And just like that, all is right with the world again

Odd how that works out.

This morning, the relo lady calls me to say she's ordering up the third market value assessment, and she's going to tell them to put a rush on it.

Grate.

Then, finally, the moving van estimator calls up to make an appointment. Only 4 days after he was supposed to call.

And, surprise surprise, the landscaper shows up and fixes the sprinkler.

While all this is going on, our realtors are taking all kinds of pictures of the house for the web page and the flyer. The lady realtor (it's a man-woman team) goes into the spare bedroom that we use as an office and tells The Mrs. to get rid of the bookshelves because they make the room seem small. You may remember the saga of the bookshelves from such posts as this one and this one. These are big, heavy shelves as can be seen in the photos on the second link there. It would have been nice if they had said something when we were clearing out the house and still had the PODS rather than waiting until the day of the photoshoot to say it was all wrong.

Then, another surprise, the realtor asked to do the third assessment calls and is heading right over. It's about 1:30. I skeedattle home to be there, as sometimes the childrens can be a handful when strangers are around, and I don't want anything to cause delay.

MaxieC was asleep for his nap already when I got there, which was about 5 minutes before the realtor. She comes in and says, "I understand it's my job to be a tie-breaker."

Yup. Two estimates already, but they differ by 7%, which is more than the allowed 5%.

She rolls her eyes.

She says, "What are the two estimates?" Then she says, "Oh...maybe you're not supposed to tell me that?"

I think to myself, "Self, I'm probably not supposed to tell her that. But no one ever told me not to tell her that. And if I do tell her, it certainly could make life a lot easier."

So I tell her the first number. She says, "I can see that." I tell her the second. She says, "Yeah, I can see that, too." Then she says something about how there's a pretty wide range on these things, and it's mostly a judgment call on what you consider comparable. She asks about the rules.

I tell her, "They take the closest two of the three, average them, and I can go 5% higher than that. But I plan to list at $X pretty much regardless of the math." $X is almost exactly 1/3 of the way up from the lower estimate to the higher.

Then she wandered from room to room taking pictures, as they are required to submit a picture of every room. MaxieC got to be in one of them, since he was asleep on his bed during this. She did lots of gushing about how nicely the house was arranged for selling and the wonderful floorplan. Then she got to the compooter room.

"Suck it up and put these shelves in the garage. This is a big room, but they make it look tiny."

Guess what I'll be doing tomorrow. That's right, I'll be figuring out where I can stow the shelves I just put in in May. They're too big to fit in the shed, and really too big for the garage even. I'm hoping I can disassemble them into planks that I can store in the shed. I think I can. They appear to be highish-end pressboard screw-together stuff, if there is such a thing as highish-end in this segment. If not, I'm going to either have to truck them to the dump or find some friend who will store them for a few weeks.

The best part of it is that they are earthquake strapped to the studs with lag bolts, so when I take out the shelves, there will be spackling and painting involved. I hope I can find the paint.

But, at any rate, right before she left, she said, "Now I can't promise you exactly what I'm going to do with the price, but I took a quick look at the comps before coming out here, and I'll have no trouble coming in between those two prices. You don't worry at all. This is taken care of. They'll have it on their desk by 11am Monday. Have a restful weekend."

Our network connection has been iffy from home the last few days. I've had to reboot the DSL modem a lot to get reconnected. Tonight, I couldn't get connected at all for a long time. The modem just kept going through a bizarre light sequence on the front, over and over.

I bit the bullet and called tech support. I was promptly connected to a nice fellow called "Alex" who had a fairly thick Indian accent. I'm guessing Alex was his stage name. He ran a line check on my line, had me reboot the modem a couple times, and had me remove the line filter. In the end, he said, "The line check came back 'out of service'. That means either there is a line problem or you modem is bad."

Yes, I knew that before I called, since the router was working fine with all the computers able to talk to it, and the modem status lights were telling me it saw the router but could not find the DSL line each time I rebooted it before started blinking that bizarre stuff.

He then added, "Based on what you are reporting of the modem lights, I'd say your modem is bad. Go buy a new modem."

Grate. This is 10pm, and tomorrow is pretty heavily booked with it being HannieC's 6th birthday and all, so probably no DSL until Sunday. The Mrs. will be especially unhappy, as her only solace, her only escape from The Childrens is the hour or so she spends on email and Yahooooo messenger with her mom each night.

I'm all pissed.

Then I gots to thinking. I said, "Self, I remember you had another DSL modem left over from when you had Covad DSL at the old house. I remember you saw it when you were organizing the compooter room back in May when you got the shelves. Self, you didn't throw it out, did you?"

"I sure hope not, Self. But I can't remember. If you still have it, it's in the bottom bin of the storage thing in the closet."

Woo-Hoo! Right on top. Gotta dig a little to find the power supply, as despite being the same brand, it was a slightly different model and the old power supply did not fit. Plus it in, fire it up, and 20 seconds later I'm back in bidness.

So, to recap, the delay in listing the house appears to be cleared up, the sprinklers appear to be fixed, the moving van people are coming out, we're going to be listed on our target date, and the DSL connectivity problem is fixed.

Not too shabby for a Friday.

I'm sure I'll pay in spades tomorrow.