Siliconchef by Brian Richardson
This morning was bad, this afternoon was just odd …
The plan for Wednesday morning: leave the house at 8:15am, move horse from front pasture to back pasture, be at work by 9:00am, give video conference demo to Germans.
The reality of Wednesday morning was much less organized, and a lot damper.
At 8:13am, the skies opened. Many gallons of water fell upon my house. My raincoat, of course, is in the back seat of the car. I’m totally soaked by the time I get to the car, but I put the coat on so I can stay dry when going to move the horse. Dixie, my wife’s horse, has no intentions of going anywhere … she knows there’s grass to eat right in front of her, so why should a little water get in the way of a good meal.
After some negotiations, I get the lead on Dixie and take her through the gate to the back pasture. This trip requires a trek through a deep puddle. Now my shoes and socks are totally soaked. I can risk catching a cold on my way to work in waterlogged shoes, or I can go back to the house and change.
Five minutes later I’m happy to be in dry shoes, but mad at the prospect of being late. I get to work at 9:05am, but my sales rep managed to push the demo back to 9:30am (sweet). Of course it is filled with technical glitches (they’re using a 64K ISDN line to view a demo attached to our DSL line … many things go wrong). But it’s over at 11:30am.
After the demo I get a call from Gid, a loan officer at Main Street Bank. Suzan and I are in the middle of a construction loan application, and he has called to give me an update. Apparently my appraisial came back “low”?
I ask him to define “low”. He gives me a number, which is indeed “low”. The term “low” means that the appraised land value plus the estimated value of the new house total to a number that is way too low for me to even build the house, much less pay off the existing mortgage.
I can feel the lump forming in my throat.
I ask him if the builder’s quote looks unreasonably high. He says no, that the price looks right for that house.
I ask him about the property value, describing what I paid for property seven years ago and how much my tax value has gone up in that time. He agrees that my ten acres should be worth more.
Ten acres? Wait, I own six acres?
After some discussion, Gid realizes that he’s not looking at the right paperwork. The appraisial he’s looking at is for a different man named “RICHARDSON”.
“Sorry about that,” he says, “forget this call ever happened.”
“What call?”
“Exactly. I’ll call you later.”
Breathe deep, relax, go to lunch, remember to call bank on Thursday after I calm down a bit.
