Miscellaneous notes.

[rivka]

o We looked at a house today that I love. Huge, full of light (there's a central light well with a spiral staircase, and big skylights in the roof, and the second and third story rooms open up to the light well), hot tub in the finished part of the basement, eat-in kitchen with lots and lots of cupboards, ginormous master bedroom/sitting room, gorgeous master bath with another skylight, fireplace in the (admittedly teensy) living room, big deep bay window (the house used to be a storefront)... I. LOVE. It.

What the hell do we do now?

o curiousangel and I finally bought the DVD player we'd agreed to give each other for Christmas, and joined Netflix. Our first movies arrived today. We just finished watching Lilo and Stitch. I bawled my head off. I was charmed by his admission that he cried and cried the first time he saw it, too. This is what makes him consummately marriage material.

o When it comes to comfort food, simpler is better. We had beef stew for dinner: a pound of chuck beef, cubed, seared in a little bit of olive oil. A small onion, two very large potatoes, two handfuls of halved baby carrots, two handfuls of quartered mushrooms, a can of beef broth, water to cover, a bay leaf, a generous amount of black pepper, added to the beef and cooked for an hour. Mmmm, stew.

o Oooooh, Lilo! I'm totally in love.

o More serious topics later, I promise. I've been wanting to write some things about forgiveness - we're submitting a grant proposal, a therapy study involving people with end-stage AIDS who have "unfinished business" with important others in their lives. In the process of preparing a pitch letter for the granting agency, I came across a lot of stuff about definitions of forgiveness, and distinctions between forgiveness and related concepts (e.g., forgiveness is not reconciliation, or forgetting, or condoning, or excusing, or...). I've struggled with how to conceptualize forgiveness, in my clinical practice, and I found this material fascinating. I want to post about it.

But not after half a bottle of wine.

Comments

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I don't know how house-buying works over there, but over here you don't get the surveyor's report until you're some way down the line - until your offer has been accepted, but before you exchange contracts, if I recall correctly. The mortgage company decide if they want to loan you money, and then assign you a surveyor to decide whether or not it would be sensible to loan money for that house. You can also get an independent surveyor in (I'm pretty sure my parents always get their own surveyor as well). You don't want to fall in love with the house, and find after you've exchanged contracts that it has some major structural flaw which you'll have to spend money out-of-pocket to fix. Getting another surveyor to report is easier and cheaper than trying to sue the first surveyor for not finding something.

Of course, none of this may apply to the US system.