Rolling Along 2013

I know I probably say it just about every time I write on here, but the days and months are just flying by! We're already into week five of the school year, and just about finished with the second month of the new year. Where does all this time go??

It's been a busy time, as usual around here. I've been playing a little bit again, this time playing electric bass with Green Valley Theatre for Aida, though only for the opening and closing weekends as a sub. I wasn't sure if I could still physically play, what with the wrist disaster of 2009 still keeping me from being able to turn my left wrist all the way. And to be sure, there is a little pain involved, but all in all it's been holding up pretty well. Good thing too, since I'll be playing six shows of Avenue Q with Runaway Stage in March, and might be possibly playing the run of Blood Brothers with Green Valley again in April. To celebrate this, I have acquired a new electric bass from guitar Center. It's a 5-string Squier with - get this - frets. I've never played with fret before, to say nothing of having five strings. So we'll see how well I can adapt to this.

In the meantime, I'm still waiting for rehearsals of my Symphony to begin. I suspect they'll start right after the March orchestra concert, and if all goes well, the piece will be performed on the May concert. It's certainly by far the biggest work I have ever imagined, attempted, or completed, so it should be quite exciting to start seeing it come to life.

Things have been going fairly well on other fronts; I sat down and got our taxes done for the year last weekend. And, we're getting a nice return this year - not like last year where we ended up paying quite a bit extra. We had been working on a refi for our underwater mortgage, simply for the sake of lowering the interest rate. We had actually gotten a solicitation from our mortgage company, Bank of America, about the new-ish Harp loan. After spending quite a bit of time on the phone and doing credit checks, and locking in a rate of 4.375 and signing and faxing over a dozen sheets of paper, we got a huge packet of paperwork in the mail to sift through and try to make sense of. We also got a call from someone else at B of A saying, sorry, but your type of condo doesn't qualify for this type of loan. Say what now?? What's that supposed to mean?? Well if we ever get a call back maybe we'll find out. In the meantime it looks iffy, and seems like we're set to be screwed over by B of A. Not that this is the first time, mind you. The first time we had received a solicitation and called in about a different type of refi, and they told us we didn't qualify because our current mortgage was not technically a Bank of America mortgage, even though our statements have their name on them, and are sent from them, and our payments go to them.

Why do banks send you solicitations to apply for programs which they aren't willing to allow you to be qualified for anyway?? Are they bored?? Are we on candid camera?? You would think with our impeccable track record of payments and exceptional credit averaging 800 between us, this wouldn't be such an issue.

Oh well, we're rolling along as usual.