dark ages

my cell phone crapped out Tuesday. First the screen turned green, then scrambled, then nothing at all, so i have no cell phone and no work email access and won't be home until friday. i've been using the hotel phone to check voicemail and using my personal email to communicate. Monday's a holiday, so i won't have a phone until tuesday. this sucks

P3

Last week was phase 3 of the big LCA house remodel, aka P3. P1 was in 2006, where they (I couldn't make it) tore off the front porch, replaced it with a nice brick patio, did some great landscaping and remodeled the tv room, foyer and chapter room. Last year, for P2, they combined two two-man rooms into one three-man room, bricked the back yard, redid the game room and some other stuff, I can't remember what.

This year was the first year I was able to make it, and it was a good time. I wish I could have been there longer than just during the day on Saturday. It started mid-week with demolition work, and they ate some fried turkey nuts at some point. I arrived on Saturday morning, around 9:30. I had a 10:00 Housing Corp. meeting, so I couldn't really get started on any work. I checked the progress out, took a few pictures and went to the meeting. When we got done 40 minutes later, things were in full swing. The major project was in theme with previous years "the brickyard". We continued the brick patio and sidewalk from the front porch all the way down to the road, put in a new entry way at the road, new doors/windows in the chapter room, which are going to be much nicer during parties, as you could never open enough windows to keep things cool. They were also adding some nice stone accents to the front corners and around the door. They used the same manufactured stone as I put on my house, and it makes the front really pop. In the back, we took out all the gravel where everybody threw their smokes between the house and the parking lot and put some paving bricks down and some nice entries into the doors. They put the old front sidewalk (in chunks) in the back yard to accommodate the snakes walking path to their house. It was a better idea than paying someone to haul off a ton of concrete for sure! They also filled in a trench with concrete, that they dug last year to run power to the back yard bbq pit. up to this point it was just full of gravel.

Inside, we were putting up new doors on some of the rooms, and upstairs doing some major remodeling and masonry work. Jim "P-Nut" Benzing was the driving force behind the design and put together some really well laid out rooms. I have a few pics of it in progress, but hopefully they were able to get done Sunday and get it ready for the actives to move in. Of note, they combined the SAC closet with 250 to make it bigger. Not sure where all the bid-tuesday beer will be kept now... Other rooms remodeled were the slug room and geek room, and the other 2 rooms on that side of the hall. I helped hang some trim in there before I had to get back home. There was still quite a bit of work to do when I left, but I'm sure they pulled together and got the hard stuff done, with mostly cleanup left for the actives when they returned, which is no worse than we ever had it moving in.

Hopefully someone else will post some better/more recent pictures, as they had another day and a quarter to work after I left.

Next year, they're not asking for donations, just sweat equity, and the year after that is the big professional remodel. We're tearing that stupid Mansard roof off and putting a peaked roof and HVAC in! I wish all these assholes would have been around BEFORE I joined!

Property Taxes

So we built our house last year. It was started in March, completed in August. I figured our property tax bill wouldn't go up until 2008, which won't be payable until next July. Apparently, I was wrong.

We got a letter from the bank yesterday to notify us that they paid our property taxes out of escrow, and that it would take our escrow account $1700 into the red by the end of the year...shit. They did tell us we could pay into escrow to keep this from increasing our payment too substantially next year (to make up for the deficit AND the increase in taxes, from $100 pre-house to $1700 post-house). It came a year early, but it was about what I expected for taxes.

I decided to call the assessors office this morning to ask why the house was on our 2007 taxes when the house wasn't completed until 2/3 into the year. They told me that the house wasn't added to our taxes until February 2008, so they'll be on our taxes for next year. This year's tax bill should have just been for the property, but the lady didn't have the tax numbers, just the property assessments. She'd transfer me to the Treasurers office for that.

The lady at the treasurers office was not helpful. she simply told me if the bank paid my tax bill that they could send me a copy of it, even though they were supposed to send all tax bills to homeowners at the same time as they sent them to the banks.

currently waiting to hear back from the bank on this whole debacle. i'm going to be PISSED if my taxes went up 20-fold WITHOUT even having my house on the assessment.

UPDATE: I talked to the bank and the Treasurer's office, and got a fax of my tax statement from the Treasurer's office. It showed the house on the taxes. I called the assessor and she assured me that "the house wasn't added until 2/22/08...oh, it was before March 1st. Our tax year goes from March 1st to February 28th"

Those cocksuckers got me by 7 days (leap year)...that's no coincidence.

The good news is that they assessed the house at a reasonable value and i do have my homestead and mortgage exemptions on it.