Let the <strike>Procrastination</strike> Planning Begin!

So, I've already told a few people, and it's not like it should be a really huge surprise to anyone (come on people, we've spent the past few months looking at houses, you do the math), but for the benefit of those of you I haven't actually spoken to over the past few days, this weekend Joanna and I decided to get married.

Well, that's really not entirely accurate. We decided we were eventually going to get married a while back. This weekend we actually started buckling down and start the mechanics of the whole thing, setting dates, talking about venues, ranking our friends and family in order of who's the most likely to give us the best gifts, allowing Joanna's elderly relatives to breathe a little easier about the fact that we're moving in together, etc.

Anyway, the event itself will be sometime in late March or early April, somewhere in the Boston area. We're thinking a reasonably small guest list (which starts to sound way less small once you take into account that just the bare minimum required family members already brings you to 30 people, and that doesn't even count our friends), and we're going to make a concerted effort to NOT turn into one of those couples whose life becomes completely and totally centered around planning what is in the end after all just a fairly large party.

Now I just have to get used to the idea of referring to Joanna as my fiance instead of my girlfriend. I suppose I'll get used to that just in time to start getting used to the idea of referring to her as my wife ;-)

No Really, This Time For Sure!

After the roller coaster ride we went through with the last house we made an offer on Joanna and I were a bit more careful this time. She started bringing a flashlight to houses we were looking at, and we spent a lot of time looking at the deep dark corners of the basement and other similar locations that our home inspector had seemed to enjoy pointing out problems. Fortunately, this payed off, and the house we decided on had far less trouble with the inspection than the first one did. I'm not saying it was perfect, but lets just say Mike was orders of magnitude more positive in his report with this house than he was with the other.

So yes, this means we've found a house and we're through the inspection process completely. Paperwork has been signed and we'll be moving in on November 1st.

We decided on a lease to own agreement, which means that we put a small percentage of the purchase price down as a deposit, and then lease the house for a year with a percentage of our monthly rent going towards the eventual down payment. At the end of the year we decide if we want to buy or not. If we do buy we get the house at the price we agreed on now, and we've got the added bonus of having already lived there so we know what we're getting into. If we don't buy then we only walk away from a few thousand dollars worth of down payment, which is a nice option to have in the event that the housing market nose dives or we end up hating the place for one reason or another.

Some details on the house. It's in Dedham near the West Roxbury line. That means we're close to Joanna's office, near commuter rail lines to get into Boston if either of us ever needs to do that for work, about half an hour from Joanna's parents and about an hour from mine. The house itself is a 3 bedroom 2.5 bath colonial that was almost totally rebuilt 9 years ago (meaning it was torn down and a new second floor and a completely remodeled first floor was put on top of an existing foundation). The kitchen is awesome, the living room and dining room have these great cathedral ceilings, there's a wrap around farmer's porch in the front and a nice deck off the back overlooking a reasonably large back yard. Upstairs there's a master suite with a loft overlooking it (a spiral staircase provides access) and an office off of the loft.

I'll post some more pictures once we're there. There are some more from the listing, but honestly they don't give you a good idea of what the place is really like, as most of them are designed to show off individual features, not the whole place.

Anyway, we're extremely excited about the whole thing and just can't wait to move in. The house seems perfect for us, and now we're counting the days until November 1st...

Keeping These Tickets

I'm sure 98% of the bloggers who care about the Red Sox have posted something about Saturday night's game, so I'll just say it was a heck of a night, I've never seen the fans at Fenway park cheer quite so loudly for quite so long, and I'm glad Justin decided to overpay for a ticket so he could be there.

Oh, and it's a good thing Joanna and I still have the tickets, so we'll have some proof that we were there to see an actual no hitter.