Stacy and
Steve--Apparently the tuna casserole wasn't as disasterous as I feared, as I'm down to 218.5 today...lol.
Claudia--I did not know you knew exactly when and how much I'm having sex.
Well, if I am ovulating (and I know of no reason why I wouldn't be), I have a pretty good idea of when it is, as I have an online calculator that predicts the day of ovulation, and also tells you all the days that you are fertile--and which days are more fertile than others. So it's not as though H and I are just facking once a month on the day we hope I'm ovulating. In fact, I try to make sure we "do it" everyday the 5-6 days prior to ovulation as well as 2-3 days after ovulation just in case the calculator is off by a few days. Considering my periods have been pretty regular lately, I see no reason why I would be ovulating much earlier or later than I am predicting. So I don't think I'm leaving it entirely up to chance as you suggest.
Margaret--I forgot about
making the scale higher, so I guess I probably did lose some weight from my walk.
Generally in this area, we do not use lawyers in real estate transactions. Between the realtors and the title agents, they are rarely necessary. The problem is that there are lots of mortgage papers and deeds, etc that we have to sign at the closing. It would be a huge hassle to try and sign those while overseas, and there is no one I trust to hand over power of attorney to sign in our behalf--I don't even know if that's possible. A few years ago we refinanced a house while H was in Australia. We had to wait for him to come home before we could finalize it. It would've taken a long time for it all to be done if we had sent him all the docs to sign and then send back.
If the sellers were normal people and not a bank, it wouldn't be a problem. But bank-owned properties are more difficult b/c the banks do everything on their terms. They are as slow as they want to be, but require the buyers to be on the ball or they find a way to make you pay. It's wrong and unfair--especially in this kind of market--but that's just the way it is. The banks are completely unreasonable most of the time. However, their slowness may make closing before we return impossible anyway. There is a good chance that they wouldn't be ready to close until after we returned. Still no news regarding our 2nd offer. The longer they take, the more property taxes they have to pay..lol. And the longer I can put off having to pay the first mortgage payment. So closing after we get back isn't such a huge deal, but if they want to close during the trip, they can fuhgeddabout it..lol. I will write into any stupid addendums they fax over that I will not be penalized for any delays in closing that are due to their lack of expediancy, and that we won't be closing between the dates of such and such. they can kiss my ass.
However, there is a good chance that we won't end up with that condo anyway, as we haven't got an accepted offer.
It is great to see Claudia showing that USA can compete when it comes to nagging.
This cracked me up!! We are very well-rounded over here, and like to be competitive in all things.
So H and I upped our offer to almost full price. We'll see what happens. The prob is that b/c the bank's been so damn slow, our trip might interfere with the closing if we end up getting it. 
So Sorry. 
