The one that almost had to be back-dated

Well, the phone company is definitely making strides in and about this neighborhood - I passed sub-contracted phone company minion dudes working on the lines when I left for work this morning, and again when I got back home. I nearly had to forgo posting this evening because the Internet went out early today (Bob was offline by the time I got to work this morning), and only just came back on about half an hour ago.

Again, very glad we requested the phone line transfer before this started happening, and also glad it's going on, since the new house is less than a mile from the old one, and maybe all this Progress will trickle down to that neighborhood and result in us actually having a phone sometime soon.

And on that topic, we're now the proud renters of The Other House. The contract the owner prepared was entirely reasonable; I was taken aback to see "three years" in the first clause, but it turns out (which Bob actually knew and told me) that rental contracts are three years by law. But the owner added some more text that effectively made three years the maximum period (I'm sure it could be renewed if everyone were happy three years down the road), and he added a clause a the bottom that actually makes seven months the minimum, by stating that we would lose our (one-month) deposit if we move out within the first seven months. That's entirely reasonable.

So we signed the contract and paid the first month, AND, it turns out the owner is still going to paint. He said he has 10 houses he rents out, and the guy who works for him just finished painting one, and is ready to do ours starting tomorrow. So we told him "white" and let him know that we'd like to take some carloads over on Saturday and move the major stuff on Sunday, and we think that's all going to work out just fine.

We also ascertained that eight of his ten houses have three bedrooms, and asked him to let us know if a 3BR should become available at any point.

We also gave him a papaya, which seemed to go over well.