MAR-A-11
I SPOKE TOO SOON ABOUT THE
SPRING THAW.
BUT, AT LEAST OTHER MORE
LASTING CHANGES AT DERWOOD ARE COMING AROUND
OK, let’s start with the complaints! It is not, as expected, all spring-like and warming, even after most of the snow melted from the drive in Derwood, converting it to a rutted mass of mud. Just in time for that first thaw, along came the fuel truck from Petro to refill my tank with heating oil. Besides rutting the road considerably, one other rather noticeable event occurred—on departing the drive, the big truck demolished my two (new) mailboxes!
I made a trial run from Lake Needwood, but the trail has too much snow and ice still, so I ran the traffic-choked roads to the side lanes of houses tucked back into the woods backing on to the parks around lakes Needwood and Frank; I was surprised at what I saw, on this, my first excursion into some of my near neighboring streets. There are houses, not as obscured by trees and with as large a “backyard” as mine, but they have paddocks and horses in many cases and lamas in one.
ITEMS
I have bought several new items in my cooped up snow-bound time in the last weeks, going through catalogs the way some cabin-fever types probably went through the Burpee seed catalog awaiting spring. One of the items I bought was a heart rate monitor, which is supposed to allow maximum exertion in endurance sports training. Since my running will be all last minute long hauls, I figured I would have to gain in efficiency what I lacked in miles, so I tried it out. It works as a transmitter to a watch worn on the wrist, and will either beep or just show you what the heart rate is so that you are pushed to 65% or 85% maximum effort. I have yet to learn how to use this device well, but I will see later, when I can run without having to dodge vehicles or jump over icy patches of snow piles.
Another item I bought was a new “pocket” camera, as potential replacements for the Nikon TeleTouch cameras that have served me well. They have served me so well, that when they are damaged (which seems to be once per year for each of them) I carry them to George Mora Nikon service, who always tells me the cost of repair will be higher than the purchase price of the camera, but I have said, “Go Ahead,” since I know how to use these small cameras, which I carry when I cannot manage the big Nikon N8008.
The smaller Nikons have worked so well for me that others have recognized their value too---and have stolen them. I bought a total of seven, gave two away as gifts, and the other four have been “Missing in Action”—one at bayonet point in Mozambique, two of them “borrowed” at Kilimanjaro and never returned, and one which is now the scavenged parts depot for the one remaining Nikon NTT that I still have. So, since they do not make a camera so convenient as this anymore, and since everyone is going digital—as I must certainly do, too, some day when I decide what kind beyond prototype I should have—I thought I would snap up a couple of the last of another breed, the Minolta Freedom Action Zoom 90.
I saw a Minolta Freedom Action Zoom 90, in a Sportsman’s Guide catalog, and bought two of them in order to have at least one as a back up if the other fails. This keeps me form having to commit to a particular kind of digital camera until I have worked with several as a trial of which I should stay with, extending my life of film and prints just a bit longer since I have large investments in photo albums and their accessory pages anyway, while putting a few photos each trip on disc and internet film for easy passing around.
AND, NOW, MOVING
ON TO THE “BIG TICKET” ITEMS:
This is the week that the title transfer would have to happen for Derwood, or else the once in a lifetime capital gains exclusion for the Vander harts’ claim would hit them after march 15 for over $85,000 on what they hoped was their windfall gold mine. To make sure the contract my attorney had drawn up was signed (not as yet delivered) and they could not accuse me of delaying things, I wrote a check for an astronomic sum, and deposited it into an escrow account by hand-delivery to my attorney’s office, so there would be no doubt about the availability of cash and sincerity of the conclusion of the deal based on the time a check might float before clearing.
There is still the question of the clearance of the original loan paid off over ten years ago, since that loan was not recorded as cleared in the court house, after it had been recorded there at the time of the purchase. In the interval Lowell Bennett died, and I had spoken with Mary Ellen Bennet three years ago after the Vander harts moved out, but there is no assurance that she is competent to clarify that the loans had been paid, despite the cashed check in my records. So, the process at the courthouse, for which letters were sent by two of the lawyers working with me, Tom Gibbon, who had arranged the settlement of the Aurora Drive property, for which I magically found the payoff note and “Discharge of Mortgage “ in the boxes in the attic on the date of the settlement which would otherwise have to be postponed, and my own attorney Dan Kennedy, who said yesterday, that the title would have to be held in some kind of escrow account until the sixty days title search to correct the courthouse omission of the mortgage discharge was clarified. What that would do to the Vander hart’s capital gains if they did not get all their blood money—a hugely handsome return on my investment—would be uncertain.
So, I went back to the attic, searching this time for the name and documentation of the Living Trust into which I had transferred my properties in 1998. In a big file binder, I found the title name fro the living trust, and then found a Xerox copy of the “Discharge of Mortgage” and of the Deed of Trust and Title to the property. This set off a further search until I found an envelope form the attorney once representing the Bennets named Fenton, and in the envelope, carefully preserved----as are almost every document I have ever kept, even if it is difficult to retrieve them on command—are all the originals of the Discharge of Mortgage, records of payoffs of notes and Deed of Trust and the original Title! So, that should “Perfect the Process,” a term I had heard once used legally as the GWU Hospital morass of action that had been flawed every which way, but they had to spend a lot of time and money trying to “perfect the process,” which ultimately failed for them anyway.
So, allegedly on Thursday, one business day ahead of the March 15 deadline, with a large pile of cash—the equivalent of bullion under the bed posts—is accessible in my attorney’s office, and the originals of all documents (faxed in their copy form) are also now ready for the table and the final “Quit Claim” should be delivered, getting greed out of my hair for good!
I have written a note to Dale Kramer of D G Liu Contractors to get them back over now that this matter is out of the way, as unhappy as I was not to have been able to sign the seven-day limit of the remodeling contract last year, and we can see by just how much the costs of the postponed additions and remodeling of the house have gone up---about at the same rate as that of gasoline, was the estimate. But, I now will have some additional items to consider adding while the house will be completely disrupted with the kitchen blown out and major demolition taking place in many other places as the long-term construction begins, and the sub-optimal state of the plumbing and bathrooms comes up. It is time to re-do those, if the whole crew is here, and if the whole house is going to be done over at once, and kitchen and bathrooms are demolished, that means I would have to find some other place to live during the interval of some considerably longer term than the estimated six months.