The Closing...

Kate and I are officially homeowners! Here is an older set of pictures of the house. Since that time, the house has been completed, and it looks fantastic. The closing was originally supposed to happen Tuesday, and then due to circumstances beyond our control, was pushed back to Thursday, and then to yesterday. Kate and I were very prepared. We had turned in all of the necessary documents far in advance, so I assumed that the closing would be easy and smooth. As yesterday progressed, and papers were still being processed, and our mortgage broker was still not able to tell us precisely how much money we needed to bring to the closing (he was able to give us a ballpark estimate which ended up being close to correct), I realized that this was going to be a crazy day.

At my real estate agent's office, I asked whether this was unusually crazy for a closing, and she laughed and said that no, about half of them are this crazy, and some of them are even more crazy. But as we drove to the actual closing, she admitted that, if the mortgage broker could not give us an exact amount of money to bring to the closing before we actually walked in to the closing, that would be a first for her. And, thus, we are number 1! We got the figure just after walking in, and our real estate agent took me on a wild goose chase to look for a branch of our bank (it was harder to find than it should have been).

But it all worked out in the end, and we celebrated an Uncle Julio's last night, the same restaurant where we ate the day that we moved to Fort Worth.

The Stars at Night...

We have officially arrived in Texas! We actually arrived Monday afternoon. Monday night, we went out to a really good Mexican restaurant called Uncle Julio's (warning: the webpage plays music). When we told our waiter that it was our first day in Texas, he said "Welcome to Texas, y'all!" We hired a great moving company called Gladiator Movers to unpack School Bus (our truck) on Tuesday morning, and now we are most of the way moved in. Even after returning our truck, SYL confessed that she still felt the urge to talk to nearby cars through walkie talkies.

Today we visited the Fort Worth Central Market for the first time, and it was fantastic. I picked up some ingredients to make pizza tonight, and we got a lot of other exciting things as well.

We will post some pictures and more information when we get more completely unpacked.

Fort Worth, Fort Woof, Etc.

This July, Kate and I will be moving to Fort Worth, Texas, because of a job that I got. I am extremely excited about this job, and I am also excited about moving to Fort Worth. One of the nice things about that city that Kate just noticed is that their dog park is called Fort Woof. That is a good name for a dog park.

We named our blog "fish for breakfast" shortly before we moved to Japan, and its name is a reference to traditional Japanese breakfasts. Now that we are moving to Texas, we are contemplating changing the name of our blog. We have a few good ideas, but we would appreciate ideas from our scores of loyal readers as well. So, loyal readers, what should we call our blog?