January 23, 2005

31

This is the week I turn 31. The big event will be Thursday. To celebrate I treated myself to a haircut and hair color yesterday afternoon (mostly to cover the two gray hairs I found. People who are 30 should not be getting gray hairs. If I continue to get gray hairs, it will be obvious that I'm not really a member of the Spice Girls and my cover will be blown).

For every birthday I've had in recent memory, the day has completely sucked. Two years ago, Archi-Sapper was alerted to go to Iraq. I had two hours notice and he vanished onto the interstate, to return a year later (and then only for fifteen days). Last year, Archi was ensconced in Iraq and I spent the evening watching American Idol with Maggie (I'm not dissing AI or Maggie, I'm just saying it could've been more exciting).

This year is going to be different. This year will be exciting! It'll be fun! I'm taking depositions on my birthday!

Well, at least I'll have good billable hours.

Posted by Kitty at 02:05 PM | Comments (9)

January 12, 2005

Home Non-Ownership

Archi-Sapper and I received a letter yesterday with some surprising news. We don't own our house.

No, I'm not kidding.

You know the house we bought four months ago? The one I blogged about? The one we shopped for, found, bid on, closed on and moved into? The one that had the gas leak that almost killed us and the ceiling that caved in during the storm? Yes, that house. We don't own it. Or all of it, anyway.

Apparently we have a title problem (so does Prince, but that's really a title problem of a different sort). As I have learned over the past 24 hours, we purchased our house from a company we'll call ABC. ABC is in the business of buying houses, renovating them, and selling them for a profit. ABC bought this house about two years ago from a group of people, all of whom are brothers and sisters.

The group of siblings had inherited the house from their parents when their parents passed away. Each sibling inherited an equal interest in the property. Unfortunately for the sibling (and now for us), one of them declared bankruptcy and in order to get one of her creditors off her back, she assigned her interest in the house to her creditor.

This worked like a charm. The only problem was that when the assignment was recorded in the local conveyance office, it was recorded improperly. Thus, when ABC's closing attorney and later our closing attorney did title searches on the property, they came up clean. ABC purchased the house from the group of siblings, never realizing that they hadn't bought the entire house. The bankrupt sibling couldn't sell her interest in the house to ABC or anyone else because she no longer owned that interest. Sadly, she never bothered to apprise anyone of that small fact.

Ultimately it appears that we now own most of our house, with this creditor owning a portion of it that they no longer want. I believe they would like to have someone buy out their interest (wouldn't we all?), but that someone will not be me (nor will it be Archi-Sapper. Or our dog. She's stingy with her money).

Happily, I spoke with the title company today and they've assured me that our home is not in danger and that they will take care of things. Even if they can't, I'm not going to lose (too much) sleep over this, as we wisely purchased title insurance, which is designed exactly for this situation.

After four brief months of home ownership, we've had so many weird things happen to us that we've decided the only weird property related thing that could happen that hasn't (yet) is for someone to call us up and tell us they have mineral rights in our backyard and they'd like for us to stop walking our dog there so they can move a drilling rig onto it and drill for oil.

I'm still waiting for that phone call.

Posted by Kitty at 06:01 PM | Comments (1)

January 08, 2005

The Jumble

Although there are all sorts of things that happen in southeast Louisiana that make me scratch my head, none has yet motivated me to write a letter to the editor of our fair newspaper. The main reason I've never written one is because I never felt like I had a big enough gripe that it needed to be aired in the paper. Perhaps I was mistaken. The following is a verbatim reprint of a letter that appeared in today's Times Picayune:

In this age of calamity and mayhem, abhorrence and war, my diminutive grievance seems quite trivial, but I desire to voice it nonetheless.

Many of us find momentary reprieve from the world's turmoil by enjoying simple things such as word puzzles. The "Jumble" puzzle published in The Times-Picayune is one such example, where the object is to unscramble so-called ordinary words. To my dismay, the Dec. 30 Jumble included the detestable and repulsive word "behead" as one of the "ordinary" words.

In my opinion the word "behead" is not an ordinary word. This repugnant and horrific word symbolizes a barbaric atrocity committed by evil, depraved and murderous degenerates who blaspheme their own religion by purportedly committing this abomination in the name of God. There is absolutely nothing ordinary about that.

The Jumble would be much more enjoyable if it could omit such despicable reminders of the world's chaos and insanity.

John Doe

New Orleans

Posted by Kitty at 08:23 PM | Comments (0)

January 07, 2005

Back in the Saddle

Archi-Sapper had the great idea of taking our desktops (both of them) to the IT guy at his office and paying him to fix them. Both were perfectly good desktops that were completely incapacitated, and we were unable to get them up and running, even after following some great advice by some smart folks.

Computer #1 is back and in great shape. It's problem was that we (read: I) had downloaded so much spyware, adware and other junk that it crippled the computer. It took Archi's IT guy THREE HOURS to delete it all off the system. He wiped the slate clean and Archi set the computer back up at home, installing every protection program McAfee makes. In addition, I took Death and Taxes' suggestion and downloaded Firefox 1.0 by Mozilla to use as our web browser.

Computer #2 is in the process of being fixed. Oddly enough, the IT guy believes that the problem with that computer is that the power button no longer works. Strange but true. He's fixing that, although it's not as much of a priority now that we have one working desktop and one working laptop at home. If we get another desktop our office will look like a NASA control room.

And if none of these solutions for fixing our computers work, I'm buy a Mac.

Posted by Kitty at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)

January 05, 2005

50 Book Challenge

Here's an interesting idea -- the challenge is to read 50 books in a year and blog about them. Hmmm, I could do that......

Posted by Kitty at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)

Road Hazards

I have just learned that I have to take another route to work tomorrow, as the roads around my office will be closed. Movie makers will be filming a high-speed car chase for the movie The Dukes of Hazzard. Sounds classy.

Posted by Kitty at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)