Oh, unless you’re “saving money” by staying home and cooking ready-to-eat meals. Way to go!

3. This open space would be perfect for entertaining!

Yeah, right. How often do you “entertain”? Once a month? Maybe? And what exactly does “entertain” mean in this context? I seriously hear this once or twice a half hour and I’m not convinced that it ever actually happens. I think it's so ridiculous that everytime Torrie and I walk through a house, I mention how great it would be for entertaining, and then laugh at myself cause I think it's so funny. Torrie sometimes laughs. The realtor never seems to understand why I'm laughing.

4. We’d like a nice yard for our dog, Charlie, to play in.

This one is always sad to me, cause it’s very rare that I hear anyone say it about kids. I’ve never heard (and I hear a lot) them even mention school districts. Maybe families never move homes?

5. It’s a little out of our budget, but we can make it work….

If it’s out of your budget…then you can’t afford it! It seems like 1 / 3 people overpay for the house they want. (Note: I would like this fact if I was selling my house right now, instead of trying to buy one.)

I just want to buy a house! AHHH!