Saturday Part 1, and Property Progress

I was going to call this "Saturday Night", but then I realised I'd include some of Saturday day too. Plus, there was a very real and terrible danger of my quoting Whigfield ;)

I managed to get downstairs by about 10am. For a Saturday, that's pretty good for me ;)

Looking back at the time I made that blog post, I am genuinely surprised that it was as early as 11:40 that I had made my decision. It felt like hours ;)

I'm often not "worried" specifically (or at least, conciously) about making the wrong decision. But this sort of one, this is the sort of thing that could be life-changing. Ok, not on the scale of having decided to do it in general, but the dilemma was thinking about where and how I want to spend the next six months.

I was still thinking about the two places I had seen and liked. The main points that made deciding difficult for me were:
- Furnished place I had not actually seen the one I would get
- Unfurnished place was unfurnished ;)

And then:
- Furnished place was furnished ;)

See, I had initially only been looking for (part-)furnished. But there aren't that many places around at the moment which are furnished (lots of regs regarding how fire/smoke-proof stuff is, I gather), so I had expanded my search into unfurnished.

Now, the problem with unfurnished is that there's no furniture ;) It still tends to include everything you'd want in the kitchen (with the exception of one of those things that stands in there and does the work for you ;), but that's about your lot. No beds, no chairs, no nothing.

So it's great that a furnished place you can just turn up at and there you go, you're sorted. Buuuut, on the other hand, the place I was thinking about would be completely fully furnished. Absolutely everything you could need or want already there. Well, great... But, actually, would I really want that? Can't get any of your own tastes or ideas in there then. Do I want to live with someone else's ideas for the next six months?

But on the other hand... Do I really want the time, expense and effort of having to buy it all? I mean on top of the cost it's the time and hassle of sorting out.

But then again, the unfurnished place is bigger...

Overall, I think it's fair to say I wasn't making much progress ;) Whilst I knew the unfurnished place had a viewing late Saturday, it wasn't likely they'd all of a sudden place a deposit on it. But I felt I wanted to make my mind up before Saturday evening really, so I could just stop thinking about it.

But thinking about it and doing random Googles on the areas and looking at Google Earth and Microsoft Live! Virtual Earth images (which interestingly the house doesn't even exist on, as it wasn't built yet ;) really wasn't getting me anywhere.

One thing I eventually did realise was that if the furnished one had gone, I'd put the deposit on the unfurnished one. If the unfurnished one had gone, I still wouldn't know about the furnished one, on account of not having seen it (I'm just concerned it might not be ready on time, or that there could be a more serious flaw with it).

So, I eventually convinced myself to just put the bloody offer in ;)

Went for a bath/shower after that, just to relax for a bit. Was about an hour, but I probably felt better :)
Filled it the form I had after that (That took longer than I was expecting - only about a page did I actually need to fill out, but thinking about it, and writing slowly and carefully all takes time :)
Left for town after that, with my filled-in (or was that filled-out?) form and proof of identity. Picked up the £200 cash deposit on the way to the Agent's.

What happens after that? Well, the next two major bits are doing a credit check on me, and writing to my employer for references, and to confirm my length of time working here (7 years. Well, 7 years employed here, at any rate ;), and my salary (an amount I am happy with ;).

I heard late Monday afternoon that the credit check came back with no problems, and they had posted the request for references to my employer. That request arrived today, and my boss has written a response back, which he'll be faxing back today.

Well, that took longer than I was expecting, so I'll have to "do" the evening later. Sorry to keep you in suspense ;)