Home shopping!

I woke up today so excited as I looked forward to sales and shopping for our new house! It's not quite ours yet. Buying a home here has been a pretty weird experience. "It's an escrow state," I keep hearing over and over again. You don't get all the parties together at one time and sign everything over, but you do it piecemeal.

On Thursday, we did the walk-through. It was nice to see the place empty! And there's something about it that still strikes me as gorgeous and peaceful every time I walk in the door. I don't really know what feng shui is, but I think this place has it in spades...

On Friday, Chris and I went to sign the papers to have the house deed recorded in our name. The sellers had come in earlier in the day. Sometime Monday or Tuesday, we'll sign the mortgage papers. Sometime between Tuesday and Thursday at 11:00, we're supposed to get the rest of the downpayment to the escrow company. Then, the deed will finally be recorded next Friday, we hope, and we'll get a call from our real estate agent, probably around 10:00, that we own the property. At that point, we'll meet our agent there, and he will have the lockbox code to open that, give us the key, remove the lockbox, and finally, it will be ours.

We received word that our household goods have arrived, so we have arranged for delivery on Sept 2nd, the Tuesday after Labor Day. I am so excited about getting our things and re-discovering them! We'll experience the joy of being reunited with our treasures and the befuddlement of "We packed this? I thought we threw that out in Australia," that kind of thing.

I shopped both Sears and Macy's today, though didn't buy anything. Didn't consider their prices to really qualify as "sale" quite yet, so am hoping next weekend (Labor Day!) will bring out the big sales. Macy's did have 800-thread-count sheets - haven't seen anything like that before! And it was great to see so many Lands End items in person rather than in a catalog. I didn't know they sold flatware... May also just check Wal-mart. If the brand and/or thread count is good, I don't care where I buy sheets and towels. Shopping did make me miss Marks and Spencers from England, though. I really liked the stuff I bought there, and am looking forward to seeing it again soon!

The mall I went to today, Pearlridge, is closer than the ritzy Ala Moana, and since it had stores I like to go to, I thought I would give it a shot. But like a lot of things in this escrow state, it was a bit odd. They built the first part in the 70's, and it's kind of grown up in a strange way ever since. It seems more to me like two malls joined together by a lot of parking structures and a small monorail (.50 each way). They call the two sections "Uptown" and "Downtown". There's also been a couple of strip malls that have joined in, and they're now "East" and "West." The monorail was cool, though. You can see Pearl Harbor and the Arizona Memorial as you ride along...

We need a lot of furniture since we sold a good chunk of it in England. Last weekend, I bought a cream leather sofa for the living room, and I also looked around for coffee tables. Found a glass-topped one with beautiful curved legs that would have looked perfect, but not for $1,595. When I was sofa shopping, I also found a cream leather sofa for $57,759. Yup, $57 thousand dollars.

"You're sure it wasn't $57 hundred?" asked Chris. Yes, honey, I am sure, since I checked that price twice. I sat on it, too. Wanted to see what $57 thousand dollars felt like on my behind. It was comfy. I wish I could describe it, because it was both unusual and beautiful. Had sort of a ruched look. I wasn't surprised it was expensive; just didn't expect it to be quite that expensive. However, it makes the sofa that I did purchase look very reasonably priced! ha!

I plan to spend the evening drawing out our rooms on graph paper and positioning the furniture that we have. Chris looks at me like I'm nuts when I do stuff like that, but I enjoy it. Oh, and I'd better practice that music this weekend so Dr. Yoo won't look at me funny during Monday's rehearsal.

It's nice to be settling in now and feeling less like a tourist or like we're just on a long business trip. Sometimes I still can't quite believe we really live here, in this beautiful, balmy, traffic-clogged escrow state.