elephant-ear plant. We were at the lawyer’s office ten minutes early. We had to present our driver’s licenses, which they scanned and stored on their computer. We settled in to wait, and about five minutes later the female of the couple who was buying our house showed up. We didn’t realize who she was until she asked Fred who we were there to see, and then introduced herself (her first name is Marcia, which she pronounced as "Mar-see-ya". I bet people fuck that up all the time). She thanked us profusely for leaving all that stuff for them and we chatted for a few moments before the lawyer called us back. The lawyer, by the way, was the bastard child of Jay McInerney and Andrew McCarthy. Anyway, Mar-see-ya told us that her husband was in a meeting and would be half an hour or more late. Excuse me, he’s known about this closing for well over a month and still can’t manage to be on time? How self-important can you be? So we signed and signed and signed some more, signing our lives away (though we didn’t have to do nearly so much signing as the buyers did), and when Chuck (Mr. buyer) hadn’t shown up by the time we were done signing, we sat around and chatted. Chuck showed up around 10:45 (everyone we’ve told about this has had the same comment about Chuckie – "asshole!") and signed and signed and signed, and asked questions about the house, and signed some more. The lawyer went away to do some lawyering, came back, went away, and came back again. There was some kerfuffle about how the contract had specified that we were to pay for an updated survey, but no one had ordered one, and yadda yadda give-us-a-check-for-$250cakes. The lawyer wandered away again and then finally showed up with checks for the realtors and for us. "We could live for two years in Mexico on that check," I pointed out to Fred, which made JeffTheRealtor laugh nervously. The people we bought our house from came in with their realtor and their six month old baby (SO cute), and we sat around waiting for numbers from our mortgage company. You see, we’d had to fax a something-or-other statement to the mortgage company so they could come up with numbers for something (see how clear I am on the details?), and we waited and waited for them to get their thumbs out of their asses. Our old mortgage was through AmSouth, and we decided to go through the bank that handles Fred’s business accounts – The Bank, is the name. I don’t know, I guess the founders tried really hard to come up with that name, don’t you think? Sounds kinda fly-by-night, doesn’t it? Anyway, thumbs were removed from asses and we commenced to signing. We were out of there by 12:30, and Jeff thanked us for buying the house from him and allowing him to sell the house, and off we went. I made Fred take me out to lunch at Bennigan’s, where I’d never been before, and then we went shopping for a washer and dryer.]]>
08/01/2001