Powered By Blogger

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Buying and buying and buying and buying and buyi...

Things move slowly around here.  I've noticed that even though Californians are supposed to be "laid back", the peoples' slow pace here makes Californians seem like frenetic neurotics!  No such thing as hurrying.  Nope.  Doesn't happen.  So when, in my usual fashion, I make a mental list of the things I want to get done on any particular day, I've been noticing that maybe half or fewer of the tasks actually get done unless I make a special, out-of-the-ordinary effort to get it accomplished.  Now, I've claimed to have given up hurrying but it's becoming clear to me that I really haven't because you CAN'T hurry in this town!  I've found that I'm up against Non-Hurry Experts!  Therefore, when I find I can't move forward with whatever I had in mind because I must await a call-back from someone, or something else in this leisurely-moving universe interferes, I'm learning that I should really just chill out - play a game or nap or read something.  REALLY chill out.  It's culture shock, I guess.  It's acclimating.  I'll learn.

So it's Saturday now, and I've been LONGING to do something mundane.  What is it, you ask?  Wash the laundry.  In my OWN washer and dryer!  Yeah, the laundry has accumulated again from when I'd caught up several days ago but that'll happen if we continue to wear clothes every day and change the bed linens once in a while.  See how we are?  Anyway, have I done any laundry yet?  Nope.

Well, let's see what we accomplished since Wednesday, when we saw the house for the first time.  We rented a car - a Nissan Altima (it was all they had) which both Al and I decided we weren't awfully fond of.  But it's wheels and it allowed us to meet up with Heather, Bobby and Heidi (who was visiting for a few days) and have a nice supper at Panera Bread, which was very pleasant.  We visited at their house for a while and traded a lot of stories and hugs.

Thursday dawned with lots of plans.  I had a lot of errands to run, and having a car now, I was eager to get to them while Al was busy working.  Heather, Bobby, and Heidi wanted to come see the RV, so we agreed that they'd come by around one-ish; giving me plenty of time to go to the post office, wire transfer the payment for the purchase of the house, find a dry cleaner, and pick up some groceries, along with a quick meal for Al and the birds.

Okay, first the post office to pick up our forwarded mail and have them send everything on to the new address.  Relying on the Garmin, I wound my way around behind some shops and found the post office to which I'd sent our mail.  The line moved fairly quickly so before long I greeted Nice Post Office Guy and explained what I needed.  He listened with a bright smile on his face, waited until I'd finished explaining the entire story, then told me I was at the wrong post office.  "But this is the address I put on the forwarding order," I protested hopefully.  "Sorry," he said with a regretful shake of his head, "any mail going to General Delivery in this town (Lady Lake) goes to the main post office, which is maybe a mile from here."

With lots of friendly smiles and encouragement he wrote down the directions to get to the main post office, wished me luck, and sent me on my way.  Okay, I started out again, and drove around a winding road behind the shopping center until I realized (within a half mile or so) that I had probably chosen the wrong direction.  Whoops - turn around in the parking lot of this medical building and go back...yup, here's the right road - make a left and onward I go.

Now, the interesting thing that I'm discovering about this neighborhood, that nobody really pointed out before is that there's a main road called Route 441 that is generously populated with businesses and shopping centers for miles at a time.  This road might be considered an equivalent to Ventura Blvd for my Californian friends, Northern Blvd for those from New York, or City Line Avenue for Philadelphians.  Very civilized - a shopper's paradise, all sorts of chain stores of every type we're all familiar with.  The surprise comes when you go just one block away on either side of the road.  Suddenly you're in the country!  There are meadows and houses and once in a while a shop standing alone in the middle of nowhere right next to a field with cows in it, which is next to a fenced-in grove of Spanish moss-covered oak trees.  IT'S REALLY COOL!!!!!

Anyway, not being used to this diversity, I'm following the cheerful Post Office Guy's directions wondering where on Earth I'm going to end up.  Here I am, following this road for 3 miles, having that spark of relief when the road that he promised would appear actually DOES appear...turning onto that road and suddenly AHA!  The promised post office is THERE!  YAYAYAYAYAY!!!!!  I go inside, stand on another line, and at last another pleasant Post Office Person (a lady with a braid all the way down her back) helps me through the process of diverting all the mail to the proper address and goes to fetch my mail.  WHEW.  Important Task# 1 accomplished!  Except that it took more than twice the amount of time I had thought it would.

No worries - I had seen a Wells Fargo Bank in the direction I had to go in so onward I trekked and walked confidently into the bank, ready to send more than $95,000 over the wires to buy my new house!  But first - we wait.  A Nice Bank Greeting Guy opened the door for me and...and Greeted me.  He took down my name and the nature of my visit, got me a small bottle of water and bade me sit and wait my turn in the Sitting-And-Waiting-Your-Turn area.  While busily waiting I watched the three Banker Ladies taking care of their clients, and the Bank Greeting Guy running around being Helpful.  I must have waited for close to half an hour before it was my turn and one of the Banker Ladies helped me correctly do the wire transfer.  Wonderful!  I left with a sense of accomplishment, since I had now paid for my new house and was completely prepared for the next day's closing!

But time had gone by and 1pm was fast approaching.  Deciding I could do the dry cleaner and the groceries another time, I hurried back to the RV park to wait for the family.  About an hour passed by and I got a call that Bobby and Heidi would come by somewhat later - Heather wasn't feeling well enough (and besides, she's allergic to my birds).  Well, they did show up and looked the RV over but didn't stay very long.  Can't blame them - Great A'Tuin isn't the most comfortable place to sit around and visit...there's about the same amount of room inside it as...as standing inside the shell of a very large turtle..

Okay, so Friday, the day of the CLOSING dawned early.  Closing was set for 9am and Lori, our realtor came by to pick us up at 8:30.  We once more met the sellers - two very lovely people who were moving to one of the Carolinas to be near their 3 daughters.  They were so sweet that they not only gave us all the keys, clearly labelled, and the garage and gate openers (with explanations of how to use them), they even brought us the names of their gardener, their handyman, and a number of other tradesmen they'd found useful and reasonable.  They had also left manuals to the appliances in the house, and all sorts of other goodies.  The closing was very cordial and friendly and easy, and afterward the sellers just took off in their car on their way to Carolina!  Bon Voyage!

Lori took us into the development (Spruce Creek South) to get our official Welcome Packet, our name badges, and so forth.  She took me around the Clubhouse to see the lovely, large swimming pool and hot tub, the lake with the geese, the ubiquitous oaks festooned with Spanish Moss (they're really quite lovely - I need to go photograph some of them to share with you in a future blog!) and all the other amenities offered at the clubhouse.  After this we went back to the house to look things over.  It was interesting that it looked somewhat smaller to me empty but it allowed us to project what we might put where, and to realize that yes - we've probably got more stuff than will nicely fit into the place.  But it'll all work out in the end.

Afterward, Lori dropped us off here at the RV and I finally went out and picked up some much-needed groceries.  I still hadn't found a dry cleaner and though I had drooled over my new washer and dryer and resolved to take a couple of loads over to wash, I hadn't done so.  Instead, Al and I sat down and started researching our next big "HAVE TO" - what car we wanted to buy.  We're devotees of Consumer Reports, and consulted the website as to which cars rated the best.  While we had been traveling we had considered buying a really small car that would happily be towed behind the RV during our imagined trips however I pointed out to Al that the majority of the time we spent in the car would just be on the local roads because we certainly wouldn't spend more time traveling than not.  Al thought about it and concluded that when we DO go traveling we could just as easily rent a car once we arrived at whatever destination we'd gone to - which would save the gasoline money it would take to haul the weight of a car behind the RV.

With this knowledge in hand we discovered that the top-rated cars had changed since the publication of Consumer Reports' 2012 Buyer's Guide, and spent the rest of the evening deciding between the Toyota Camry Hybrid, the Honda Accord, Nissan's Altima, Ford's Focus (Hybrid) and the Hyundai Sonata.  After literally hours of research and discussion we agreed on the 2012 Toyota Camry Hybrid XLE, and called it a night.

So this morning, Al suggested that we go out and get our hair and nails done - the first time since before the move!!  What a treat!  We were both looking forward to it but first he had to go online to find who had the best price on the car we wanted.  It turned out that nobody within 100 miles even HAD the model we wanted but one guy in a town about 20 miles south of here (Leesburg) suggested we look at the non-hybrid 2012 Camry XLE, two of which he had on hand.  A number of additional hours went by as Al haggled, checked other sources, awaited call-backs, and finally decided on one of the cars.  Then he spent another large amount of time securing insurance for it.  At last we cut a deal ($2000 less than MSRP - a price in line with what Consumer Reports said was fair.  Good Job, Al!!) and awaited pickup by one of their staff who happened to live in The Villages.  We got to the dealership at around 3pm, saw the car (it's quite pretty, actually) and did the deal.  The car only had 34 miles on it when we drove it off the lot.  The color is called "Sandy Beach Metallic" (who thinks up these color names, anyway?  Someone who's surely had too much sugar before sitting down to work!) but to me it looks sort of goldish.  It's pretty.  The seats are beige with a nice white cross-hatch pattern on 'em.  It has a lot of bells and whistles which we have yet to learn but the driver's seat adjusts 9 different ways so Al was able to find a really comfortable position to drive in.  I wrote a big check, they slapped a license plate on it, and it's ours!  Now we own a house and a car OUTRIGHT!  Coolness!

So we drove our shiny, new car back to Spruce Creek, where we still haven't gotten our hair and hails done but instead we tried one of the Japanese restaurants we'd discovered.  It's actually a steakhouse, which means Teppanyakki, of course, and that side of the restaurant was quite busy; meaning the locals enjoy it a lot however we were the only ones who sat at the tiny little sushi bar to see what the sushi guy could do.  It wasn't bad but I gotta admit, it sure wasn't what we were used to.  No uni, no salt water eel, no natto, no Green Tea Ice Cream.  And the sushi man, though he was clearly Japanese, didn't understand Al when he asked for the check in Japanese.  AWWWW.  We've heard of another Japanese restaurant in The Villages that actually had an interesting website so next time the raw fish level of our bloodstreams gets low we'll try the other place.

That brings me to right now - it's 9pm, I'm full, the birds have been fed and put to bed, and I haven't yet found a dry cleaner or gotten any laundry done.

Wish me luck for tomorrow - but  I've got to return the rental car...

Oh well, if that doesn't work, the movers are coming on Monday and I'll have to be at the house anyhow!


No comments:

Post a Comment