CLOSED!

Not an April Fool joke. We hope ... our realtor called us Tuesday afternoon to tell us the sale was closed.  A closing on April Fool's day seems a fitting conclusion for our sale saga; it went up for sale on August 16.

I'm not sure what we would have done if it had fallen through again.  Arson? Explosives? Abandonment? Hari kari? 

Or maybe we would have just kept running!

Fortunately, we do not have to consider any of those.  

I have waited until today to post this because I reallly wanted to see the money in our account before breathing that final sigh of relief.

But it is there now and we can do what we have planned on doing.  Driving off into the sunrise ...  

We started in California after all!




[From Craig: Story of My Life department] For years I have been lusting after the FIOS service from Verizon, but was always told that we couldn't have it in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It's about the fastest Internet and movie access available in the US.  Today I logged into the Verizon site to terminate our phone service and was confronted by a announcement "Wonderful news! Your area is now eligible for Verizon FIOS service." Grrrrr!

A Plug for my Son's Blog

Some of you have been checking in on my Son, Gil (AKA Joko) over the last year. He has been teaching English as a second language in Thailand.

I'd like to recommend his latest post about a place called Muang Buran. I think he did a remarkable job on the video. If you go to see it, please tell him Mom sent you!

For those of you who do not generally have the ability to view videos, but are interested in a summary of the experiences of a first year TESL teacher, check out the post just before that one: Reflections on One Year of Teaching. Some of you who are retired  teachers will remember those thoughts from your early years! He stuck it out, learned, and wants to continue.

On the Camp Driveway home-front, nothing much is happening. I started looking into planning an RV trip for early this week. We usually go down to dump the tanks on Tuesdays and I thought it would be a good time to just keep going! But then I realized it was President's Day week, and the Olympics are still on. We have been watching them on the computer during the day.  Craig got a VPN  thru which we can watch the BBC coverage in the UK. It's interesting to watch the coverage from the English point of view instead of the American. We get to hear about athletes who are not from the USA! We are also enjoying listening to the accents and the slang.  "Huge! Brilliant! Monstrous! Massive!" Each sport has a different set of superlatives, and all of then are different from ours.

A quick note: Thanks for all the interest and comments on the house sale situation. One commenter reminded us that if we got the payment from the buyer as "rent" it would be taxable as ordinary income. Another mentioned how difficult it can be to collect deposit money if the deal doesn't close. We hope neither of these bit of advice will be needed. The payment mentioned has been contracted as rent to put it outside of the deposit already in escrow.  This would be so that if the transaction doesn't close by March 25, this payment could be collected without the hassle of going through escrow.  We would still be able to extend his escrow time, or go after the other deposit money if his house closes and he does not complete our deal.  

We hope, and are confident, that neither of these situations will occur. We would much rather see our house sale close by March 25 so we can be on our way.  If it doesn't and we have to pay taxes on the money, so be it.

All will be well in the long run. We have both settled down into a less stressed waiting mode. 

So, visit Gil's blog and leave a comment.  He would love to hear from you. (And to members of my family, you do not have to be a blogger to leave a comment, just use the anonymous feature.)