Frisco Lakes

On Saturday I attended the seminar in Dallas on the Frisco Lakes retirement community. Preliminary floor plans of the homes were presented. The houses are going have a 100 percent brick exteriors and sidewalks in front of them. The streets are going to be wide with parkways down the middle. Trees will be planted every 35 feet in the parkways. The houses are going to be more expensive than equivalent models in the Sun City Texas community at Georgetown. I was somewhat upset over the pricing but have managed to reconcile myself to the price difference. Frisco definitely justifies a premium over Georgetown. All the necessary shopping and services are a very short distance from the Frisco Lakes community.

 

The plan is to have 270 homes ready for occupancy in the July/August time frame. Del Webb has concocted a scheme to allocate these first homes which is something like an Internet lottery. Attendance at the seminars this past week was the entry step into the process. If you want to go forward with the process, you must give them a fully refundable $1,000 check for a one-on-one interview. At that time you will make either five or ten (I heard both numbers) lot selections and choose brick colors. At a date late in February, yet to be determined, there will be an email with a password and and ID mailed out. There will be a link to a Frisco Lakes website. You will log in, fill out a form and pay $5,000 earnest money via credit card. The lots will be assigned based on the order the earnest money is received. They assured me their computer staff says they have sufficient bandwidth to handle the process.

 

I am going to go forward with the process. If I do not get one of the first 270 homes, there will be more sections completed later in the year. They said they are going to raise the prices. I do not know if you put down the $5,000 in late February and do not get a lot in the first group if the price is locked in. Also I do not know if the initial $1,000 is applied as part of the earnest money. At this point all I know is that I want to move there.

I am still here

For some reason I felt like adding an article to the blog even though I do not have much to say. I am still working on the garage. I have been taking lots of things to the Goodwill donation station and putting all that I think I can get away with out for the trash pickup each week.

 

I moved my patio furniture out of the garage and put it on the patio. When I finish with the garage cleaning project, I want to paint my patio furniture. It is cast aluminum and looks like the heavier cast iron furniture in the grape and ivy pattern. I have an umbrella table with four chairs, a coffee table and two chairs, a settee and four planters. With a decent coat of paint it will be quite attractive again. I have a Wagner spray painter that I bought twenty years ago and never used. I hope it is operable after all these years. It is brand new and in its original box. I painted the furniture one time with Rust Oleum paint in the spray cans. I had carpal tunnel syndrome after I finished shaking all the cans while I painted. I gave the patio table umbrella to Goodwill. I guess next year I will be shopping for a new umbrella.

 

I hope I can finished the garage cleaning and patio furniture painting by the end of March. After that, it is going to be too hot to work outside. After thirty plus years down here, I still have not developed a tolerance for the heat and the humidity. When the hot weather arrives, I will start cleaning out the closets and cabinets in the house.

 

Next weekend I will be in Frisco, Texas, for the Del Webb seminar on their Frisco Lakes retirement community. I got an email from them this week that said the floor plans and pricing would be available. I am hoping they will have a floor plan that is similar to the Lexington model that they have at Sun City Texas. I have mentally arranged all of my furniture in that house.

New Shop Vacuum

Yesterday while I was continuing my garage cleaning project I decided I needed a new shop vacuum. The one I have must be over twenty years old. I bought a new hose for it but found I could not remove the old hose because it seems to be frozen in place. I have tried everything I could think of to remove it, but every attempt failed. The old one still has powerful suction, but it has always been top heavy and tips over very easily.

 

I checked Amazon.com for shop vacs and got an idea of the price range. I also checked Pricegrabber.com. The main brand seems to be called Shop Vac. They are yellow in color. My old vacuum is a Sears Craftsman. I looked at Sears.com. I saw one that was on sale and could be picked up at the Parkdale Mall store. They wanted $11.90 shipping charges. I tried to place my order. Somehow it wanted to have me pick up the order at Central Mall in mid-county even though I had checked the Parkdale Mall box. I went through the process twice. I gave up and decided I would just go to Parkdale and buy it.

 

It was a good thing I did go to the store. There were many more models available than the web site showed. The model I was planning on buying was a 16 gal. model. My old vacuum is a 12 gal. I decided the 16 gal. model was too big for me to handle. I told the sales lady my old one was a 12 gal. She pointed to a box up on the shelf that had a 12 gal. model. The 16 gal. model was on sale. The 12 gal. model was not on sale and has a less powerful motor and had the same price as the 16 gal. model. I went ahead and bought the 12 gal. model. I then had to drive my car around to the merchandise pickup door.

 

It has been years since I had purchased a large item at Sears. I went in and was just standing there trying to figure out what to do. A lady walked through and asked me if she could help me. I told I was there to pick up my vacuum. She took my receipt and stuck it in a reader. The receipt had a barcode on it. My name popped up on a video screen on the wall and had a counter that showed how many minutes I had been waiting. I saw the average wait for the day was slightly over four minutes. They had statistics on the wall that said 95 percent of the merchandise had been delivered in under five minutes the previous month. Time passed and a man came out and asked to see my receipt. He asked me when I had made the purchase because they could not find the item. He then took my receipt and disappeared. I stood there and watched the timer. Finally when the wait was close to 13 minutes two men came out with my vacuum. I had ruined their statistics.

 

They could not fit the box in the trunk of my car. They tried and tried. I was afraid they were going to damage my car. I told them to open the box and take the vacuum out. It was still questionable whether the vacuum would fit in the car. I told them to take the motor housing off the tank. They did. Then all the pieces were safely in the trunk. I asked them to break down the box so I would have it in case I had to return the vacuum.

 

When I got home and unloaded my car, I carefully checked the list of the parts that were supposed to be included. Fortunately nothing got lost in the chaos that took place while the vacuum was loaded. I assembled the casters. I think the vacuum is going to be just fine. They seems to have corrected the design flaws of the old model. The new one is short and fat. There is no way that it is going to tip over. There is a button to release the hose. I have decided I will disconnect the hose after each use. There is cord storage. Also the motor housing is black. The old one had a red tank and a red motor housing. The motor housing had faded to an ugly orange. I think the new one looks like a short, fat R2D2. Now if it were a really a robot, I could tell it to go clean the garage. Unfortunately it does not work that way.

 

I have many accessories such as a dusting tool for the old vacuum that did not come with the new one. Fortunately I can use the old tools with the new one. Now I have to load the old vacuum into the trunk of my car and take it to Goodwill.

 

Update

We are supposed to get a little rain today. It is badly needed. Jefferson County is under a burn ban. Every time it has rained since the hurricane I have been a little worried about my roof. Since my roofer checked it out I will not be so apprehensive every time it rains. I have seen no signs of leaking since I returned. I need to go to the post office and get one and two cent stamps. I forgot about the postage increase.

 

I did a little more cleaning in the garage. The garage project is going to take a long time. I gave the tile in my front entry a thorough scrubbing with my Hoover FloorMate. The scrubber does a fairly decent job. It is really good at vacuuming up the dirty scrub water. I have had it for several years but for some reason I have to have the manual close at hand every time I use it. I think getting the controls set for vacuuming, scrubbing and wet pickup are complicated.

 

It is time to pay the property taxes on my house. In the past I have mailed a check to the tax assessor's office. It takes forever to get the receipt. I always worry if they received my check until I receive the receipt. This year I have decided to go pay in person so I can walk away with my receipt in hand. I have not received a thing from the IRS. I suppose since I have filed electronically they are saving the expense of mailing forms to me.

 

I have not heard from the man who repaired the sheetrock in my neighbor's house. Another lady on the street is also trying to get him to come and look at her house. She talked to him on Friday. She told him he could do both of our houses at the same time and save on his travel time. We are going to take turns calling him until he shows up.

 

In a little over two weeks I will go to Frisco to attend the Del Webb seminar on their Frisco Lakes community. If I am still interested in moving to Frisco after this trip, I might rent an extended stay apartment and spend several weeks in the area. I will pretend I live there and explore grocery stores, shopping centers and all of the other services that I need for day to day living. That would give me a feel for the community and traffic conditions. The traffic is my worst worry about Frisco. It would give me an opportunity to learn about the area before I make a big commitment.

Garage Cleaning

My garage is dirty. That is the simple truth. A big bag of potting soil split and the soil was two to three inches deep in the corner where the bag was. I got rid of what was left in the bag and scooped as much as I could into my dust pan. I did this over several days last week. I finally reached the point where I was able to clean up the rest with the shop vacuum. I am also washing the garage door. I am cleaning one square of the door a day. It is going to take close to a month to complete the task. My goal is to have cleaned every inch of the garage before warm weather gets here. I have shelving in the garage that needs to be cleaned. I am throwing things that I have not touched in years away. When I find something that might be of use to someone, I put it in the trunk of the car and am making a stop at the Goodwill donation station every time I go out. The terrible humidity of this place keeps me inside during the warm season which usually is here by April. This winter has been so warm that I am wondering if I will be able to do much physical work in the garage and outside by March.

Confused

Yesterday the realtor and her husband came out to view my home in order to prepare a comparative market analysis. I had decided the best thing to do would be to get the repairs to the sheetrock made now and have the interior repainted after I move out so that I can avoid the stress of having my furniture moved while I am still living here. I am very protective of my furniture and have done everything to protect it from scratches. Their opinion was that the interior paint in my house is in very good shape. They said painting the inside may help the house sell faster, but it is doubtful that I would recover the cost. They said the more places that I had the sheetrock touched up would be obvious and that would require me to have the painting done. This makes me wonder if it would be wise to limit the sheetrock to just the area above the windows in the front two bedrooms that got the worst of Hurricane Rita. I am very particular about my house. I know not many people worry as much as I do about small details. I think I need to sample the opinions of a few more realtors. They certainly have a different prospective than the repair contractors.

Realtor Visits Today

The realtor that I met on Thursday called yesterday afternoon and said she and her husband would like to come out and make a few notes on my house. This lady's husband is a builder. I can remember looking at some of his houses way back in the early 1970's. His houses were out of my price range back then, but I have remembered for all these years that they were very nice houses. This realtor is making a good impression on me. She said she would call in a few days, and she did. People who tell me they will call and do not follow through on what they have promised promptly get scratched off my list.

Forgot

It has been a long time since I skipped a day without writing something for this blog. The fact is that yesterday I just forgot about it.

 

Yesterday I went with my neighbor and her realtor to look at a few new homes and fairly new homes that were up for resale. I saw some very nice houses. Just this week Beaumont was mentioned on the national news as being one of the top five cities in the country where real estate is seriously undervalued. I saw confirmation of that yesterday. $200,000 to $250,000 will buy a very nice house in this city. All of Texas is under valued compared to many parts of the country. I am not going to get as much house for the money in a Del Webb community as I could here in Beaumont, but I am very willing to pay the premium to get away from the Gulf Coast.

 

I really liked my neighbor's realtor. She was not at all pushy, she seemed to be very efficient and well informed. She is going to come out and do a market analysis of my house. She called me yesterday evening to tell me what the house across the street from me sold for in December. I had thought my neighbor had exaggerated when he told me what he got. It turns out that the house sold for 3k more than he told me. I am encouraged.

Health Followup

I called my doctor's office yesterday. After I told the receptionist why I was calling, I was transferred to my doctor's nurse. She told me to come in at 2:30. I was surprised they were able to see me so fast. I guess when you mention chest pains they do not waste any time. They checked my blood pressure and gave me an EKG and chest x-ray. As far as my doctor could tell, all appeared to be normal. They are going to schedule me for a stress test. My diagnosis is that I am suffering from post hurricane stress. I did the right thing to get checked. I try to avoid doctors, but there are times when you definitely need them.

 

It was kind of funny. I checked the mailbox as I was leaving for the doctor's office. My new identification cards from Aetna were in the box.

My Health Concerns

I do not have any immediate family members who nag me to see the doctor when I have symptoms that should be checked out. I have not seen my family doctor for a year. My last visit was only because I had to have him check me out before I had eye surgery. I have had a couple of episodes where I have had chest pains and got rather cold and lightheaded over the past few weeks. I have tried to ignore it but am afraid this problem will not go away. Today I am going to be a good girl and make the appointment to see my doctor. When you first go on Medicare, you are entitled to get a "Welcome to Medicare" physical. Medicare pays for this. I will get the physical and tell my doctor about my concerns. I checked Aetna's website this morning to make sure they had me in the system for the new supplemental plan. It appears the health and pharmacy coverage are now under two separate plans. I printed out a temporary identification card for the pharmacy coverage. It is a good thing I did this because I have not received the permanent card in the mail. Life is becoming more complicated.

Beginning to Contact Realtors

I visited a neighbor over the weekend and inspected the hurricane damage to her home. She has a new roof and fence now and is ready to start on the interior repairs. Like me she wants to move, but she thinks she will stay in Beaumont. A realtor is going to take her around the area to view new homes this week. She invited me to ride along. I accepted. I consider it part of my education. Buying a new home is not something that I take lightly. I intend to research all aspects. I have also talked to the realtor who listed the house across the street from me. That house sold after two and a half weeks on the market for the asking price. I hope that I can be as fortunate.

Happy New Year

Well it is 2006, and I am still here. For a while last night I was wondering if I would survive the night. Texas is under a state-wide burn ban because of the dry conditions. Some idiot in my neighborhood started shooting fireworks around 8 PM. Thankfully nothing ignited.

 

I have put out one of the new calendars that I purchased. I also have to change the furnace filter and put out a new toothbrush. No, these are not annual tasks. They are first of the month chores. After I take care of the chores, it will be a normal Sunday.The Rose Parade is tomorrow. It seems a little strange that is not on New Year's Day.