Until tomorrow. I have pictures of puppies to take.

I know the world is full of news, much of it awful.

But I’m still on break.

I’m apparently performing the Meryl Tour of Friends and Family bedrooms, as I was at my mother’s last night, at my friend Kim’s tonight, and will be at Lynn’s tomorrow.

I think sleeping in my own bed is going to feel just a little bit more special on Sunday night. Not that I don’t like visiting, but this is one for the record books.

Yes, that’s right. I’m sleeping around. (I know you were thinking it.)

Today, I give thanks for the many, many blessings in my life.

In the last year, I lost and found a Tigger, gained a new, wonderful job, and was able to buy—for the first time in my life–my own home. I’ve seen my friendships grow even more than they have in the last few years, and seen my nephews and nieces grow into amazing young men and women (you should see my brother’s son, with his soul patch, getting more handsome by the day). ((Oy. He’s shaving. He’s growing beards. Oy. I swear, he was four years old just last week.))

I have two tremendous co-bloggers (although one has been rather busy lately). Thank you, Soccer Dad and Snoopy, for keeping this blog going when I’ve been too tired or too busy or too depressed to post much. And for supplying a different point of view. (Not so different, but then, I’m not interested in point/counterpoint on this blog.)

I’m thankful for my readers, too, and of course that includes those of you who read and never comment. I used to call you my “invisibles” when I was running a BBS. I always thought the word “lurker” has too much of a negative connotation. In this world, some people talk, and many people listen. Same for blogging, BBSing, and message boards.

And I’m thankful, as always, that I live in these United States—the world’s most hospitable nation to Jews this side of Israel, and the world’s greatest democracy. I’m thankful to the servicemen and women who risk their lives to keep us that way. Long may America prosper. And the same for Israel. Am Yisrael Chai.

First, go watch your nephew in the playoff game and marvel at the fact that third and fourth graders can actually play good football. Then watch his team pull out a touchdown in the last two minutes of the game. Then watch the other team pull out a touchdown and tie it. Then watch his team get another touchdown but miss the extra point in overtime. Then watch his team force the other team to fumble and win the game, moving on to the Superbowl.

That was fun. So was shopping for a new Wii game (the Simpsons) with Jake, who is currently practicing his baseball game so I won’t beat him too easily.

Tonight, dinner at the G.’s and Sarah’s amazing Apple Tarty Thing for dessert. (It has a name, but we like to call it that.)

Yeah, way better than the drunken blowouts of my youth. And no hangover to recover from the next day.

You know what they don’t mention in the Wii instruction manual?

What to do when your cat thinks that it’s a great idea to play with your legs while you’re trying to play a game on the Wii.

Yep. Tig really loved baseball. Much more than bowling.

It’s my own fault, I suppose. When he gets all arched-back Halloween kitty, I take a couple of steps at him, and he bounces at me, and it’s become a routine of ours. He leaps at my legs and runs away. I’m sure I violated about a hundred cat-training rules in the way I’ve raised him, but hey—Gracie wouldn’t play with him while he was growing up, and he needed someone to run around with.

My silly boy. Here’s a picture of him yesterday afternoon, having discovered the joys of postponing the laundry.

It’s a tough life, being a cat.

I just want to warn my readers that I bought myself an early birthday present: A Wii.

First game I got? The Hulk game, of course.

If posting is light over the next week or so, you’ll know why.

This is the first game system I’ve ever bought, actually. So far, I’ve tried the bowling and duck hunt, haven’t figured out how to sync my second controller, and can’t figure out why the Wii is on the DVD input on the TV, but don’t care, because it’s working.

Now to go learn more so I can be the coolest. Aunt. Ever. (We have a birthday and a major babysitting event coming up with the G. kids, so I’m thinking the Wii will get fairly well broken in.)

It is chestnut season, and my brothers and I were taught to be passionate consumers of chestnuts by virtue of having a father who was a passionate consumer of chestnuts. I remember that several decades ago, I told my younger brother that one of the best things about moving out on my own was that I didn’t have to share any more batches of chestnuts with my brothers.

Last year, I discovered that there are still American chestnut growers, though they are few and far between. There are a couple in Maryland and Virginia. But there are also vendors online who will ship them to me for prices not very much higher than what I pay in the supermarket for old, moldy, wormy chestnuts imported from Italy. I picked up a few pounds of the last of the crop at the end of the season (post-Thanksgiving) last year. I had the brochure on my fridge since last year. But it got put somewhere in the move, and I forgot that I could get chestnuts a lot earlier through my farm in Washington than in the supermarket. Sunday, I remembered.

Today, my five pounds of fresh chestnuts arrived.

They won’t last long. My mother is coming to visit, and I plan on sending a pound or two home with her for my brothers. But I may stop at that farm in Maryland on the way to NJ for the holiday. Or maybe just order from there. I’m going to compare and contrast, and have a vegetable crisper filled with fresh chestnuts for the rest of the season, if I can help it.

It’s an acquired taste, but once you’ve acquired it, chestnuts are one of the most delicious foods in existence. And may I say: Yum.

Go read it. H/T: Stretch (my shooting teacher).

Check it out. My condo purchase last month is helping the economy.

Home resales in the U.S. rose more than forecast in September, aided by foreclosure-driven declines in prices that made properties more affordable.

Purchases of existing homes jumped 5.5 percent last month to a 5.18 million annual pace, the highest level in a year, the National Association of Realtors said today in Washington. The median price dropped 9 percent.

By the way, for the commenter who felt he had to tell me what a mistake I made in not waiting (while living in The Craphole that I hated) another year or two to buy, well, I’m thinking I was right.

Foreclosure-related sales accounted for 35 percent to 40 percent of last month’s total, the agents’ group said. Of those, about 80 percent were for primary residence, higher than the average of about 75 percent and signaling that investors are not a primary reason for the jump, said Lawrence Yun, the group’s chief economist.

“In terms of sales, I think we have bottomed out,” Yun said in a press conference. “The first step to housing-market stabilization is rising home sales. Hopefully, this trend can continue.”

Yes, and I’m employing a legion of people and spending money on all sorts of things necessary for my home. Besides hiring a cleaning service once a month (which I did not do in my apartment), I now have a bed in my guestroom and have been shopping for lamps, dishes, end tables, a dining room set—all kinds of things I need for my new home. From putting in a programmable thermostat to buying new blinds to supplying three bathrooms instead of two, I’m a one-woman purchasing storm. Of course, I’m shopping for bargains—I saved hundreds on the bed, and I go to a nearby Wal-Mart, or use the ubiquitous BB&B coupon—but I’m still putting money into our troubled economy.

Of course, if Barack Obama raises my taxes, that will stop the spending spree. Big-time.

I am sitting here working while a team of four women clean my home for me. And they’re doing a better job than I would do, too.

Oh, I straightened up and got things out of their way and made the place presentable—but they’re the ones doing the vacuuming and floor-washing and cleaning of windows.

They even cleaned my antique Chinese six-panel wooden screen, which stopped my heart when I saw that the window-washer had sprayed cleaning fluids on it. It seems to have taken no damage, and I will inform them that they must dust it only in the future.

Other than that, except for two missing cats (presumed cowering under something), this is great.

This is the same company I used to clean my old apartment. They were done in an hour. It would have taken me most of the day. And I got my security deposit back. Totally paid for the cleaning crew to come in and save me the effort.

They did the toilets. They did the windows. They even got the cobweb in the corner of the great room that’s, like, twenty-five feet high and impossible to reach without a really, really long extension. They had one. The cobweb is gone.

Nope. I’m never cleaning my house again.

“Doctor’s office.”
“Hi, this is Meryl Yourish. Say, remember when you guys set me up with someone that your office works with who was going to contact my insurance company and make sure that I could get that MRI approved without getting a surprise bill of several thousand dollars somewhere down the line?”
“Yes.”
“Surprise!”

Gas prices in Richmond have fallen as low as $2.69.

Crude oil ended the week at less than $80 a barrel.

Iran is freaking.

Iran on Saturday called for stability in the oil market, saying the biggest challenge now was a decline in the demand for oil due to a global economic recession.

The stunning collapse in oil markets accelerated Friday, sending a barrel of crude plunging below US$78 as investors grow more pessimistic about resolving a mushrooming global economic crisis.

“We have to look for market stability because this matter is very important both for producers and consumers,” Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari told reporters.

Some people think it may fall all the way to $60. Here’s hoping.

So, what are gas prices like in your neighborhood?

Yes, the economy is tanking. Yes, the news seems almost all bad. But if you have a few dollars to spare, there’s an organization called Donors Choose that has a website where you can help children all over the country get things they need for their schools. You can choose by state and type of project. I found a few that I think are extremely worthy causes just browsing my two home states.

In New Jersey, the Battle of the Books needs money. Like to read? This class teaches students just how to do that.

Help first graders learn about real American heroes, not celebrities—donate money to buy these books for a poor school in rural Virginia.

Give the gift of music. Did you learn how to play the recorder in elementary school? I did. Did you have to pay for it? I didn’t. Buy thirty recorders and remember how incredibly painful the sound of a recorder tooting “Mary Had A Little Lamb” can be, and then be glad that you don’t have to hear it. Then think about that child ten years from now, and how wonderful the music will be.

Fourth graders, my favorite year: They need a new microscope. And how cool is it that a digital microscope can take a digital picture and then print it out so that you can actually see a picture of that amoeba that you had to draw way back when?

These kids don’t even have the right size chairs. This is pathetic. Children can’t concentrate if they’re not comfortable. There are a few things I learned teaching fourth grade, and that’s you can’t teach hungry children, and you can’t teach children if you can’t get them to pay attention because their classroom surroundings aren’t right.

Feel free to browse your state and post the URL in the comments. Although you may need to go to tinyurl.com if you don’t know how to make it an href.

A quick HTML lesson: Use the angle brackets instead of regular brackets, but create a hyperlink like this:

[a href="URL_Goes_Here"]Text goes here[/a]

That would turn out like this:

In any case: Choose. Donate. Post, if you want. You don’t have to tell us how much. Just that you picked one. I’m not teaching this year, but I can still help students. Via Sarah.

You know what the best thing about coming home is?

Coming home to my actual home. Not an apartment. My very own home.

I really, really like being a homeowner. I love my condo. Hell, I even like having to put the garbage can inside garage. No more dumpsters. No more noisy neighbors. No more boom boxes shaking the walls as they drive through the parking lot at 2 a.m.

Just quiet. And home.

I’ve been reading Megan McArdle a lot lately in an attempt to understand the current financial crisis. In one of her posts, I’m trying to decide if I’m a bad, bad person, or if I just happened to buy my condo at just the right moment and lucked out on price and interest rates.

It’s hard to tell.

I feel bad for the homeowners, and outraged that so many people got gigantic sums of money for screwing up the financial system. But that money’s gone. The mortgage bankers have already mostly lost their jobs, because their market (and often their firm) collapsed. Much of the outrageous compensation was in now worthless (or nearly worthless) company stock. And even if we dun, say, the top executives at Bear, Lehman, and AIG (I’m not opposed to doing so if it’s legal), we will get only a trivial fraction of the money lost in these markets. You know who made most of the money on the subprime bubble? Anyone who bought a house in the last ten years. Yes, that’s right, you, with your low fixed interest rate on a reasonably sized house. You’re the profiteer who laughed all the way to the bank.

I’m laughing all the way to the bank? I’m a profiteer? But—but—I saved my money, I paid down my debt, I waited until I found a mortgage I could afford, and I bought my house.

People were gambling on the housing market–nice, middle class people who would never carry a gigantic credit card balance or declare bankruptcy. In the face of the housing bubble, they took out ARMs they knew they couldn’t afford to pay when the teaser reset, in the hope that rising home equity would let them refinance. (A fair number of them got away with it, too.) When pressed on this behavior, they claimed they had to because otherwise they couldn’t afford a house–as if renting were a physical or moral impossibility.

Borrowers were not brought down by predatory lending. The terms that are causing trouble were clearly laid out in their loan term sheets, right on the top of their mortgage package. Borrowers were brought down by a willingness to gamble on rising home prices–exactly the same thing that knocked out Lehman Brothers. At least Lehman Brothers had the excuse that ten years of rising prices had completely screwed up their default models.

Bailing out home gamblers by freezing their mortgage rates, extending their loan terms, or otherwise forcing the banks to give them free money, will teach them the same thing we are trying hard not to teach Wall Street: if you gamble big enough, Uncle Sam will pick up your losses. Moreover, it’s not exactly the cleverest idea to levy a huge regulatory taking on an industry that’s already really shaky, and threatening to take the rest of us down with it in the event of a collapse.

Any bailout should not aim to help either homeowners or lenders for their own sake–we are helping them because if we don’t, the rest of us will suffer more than the cost of the bailout. The health of the Fort Meyer housing market is not the proper province of the federal government, no matter how distressing the locals may find it.

Okay, well, I don’t have an ARM, I didn’t buy a house too big for my pocketbook (though to be honest, I could have gotten a smaller condo and been happy enough in it, but hey, it was in my price range, and I really do love the extra room), and I didn’t gamble on home prices going up. So I guess she’s not talking about me after all. But that surely is an odd way of calling out the villains in this piece: People who took advantage of lower interest rates to buy a home, or refinance their higher mortgage, and had the finances to keep it. I don’t think that’s quite right. There are executives out there who have pocketed millions of dollars that are not in worthless stock options. They’re the bad guys. Not my friends who built a new home six years ago and refinanced it during the falling interest rates period.

I’m not going to need bailing out, but I will be one of the ones paying for it, I’m sure.

Apparently, all I have to do is hold out until the new Jeep hybrids hit the market.

When they get to the 2-door Wrangler, I am so there.

Okay, here’s the problem.

I can’t seem to find the desire to write about anything tonight. Not my commentary for the podcast, not a serious blog post, not nuffin’.

So we’ll just have to have an open thread. This is usually your cue to start talking, but since most of you don’t, I’ll just pretend you did it in, uh, invisible bits.

I know. I can talk about how happy I am in my new home. No, wait. Did that Saturday.

Aha! I can give you the useful tip that Sarah gave me: A hair dryer loosens the glue on contact paper so you can remove it in one continuous sheet (more or less) without leaving great globs of paper. But I have to tell you, it takes a great deal of patience to pull the paper slowly enough so it doesn’t tear.

There you go. We can trade household hints.

Your turn.

You know, if anyone out there wants to rent themselves out as a temporary husband or grown child, I sure could use some help unpacking and getting my new condo into shape.

I’m just sayin’.

My first night in the new home, I would have gotten a lot more sleep if, say, I had no cats.

Tig and Gracie spent about ten or eleven hours huddled in the bathroom vanity, caving for protection. Tigger came out first, and was so incredibly overstimulated by all the new things that I locked him in my room after about an hour. He kept running around and coming back to me panting and out of breath, either from excitement or panic. Either way, I also had enough of his yowling and meowing and burbling. Meantime, Gracie settled down rather quickly, so much so that I had no idea I’d locked her out of the room. I found out at seven this morning, when she yowled to be let back in. Tig had already woken me up. Then there was the call from Cavalier Telephone at eight to tell me they were on my way to fix my phone. The one at my old address. The one that they fixed. In fact, I’ve had the new phone since Thursday. It seemed pointless to have them turn it back on for a few hours, so I just used my cell all day Thursday.

I left the wireless router over at the old apartment, but I picked it up last night when I went on my computer run. (There wasn’t enough room in my Jeep for two cats in carriers, their litterbox, my work laptop, a few bags of important things that I didn’t leave to the movers, and my 17-inch HP notebook on top of all that.) But I was so damned tired the system stayed down until, well, a few minutes ago. I thought I’d have to reprogram the router. Nope. Fred (my system) is up and running just fine. But I’ve been rather busy. Or tired.

I have a zillion unpacked boxes, yet. I have a very clean fridge and oven. I unpacked my clothes, and I think I’ll get to the kitchen cabinets tonight. Oh, let’s face it. The wireless is back. I’ll get to it tomorrow.

Gracie is grooming herself in the office a few feet away from me. Tig is behind me, looking for a playmate. I don’t remember where I left his toys. We’ll have to make new ones. He’s calmed down quite a bit. Gracie hid when Heidi and Sorena came over. Tig popped his head out—literally. He was sleeping underneath the bureau, which is he soon going to be too big for, and all we saw was his head. Sarah got to see both of the cats, because she came over during the afternoon, while they were caving. She brought chocolates. This house had no chocolate until Sarah arrived. I knew there was something missing.

Think I’ll go work on some pictures for you now. Back soon.

I’m about 95% moved in. I left a few things at the old apartment, and, well, I didn’t unbox anythying other than my work computer.

Tig and Gracie are currently hiding in the vanity in my bathroom. I expect they’ll be out sometime tomorrow, and maybe back to normal in a week or two.

Sarah brought me chocolate. She’s so smart. I was thinking before she got here that this apartment was missing something vital: There was no chocolate in it.

I got my first mail at the new address, too. Tickets to High Holiday services. Fitting.

A new cat, a new home, a new year.

Life is good.

I have two garage door openers, three sets of keys, a condo, and a mortgage.

Tigger is giving me congratulatory kisses. (Actually, he’s just licking my hands while I type this, but hey, I can make stuff up with the best of them.)

Best of all, my brother is driving down from NJ to help me pack and paint. He’ll be here tonight, stay for a couple of days, then head back to NJ. Until he has more time, when he’ll be able to stay as a guest and do no work.

Off to the new condo, after I call the gas company to switch service over to me. I missed that one.

Well, between the packing and cleaning and closing, I don’t really have much time to blog.

Posting will be light for the next few days.

Rats. Just when I finally found the issue that gets people commenting (it is apparently politics, and not Israel or even—sigh—my enthralling cat and life posts), I have to do things like, gee, move.

I’m off for the entire next week, albeit not really, as I will be doing work in the evenings, probably. But I will be cleaning, packing, closing, painting, and moving into my new home. This is the last weekend I’ll be spending having to listen to noisy people in the parking lot at midnight, or cars coming by with their stereos literally shaking the walls to my apartment, or neighbors screaming at each other or partying.

I won’t be missing this place. Only its central location. But I’m not moving very far, just about ten miles west. It will add about 5-10 minutes to my trip to NorVA, but cut my time to just about everywhere else. Except going to Heidi and Sarah’s places. There are almost no direct routes between where I am and where they are. It’s slightly annoying.

The close is supposed to happen Tuesday morning at 11, but may be pushed back a few hours. I’m getting really excited. Moving into my own home. How cool is that?

Verizon sucks.

Several months ago, I started having troubles with my phone line after a heavy rain. Verizon took a week to fix it the first time. I had no phone service for a week except for my cell. It happened again after another heavy rain. They told me it would take a week to get a repairman out. I told them to stick their service where the sun don’t shine and switched to Cavalier Telephone. Turns out they charge about half what Verizon was charging me, too.

But what Verizon didn’t do was send their repairman out a second time, so after the heavy rain from the remnants of Fay, I have no land line service. I am currently in live chat with Cavalier, which is taking an extremely long time for the rep to respond. Makes you wonder what the heck they’re doing on their end. Computer games? TV? Chatting with seven people at once? Really getting tired of seeing this:

JoannaD: Thank you for waiting. I’ll be with you in just a moment.

They’re scheduling a service call. 24 hours at the most. Well, that’s better than Verizon’s one-week service time, but I still have no phone until it dries out or they come and fix it.

I am so glad I’m leaving this craphole. The water comes into the front picture window when the gutters get full of pine needles. The gutters are full of pine needles, and my requests to have them cleaned have gone unanswered. I have towels in my windowsill to keep Tig from (sigh) drinking the water, or to keep it from getting into my living room. So far, it hasn’t done more than pool on the windowsill and rot out the wood under the picture window. Which, of course, doesn’t bother the management company.

Five days until the close. Eight days until I’m moved out of here.

I can’t wait.

Update: Something tells me CavTel shut my phone off several days early. I’m getting an out-of-service message now.

Well. I have a brand-new Blackberry that T-Mobile gave me for free. Don’t call me on the home phone, people. Try the cell.

When I was their age, my relatives gave us pen sets.

Nowadays, children get their first email accounts.

Sarah and Larry’s two oldest children have their first email accounts. Being a dutiful aunt, I sent them emails at Larry’s request.

On Sunday, I had dinner with my family, and my nephew was texting and receiving texts throughout dinner. His phone never stopped buzzing.

It is absolutely a different generation.

I don’t feel old, though. I’m going to upgrade my cell phone this week and start texting my nephew. Who may be going to my alma mater next year.

The years are sure going fast. I could swear he was only four years old last week. Nine at the most.

On an completely different note, Sarah is the Chocolate Chip Cookie Champion of Chesterfield County. She won first place in the fair, and third place for the cake.

Two trucks got into the way of my travel plans, but in both instances, I found out about them long before I could get stuck in the traffic they caused.

First, a pickup truck being towed off the Nice Bridge changed my driving plans from “back way” to “Damn! I have to drive the Beltway.” No real traffic on the Beltway, though, or anywhere, until I got to effing Delaware. I hate Delaware. Don’t even get me started on how much. Ten minutes to get across, and they make you pay through the nose to do it. Plus they steal the rest of the country’s business by their sweet incorporation deals.

Told you not to get me started.

Then, once in NJ, a truck accident shut down 295 at precisely the exit I needed to get off. Some frantic phone calls to Bob and Kim, and I took an alternate route, only to miss 206 and wind up on the scenic route through Trenton. It seems to have picked up some in the years since I was last there.

We’re heading off to the pool for the rest of the day. Posting will be light. No, nonexistent.

I scheduled a few posts for tomorrow, but I’m going on a small vacation before going into closing-on-the-condo/packing/cleaning/painting/moving hell. I shall be visiting my friends and family in New Jersey, and I’m looking forward to it. And while I’m bringing my laptop, well, I was planning on spending most of the time outside by Kim and Bob’s pool. And maybe seeing a movie. And going to my favorite restaurant in NJ. And playing with Puddin’.

I wish I had a little more time to spend in NJ, but it’s a there-and-back-again trip, so no time for Katz’s in NYC, or visiting with my New York JBlogosphere buddies. Or friends I used to work with. Too bad Drew’s next comedy club appearance is next week instead of this one.

On the other hand, if people want to come to where I plan on being on, say, Sunday afternoon (West Orange), I could meet up for a few minutes. I’m thinking of picking up some kosher steaks while I’m there. Or maybe some corned beef. Yum. Corned beef.

More than anything, though, I’m looking forward to coming back and having only days before I get out of this craphole to a place where I don’t worry about leaving my laptop for four days, and wind up taking it with me even though I have my work laptop and don’t need to take two.

September 2nd. Closing on the 2nd. Moving on the 5th. Two weeks. Only two more weeks.

It’s official. I’m going to be a homeowner in less than three weeks. Proof of the change?

The last gift cards I ordered through my rewards program were Circuit City gift cards and they went towards buying my big-screen TV.

I just ordered a Home Depot gift card.

Yep.

I’m shifting my priorities.

Even worse, I’m starting to think in terms of doing things I’ve never done before: Like switching out the crappy thermostat to a digital thermostat as soon as I get the chance to buy one. And, uh, learn how to do it.

My brother the contractor may actually spend some time with me when I first move in. That, of course, would be the best of all possible worlds. Not only would he do the thermostat-switching, but I’m pretty sure he would screen in my deck and do anything else I would ordinarily have to pay someone to do.

Here’s hoping his condo sells quickly.

I’ll be damned. Congress actually passed a law that is going to benefit me. After all these years of being unable to take advantage of, well, almost every tax credit, the Housing and Economic Recovery Act is actually going to give me a break. I get the equivalent of an interest-free loan that I can pay back over 15 years, starting in 2011.

As a first-time home buyer, I will be able to claim a tax credit of $7500 on my 2008 taxes. And it’s dollar-for-dollar, so if my tax burden is $10,000 after all the deductions and taxes are figured, and I’ve already paid $5000, I’ll still get a $2500 refund.

Except I’m also going to be able to deduct four months’ mortgage, property taxes, and other deductions for the year. So I should be getting the biggest refund ever, and boy, is it going to come in handy after tapping out my funds to buy the condo.

Watch Meryl get her taxes prepared faster than ever before. The second I get those W-2s, I’m going to have them done.

Between doing new home-related things and heading to NorVA for my weekly trip to the home office, I find myself more busy than usual lately.

You may have to talk among yourselves while I’m gone.

Coming down the tubes: A takedown of the various anti-Semitic trolls and creepazoids I’ve had lately (it’s really time to hit the small-brained crowd again, since they keep on thinking they can handle words of three syllables), more cat pictures and, of course, news about Jews.

While I’m gone, there’s always Haveil Havalim. And I’m behind in reminding you to check out Shire Network News podcasts. Okay, I haven’t had time to do that lately, either, but you should be listening every week, because we rock, with or without me.