My home is not a place, it is people.
Published on July 22, 2004 By Cordelia In Home & Family
I told my friend I'd write a new blog when I have something new to say, and lo and behold I have something new to say. Or rather, I'm going to say something I've said before, just with new dates.

Still on hold with the house.

I was under the impression that we had already gotten the appraisal but we haven't. Why haven't we, an astute reader might ask? Because it's "hard". Apparently appraisers don't like to do hard jobs. From this statement, (made to me by my real estate agent) I deduce that real estate appraisers have gotten into the business for an easy paycheck. So they wouldn't actually have to work; could assess value by matching the home in question to a other homes just like it in the area, and come up with a value for which they are paid a good sum of money. I could do that. Any trained monkey could do that. But our house isn't like other houses. There are no other houses like ours anywhere near us, so they have to get a special variance to go outside the area to get a comparable value and the real estate agents office has not been able to access the internet for the last four days. Apparently they have not been able to find anyone qualified to fix the problem, so they keep calling around. Well, maybe the job of fixing the internet connection is too "hard" for most people, so they don't do it. Maybe my agent likes a taste of his own medicine.

Of course the difference here is that he is not working, or at least not working efficiently, whereas I am working as per usual, but because of these delays I have yet another month of 2 house payments to make, and bills to pay that should have been paid off by now, and interest rates going up, and why the HELL can't anyone stand up and say "yeah, it's a little hard but I think I can handle it!"

And we wonder why our nation is circling the drain. And we wonder why our schoolchildren have low test scores when they have us for an example. I have to wonder WHY when the current appraiser is waiting for my agent to get her some information can't he borrow against the more than $10,000 he's about to make off the sale of our house, go buy a laptop and go down to the freaking Starbuck's and use their internet connection!! And this jackass was recommended to me.

Everyone is a fucking idiot.

Including me, apparently, for buying the house in the first place.

Comments
on Jul 22, 2004
I've been "extra" bothered by incompetence lately. Not by the incompetence itself, which is bothersome enough, but more my inability to understand how things can be this way. How they could get and stay this way.

I found an answer though. Pick up a copy of "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, and enjoy a good read. It won't make anyone anymore competent - I think that may be a lost cause for a while until everything goes to hell and the morning coffee gets its proverbial smelling - but it will at least fill in the "why" blank, and I find that it helps, if only a little.

Good luck with the house,
Ock
on Jul 23, 2004
Thanks for your comments! Actually, I've read Atlas Shrugged several times and I agree with your take on it. It's always a good read, if only to make you feel like you are not alone in the world.

I also have a button that I pull out whenever I'm feeling particularly snotty about incompetence around me:

"I think, therefore I am...overqualified"

Usually that's when I start screwing things up, but I try!