Dean
Choi's Clawmaker
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2003
- Posts
- 4,821
So this is a long story that some of you may read, some may not, some may care, others not. Either way, I finally have some few minutes or so to type it right now, so here goes.
Last I was on here, I mentioned I was moving. And that has happened. Sort of. And also some may remember I went to China in June. And that I switched jobs 10 months ago. All of this has factored into where I've been and what I've been doing.
Prior to going to China, we had decided to buy a house off of my in-laws, a house that had been a rental property for the past 18 years. The move was planned for July 14th, a day after the house was vacated and one day before the tenants were to move into my old house. This is what you'd call a tight timeline.
While in China (June 10-20), I noticed that my father-in-law seemed a bit winded when walking around and taking lots of naps. Now remember, we're buying a house from him too.
We returned and on the drive to his house, my father-in-law crashed his car. It seemed he had merely fallen asleep at first. But after running tests, the doctors discovered his heart's mitral valve had deteriorated and needed repair/replacing immediately. The surgery was scheduled for late July. And was successful, full-on open heart surgery. In the hospital for 5 days, and then out and around the house for 6 weeks of recovery.
Now of course this is my wife's father and we are in the middle of coordinating a massive move and dealing with finding then moving in renters to our old house.
Then a week later, he is short of breath again and his heart is racing with abnormally low blood pressure. Rushed to the hospital where after a day of tests they find out that he has fluid around the heart: nearly 800 mL, almost a freaking liter! Another week in the hospital, but since then he has been doing well and is now back to work.
Except for the blood clot resulting from the artificial valve they installed. A blood clot they can't find and that has given him a couple of instances of blurry vision and light-headedness. So you can imagine the tension we've had.
Now about the move itself, you know, the other main event starting at this time.
So the house is actually the house my wife grew up in, some 18-28 years ago. It has been a long time since she had even stepped foot in it and we had both seen the inside for only 5 minutes before we were to move in. It seemed fine at quick glance and the in-laws didn't raise any concerns at all about it. We assumed we would just be painting the inside and then moving on and in.
After nearly 2 weeks of packing our old house, the movers show up, pack up the truck, drive, and unload, the majority of the boxes into the garage, the furniture into the house. This was smooth.
But then we were in the house and found that the kitchen was basically completely unchanged in 28 years. And seemingly not cleaned at all either. The floors are nasty, the cabinets are sticky, and there is a massive ant problem. The bathrooms are OK. That is if you like metallic palm tree wallpaper. The carpets are dirty, the ceiling has watermarks.
Oh, and there are rat droppings coming from a split in the ceiling beam/roof in the living room. The garage has tons of cobwebs and rat shit everywhere, which I of course discover after moving stuff into it.
Weeks and now months of work later, the kitchen is ALMOST done, the bathrooms are scheduled for this week, and the painting has come down to two last rooms. My workshop is currently a wood bench and no tools since I haven't yet unpacked or even found those boxes.
And wait, did I yet mention that this entire past 3 months we've been living AT my in-laws? You know, where the good drama is? Where a father-in-law that couldn't go to work for 6 weeks was living on the internet connection (the router they have is currently only working on the hardline, the wireless is dead and this has occurred to TWO routers now they've had). Pretty much I leave work at 6:30-7 pm everyday, go to the "new" house and work for 2-3 hours, get "home" at eat at 10 pm, then head off to bed.
Squeeze in about 10-30 minutes to play with my son here and there too.
So, the job. That has been going very well since I joined and I'm doing well there, but the pressure is on me since I am new, in a slightly different field, and since we announced the second largest deal in biotech history recently. We are only ~65 people right now, but we signed a $1.5 BILLION deal with GSK a month ago and now the pressure is really on to prove we can do it. You can read about it at my companies web page:
www.chemocentryx.com
I did mention renting out my old house too, right? Hey guess what happened with the renters we had.
No rent in August. No contact. Screening calls. When do we hear from them? After we start the eviction process by posting a 3-day notice on the door. We showed up at the house, knowing damn well they were in there and they didn't answer the door. The yappy mutt they had is getting smothered so it doesn't make a sound and alert us to their presence.
Then they answer us and say they'll be out in 2 weeks. This after a month (all of August) of dealing with bounced checks, broken promises, and much dealing with legal information about how to properly evict someone in the shortest time so we're out the least amount of money.
So they moved out Sept 17th without ever meeting up with us, without paying $1500+ they still owe us and without a forwarding address. We get to the house the next day and find a ton of crap they left. Boxes of belongings, tons of cleaning supplies, and then the best one, a box of documents, including years of late payment notices, rejected credit cards, etc. Found a back taxes letter from the IRS, 2 unlawful detainer notices (eviction proceedings) unopened, etc. And the best part?
The guy was using a fake last name due to his bad credit.
And the yard was a complete mess which makes renting it out again very very difficult. I have been spending time on the weekends mowing, trimming, cutting, etc at THAT house. And all the time we're losing money since we had no real notice to get new people in the house.
This caused a very stressful time to be even more so, with my wife ready to beat someone's ass, potentially including mine.
On top of it all, we discover 3 weeks ago some wings. Little bug wings. In the house we bought. You know, little wings of things that fly? Yeah, well those wings it turns out belong to termites. The drywood kind. You know, the type that you need to put a big ass tent over your house to fumigate and kill them? Yeah, those. Oh, and then upon inspection under the house? Yeah, they found subterranean termites too. So that's now 4 pests (tons of ants, rats, drywood, and subterranean termites). Usually you'd find out about all that BEFORE you buy and move in, right?
Not when you buy from the in-laws.
Now realize they weren't being malicious. They just never thought about it. Remember, this was a rental for 18 years. A house I never had a report on nor ever seen for more than 5 minutes.
So this weekend, the circus is in town. I'll post pics of the circus tent on the house soon. What's more is that since we are effectively bombing the house, my wife wanted to move out EVERYTHING. Yeah, all that stuff the movers put inside, like beds, carpets, clothes, etc? I moved all that out over the past 1+ weeks. And now I'll have to move all back the hell in in the next weeks.
In the end, it'll all work out, of course, but for nearly 3 full months now my life has been utter hell and as a result I've nearly cut ties with the outside world. Internet at work is near impossible (remember months ago I posted how I don't have an office in the new job and I have high traffic behind me and a window to the hall next to me) and at home is very difficult. I'm up at 6:15 am to get out for work and home at 10pm, exhausted. The problem is that I've more or less been sporadic in answering any messages or e-mails while I have deals pending at it has been killing me knowing it. Superguns lying half finished, a few packages yet to ship. And I must thank everyone who has been so patient with the situation and the tiny drips of info I have gotten out there in rare e-mails.
I envision this only taking another 2-4 weeks of full on attention, but with some more breaks coming in the current week. Finally.
Sorry to anyone that has tried to contact me and thanks to those that have been concerned. I've missed this place a ton and I'll be working back to normal shortly.
Last I was on here, I mentioned I was moving. And that has happened. Sort of. And also some may remember I went to China in June. And that I switched jobs 10 months ago. All of this has factored into where I've been and what I've been doing.
Prior to going to China, we had decided to buy a house off of my in-laws, a house that had been a rental property for the past 18 years. The move was planned for July 14th, a day after the house was vacated and one day before the tenants were to move into my old house. This is what you'd call a tight timeline.
While in China (June 10-20), I noticed that my father-in-law seemed a bit winded when walking around and taking lots of naps. Now remember, we're buying a house from him too.
We returned and on the drive to his house, my father-in-law crashed his car. It seemed he had merely fallen asleep at first. But after running tests, the doctors discovered his heart's mitral valve had deteriorated and needed repair/replacing immediately. The surgery was scheduled for late July. And was successful, full-on open heart surgery. In the hospital for 5 days, and then out and around the house for 6 weeks of recovery.
Now of course this is my wife's father and we are in the middle of coordinating a massive move and dealing with finding then moving in renters to our old house.
Then a week later, he is short of breath again and his heart is racing with abnormally low blood pressure. Rushed to the hospital where after a day of tests they find out that he has fluid around the heart: nearly 800 mL, almost a freaking liter! Another week in the hospital, but since then he has been doing well and is now back to work.
Except for the blood clot resulting from the artificial valve they installed. A blood clot they can't find and that has given him a couple of instances of blurry vision and light-headedness. So you can imagine the tension we've had.
Now about the move itself, you know, the other main event starting at this time.
So the house is actually the house my wife grew up in, some 18-28 years ago. It has been a long time since she had even stepped foot in it and we had both seen the inside for only 5 minutes before we were to move in. It seemed fine at quick glance and the in-laws didn't raise any concerns at all about it. We assumed we would just be painting the inside and then moving on and in.
After nearly 2 weeks of packing our old house, the movers show up, pack up the truck, drive, and unload, the majority of the boxes into the garage, the furniture into the house. This was smooth.
But then we were in the house and found that the kitchen was basically completely unchanged in 28 years. And seemingly not cleaned at all either. The floors are nasty, the cabinets are sticky, and there is a massive ant problem. The bathrooms are OK. That is if you like metallic palm tree wallpaper. The carpets are dirty, the ceiling has watermarks.
Oh, and there are rat droppings coming from a split in the ceiling beam/roof in the living room. The garage has tons of cobwebs and rat shit everywhere, which I of course discover after moving stuff into it.
Weeks and now months of work later, the kitchen is ALMOST done, the bathrooms are scheduled for this week, and the painting has come down to two last rooms. My workshop is currently a wood bench and no tools since I haven't yet unpacked or even found those boxes.
And wait, did I yet mention that this entire past 3 months we've been living AT my in-laws? You know, where the good drama is? Where a father-in-law that couldn't go to work for 6 weeks was living on the internet connection (the router they have is currently only working on the hardline, the wireless is dead and this has occurred to TWO routers now they've had). Pretty much I leave work at 6:30-7 pm everyday, go to the "new" house and work for 2-3 hours, get "home" at eat at 10 pm, then head off to bed.
Squeeze in about 10-30 minutes to play with my son here and there too.
So, the job. That has been going very well since I joined and I'm doing well there, but the pressure is on me since I am new, in a slightly different field, and since we announced the second largest deal in biotech history recently. We are only ~65 people right now, but we signed a $1.5 BILLION deal with GSK a month ago and now the pressure is really on to prove we can do it. You can read about it at my companies web page:
www.chemocentryx.com
I did mention renting out my old house too, right? Hey guess what happened with the renters we had.
No rent in August. No contact. Screening calls. When do we hear from them? After we start the eviction process by posting a 3-day notice on the door. We showed up at the house, knowing damn well they were in there and they didn't answer the door. The yappy mutt they had is getting smothered so it doesn't make a sound and alert us to their presence.
Then they answer us and say they'll be out in 2 weeks. This after a month (all of August) of dealing with bounced checks, broken promises, and much dealing with legal information about how to properly evict someone in the shortest time so we're out the least amount of money.
So they moved out Sept 17th without ever meeting up with us, without paying $1500+ they still owe us and without a forwarding address. We get to the house the next day and find a ton of crap they left. Boxes of belongings, tons of cleaning supplies, and then the best one, a box of documents, including years of late payment notices, rejected credit cards, etc. Found a back taxes letter from the IRS, 2 unlawful detainer notices (eviction proceedings) unopened, etc. And the best part?
The guy was using a fake last name due to his bad credit.
And the yard was a complete mess which makes renting it out again very very difficult. I have been spending time on the weekends mowing, trimming, cutting, etc at THAT house. And all the time we're losing money since we had no real notice to get new people in the house.
This caused a very stressful time to be even more so, with my wife ready to beat someone's ass, potentially including mine.
On top of it all, we discover 3 weeks ago some wings. Little bug wings. In the house we bought. You know, little wings of things that fly? Yeah, well those wings it turns out belong to termites. The drywood kind. You know, the type that you need to put a big ass tent over your house to fumigate and kill them? Yeah, those. Oh, and then upon inspection under the house? Yeah, they found subterranean termites too. So that's now 4 pests (tons of ants, rats, drywood, and subterranean termites). Usually you'd find out about all that BEFORE you buy and move in, right?
Not when you buy from the in-laws.
Now realize they weren't being malicious. They just never thought about it. Remember, this was a rental for 18 years. A house I never had a report on nor ever seen for more than 5 minutes.
So this weekend, the circus is in town. I'll post pics of the circus tent on the house soon. What's more is that since we are effectively bombing the house, my wife wanted to move out EVERYTHING. Yeah, all that stuff the movers put inside, like beds, carpets, clothes, etc? I moved all that out over the past 1+ weeks. And now I'll have to move all back the hell in in the next weeks.
In the end, it'll all work out, of course, but for nearly 3 full months now my life has been utter hell and as a result I've nearly cut ties with the outside world. Internet at work is near impossible (remember months ago I posted how I don't have an office in the new job and I have high traffic behind me and a window to the hall next to me) and at home is very difficult. I'm up at 6:15 am to get out for work and home at 10pm, exhausted. The problem is that I've more or less been sporadic in answering any messages or e-mails while I have deals pending at it has been killing me knowing it. Superguns lying half finished, a few packages yet to ship. And I must thank everyone who has been so patient with the situation and the tiny drips of info I have gotten out there in rare e-mails.
I envision this only taking another 2-4 weeks of full on attention, but with some more breaks coming in the current week. Finally.
Sorry to anyone that has tried to contact me and thanks to those that have been concerned. I've missed this place a ton and I'll be working back to normal shortly.
Just get all that garbage taken care of, and come back whenever its done heh.
