In Which We Qualify

The Emperor got to his doctor and found out that he wasn't getting sick, but instead was having a little trouble breathing, probably because of air quality -- smoke in the air from recent prairie fires, wind, pollen, and so on.  They gave him some medicine and he's perked right up, so we might get out of here and on the road after all.  I'm making no plans while secretly dreaming up plans.

In the end, I took my pile of papers to the bank and asked a loan officer to help me fill out the application for a home loan.  They assigned me to a very young man -- was he old enough to shave, I wondered? -- and he was very helpful.  As it turns out, we didn't need to add up the life insurance policies, because we're not going to use them as a down payment.  In the end, it took about fifteen minutes for him to look everything over, answer my questions, make a few calculations ... and a few hours later we were qualified to borrow $135,000 for a home.  Now we know.

That house we visited last week costs quite a bit more than that.  Well, we can make an offer for what we can afford, and they're free to say yes or no.

That said, today we've got an appointment to view another home with a price closer to our affordability figure.  It's less ideal, but it has enough rooms, a basement, and an adequate garage, so I'm sure we could work with it.

Well, I did it -- I made my Attractive Cone Knitting Box.  During the week the Emperor got out his tiny coping saw for me and on Friday afternoon I measured the dowel and cut it.  I measured the placement for the holes in the box, and then used an awl to poke starter holes in each side.  I used a number 10.5 knitting needle to enlarge the holes for the dowel, and assembled it as you see here.  Still to do: trim the edges of the holes with a craft knife, and glue one of the end caps to the dowel.  Finally, I'll paint the end caps with a pretty shade of coral.  But as you see it here, it's functional enough to use now.  Once all the parts were in one place, it took me less than five minutes to make.  I can keep all of the parts for the project in the box and close it.  Now there are no more excuses to not use my silk/stainless steel yarn for a project!  Now I can use coned yarn to warp my loom! 

My other accomplishment for the week was to "do" our taxes.  In the course of applying for the home loan, the bank checked my credit and when he did, Credit Karma sent me an email about it (I signed up for CK a while ago).  I looked at their site and they had a section with a new free tax computation tool.  I've always done my taxes, and then our taxes, myself by hand, but since the Emperor retired I've made a pretty steady stream of mistakes.  The tricky bit is the formula the IRS tells you to use to calculate how much tax is owed on Social Security.  Anyway, the Credit Karma site tool figures that out for you, so I gave it a try.  It took me about twenty minutes to enter all the information, once I had it all in one place, and the results were two filled-out forms, federal and state, ready to sign.  I love it.

On top of all that, I'm caught up with grading essays for at least the next ten days.  The sense of personal freedom is dizzying. I think I'll go paint my end caps now.