Hello from sunny Florida!

Happy Holidays from Florida! It is so nice to be experiencing some sunshine down here...the weather has floated between the 60's and 70's...and will hopefully get warmer when we head down to Key West next week for New Year's. We spend every other year down here with Matt's parents who have a house down here. It's been a relaxing vacation so far and pretty easy! It actually started off with us taking public transportation to the Seattle airport for the first time ever-- a combination of bus and lightrail: the bus stop right in front of our house drops us off inside the downtown bus tunnel where we get off and just wait for the lightrail. Total cost--$1.75 (free for me since I already have an ORCA card through work). Sweet! Door to door -- about an hour..not bad! The flight went without a hiccup and then we were in Florida.

Of course, we had mortgage related drama...AGAIN...the day before leaving. I don't know how we coincidentally got ourselves into this predicament (remember, the day before leaving for Thanksgiving break, we had to sign papers for the house). Well, I refinanced the condo and the closing for that happened the day before we left. Around 4pm, I finally got a phone call saying "can you be in Kent in an hour?" Sheesh. So off to the bank I went, got a cashier's check, quickly stopped by the grocery store to pick up food and random gifts for a white elephant potluck we were attending later, and then off to deal with rush hour traffic down to Kent to sign papers. When all was said and done, we turned to each other and said "well, hopefully nothing goes wrong tomorrow since we're on an airplane all day!". Sure enough, I got an email in the morning from the escrow company, frantic because they realized they forgot to have Matt sign ONE document. One document! I then called them:

ESCROW: "are you at the airport?"
ME: "yes, but my flight is leaving in an hour"
ESCROW: "what airline?"
ME: "Southwest..but I'm not dealing with security again"
ESCROW: "our notary will go to you....hold on..."
[pause]
ESCROW: "okay, we're just going to email the doc to you and have you sign and scan it back"

Thank goodness that was acceptable! There was no way we were going to deal with leaving security just to meet a notary to sign one document with our flight leaving in an hour! Once we got to Florida, fortunately, Matt's parents own a printer/scanner so we were able to take care of everything that night. The next day, we got the official "YOU'RE FUNDED!" email--damn straight I better be!

All in all..very happy with the rates we ended up getting: 4.5% for the house and 4.625% for the condo (and keep in mind, I had to refinance it AS an investment property) All is well!

I had the walkthrough the tenant also and I think it went okay. I felt bad as he did notice the semi-crappy job on the walls (I decided not to paint as I thought spot painting with random "looks-like-generic-off-white-wall-paint" would just make it worse) I left him the walkthrough inspection papers...so we'll see what he writes when I get home and see the mail!

Anyway, I need to wrap up as we're leaving soon..afterall, it's football Sunday and apparently the Patriots game is not playing on local TV so we've got to leave the house...and I think Matt's mom is going to spend the afternoon with me in Venice. I just want to soak in some sun.