50 Questions

Well, $9 and 50 questions later, Maria has her learner's permit. I will say that she didn't pass the exam the first time around -- missed by two questions. I would give her crap about this, but, oh, wait, I failed my written test the first time, too. (Passed the road test first time, though. Shocker.)

Anyway, that was on Saturday morning. So of course, we took a quick lesson around a neighborhood right after that. We didn't hit anything. She stayed on the right side of the road. Good and good.

Sunday we went for a longer lesson (Asim cried throughout the entire Saturday lesson) and Asim was a bit more calm. We went around a parking lot nearby a couple of dozen times. While she's driven in Pakistan just a little bit, we were basically starting from scratch. And I didn't realize how much I took for granted driving. For instance, try to describe in words to someone else where you put your hands when making a sharp right turn. And no, palming the wheel with one hand is not the answer.

After a while I got a better idea of hand-over-hand and we just kept on going around and around the parking lot. Again, we didn't hit anything. Then we went out onto a mostly empty road for a little bit. Around the back of the Meijer, past our apartment, through a (green) light and onward. We decided to end the lesson when Asim started screaming again, and Maria tore into a parking lot. I just started laughing. It was pretty impressive, really.

I am trying not to yell too much. I think doing the same thing over and over is good, too. The car is insanely easy to drive (automatic) so that's not a problem. I think the next thing will be some more road driving where there's not a lot of traffic.

On Friday we went to the Design Studio (finally!) to pick out our colors and faucets and all that stuff. It went very smoothly and very quickly, and the woman wasn't nearly as big of a bitch as she has been. The only snag was that we want a custom microwave cabinet, and she has to get the price this week sometime. You see, we don't want the microwave above the stove -- we want a vent hood that sucks the air outside instead. And we don't want their microwave, we want to use ours since it's only about two years old and quite dandy. So we thought that having a cubby hole for the microwave would be nice so it's off the counter.

She also told us that we have to pay, in cash, for our custom options. What? Salesguy never mentioned this. So that's $3,000 for the insulation, $2,200 for the tankless water heater, and probably $300 for this cabinet. Ouch.

We went to see Salesguy afterward, and he apologized about it. He said that he should have told us that. And here's the thing -- had I known, I could have saved up for it. But I was under the impression that we were just cruising toward only having to pay closing costs (less than $2,000) so I could go ahead and start killing some credit card debt.

Well, hopefully he can work something out and we can pay a little bit very fortnight or something. Otherwise it's back to cash-advancing a credit card (ick) to appease them.

Not to mention that on Friday I also signed papers locking in our interest rate for 180 days. So the house better be done by then, otherwise I'm out a couple hundred more bucks!

Of course after making our selections, we thought about colors and whatnot even more and now need to go back and change some stuff. I'm hoping they don't give us a hard time about this. Particularly because nothing is set in stone, and we know exactly what we want to change to. (All the changes are color-related. Like, the color of the house.)

And no, we're not getting a blue or green house. Those aren't options.

Asim is still doing very well. He behaved nicely during the Design Studio appointment. I continue to feel bad for him because the apartment is heinously small, and I imagine he must get bored very quickly. (You know, like me.) He can crawl ridiculously fast now. I like to try to tire him out by walking across the apartment from one bedroom to the other so he has to crawl after me.

Work-wise, things are going well. I should be done with the long commute at the end of June still. There is work back in the office to go to, so I'm stoked about that. I'm more stoked at the possibility of bike commuting every day. I guess I'll start out at every other day and then go from there. I've ordered some panniers and new cleats for my shoes, so I'll be better equipped to handle the commute.