House buying

As I write this - Jan 18th - I just opened our 401k and realised HOW much money has vanished this past year. About 50%.

No, that's not a typo :-(. Picking smallcap and international stocks has been good in the past; not this year.

Which is one of many reasons that I'm glad we moved to a place where we could afford to buy a house that we *really* like without killing ourselves financially. Here we are at the closing - only 6 weeks behind schedule, pretty good for construction! - with Keiran being held by our realtor (Lisa Wallock; we'd recommend her if you happen to need a house in Albany)




and with Jenny and the attorneys.



For once we actually got our money's worth out of the legal fee: the very last paper (as in, I have the keys in my pocket and everyone has their coats on) had a title issue, and it took four of them several hours the next morning to resolve it, after I did not respond favourably to the suggestion that we should "just sign" papers binding us to conditions that didn't exist :-).

Anyway: one very large cheque, and an even larger debt, and we bought a house. Of which pictures should be next!