Friday-

On Friday I closed on my fancy new condominium. Closed like a Georgia liquor store on Sunday. Now I own a home. Actually, the bank owns it and they are letting me stay there as long as I promise to pay on time.

In the process, I signed my name about seven hundred times. Oh, wait. Not the name I sign on all of my artwork, checks, and everything else I sign, but my LEGAL name. Very few of you out in readerland know this, but my real name is super long and much more formal than the guy you know as Dusty. For argument’s sake, we’ll say it is Chancington Dartonsworth Scott the 18th. In reality it’s not far from that. As I signed the first form in the attorney’s office, he informed me that I have to sign the same name that is typed below the signature line.

Chancington Dartonsworth Scott XVIII

Lawyerboy seemed to be surprised that I barely knew how to spell that name, let alone had time to practice a big damn signature for it. My response was to just print it sort of fast and add a fancy swoosh when I crossed the two t’s in my last name. The swoosh is what makes a signature, I guess.

All this time I thought a signature was what they used to fraud-proof a document. None of the signatures I left on that day looked anything alike. I couldn’t duplicate any of them if I had a pantograph. Go google that word. Then you’ll be smart like I am.

The closing went without a hitch. Buying this house cost me a grand total of $942 to date. Not bad for a Jewish midget.

Now here’s a story of true class.

My Real estate agent, Justin Seeby, is a really friggin’ cool guy. One of these dudes who has his stuff together so completely that it makes you feel kind of dumb by comparison. These are the kinds of people I like to be around. People I can learn from. I started looking around for property in January, and he spent the bulk of several weekends driving me around to a bunch of places to look at. I thought I was going to buy a place, but a combination of my work situation, needing more money in the bank, and general “holy crap what am I doing?” fear made me have to call him and tell him I’d be waiting a while to buy a place. As a gesture of gratitude and good faith, I bought a nice bottle of wine for him and his wife and gave it to him with the promise of my going through with a purchase when I got back in the market.

Fast forward to my closing day. He had spent countless hours with me explaining every step of what was going on and educating me in general about real estate, and when we left the closing attorney’s office, we walked back to his office and he said “Hang on. I have something for you.”

He then produced the bottle of wine I had given him two months before and laughed, saying “I didn’t think you’d be back as soon as you were, but I was waiting to give this back to you.”

I thought that was truly a cool thing to do for some reason. Guess who’s getting the same bottle of wine back in a couple of years when I sell the house? Maybe we’ll keep giving it back to each other for the next forty years, and one day one of us will discover that it is worth $400,000 and will have to kill the other one to get the money. I mean, on a $50 initial investment, that’s one hell of a return. I need to write a book about that.

If anyone is looking for a house in Atlanta, you have my word that Justin Seeby is the man to see.

Saturday-

What a great day Saturday was.

I got to see my Niece and Nephew and Sister for the first time in way too long. Savannah and I started the day with a Tea party in the playroom. I got in trouble for not matching the plates with the same color cups, but was soon forgiven when I built a castle out of blocks. I knew that Industrial Design degree would come in handy someday. Then Hayden came in and we played with tractors and built the world’s largest marble track. They get impatient when we start building stuff because crazy uncle Dusty has to re-invent the wheel every time.

“I think if the marble gains enough momentum, we can bounce it off the wall and it will hit the bedpost just hard enough to ricochet into the time vortex in the corner of the room”.

“Uncle Dusty, what does ricochet mean?”

“I don’t know. Hand me that section of hotwheels track over there. And stay away from the time vortex.”

After refereeing a couple of fights over who had more marbles, I decided to take them lizard hunting out in the yard. I showed them where the big spiders live, caught a salamander (which they both declined to hold on the grounds that they would have to wash their hands immediately afterward), and laughed while I watched Savannah try to catch butterflies with a net. I had to explain to them that when trying to catch lizards and butterflies, the best approach is not necessarily to run screaming toward it. They had more fun with the running and screaming, so I let them go nuts.

Then we went to my great aunt’s house for lunch and more butterfly hunting. Savannah got stung by a bee a few weeks ago, and has this insane phobia of anything that looks like it has a stinger. We were out in the yard, chasing the neighbor’s cats around, and she saw a bee. All I heard was a gasp, the word “bumblebee”, and then she just started running. I was between her and the door, so she ran right into me, landing a shoulder in uncle Dusty’s crotch and sending me directly to the mat. I think it was a lot like outrunning a lava flow for her. I had fallen and was as good as dead. She didn’t even slow down. Meanwhile, Hayden is tormenting the cat with his net. The cat was not amused by this, and started getting pissed off. When it looked like the cat was about to kill him, I intervened and told him that if he keeps messing with the cat, the cat would scratch out his eyes and eat his brain and I would be helpless to stop it.

Both Hayden and Savannah wanted to go fishing, so we got a Spiderman fishing rod and a Barbie fishing rod on the way home. I took them out in the driveway to teach them how to cast with weights. I only got hit twice, and both seemed to have the hang of it. I was already a little worried about putting hooks on the end of their line, since neither of them seemed to know or care where the end of their fishing pole was.

So we got to the lake and caught absolutely nothing. Hayden and savannah seemed to enjoy casting, but then delegated the task of waiting to my brother and I. When it became apparent that every fish in the lake had died, they started rubbing my head for luck. My head is not a good luck charm.

My bro and I discuss the merits of sending the kids on a beer run

Another great weekend. Next weekend will be spent at a big house on a private lake fishing on a pontoon boat with a couple of friends, so I don’t see the trend changing…

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