Presently we’re trying to find a dentist near my work, as it’s time for the normal cleaning. After personal recommendations didn’t pan out, Rachel started by checking our insurance provider’s list of participating dentists in the area. From there, she went to the interwebs in search of information on said dentists. As it turns out, there is something called the Virginia Board of Dentistry, and they just saved me a mouth full of hurt. One of the dentists was listed in a Case Decision with the following publicly stated Order and Sanction,

Reprimand, monetary penalty of $4000 and probation with terms imposed for conducting his practice in a manner likely to cause injury to patients due to mental and physical incompetence.

Tempting, but I think I’ll try one of the other dentists first.

(1) The water company charges a $20 administration fee for switching the name on the account from the old owners to us, and tacks on a $60 deposit. They hold on to that $60 deposit until sometime after we close our account with them someday.

(2) The gas company has a $31 initiation charge.

(3) The electric company has a $15 connection fee.

It’s interesting to see how they all find creative terms for those 2 minutes they spend slapping your name on an account. Then there are the utilities where we actually have a choice of providers:

(4) We’ve been using Vonage for our phone service for a while now. They were a joy to have during the move. We were able to continue using our old phone number by simply hooking up our Vonage router to my brother’s network once we arrived. We kept that same number until we knew for sure where we would be purchasing a house. At that point I had a 10 minute phone call with them wherein they activated a new number for us with the local area code, and pointed our old number at it so both would work for a time while we transition to the new. By the time I hung up from that call, the new number was already active and routing to us.

(5) While we technically had a choice of who to use for Internet connectivity, the DSL route scared me because our house is 20,000 feet from the CO (and 15,000 feet is supposed to be the limit for DSL). I’m surprised Verizon even offered the service at that distance. So, we once again joined the ranks of Comcast customers. I must admit I enjoyed the 2 year hiatus, and wish I could have returned to Speakeasy. (Speakeasy has some of the best customer service I’ve ever experienced, not just with technology providers, but of any company.)

Ordering service from Comcast turned out to be a chore, probably involving a total of 3 hours on the phone with who knows how many different people and departments. I ordered the service through comcastoffers.com, as they got us a free cable modem, $125 cash back, and 6 months of service at $19.99. I just kept telling myself all the money we are saving was worth the headache of ordering. Today I got our first monthly invoice, and there are two incorrect charges. I wish I could say I’m surprised.

As for the service, Comcast says they provide up to 6 Mbps down. Even so, I was pleased to run some tests in excess of 5 Mbps this weekend (using a speed test). Have no fear, however: after two days of service, we had our first outage on Monday night lasting about 2 hours. Comcastic! Hopefully it’s not too much longer until Verizon provides FiOS in our area. Rumors are swirling about that it might be sometime in 2007.

All things considered, the move went very smoothly. It helped that about 2/3 of our possessions were still packed and stacked in boxes. We are also very fortunate that Rachel’s mom flew out from CA for the week to help make sure there were enough hands to care for Micah (and Moby).

After several days of living here, we’re still very excited about the house. While there are still plenty of boxes that need unpacking, items that need sorting and storing, and pictures that need to be hung, we are over the hump that divides the initial phase of feeling like you’re living out of a suit case and the phase where things start to feel like home again (in spite of the mess).

The house has all your standard features: bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, etc. It seems to have plenty of room for years to come, and even has a nice bedroom and bathroom for visiting guests. (Hint, hint. Come visit.)

It is comforting to look back at the events during our move from MI to VA, and see how God orchestrated the timing. On Aug. 2, 2006 (Rachel’s birthday), we received the call letting us know I had my full clearance to start my new job. The next day the house we eventually purchased in VA was put on the market. The day after that we put our GR house up for sale. After encountering multiple closed doors in the ensuing months while trying to find a new place to live, we decided to wait until our GR house sold before doing any more searching here in VA. The week before we were scheduled to begin the house hunt again, the house we ended up buying dropped its price low enough so it showed up on our radar (i.e., it was in our price range). Were it not for some timely roadblocks placed in front of us, we likely would have made an offer on a house much sooner, and it would not have worked out as well as our current house.

All that to say, we’re extremely grateful for God’s faithfulness, and the help of our whole family during this process.

Well, as of today we’re debt free … if only for a short time. We closed on our Michigan house today which means we no longer have a mortgage. Ahhh, what a great feeling. It also means we no longer have a house.

Because we weren’t in Michigan for the closing, the title company sent us all the documents overnight, with nicely colored arrow stickers pointing out the places on each page we needed to sign. Several of the pages required a notary. It was nice that we didn’t have to go to a title company to sign everything, but because we had to get these documents signed and back in the mail the same day, we had to find a notary that was open on a Saturday. We ended up at our local Pak Mail store, of all places. That’s right– we closed on our house at Pak Mail. They charged $3 for every page requiring a notary stamp, so thankfully there were only a few. Pictured is Rachel signing some of the pages while waiting in line. (Incidentally, we were waiting behind numerous folks desperately trying to ship boxes of gifts to friends and family. After hearing what they had to pay, even for the “no guarantees on the timing” packages, the beauty of online shopping was reinforced.)

So we’ll try to enjoy being debt free during the holidays this year, for come sometime around January 16 we’ll have a new mortgage to pay. Yep, we made an offer on a house Thursday morning, and it was accepted with no counter that evening. Woo-hoo! More details about that as things progress. It’s been a busy week.  Now we need to set a new target date for when we can once again say “we’re debt free” … this time hopefully while still owning a house.

Our goals seemed relatively simple:

1. get VA driver’s licenses for each of us

2. transfer the title on each car to VA

3. register each car

4. get license plates for each car

In order to do that, we had to do several other things first: get new insurance policies in VA, get an emissions inspection on each car, and get a safety inspection on each car. (And why does the county government have the right to force an inspection on my personal property?) All that having been done, we were done with all the prep work … sort-of.

In order to accomplish all the goals above, we had to compile a multitude of documents, including but not limited to: proof of insurance on each car, existing titles for each car, marriage license, birth certificates for both of us, proof of passed emissions inspection for each car, proof of passed safety inspection for each car, proof of purchase price for each car (no, they were not purchased in VA), proof of paid sales tax on each car (again: no, they were not purchased in VA), proof of residence in VA, our MI drivers licenses, and our social security cards.

Fortunately, my wife is the queen of preparations. Thanks to her diligent research (including online, multiple phone calls to VA DMVs and the MI Secretary of State, and snail mail correspondance with the MI Sect. of State), she compiled all our documents and had all our forms ready to go. To our amazement, the DMV didn’t require anything that we didn’t have in hand and we were able to accomplish all 4 goals in one trip.

On the plus side, the VA DMV offices accept credit/debit cards (a novel idea yet to be adopted by the MI Sect. of State branches), and we got our new drivers licenses on site rather than having to wait for them to come in the mail.

Having accomplished all that, we still needed to get county registration stickers, because that can’t be done at the DMV. Those arrived in the mail last week.

One remaining hurdle is getting license plates put on the front of our vehicles, since there is no spot to attach them in front. (Must be cars made in MI where that isn’t a requirement, or something.)

Lastly, we need to pay to our county what they call a “personal property tax.” It’s a tax you pay twice per year on each car you own, and it’s based on the value of your vehicle.

Once that’s done, I think we can officially declare that our cars have successfully made the move to VA. If anything can make you miss filling out a city income tax form once each year, this process might be it. Phew.