House hunting update

Wow has this week flown! I've had the best of intentions to sit down and write but have either been on the run or ready to fall into bed. My blog reader has reached high into the count of hundreds of posts waiting to be read.

We have been to the big city on two separate days this week. One day was spent looking at houses (one for the second time). The one we liked was a decent sized bungalow-style. Everything was looking good. We liked the house. It was within walking distance of an elementary school. There were even two sump pumps and a radon removal system. It was decided to make an offer as houses in our price range are starting to move fairly quickly. Mr. Irony went in to the realtor's office to make the offer and (yep, you guessed it...a problem) upon some further research by the realtor it was discovered that the house is on the edge of the city's flood zone. Okay, not a problem. We knew water was not a problem in the basement because we'd been there twice and with the amount of rain the city's seen in the last month, if there was a problem we'd have seen it by now.

Mr. Irony and the realtor did a bit more searching, though, because these two observant people remembered hearing some rumor about the city planning to update the current flood zones. Herein lies the rub. What the house was zoned now would have cost us about $300-$400 a year extra in flood insurance, but it still would have been fairly easy to sell down the road. However, if the city passes the newly proposed flood zone designations the rating for this house would change and the flood insurance would jump to a minimum of $1000 per year. This would make it significantly harder to sell down the road. So...no offer was made and we are back to square one. Well, maybe square two since Mr. Irony is now fairly well versed on the city's flood zones and we will be avoiding any houses that fall into the potential new flood zones.

The second trip to the city entailed a job interview. It would be doing what I just resigned from, albeit with a twist. Part of the job would be at a public school (wasn't told where, just asked was I okay with driving) and one to two days per week would be at the school for children with severe disabilities. The position would be four days per week, possibly five. I was honest about my reasons for moving and answered the questions to the best of my abilities. I think I did a pretty good job, but who knows. They either liked me or they didn't and I'm not to worried one way or the other. I was told that it will be a couple of weeks, at least, before I'd hear anything as they are still in contract negotiations with the public school. It would be nice because the family insurance rate was actually affordable! We'll see. Like I said, if they offer it I'm fine with that and if they don't? Well, I'm fine with that too.

I'm still working on adding Blogger's new blog roll feature. I had everyone almost transferred over last night and the stupid computer decided that it needed to shut down at that point, thus wiping out everything I had done. Thanks for the comments and emails, readers! I will get you on there!

I'm feeling the need for caffeine so I'm off to brew a pot of coffee. I'm on a packing "kick" right now and mustn't stop for too long or I'll lose that boxing/packing mojo!