Wilkie, sk house for sale
cambridge
2008.01.28 17:06 cambridge
Cambridge, England, United Kingdom.
2010.12.19 11:20 waldoxwaldox Toronto GTA Real Estate News & Trends
The Latest Real Estate Market News, Trends & Advice For Toronto GTA and Surrounding areas Halton, Peel, York, & Durham.
2009.10.20 02:15 terraserenus TinyHouses: a place for people interested in small or tiny houses
A place for people interested in small or tiny houses.
2024.05.29 05:45 snotrocketscientist Shamrock Shake sales raise nearly $60,000 for Ann Arbor's Ronald McDonald House - WDIV ClickOnDetroit
submitted by snotrocketscientist to greatlakestate [link] [comments]
2024.05.29 05:36 KeiraRose Am I out of line?
I’m buying a new build home and selling my old home on the same day, closing date 5/31. I had a contingency in place for me getting final loan approval by 5/24, or we had to cancel the contract with the buyers of my current home and thus cancel the purchase of the new home.
05/21 I submitted all documents requested for the conditional loan approval
05/24 I email my loan officer, sales agent, and loan processor at 8am asking if there are any further documents they need for the underwriter to make a decision or if they have any updates for me. Hits 12pm, no response from any 3 individuals, so then I try calling, texting, and sending a follow up email. No response. They are all fully aware we have a deadline by 5pm for a response, or we will have to continue with cancelling the whole deal, otherwise we could still be forced to sell our current home even without loan approval, where we could then literally be homeless. 3:30pm hits and I’ve STILL received no response from anyone, so I decided to call the front desk of the new builder and plead with them to please help me get ahold of someone. Low and behold, 5 minutes after I hang up with the receptionist I get a phone call from my loan officer literally yelling at me that I had no right to involve others in the process and she was “doing everything she possibly could for me” and that “the loan is in review, if I have an update, I’ll let you know.”
I cancelled the deal, so no one is now getting a new house, and now I’ve been made to feel like a complete asshole because I went around 3 people that were ignoring me for a very important update. Was I out of line by doing this? I honestly feel like they decided not to approve me because I “went behind their back” but I literally just wanted ONE person to respond. A simple “still in review” would have been all I needed to get me through the day.
submitted by KeiraRose to RealEstate [link] [comments]
05/21 I submitted all documents requested for the conditional loan approval
05/24 I email my loan officer, sales agent, and loan processor at 8am asking if there are any further documents they need for the underwriter to make a decision or if they have any updates for me. Hits 12pm, no response from any 3 individuals, so then I try calling, texting, and sending a follow up email. No response. They are all fully aware we have a deadline by 5pm for a response, or we will have to continue with cancelling the whole deal, otherwise we could still be forced to sell our current home even without loan approval, where we could then literally be homeless. 3:30pm hits and I’ve STILL received no response from anyone, so I decided to call the front desk of the new builder and plead with them to please help me get ahold of someone. Low and behold, 5 minutes after I hang up with the receptionist I get a phone call from my loan officer literally yelling at me that I had no right to involve others in the process and she was “doing everything she possibly could for me” and that “the loan is in review, if I have an update, I’ll let you know.”
I cancelled the deal, so no one is now getting a new house, and now I’ve been made to feel like a complete asshole because I went around 3 people that were ignoring me for a very important update. Was I out of line by doing this? I honestly feel like they decided not to approve me because I “went behind their back” but I literally just wanted ONE person to respond. A simple “still in review” would have been all I needed to get me through the day.
2024.05.29 05:27 thinkingstranger May 24, 2024
The defense and the prosecution today made their closing statements in the New York criminal case against Trump for falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels. The payment was intended to stop her account of her sexual encounter with Trump from becoming public in the days before the 2016 election, when the Trump campaign was already reeling from the Access Hollywood tape showing Trump boasting of sexual assault.
The Biden-Harris campaign showed up at the trial today with veteran actor Robert DeNiro and former police officers Michael Fanone and Harry Dunn, who protected the U.S. Capitol and members of Congress from rioters on January 6, 2021. In words seemingly calculated to get under Trump’s skin, DeNiro said, “We New Yorkers used to tolerate him when he was just another grubby real estate hustler masquerading as a big shot,” and called him a coward.
When Robert Costa of CBS News asked campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler why they had shown up at the trial, Tyler answered: “Because you all are here. You’ve been incessantly covering this day in and day out, and we want to remind the American people ahead of the…first debate on June 27 of the unique, persistent, and growing threat that Donald Trump poses to the American people and to our democracy. So since you all are here, we’re here communicating that message.”
Yesterday, in remarks at Arlington National Cemetery in observance of Memorial Day, President Joe Biden honored “the sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands of women and men who’ve given their lives for this nation. Each one…a link in the chain of honor stretching back to our founding days. Each one bound by common commitment—not to a place, not to a person, not to a President, but to an idea unlike any idea in human history: the idea of the United States of America.”
“[F]reedom has never been guaranteed,” Biden said. “Every generation has to earn it; fight for it; defend it in battle between autocracy and democracy, between the greed of a few and the rights of many…. And just as our fallen heroes have kept the ultimate faith with our country and our democracy, we must keep faith with them,” he said.
His speech at Arlington echoed the message he delivered to this year’s graduating class at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he urged the graduates to hold fast to their oaths. “On your very first day at West Point, you raised your right hands and took an oath—not to a political party, not to a president, but to the Constitution of the United States of America—against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” he said to applause. Soldiers “have given their lives for that Constitution. They have fought to defend the freedoms that it protects: the right to vote, the right to worship, the right to raise your voice in protest. They have saved and sacrificed to ensure, as President Lincoln said, a ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth.’”
“[N]othing is guaranteed about our democracy in America. Every generation has an obligation to defend it, to protect it, to preserve it, to choose it,” he said. “Now, it’s your turn.” Biden spent more than an hour saluting and shaking the hand of each graduate.
In contrast, Trump ushered in Memorial Day with a post on his social media company, saying: “Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country, & to the Radical Left, Trump Hating Federal Judge in New York that presided over, get this, TWO separate trials, that awarded a woman, who I never met before (a quick handshake at a celebrity event, 25 years ago, doesn’t count!), 91 MILLION DOLLARS for “DEFAMATION.” He then continued to attack E. Jean Carroll, the writer who successfully sued him for defamation, before turning to attack Judge Arthur Engoron, who presided over the civil case of Trump and the Trump Organization falsifying documents, and Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the current criminal case in New York.
The message behind this extraordinary post was twofold: Trump can think of nothing but himself…and he appears to be terrified.
On Saturday, May 25, Trump had an experience quite different from his usual reception at rallies of hand-picked supporters. He was resoundingly booed at the national convention of the Libertarian Party in Washington, D.C., where Secret Service agents confiscated squeaky rubber chickens before his speech. Attendees jeered Trump’s order, “You have to combine with us,” even when he reminded them of his libertarian credentials—tax cuts and defunding of federal equality programs—and promised to pardon the January 6 rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol.
Trump also promised to pardon Ross Ulbricht, who founded and from January 2011 to October 2013 ran an online criminal marketplace called Silk Road, where more than $200 million in illegal drugs and other illicit goods and services, such as computer hacking, were bought and sold. Most of the sales were of drugs, with the Silk Road home page listing nearly 13,000 options, including heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, and LSD. The wares were linked to at least six deaths from overdose around the world. In May 2015, Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison and was ordered to forfeit more than $180 million.
Libertarians want Ulbricht released because they support drug legalization on the grounds that people should be able to make their own choices and they see Ulbricht’s sentence as government overreach. Trump has repeatedly called for the death penalty for drug dealers, making his promise to pardon Ulbricht an illustration of just how badly he thinks he needs the support of Libertarian voters. But they refused to endorse him.
Trump appeared angry, and on Sunday, as Greg Sargent reported in The New Republic, he reposted a video of a man raging at MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. In it, the man says that when Trump is reelected: “He’ll get rid of all you f*cking liberals. You liberals are gone when he f*cking wins. You f*cking blowjob liberals are done. Uncle Donnie’s gonna take this election—landslide. Landslide, you f*cking half a blowjob. Landslide. Get the f*ck out of here, you scumbag.”
Trump’s elevation of this video, Sargent notes, is a dangerous escalation of his already violent rhetoric, and yet it has gotten very little media attention.
Last November, Matt Gertz of Media Matters reported that ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News provided 18 times more coverage of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s comment at a fundraising event that “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables” who are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic,” than they provided of Trump’s November 2023 promise to “root out the communist, Marxist, fascist and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”
CNN, the Fox News Channel, and MSNBC mentioned the “deplorables” comment nearly 9 times more than Trump’s “vermin” language. The ratio for the five highest-circulating U.S. newspapers was 29:1.
Clinton’s statement was consistent with polling, and she added that the rest of Trump’s supporters were “people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change.” She said: “Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”
Sargent noted that news stories require context and that Trump’s elevation of the violent video should be placed alongside his many threats to prosecute his enemies. While there is often concern over disrespect toward right-wing voters, Sargent writes, there has been very little attention to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s posting of “a video that declares a large ideological subgroup of Americans ‘done’ and ‘gone’ if he is elected.”
Scott MacFarlane of CBS News reported yesterday that Republicans have ignored a law passed in March 2022 requiring the placement of a small plaque honoring police officers who protected the U.S. Capitol and the lawmakers and staffers there on January 6, 2021. It was supposed to be in place by March 2023 but has not gone up. A spokesperson for House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) says his office is working on it. Kayla Tausche of CNN reported today that three of the police officers at the Capitol that day—Sergeant Aquilino Gonell and Officer Harry Dunn, both retired, and Officer Daniel Hodges, who is still with the Washington, D.C., metropolitan police—will be traveling to swing states for the Biden campaign to tell voters that Trump threatens Americans’ fundamental rights.
Finally, today, Melinda French Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announced $1 billion in new spending over the next two years “for people and organizations working on behalf of women and families around the world, including on reproductive rights in the United States.” Only 2% of charitable giving in the U.S. goes to these organizations, she wrote the New York Times, and “[f]or too long, a lack of money has forced organizations fighting for women's rights into a defensive posture while the enemies of progress play offense. I want to help even the match.”
—
Notes:
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/26/libertarians-reject-trump-rfk-chase-oliver-presidential-nominee-00160040
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/05/27/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-156th-national-memorial-day-observance-arlington-va/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/05/25/remarks-by-president-biden-in-commencement-address-to-the-united-states-military-academy-at-west-point-west-point-ny/
https://newrepublic.com/article/181973/trump-media-attacks-media-dangerous-turn
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-fails-to-install-plaque-honoring-jan-6-police-officers/
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/28/politics/biden-campaign-january-6-officers/index.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c722qy5dzlgo
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/25/trump-commute-ross-ulbricht-sentence-libertarian-convention-00160025
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ross-ulbricht-aka-dread-pirate-roberts-sentenced-life-federal-prison-creating
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-is-spotlighting-ross-ulbricht-silk-road-appeal-to-libertarians-2024
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4305566-trump-doubles-down-death-penalty-for-drug-dealers/
https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/major-news-outlets-gave-much-less-coverage-trumps-vermin-attack-then-they-did-clintons
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4687060-donald-trump-squeaky-chicken-libertarian-controversy/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/opinion/melinda-french-gates-reproductive-rights.html
The Dworkin ReportDe Niro and Jan 6 Heroes Unload on Trump Outside NY TrialRobert De Niro just showed up outside the New York City courthouse, where Trump is facing 34 felony counts. Rightwing lunatics are already trying to start conspiracy theories lying and saying that thi…Read more8 hours ago · 765 likes · 132 comments · Scott Dworkin
X:
BidenHQ/status/1795469679542100005
costareports/status/1795484830349852855
adamkinzingestatus/1795111150494826743
BidenHQ/status/1795468053993357493
submitted by thinkingstranger to HeatherCoxRichardson [link] [comments]
The Biden-Harris campaign showed up at the trial today with veteran actor Robert DeNiro and former police officers Michael Fanone and Harry Dunn, who protected the U.S. Capitol and members of Congress from rioters on January 6, 2021. In words seemingly calculated to get under Trump’s skin, DeNiro said, “We New Yorkers used to tolerate him when he was just another grubby real estate hustler masquerading as a big shot,” and called him a coward.
When Robert Costa of CBS News asked campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler why they had shown up at the trial, Tyler answered: “Because you all are here. You’ve been incessantly covering this day in and day out, and we want to remind the American people ahead of the…first debate on June 27 of the unique, persistent, and growing threat that Donald Trump poses to the American people and to our democracy. So since you all are here, we’re here communicating that message.”
Yesterday, in remarks at Arlington National Cemetery in observance of Memorial Day, President Joe Biden honored “the sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands of women and men who’ve given their lives for this nation. Each one…a link in the chain of honor stretching back to our founding days. Each one bound by common commitment—not to a place, not to a person, not to a President, but to an idea unlike any idea in human history: the idea of the United States of America.”
“[F]reedom has never been guaranteed,” Biden said. “Every generation has to earn it; fight for it; defend it in battle between autocracy and democracy, between the greed of a few and the rights of many…. And just as our fallen heroes have kept the ultimate faith with our country and our democracy, we must keep faith with them,” he said.
His speech at Arlington echoed the message he delivered to this year’s graduating class at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he urged the graduates to hold fast to their oaths. “On your very first day at West Point, you raised your right hands and took an oath—not to a political party, not to a president, but to the Constitution of the United States of America—against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” he said to applause. Soldiers “have given their lives for that Constitution. They have fought to defend the freedoms that it protects: the right to vote, the right to worship, the right to raise your voice in protest. They have saved and sacrificed to ensure, as President Lincoln said, a ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth.’”
“[N]othing is guaranteed about our democracy in America. Every generation has an obligation to defend it, to protect it, to preserve it, to choose it,” he said. “Now, it’s your turn.” Biden spent more than an hour saluting and shaking the hand of each graduate.
In contrast, Trump ushered in Memorial Day with a post on his social media company, saying: “Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country, & to the Radical Left, Trump Hating Federal Judge in New York that presided over, get this, TWO separate trials, that awarded a woman, who I never met before (a quick handshake at a celebrity event, 25 years ago, doesn’t count!), 91 MILLION DOLLARS for “DEFAMATION.” He then continued to attack E. Jean Carroll, the writer who successfully sued him for defamation, before turning to attack Judge Arthur Engoron, who presided over the civil case of Trump and the Trump Organization falsifying documents, and Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the current criminal case in New York.
The message behind this extraordinary post was twofold: Trump can think of nothing but himself…and he appears to be terrified.
On Saturday, May 25, Trump had an experience quite different from his usual reception at rallies of hand-picked supporters. He was resoundingly booed at the national convention of the Libertarian Party in Washington, D.C., where Secret Service agents confiscated squeaky rubber chickens before his speech. Attendees jeered Trump’s order, “You have to combine with us,” even when he reminded them of his libertarian credentials—tax cuts and defunding of federal equality programs—and promised to pardon the January 6 rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol.
Trump also promised to pardon Ross Ulbricht, who founded and from January 2011 to October 2013 ran an online criminal marketplace called Silk Road, where more than $200 million in illegal drugs and other illicit goods and services, such as computer hacking, were bought and sold. Most of the sales were of drugs, with the Silk Road home page listing nearly 13,000 options, including heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, and LSD. The wares were linked to at least six deaths from overdose around the world. In May 2015, Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison and was ordered to forfeit more than $180 million.
Libertarians want Ulbricht released because they support drug legalization on the grounds that people should be able to make their own choices and they see Ulbricht’s sentence as government overreach. Trump has repeatedly called for the death penalty for drug dealers, making his promise to pardon Ulbricht an illustration of just how badly he thinks he needs the support of Libertarian voters. But they refused to endorse him.
Trump appeared angry, and on Sunday, as Greg Sargent reported in The New Republic, he reposted a video of a man raging at MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. In it, the man says that when Trump is reelected: “He’ll get rid of all you f*cking liberals. You liberals are gone when he f*cking wins. You f*cking blowjob liberals are done. Uncle Donnie’s gonna take this election—landslide. Landslide, you f*cking half a blowjob. Landslide. Get the f*ck out of here, you scumbag.”
Trump’s elevation of this video, Sargent notes, is a dangerous escalation of his already violent rhetoric, and yet it has gotten very little media attention.
Last November, Matt Gertz of Media Matters reported that ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News provided 18 times more coverage of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s comment at a fundraising event that “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables” who are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic,” than they provided of Trump’s November 2023 promise to “root out the communist, Marxist, fascist and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”
CNN, the Fox News Channel, and MSNBC mentioned the “deplorables” comment nearly 9 times more than Trump’s “vermin” language. The ratio for the five highest-circulating U.S. newspapers was 29:1.
Clinton’s statement was consistent with polling, and she added that the rest of Trump’s supporters were “people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change.” She said: “Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”
Sargent noted that news stories require context and that Trump’s elevation of the violent video should be placed alongside his many threats to prosecute his enemies. While there is often concern over disrespect toward right-wing voters, Sargent writes, there has been very little attention to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s posting of “a video that declares a large ideological subgroup of Americans ‘done’ and ‘gone’ if he is elected.”
Scott MacFarlane of CBS News reported yesterday that Republicans have ignored a law passed in March 2022 requiring the placement of a small plaque honoring police officers who protected the U.S. Capitol and the lawmakers and staffers there on January 6, 2021. It was supposed to be in place by March 2023 but has not gone up. A spokesperson for House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) says his office is working on it. Kayla Tausche of CNN reported today that three of the police officers at the Capitol that day—Sergeant Aquilino Gonell and Officer Harry Dunn, both retired, and Officer Daniel Hodges, who is still with the Washington, D.C., metropolitan police—will be traveling to swing states for the Biden campaign to tell voters that Trump threatens Americans’ fundamental rights.
Finally, today, Melinda French Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announced $1 billion in new spending over the next two years “for people and organizations working on behalf of women and families around the world, including on reproductive rights in the United States.” Only 2% of charitable giving in the U.S. goes to these organizations, she wrote the New York Times, and “[f]or too long, a lack of money has forced organizations fighting for women's rights into a defensive posture while the enemies of progress play offense. I want to help even the match.”
—
Notes:
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/26/libertarians-reject-trump-rfk-chase-oliver-presidential-nominee-00160040
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/05/27/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-156th-national-memorial-day-observance-arlington-va/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/05/25/remarks-by-president-biden-in-commencement-address-to-the-united-states-military-academy-at-west-point-west-point-ny/
https://newrepublic.com/article/181973/trump-media-attacks-media-dangerous-turn
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-fails-to-install-plaque-honoring-jan-6-police-officers/
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/28/politics/biden-campaign-january-6-officers/index.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c722qy5dzlgo
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/25/trump-commute-ross-ulbricht-sentence-libertarian-convention-00160025
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ross-ulbricht-aka-dread-pirate-roberts-sentenced-life-federal-prison-creating
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-is-spotlighting-ross-ulbricht-silk-road-appeal-to-libertarians-2024
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4305566-trump-doubles-down-death-penalty-for-drug-dealers/
https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/major-news-outlets-gave-much-less-coverage-trumps-vermin-attack-then-they-did-clintons
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4687060-donald-trump-squeaky-chicken-libertarian-controversy/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/opinion/melinda-french-gates-reproductive-rights.html
The Dworkin ReportDe Niro and Jan 6 Heroes Unload on Trump Outside NY TrialRobert De Niro just showed up outside the New York City courthouse, where Trump is facing 34 felony counts. Rightwing lunatics are already trying to start conspiracy theories lying and saying that thi…Read more8 hours ago · 765 likes · 132 comments · Scott Dworkin
X:
BidenHQ/status/1795469679542100005
costareports/status/1795484830349852855
adamkinzingestatus/1795111150494826743
BidenHQ/status/1795468053993357493
2024.05.29 05:06 Valtronas My positive experience selling to Opendoor (2024)
For anyone hesitant about selling to Opendoor, I hope this helps you.
When my wife and I found our dream new build "move-in ready" house we made moves to quickly sell our home to get a contingent contract going on the new one. After getting quotes from Opendoor, various other sites that offer the same services, and a few local realty groups we decided to go with Opendoor. We knew we were taking a small cut on the sale, but it was only by about 1.5% less compared to what the traditional agents wanted to list at. We did have some concerns going into the Opendoor process due to some scare tactics a few different realty groups used.
They warned that Opendoor had a 50% cancellation rate, that they would use the info of being on a contingent contract with the new house to cut the final offer the day before close, or that they would back out the day of close.
This made us pretty anxious the entire time. I spent countless hours looking into these claims and couldn't find anything outside of cancellations during the start of the pandemic.
The claims were unfounded. I had a great experience. Both Opendoor and the title company they use were extremely informative, friendly, quick to reply to questions, and timely with their payments. They even gave us three extra days post close to move out. 10/10 would recommend.
submitted by Valtronas to opendoor [link] [comments]
When my wife and I found our dream new build "move-in ready" house we made moves to quickly sell our home to get a contingent contract going on the new one. After getting quotes from Opendoor, various other sites that offer the same services, and a few local realty groups we decided to go with Opendoor. We knew we were taking a small cut on the sale, but it was only by about 1.5% less compared to what the traditional agents wanted to list at. We did have some concerns going into the Opendoor process due to some scare tactics a few different realty groups used.
They warned that Opendoor had a 50% cancellation rate, that they would use the info of being on a contingent contract with the new house to cut the final offer the day before close, or that they would back out the day of close.
This made us pretty anxious the entire time. I spent countless hours looking into these claims and couldn't find anything outside of cancellations during the start of the pandemic.
The claims were unfounded. I had a great experience. Both Opendoor and the title company they use were extremely informative, friendly, quick to reply to questions, and timely with their payments. They even gave us three extra days post close to move out. 10/10 would recommend.
2024.05.29 05:02 Valtronas My positive experience selling to Opendoor (2024)
For anyone hesitant about selling to Opendoor, I hope this helps you.
When my wife and I found our dream new build "move-in ready" house we made moves to quickly sell our home to get a contingent contract going on the new one. After getting quotes from Opendoor, various other sites that offer the same services, and a few local realty groups we decided to go with Opendoor. We knew we were taking a small cut on the sale, but it was only by about 1.5% less compared to what the traditional agents wanted to list at. We did have some concerns going into the Opendoor process due to some scare tactics a few different realty groups used.
They warned that Opendoor had a 50% cancellation rate, that they would use the info of being on a contingent contract with the new house to cut the final offer the day before close, or that they would back out the day of close.
This made us pretty anxious the entire time. I spent countless hours looking into these claims and couldn't find anything outside of cancellations during the start of the pandemic.
The claims were unfounded. I had a great experience. Both Opendoor and the title company they use were extremely informative, friendly, quick to reply to questions, and timely with their payments. They even gave us three extra days post close to move out. 10/10 would recommend.
submitted by Valtronas to RealEstate [link] [comments]
When my wife and I found our dream new build "move-in ready" house we made moves to quickly sell our home to get a contingent contract going on the new one. After getting quotes from Opendoor, various other sites that offer the same services, and a few local realty groups we decided to go with Opendoor. We knew we were taking a small cut on the sale, but it was only by about 1.5% less compared to what the traditional agents wanted to list at. We did have some concerns going into the Opendoor process due to some scare tactics a few different realty groups used.
They warned that Opendoor had a 50% cancellation rate, that they would use the info of being on a contingent contract with the new house to cut the final offer the day before close, or that they would back out the day of close.
This made us pretty anxious the entire time. I spent countless hours looking into these claims and couldn't find anything outside of cancellations during the start of the pandemic.
The claims were unfounded. I had a great experience. Both Opendoor and the title company they use were extremely informative, friendly, quick to reply to questions, and timely with their payments. They even gave us three extra days post close to move out. 10/10 would recommend.
2024.05.29 04:36 GenericNameSC1989 Charleston In A Nutshell
 | submitted by GenericNameSC1989 to Charleston [link] [comments] |
2024.05.29 04:03 RustyScrew72 Thank you Wade!
My husband and I are planning on purchasing a home in the Midwest. After hearing about his mishaps with his radon mitigation kit, it stuck in my head during the whole sales process; when the time came for environmental testing, I assured our agent we absolutely wanted the house to get checked for radon.
Lo and behold, the levels were mind boggling and 3 times higher than the "safe amount." I would never have considered pushing for the test if I hadn't heard Wade talk about his radon mitigation system, and I'm so glad I did.
Friendly PSA, even if your agent tells you that none of the other houses in the area have been tested, don't put your family's health at risk.
submitted by RustyScrew72 to distractible [link] [comments]
Lo and behold, the levels were mind boggling and 3 times higher than the "safe amount." I would never have considered pushing for the test if I hadn't heard Wade talk about his radon mitigation system, and I'm so glad I did.
Friendly PSA, even if your agent tells you that none of the other houses in the area have been tested, don't put your family's health at risk.
2024.05.29 03:57 PunkiesBoner A close friend who has some debilitating anxiety issues is losing their house to foreclosure - The auction is 35.5 hours from the time of this posting in Maricopa County, AZ...
....Her anxiety had her basically frozen until she came to me for help today. The amount she is behind is very low five digits, and she stands to lose equity in the mid six-digit range. She has about 25% of the amount she is behind in cash.
We called the mortgage company today and they said it's too late to stop the auction. The notice from the County Recorder says:
I am an engineer and construction manager, so I am literate and can usually decode legal documents, and I can usually tell when I should hire professional help. This feels like one of those times but she's short on both time and money, and so I plan to accompany her to the courthouse in the morning to see if she can file an action in time to get in front of this thing.
THE QUESTION (TLDR): How likely are we to be successful in obtaining a court order in one business day? What should we bring with us to the courthouse? Is there anything else we should know or do or get in order to increase her chances of preventing her house from being auctioned?
submitted by PunkiesBoner to legaladvice [link] [comments]
We called the mortgage company today and they said it's too late to stop the auction. The notice from the County Recorder says:
"IF YOU BELIEVE THERE IS A DEFENSE TO THE TRUSTEE SALE OR IF YOU HAVE AN OBJECTION TO THE TRUSTEE SALE YOU MUST FILE AN ACTION AND OBTAIN A COURT ORDER PURSUANT TO RULE 65, ARIZONA RULES OF CIVIL PROCEDURE, STOPPIN THE SALE BEFORE 5:00PM MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME ON THE LAST BUSINESS DAY BEFORE THE SCHEDULED DATE OF THE SALE OR..."you're f'ed, basically.
I am an engineer and construction manager, so I am literate and can usually decode legal documents, and I can usually tell when I should hire professional help. This feels like one of those times but she's short on both time and money, and so I plan to accompany her to the courthouse in the morning to see if she can file an action in time to get in front of this thing.
THE QUESTION (TLDR): How likely are we to be successful in obtaining a court order in one business day? What should we bring with us to the courthouse? Is there anything else we should know or do or get in order to increase her chances of preventing her house from being auctioned?
2024.05.29 03:52 Keep_trying_zzz (Canada) My Grandma was selling her house to a lady. My Grandma passed away in early May. My dad is the executor of the will, and intended to see the sale through. Now, because of a small delay (Probate, lawers, etc) of only a few weeks, the buyer is trying to backout for unknown reasons
EDIT: Meant "Lawyers" in the title obviously lmao facepalm
My family is in a full panic, and I feel like the voice of calm reason, so I'm trying to keep everyone level-headed
Basically, the original contract had them moving in & everything closed up June 1st. Now, because of my Grandma passing away, probate and whatnot had to be involved, so the date is estimated to be about June 21st-28th, somewhere in that range.
For SOME reason (We're not yet actually entirely sure), they now want to completely back out of the sale AND keep their deposit.
My parents are understandably upset, and slightly worried because even though they've done EVERYTHING right, they're worried about potential legal issues (They're just freaking out, I've tried to reassure them that if anybody is breaching the contract, it's the buyer - my parents have done everything possible to uphold & see the sale of the house through)
I am just their dumb son, I don't know SHIT about real-estate or how any of this stuff works...so I guess I'm just asking you folks if you happen to have any knowledge, or even just guesses at what could/would/is most likely to happen from this point on?
Will my parents be sued for trying to stop the buyers to backout of the sale or some kind of breach of contract? Can the buyers backout of the sale AND keep their deposit? Will my family accrue even more legal fees because of this, outside of the bills & immense financial strain of having to keep this second property afloat now for months back on the market?
If you need any information, I can try my best to answer any questions. Sorry if this is poorly written, worded, or my questions are just silly - like I said I don't know this stuff and I just want to give my parents some information, and maybe peace of mind because they're unfamiliar with real-estate themselves
Thanks :)
submitted by Keep_trying_zzz to RealEstate [link] [comments]
My family is in a full panic, and I feel like the voice of calm reason, so I'm trying to keep everyone level-headed
Basically, the original contract had them moving in & everything closed up June 1st. Now, because of my Grandma passing away, probate and whatnot had to be involved, so the date is estimated to be about June 21st-28th, somewhere in that range.
For SOME reason (We're not yet actually entirely sure), they now want to completely back out of the sale AND keep their deposit.
My parents are understandably upset, and slightly worried because even though they've done EVERYTHING right, they're worried about potential legal issues (They're just freaking out, I've tried to reassure them that if anybody is breaching the contract, it's the buyer - my parents have done everything possible to uphold & see the sale of the house through)
I am just their dumb son, I don't know SHIT about real-estate or how any of this stuff works...so I guess I'm just asking you folks if you happen to have any knowledge, or even just guesses at what could/would/is most likely to happen from this point on?
Will my parents be sued for trying to stop the buyers to backout of the sale or some kind of breach of contract? Can the buyers backout of the sale AND keep their deposit? Will my family accrue even more legal fees because of this, outside of the bills & immense financial strain of having to keep this second property afloat now for months back on the market?
If you need any information, I can try my best to answer any questions. Sorry if this is poorly written, worded, or my questions are just silly - like I said I don't know this stuff and I just want to give my parents some information, and maybe peace of mind because they're unfamiliar with real-estate themselves
Thanks :)
2024.05.29 03:49 ThrowOutYourGarbage Question about bank transfers / deposits
Hi,
Just a bit of context for this thread, I have inherited a very old family cottage from my grandparents who passed away a few years ago.
I am thinking of selling the cottage, but one of my concerns is if I get a certified cheque or other piece of paper and then losing the paper before depositing it at the bank, I could see that being a big headache. I believe back in the old days, people would commonly have pieces of paper like certified cheques or something similar, and they would have to rush to go to the bank to deposit it. Personally, I prefer digital options and I think having to rush to the bank with a piece of paper in hand would be really archaic and honestly just not pleasant at all.
Basically, my question is, when selling a house, is it possible to get the funds from the sale deposited directly into my chequing account, like if I provide a void cheque with my direct deposit information? What about a wire transfer, is this another option for the funds to be transferred directly into my chequing account? Would I be paid by my real estate agent, or by my real estate lawyer, or something else? Sorry, I am kind of new to all of this, I have never personally sold a home before as you can probably tell.
I feel like this doesn't deserve it's own thread, so I am terribly sorry about creating a thread for this, but I couldn't find a "common questions" or "weekly questions" where I could quickly place my question. I know "there are no dumb questions" but I still feel dumb.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
submitted by ThrowOutYourGarbage to RealEstateCanada [link] [comments]
Just a bit of context for this thread, I have inherited a very old family cottage from my grandparents who passed away a few years ago.
I am thinking of selling the cottage, but one of my concerns is if I get a certified cheque or other piece of paper and then losing the paper before depositing it at the bank, I could see that being a big headache. I believe back in the old days, people would commonly have pieces of paper like certified cheques or something similar, and they would have to rush to go to the bank to deposit it. Personally, I prefer digital options and I think having to rush to the bank with a piece of paper in hand would be really archaic and honestly just not pleasant at all.
Basically, my question is, when selling a house, is it possible to get the funds from the sale deposited directly into my chequing account, like if I provide a void cheque with my direct deposit information? What about a wire transfer, is this another option for the funds to be transferred directly into my chequing account? Would I be paid by my real estate agent, or by my real estate lawyer, or something else? Sorry, I am kind of new to all of this, I have never personally sold a home before as you can probably tell.
I feel like this doesn't deserve it's own thread, so I am terribly sorry about creating a thread for this, but I couldn't find a "common questions" or "weekly questions" where I could quickly place my question. I know "there are no dumb questions" but I still feel dumb.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
2024.05.29 03:45 Full-Somewhere-6337 Let’s assume I’m married and I own a house , could my spouse take a home loan to buy my house so I get cash from the bank,and then I still live in the house while having cash to invest ? The tittle is the question
Would this work ? In theory hat you gain from this is the following: -You get the full cash amount of the sale which you can reinvest ! - You don’t lose ownership of the property ASUMING YOU trust your significant other and plan on staying together -You can live in your own house for free while helping your spouse pay her mortgage! -you and your spouse still earn money since your property will appreciate on value over time.
Is this legal ? Has anybody thought about this before ?
submitted by Full-Somewhere-6337 to RealEstate [link] [comments]
Is this legal ? Has anybody thought about this before ?
2024.05.29 03:34 BowDown2No1ButCrypto Archie No.35 SEPT(1974)
 | submitted by BowDown2No1ButCrypto to comicbookcollecting [link] [comments] |
2024.05.29 03:32 RealisticEdge Realistic Cash Option For Foreclosure
I found a home that I'd like to move my family to as our "forever home." It's currently for sale (the owners won't come down on the price, we tried to buy it) but I have reason to believe it may go into foreclosure in the next couple of months - the process has been going on for quite some time, there's a chance it may go for auction over the summer.
If it does go to auction, I would like the opportunity to bid on it. I've never done something like this before, and know everything is stacked against us - but I'd like to know if anyone has any practical advice.
The estimated prices are: Final judgement amount: $350k
Plaintiff's max bid: Unknown
Assessed value: $400k
Just market value: $650k
*I would check to make sure there aren't other liens on the property too.
My spouse and I have $200k in our 401ks, and about $350k equity in our current home (which we would sell if we took ownership of this home.)
Would it be crazy to take out a HELOC on our current home and borrow (or do the 60 day rollover) for our 401ks to try and get the house? With a HELOC, if we don't end up winning the bid, we could just not use the money correct? And then just roll our 401ks into IRAs? But if by some miracle we do get the home, just pay ourselves back with the equity from our current home?
I assume other people would bid on this property too, there are plenty of pictures on Zillow showing that it's not in bad shape. The current listing price is almost $800k. The just market value is in line with what we'd be willing to mortgage, but we'd never be able to come up with the cash to bid that high. We did offer that amount to the owners and they ignored us.
submitted by RealisticEdge to RealEstate [link] [comments]
If it does go to auction, I would like the opportunity to bid on it. I've never done something like this before, and know everything is stacked against us - but I'd like to know if anyone has any practical advice.
The estimated prices are: Final judgement amount: $350k
Plaintiff's max bid: Unknown
Assessed value: $400k
Just market value: $650k
*I would check to make sure there aren't other liens on the property too.
My spouse and I have $200k in our 401ks, and about $350k equity in our current home (which we would sell if we took ownership of this home.)
Would it be crazy to take out a HELOC on our current home and borrow (or do the 60 day rollover) for our 401ks to try and get the house? With a HELOC, if we don't end up winning the bid, we could just not use the money correct? And then just roll our 401ks into IRAs? But if by some miracle we do get the home, just pay ourselves back with the equity from our current home?
I assume other people would bid on this property too, there are plenty of pictures on Zillow showing that it's not in bad shape. The current listing price is almost $800k. The just market value is in line with what we'd be willing to mortgage, but we'd never be able to come up with the cash to bid that high. We did offer that amount to the owners and they ignored us.
2024.05.29 03:31 ErnestFlubbersword House heating options in Chch
I just found out from ECan my perfectly good and efficient pellet heater has "expired", and I'm no longer allowed to use it.
Anyway I'm looking at getting a new one, or maybe replacing with a heat pump, but none of the local websites have prices listed. So I'm hoping to get some unbiased objective opinions before speaking with sales people.
A new pellet heater is simpler as all the infrastructure is already in place. I also like the fact I can run it in a power outage. No idea of prices.
A heat pump might be cheaper to run, and generally cleaner for the city. The trouble is finding a good location in the house, and knocking a hole in the brick wall. I also have no idea about product prices or installation costs.
Not interested in a wood burner.
The house is something like 120 m^2. Any suggestions please?
submitted by ErnestFlubbersword to chch [link] [comments]
Anyway I'm looking at getting a new one, or maybe replacing with a heat pump, but none of the local websites have prices listed. So I'm hoping to get some unbiased objective opinions before speaking with sales people.
A new pellet heater is simpler as all the infrastructure is already in place. I also like the fact I can run it in a power outage. No idea of prices.
A heat pump might be cheaper to run, and generally cleaner for the city. The trouble is finding a good location in the house, and knocking a hole in the brick wall. I also have no idea about product prices or installation costs.
Not interested in a wood burner.
The house is something like 120 m^2. Any suggestions please?
2024.05.29 03:23 Cactuswoog808 Avoid rural areas ?
Should i avoid rural houses for sale ? Im in Northwest Arkansas but am planning to expand but dont know if i should waste my time with properties that are out in the sticks
submitted by Cactuswoog808 to WholesalingHouses [link] [comments]
2024.05.29 03:20 UnmovableFeast Pitchforks
It happened. He didn't deny that. Not like he was a suspect or anything—not yet—but he never denied it to himself. At the same time, this all happened over a decade ago—twelve years to be exact.
He didn't think of it every day; in fact, sometimes an entire month would go by where it barely crossed his mind.
In a way, that whole experience—he thought of all the abductions and murders as a singular event—now felt as if it belonged to somebody else.
It was a time in his life when he was confused, mixed-up, searching; a dark time, you know, like a phase. Who didn't have one of those in their past?
Plus, he was married now. His wife, Dee, obviously didn't know about it and he felt no obligation to tell her. Did he ask about her former lovers?
Sometimes there are things in the past and you just let them be. Whether it was Dee losing her virginity to the quarterback of the football team in the backseat at a drive-in or him using multiple black garbage bags and masking tape on that thing he didn't have time to bury in rural Tennessee, everyone has things they would rather forget about. Sometimes you just leave things where they lie.
So that's what Ned Doyle did.
Until that Sunday morning, November 6th, 1988.
He was a having a glass of Dee's pulpy homemade orange juice, waiting for his coffee to percolate, when he opened his heavy weekend edition of the New York Times (probably Ned's greatest extravagance—he liked its heft; and how the Arts & Leisure section made him feel culturally superior to his Ohio townsfolk, “the Philistines of Findlay,” he called them) when he saw the article buried in the back.
The country was two days from heading to the polls for the General Election—Bush v. Dukakis—so most everything else that week had been relegated to the back.
He read the article twice before he could even begin to make sense of it. It seemed to be a story about something called "DNA fingerprinting" and a 27-year-old baker in Great Britain named Colin Pitchfork who had confessed to raping and murdering two 15-year-old girls, in separate incidents a few years apart, after a new scientific process had been used to extract information from semen which he, Colin Pitchfork, had left at the crime scenes (likely inside the victims) some five years earlier.
Now if they could do all that after five years, why not ten years—or maybe even… twelve?
"Interesting story here," he said to Dee. It wasn't uncommon for Ned to read a news story twice—once for himself and a second time aloud to Dee while she brewed his coffee and burnt her toast. But this was his third reading and Ned acted as if it were his first.
"What do you make of that?" he asked. It somehow got worse each time he read it. After the third time, he felt as if he had been sucker punched in the stomach.
"Science Fiction is what it sounds like," Dee said matter-of-factly, pouring Ned his coffee in a mug that bore the Marathon Oil insignia. Findlay, Ohio was Marathon’s headquarters although there had been rumors circulating about a move to Texas.
"And unconstitutional," he said. "Cops running a dragnet like that, taking blood samples from 5,000 townspeople. Thankfully, that would never pass the muster here."
"They did catch the killer so maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea," she said, buttering her burnt toast. "Otherwise, who knows? They could have convicted the wrong man.”
Ned had already gotten lucky once – astonishingly so. Griffin Gerald Jones, the famed “I-75 Corridor Child Killer,” had claimed responsibility for all but one of Ned’s victims before dying in Florida’s electric chair.
"You can't have police in this country running around, sticking everyone with needles, drawing blood for some sort of science experiment,” he said. “Nevermind the Constitution, what about AIDS?”
“What about it?” she asked.
“There's been hundreds, thousands of cases now where people have been infected by giving blood,” he said. “That's a medical fact. Get accused of a crime and AIDS too?"
"It doesn't sound like any of the townspeople there in England got AIDS, darling. Unless there's more to the story, besides what you read to me."
He watched her spread orange marmalade over her burnt toast and take a bite. She had a dead tooth and he saw it every time she opened her mouth. He loved Dee but had never been sexually attracted to her. Not in the way he had been attracted to others.
"It really is just a matter of time before that stuff makes it over here," she said with her mouth full. "To this side of the pond, as they say." She took a sip of his orange juice. "Isn’t that how it always works? Things start over there in England, or in California, and then phht, before you know it, it makes its way to Findlay."
He held his hand over his stomach. She saw him wince.
"Was it my orange juice again? Was it still pulpy? I squeezed it by hand and even strained it twice this time."
"It’s not your fault,” he said. “I think it’s me. Orange juice is getting too… acidic for me." He looked at the clock on the coffee maker. "I'm going to be late."
He turned the page.
He played the 8 o'clock Mass by rote as he had many a bleary-eyed Sunday morning. It was pure muscle memory at this point. He made a few mistakes here and there, missed a key or two, but it was nothing the organ's sustain pedal couldn't mask – not that anyone would complain (not at the 8 o'clock anyway).
On Sundays Ned had four Masses: the 8, the 9:30, the big one at 11, and the 12:30 for the dilettantes who couldn't get their acts together for the 11.
He turned the page.
Today he was using Glory and Praise, AKA "the blue hymnal" for songs he knew by heart.
Turning the pages of his sheet music, reading each note, he was able to keep his mind off it.
Ned abhorred cliches (especially those involving sports) but he made an exception for “Out of sight, out of mind.” For Ned, that wasn’t a cliché; it was a way of life. He was a man who preferred to be heard, not seen, which made St. Bartholomew (or St. Bart’s) the perfect home for him.
In a spectacular architectural oversight, the church's pipe organ was situated so the organist's back was to the altar and pews. The organist of course needs to see what's going on in the Mass to read certain non-verbal cues but the arrangement suited Ned just fine. The congregation was comprised of many young families who had many young children—boys in particular—and it wasn't so much that he couldn't control himself because he was now firmly in control of all that; it was more that he didn't need any reminders of that time when he couldn't.
Especially during church.
So to see the altar behind him, Ned had installed an actual rearview mirror, the type you'd find on an old Buick, and he used a special type of putty to affix it to the mantle of the pipe organ. Having been the church organist at St. Bart's for nine years, he seldom needed it anymore—he could do it in his sleep—but it came in handy today as he found his attention drifting and he nearly missed the oratory refrain at the 9:30 Mass.
His real problems didn't start until the 35-minute break between the 8 and 9:30.
He was reorganizing his sheet music after the first wave of churchgoers had cleared out, when he began thinking about Colin Pitchfork again. The article said he was a baker in England somewhere—did it say he baked cakes or was that Ned's invention?
Even though no picture was provided in the Times article, Ned spent the balance of the 9:30 service picturing the 27- year-old ex-rapist/murderer working in his small English bakery, quietly going about his business, baking his cakes, when the police (Bobbies?) came.
Was he expecting them?
He played the offertory hymn, "On Eagle's Wings," as the ushers began taking up the collections and a family of parishioners he’d never seen before brought the gifts up.
And what was going through Pitchfork's head when he saw the Bobbies there? When they began asking him about rapes and murders that happened almost five years ago? The article said that he had initially given investigators someone else's blood when “the enquiry” began. Had he somehow caught wind of this “DNA Fingerprinting?”
There was a new usher, Ned noticed, in his makeshift rearview mirror.
The Times article said that one of Pitchfork's co-workers at the bakery had taken the blood test masquerading as Pitchfork because Pitchfork had told the co-worker that ‘he could not give blood under his own name because he had already given blood while pretending to be a friend of his who had wanted to avoid being harassed by police because of a youthful conviction for burglary.’ This story was later overheard by a woman in a pub who immediately went to the police.
Ned realized he had missed the homily twice now. Not that it mattered. Heard one you've heard them all and Ned was pretty sure there would be no surprises. Plus, he'd have two more chances to catch it. He knew he would have to really focus for the 11 o'clock. That was always the main event. He was going to play "I Will Raise Him Up," a complex hymn, which required his full attention. He would scratch that one now if he hadn’t read that article and if the Sunday programs hadn't already been printed. People liked that one –it was a real barn burner, as they say—and if he skipped it, there might be questions.
The last thing Ned needed right now were fucking questions.
Who was this new usher, by the way?
By the start of the 11 o'clock Mass, Ned wondered whether anyone would even show for the 12:30, seeing that it was already standing room only. The 11 was always the most popular Mass, but today felt different; it was packed like Christmas Eve. What was the occasion? Was the predominantly conservative town that afraid of Dukakis winning the presidency? Ohio was a swing state after all and that image of the little Greek man in the tank was unnerving, sure, but was it enough to warrant this sort of turnout for the 11 AM Mass at St. Bart's in Findlay?
Or was something else going on?
Ned didn’t believe they had come to hear his rendition of "I Will Raise Him Up."
Or could there be another reason? Maybe they had all read the same Times article. Maybe there had long been simmering suspicion of Ned in the community and maybe the article finally prompted the townspeople to join together and take arms. With pitchforks.
On March 31, 1892, the only known lynching in the history of Hancock County occurred when a mob of 1,000 men, many "respectable citizens," broke into the county jail in Findlay. They lynched Mr. Lytle, a man who had killed his wife and two daughters with a hatchet the day before. The townsfolk hanged the man twice (first from the bridge, then a telegraph pole) and then, in a classic case of overkill, shot his body over a dozen times. The authorities had intended to transfer the prisoner out of town at 1 o'clock in secret, where a train was scheduled to transport him to Lima, but someone talked.
Ned had only confessed what he had done to one person – a priest eight years prior. The priest was set to retire as he was dying of pancreatic cancer and visiting from a nearby parish. For years Ned had heard this priest was “of the old school” – i.e., your word to God’s ear, and it went no further. He was as safe as they come. Still, even then, Ned used the screened side of the Confessional, lowered his voice a full octave, and spoke of what he had done obliquely and in generalities. They were mortal sins. His penance severe: to repent and refrain from repeating the act again. The priest was now long dead. There’s no way he could have tracked Ned down and told anyone. Was there?
The last one was named Derek. That was the only one left unsolved.
He would play "I Will Raise Him Up" during Communion. Because of the crowds, he knew the communion lines would be longer and would thus require him to stretch the already difficult song a few minutes longer. If he was going to supply the masses, he was going to need a bigger yield. In a way it was like baking a cake, wasn't it?
He met Derek at a Dairy Queen in Paducah, Kentucky. It was Labor Day 1976. It must have been 100 degrees out, but it felt even hotter with the humidity. It was a real scorcher.
Derek had a bicycle with an American flag banana seat. It was the summer of Bicentennial Fever. The Dairy Queen was in an area known as Noble Park. It had a tin canopy that kept cars cool in the shade.
Ned missed a note as he turned the page. He stepped on the sustain pedal and his mistake sounded deliberate and beautiful even.
It was early evening; fireflies were out in full force and Ned was blotto. He had been drinking beer—cans of Schlitz—all day at the picnic of a friend (technically, the friend of an acquaintance so basically a stranger). A born introvert who still lived alone (this was pre-Dee), Ned was very drunk and primed for small talk. You must also remember this was a very different time. This was back when you still opened cans with an opener; drunk driving was frowned upon but not the cardinal sin it is today; and a grown man could still park outside a Dairy Queen and strike up an innocent conversation with a prepubescent boy on a bike.
"What da ya' got there?" Ned asked.
"Butterscotch Sundae," the boy said. The boy was blonde with brown eyes.
"Butterscotch, eh?"
The boy licked his plastic spoon and stared somewhere beyond the pea-green 1974 Buick Riviera Ned had inherited from his old man after he had kicked the bucket.
"For the life of me, I can't remember if I like butterscotch or not," Ned said. "That probably sounds pretty screwy, I bet."
"Get a free sample at the window,” the kid said. “They're free."
"Looks awfully busy over there. Mind if I have a taste of yours? I don't have any cooties, I promise."
The kid dragged his spoon over his ice cream as he mulled it over. Maybe seeing that he was almost done with it anyway, he figured what's the harm. He handed Ned the Styrofoam cup.
Ned looked at the boy as he stirred it a little and then placed the curved side of the spoon on his tongue and kept it there.
"I do like butterscotch," Ned said, giving it back. "Thank you for sharing that with me, that was awfully kind of you—say, what is your name?"
"Derek," the boy said.
"Derek. What a nice boy you are. Do you like dogs, Derek?"
"Sure," Derek said.
"Do you have a dog?"
"Not anymore. Used to. We had a beagle named Eleanor but she went blind and then lame and then..."
"What kind of dog was she?" Ned asked.
"A beagle," the boy said.
"A beagle, yes you said that. You like Golden Retrievers?"
"Sure," the boy said.
"Cause I have a Golden Retriever. It's a girl too. A bitch."
Derek smiled.
"She's pregnant. I mean she was. But… she just gave birth."
"To puppies?"
"You betcha. It was just a few weeks ago. She had a whole litter of 'em. Boys, girls. Cutest little pups you've ever seen. The thing is, Derek, I don't know what to do with them all. You're a nice boy. You just shared your Butterscotch Sundae with me and I'd care to return the favor. Would you… like a puppy?"
"How much?"
"For nothing,” Ned said. “For free.”
"You'll give me a puppy for nothing? And I can pick the one I want?"
"Sure can. They're at my place just down the road. Thing is, it's probably too far to bike there. And you're going to need both hands to hold on to the puppy. Hop in, I’ll give you a lift."
"What about my bike?"
"We could put it in the trunk but we're not going to be long. We'll be right back. It'll be safe here. People don't take things that aren’t theirs around here – especially when there's a lot of people around."
He remembered waking up on the floor of his apartment disoriented. He was late for work. He was still working as a salesman at the piano store. There was a big Labor Day sale still going on. Labor Day was always a big day for retail. The owner was a nice man and Ned wanted to call him and apologize but he wasn't sure what to say yet.
He hadn't planned on sleeping in. Forgetting work on Labor Day. The irony.
He saw the boy's underwear on his floor. They were tighty-whities from Fruit of the Loom. He thought of that every time he saw an ad for that company afterward.
They weren’t bloody but they were torn.
He remembered the sound of the filter on the aquarium he used to keep in his apartment. It was noisy but sometimes that was a good thing. He was very into Japanese Fighting Fish for a while until it became too expensive as they always killed each other.
There were no puppies obviously.
His apartment did not allow dogs.
His sense of disorientation and the ensuing panic prevented him from experiencing any of the usual remorse he felt afterward.
There would be plenty of time for that later.
The boy's body was in the bathroom just off the bedroom and he needed to get rid of it. He needed to get out of town. Out of Paducah. Out of Kentucky.
He placed the boy in a hardshell Samsonite suitcase, carried it out of his apartment, walked down the one flight of steps. He saw no one and he was confident no one had seen him. The suitcase was lighter than it should have been—a detail he never forgot—and he walked out to the carport where he saw his Riviera parked sloppily between the lines. He felt a wave of nausea come over him but he suppressed it. He opened his trunk, placed the suitcase in the back, and then looked around the apartment complex before walking back inside. He cleaned up with bleach. Showered. Hit the road.
There were no police gathered outside the Dairy Queen. It wasn’t a crime scene. He didn't look to see if the boy’s bike was still there; he didn’t want to appear suspicious.
He needed to get out of Paducah so he headed toward the freeway.
For a moment he briefly considered the Shawnee National Forest, which was to the north, but he stuck to his gut and took the newly-constructed Interstate 24 East toward Tennessee. Aside from getting out of Kentucky, he didn't have a plan. The asphalt was brand new and at times he felt as though he were floating across the highway. It took about two hours to get to the state line and once he was over, he filled up at a 76 Station in Clarksville, Tennessee. Only when he was filling his tank and had a moment to reflect, did he think about what was in the trunk. He imagined he had Superman's X-Ray vision and pictured the suitcase in the back, the boy's tiny body folded like a pretzel inside.
He missed both the readings, the Gospel, and the homily again. Then came the Consecration which was over before he knew it. It was time. He began to play "I Will Raise Him Up." In his rearview, he saw the communion lines forming and he thought he caught a glimpse of the new usher staring at him, but he couldn't be sure. He needed to concentrate on the song. People knew this one; people wanted to hear it exactly as they remembered it, and it was a full house, so the sustain pedal wouldn't save him this time.
Once he made it through the chorus, he knew he could relax a little.
The "DNA fingerprinting" in Pitchfork's case came from semen that was left inside of the victims.
Ned had made it to the outskirts of Nashville faster than he expected. He still hadn't checked in with Mr. Cory, the owner of the piano store. He desperately needed an alibi. Old Mr. Cory could probably send Ned to the electric chair if he wasn't careful.
He got on Highway 386 and headed north. After 20 minutes, he exited in Gallatin and drove around until he found an area he thought was remote. There was a road called Cages Bend.
He liked the sound of that.
It sounded hopeful.
He took that until he came to a gravel road, which looked as if it led to an even more secluded wooded area.
In the rearview, he remembered the cloud of dust kicked up by the tires of the Riviera he had inherited from his father, the drunk, who had done to him what he had gone on to do to others.
In the rearview, the communion lines were still going strong. No sign of that new usher.
He came upon a bend in the road that looked totally secluded, as if no one had been there in years. He cut the engine and listened for a moment. The invisible cicadas high up in the trees made it sound as if a giant rattle snake was slithering around him, preparing to strike. He got out of the car.
He didn't know if it was the trees or the fields of tall grass, but something smelled like semen.
He opened the trunk with his keys and pulled out the hardshell suitcase. When he closed the trunk there was a rustling in the tall grass but when he looked, he saw only a herd of white tail deer scattering.
Initially he had planned on dumping the body and taking the suitcase home with him. He didn't think to bring a shovel. Then he heard the sound of a bush hog—a piece of farm equipment with spinning blades that cut vegetation and cleared the land. He couldn't tell which direction it was coming from. He checked to make sure his suitcase didn't have any labels on it or name tags. He then two black trash bags in his back seat and wrapped the suitcase – one bag around the top, the other on the bottom, and secured it with masking tape. Then he carried it into the woods and set it down in some brush. He began snapping tree branches off to make cover but as the bush hog got louder and closer he panicked, leaving it only partially covered.
The communion lines had dissipated. Everyone was sitting now, even the priest.
Everyone always knelt until the priest sat and Ned should never be playing if the priest was sitting but somehow, Ned had missed his cue.
He concluded "I Will Raise Him Up" softly, using the sustain to ease himself out.
He looked in the rearview and saw the priest staring at him.
As was the rest of the congregation.
They would all be coming for him soon enough.
Unless he could make it back down to Tennessee and get rid of that thing once and for all – assuming it hadn’t been found yet.
Somehow, deep down, Ned always knew it was going to happen.
He was raised up, alright.
Now it was just a matter of time.
submitted by UnmovableFeast to creepypasta [link] [comments]
He didn't think of it every day; in fact, sometimes an entire month would go by where it barely crossed his mind.
In a way, that whole experience—he thought of all the abductions and murders as a singular event—now felt as if it belonged to somebody else.
It was a time in his life when he was confused, mixed-up, searching; a dark time, you know, like a phase. Who didn't have one of those in their past?
Plus, he was married now. His wife, Dee, obviously didn't know about it and he felt no obligation to tell her. Did he ask about her former lovers?
Sometimes there are things in the past and you just let them be. Whether it was Dee losing her virginity to the quarterback of the football team in the backseat at a drive-in or him using multiple black garbage bags and masking tape on that thing he didn't have time to bury in rural Tennessee, everyone has things they would rather forget about. Sometimes you just leave things where they lie.
So that's what Ned Doyle did.
Until that Sunday morning, November 6th, 1988.
He was a having a glass of Dee's pulpy homemade orange juice, waiting for his coffee to percolate, when he opened his heavy weekend edition of the New York Times (probably Ned's greatest extravagance—he liked its heft; and how the Arts & Leisure section made him feel culturally superior to his Ohio townsfolk, “the Philistines of Findlay,” he called them) when he saw the article buried in the back.
The country was two days from heading to the polls for the General Election—Bush v. Dukakis—so most everything else that week had been relegated to the back.
He read the article twice before he could even begin to make sense of it. It seemed to be a story about something called "DNA fingerprinting" and a 27-year-old baker in Great Britain named Colin Pitchfork who had confessed to raping and murdering two 15-year-old girls, in separate incidents a few years apart, after a new scientific process had been used to extract information from semen which he, Colin Pitchfork, had left at the crime scenes (likely inside the victims) some five years earlier.
Now if they could do all that after five years, why not ten years—or maybe even… twelve?
"Interesting story here," he said to Dee. It wasn't uncommon for Ned to read a news story twice—once for himself and a second time aloud to Dee while she brewed his coffee and burnt her toast. But this was his third reading and Ned acted as if it were his first.
"What do you make of that?" he asked. It somehow got worse each time he read it. After the third time, he felt as if he had been sucker punched in the stomach.
"Science Fiction is what it sounds like," Dee said matter-of-factly, pouring Ned his coffee in a mug that bore the Marathon Oil insignia. Findlay, Ohio was Marathon’s headquarters although there had been rumors circulating about a move to Texas.
"And unconstitutional," he said. "Cops running a dragnet like that, taking blood samples from 5,000 townspeople. Thankfully, that would never pass the muster here."
"They did catch the killer so maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea," she said, buttering her burnt toast. "Otherwise, who knows? They could have convicted the wrong man.”
Ned had already gotten lucky once – astonishingly so. Griffin Gerald Jones, the famed “I-75 Corridor Child Killer,” had claimed responsibility for all but one of Ned’s victims before dying in Florida’s electric chair.
"You can't have police in this country running around, sticking everyone with needles, drawing blood for some sort of science experiment,” he said. “Nevermind the Constitution, what about AIDS?”
“What about it?” she asked.
“There's been hundreds, thousands of cases now where people have been infected by giving blood,” he said. “That's a medical fact. Get accused of a crime and AIDS too?"
"It doesn't sound like any of the townspeople there in England got AIDS, darling. Unless there's more to the story, besides what you read to me."
He watched her spread orange marmalade over her burnt toast and take a bite. She had a dead tooth and he saw it every time she opened her mouth. He loved Dee but had never been sexually attracted to her. Not in the way he had been attracted to others.
"It really is just a matter of time before that stuff makes it over here," she said with her mouth full. "To this side of the pond, as they say." She took a sip of his orange juice. "Isn’t that how it always works? Things start over there in England, or in California, and then phht, before you know it, it makes its way to Findlay."
He held his hand over his stomach. She saw him wince.
"Was it my orange juice again? Was it still pulpy? I squeezed it by hand and even strained it twice this time."
"It’s not your fault,” he said. “I think it’s me. Orange juice is getting too… acidic for me." He looked at the clock on the coffee maker. "I'm going to be late."
He turned the page.
He played the 8 o'clock Mass by rote as he had many a bleary-eyed Sunday morning. It was pure muscle memory at this point. He made a few mistakes here and there, missed a key or two, but it was nothing the organ's sustain pedal couldn't mask – not that anyone would complain (not at the 8 o'clock anyway).
On Sundays Ned had four Masses: the 8, the 9:30, the big one at 11, and the 12:30 for the dilettantes who couldn't get their acts together for the 11.
He turned the page.
Today he was using Glory and Praise, AKA "the blue hymnal" for songs he knew by heart.
Turning the pages of his sheet music, reading each note, he was able to keep his mind off it.
Ned abhorred cliches (especially those involving sports) but he made an exception for “Out of sight, out of mind.” For Ned, that wasn’t a cliché; it was a way of life. He was a man who preferred to be heard, not seen, which made St. Bartholomew (or St. Bart’s) the perfect home for him.
In a spectacular architectural oversight, the church's pipe organ was situated so the organist's back was to the altar and pews. The organist of course needs to see what's going on in the Mass to read certain non-verbal cues but the arrangement suited Ned just fine. The congregation was comprised of many young families who had many young children—boys in particular—and it wasn't so much that he couldn't control himself because he was now firmly in control of all that; it was more that he didn't need any reminders of that time when he couldn't.
Especially during church.
So to see the altar behind him, Ned had installed an actual rearview mirror, the type you'd find on an old Buick, and he used a special type of putty to affix it to the mantle of the pipe organ. Having been the church organist at St. Bart's for nine years, he seldom needed it anymore—he could do it in his sleep—but it came in handy today as he found his attention drifting and he nearly missed the oratory refrain at the 9:30 Mass.
His real problems didn't start until the 35-minute break between the 8 and 9:30.
He was reorganizing his sheet music after the first wave of churchgoers had cleared out, when he began thinking about Colin Pitchfork again. The article said he was a baker in England somewhere—did it say he baked cakes or was that Ned's invention?
Even though no picture was provided in the Times article, Ned spent the balance of the 9:30 service picturing the 27- year-old ex-rapist/murderer working in his small English bakery, quietly going about his business, baking his cakes, when the police (Bobbies?) came.
Was he expecting them?
He played the offertory hymn, "On Eagle's Wings," as the ushers began taking up the collections and a family of parishioners he’d never seen before brought the gifts up.
And what was going through Pitchfork's head when he saw the Bobbies there? When they began asking him about rapes and murders that happened almost five years ago? The article said that he had initially given investigators someone else's blood when “the enquiry” began. Had he somehow caught wind of this “DNA Fingerprinting?”
There was a new usher, Ned noticed, in his makeshift rearview mirror.
The Times article said that one of Pitchfork's co-workers at the bakery had taken the blood test masquerading as Pitchfork because Pitchfork had told the co-worker that ‘he could not give blood under his own name because he had already given blood while pretending to be a friend of his who had wanted to avoid being harassed by police because of a youthful conviction for burglary.’ This story was later overheard by a woman in a pub who immediately went to the police.
Ned realized he had missed the homily twice now. Not that it mattered. Heard one you've heard them all and Ned was pretty sure there would be no surprises. Plus, he'd have two more chances to catch it. He knew he would have to really focus for the 11 o'clock. That was always the main event. He was going to play "I Will Raise Him Up," a complex hymn, which required his full attention. He would scratch that one now if he hadn’t read that article and if the Sunday programs hadn't already been printed. People liked that one –it was a real barn burner, as they say—and if he skipped it, there might be questions.
The last thing Ned needed right now were fucking questions.
Who was this new usher, by the way?
By the start of the 11 o'clock Mass, Ned wondered whether anyone would even show for the 12:30, seeing that it was already standing room only. The 11 was always the most popular Mass, but today felt different; it was packed like Christmas Eve. What was the occasion? Was the predominantly conservative town that afraid of Dukakis winning the presidency? Ohio was a swing state after all and that image of the little Greek man in the tank was unnerving, sure, but was it enough to warrant this sort of turnout for the 11 AM Mass at St. Bart's in Findlay?
Or was something else going on?
Ned didn’t believe they had come to hear his rendition of "I Will Raise Him Up."
Or could there be another reason? Maybe they had all read the same Times article. Maybe there had long been simmering suspicion of Ned in the community and maybe the article finally prompted the townspeople to join together and take arms. With pitchforks.
On March 31, 1892, the only known lynching in the history of Hancock County occurred when a mob of 1,000 men, many "respectable citizens," broke into the county jail in Findlay. They lynched Mr. Lytle, a man who had killed his wife and two daughters with a hatchet the day before. The townsfolk hanged the man twice (first from the bridge, then a telegraph pole) and then, in a classic case of overkill, shot his body over a dozen times. The authorities had intended to transfer the prisoner out of town at 1 o'clock in secret, where a train was scheduled to transport him to Lima, but someone talked.
Ned had only confessed what he had done to one person – a priest eight years prior. The priest was set to retire as he was dying of pancreatic cancer and visiting from a nearby parish. For years Ned had heard this priest was “of the old school” – i.e., your word to God’s ear, and it went no further. He was as safe as they come. Still, even then, Ned used the screened side of the Confessional, lowered his voice a full octave, and spoke of what he had done obliquely and in generalities. They were mortal sins. His penance severe: to repent and refrain from repeating the act again. The priest was now long dead. There’s no way he could have tracked Ned down and told anyone. Was there?
The last one was named Derek. That was the only one left unsolved.
He would play "I Will Raise Him Up" during Communion. Because of the crowds, he knew the communion lines would be longer and would thus require him to stretch the already difficult song a few minutes longer. If he was going to supply the masses, he was going to need a bigger yield. In a way it was like baking a cake, wasn't it?
He met Derek at a Dairy Queen in Paducah, Kentucky. It was Labor Day 1976. It must have been 100 degrees out, but it felt even hotter with the humidity. It was a real scorcher.
Derek had a bicycle with an American flag banana seat. It was the summer of Bicentennial Fever. The Dairy Queen was in an area known as Noble Park. It had a tin canopy that kept cars cool in the shade.
Ned missed a note as he turned the page. He stepped on the sustain pedal and his mistake sounded deliberate and beautiful even.
It was early evening; fireflies were out in full force and Ned was blotto. He had been drinking beer—cans of Schlitz—all day at the picnic of a friend (technically, the friend of an acquaintance so basically a stranger). A born introvert who still lived alone (this was pre-Dee), Ned was very drunk and primed for small talk. You must also remember this was a very different time. This was back when you still opened cans with an opener; drunk driving was frowned upon but not the cardinal sin it is today; and a grown man could still park outside a Dairy Queen and strike up an innocent conversation with a prepubescent boy on a bike.
"What da ya' got there?" Ned asked.
"Butterscotch Sundae," the boy said. The boy was blonde with brown eyes.
"Butterscotch, eh?"
The boy licked his plastic spoon and stared somewhere beyond the pea-green 1974 Buick Riviera Ned had inherited from his old man after he had kicked the bucket.
"For the life of me, I can't remember if I like butterscotch or not," Ned said. "That probably sounds pretty screwy, I bet."
"Get a free sample at the window,” the kid said. “They're free."
"Looks awfully busy over there. Mind if I have a taste of yours? I don't have any cooties, I promise."
The kid dragged his spoon over his ice cream as he mulled it over. Maybe seeing that he was almost done with it anyway, he figured what's the harm. He handed Ned the Styrofoam cup.
Ned looked at the boy as he stirred it a little and then placed the curved side of the spoon on his tongue and kept it there.
"I do like butterscotch," Ned said, giving it back. "Thank you for sharing that with me, that was awfully kind of you—say, what is your name?"
"Derek," the boy said.
"Derek. What a nice boy you are. Do you like dogs, Derek?"
"Sure," Derek said.
"Do you have a dog?"
"Not anymore. Used to. We had a beagle named Eleanor but she went blind and then lame and then..."
"What kind of dog was she?" Ned asked.
"A beagle," the boy said.
"A beagle, yes you said that. You like Golden Retrievers?"
"Sure," the boy said.
"Cause I have a Golden Retriever. It's a girl too. A bitch."
Derek smiled.
"She's pregnant. I mean she was. But… she just gave birth."
"To puppies?"
"You betcha. It was just a few weeks ago. She had a whole litter of 'em. Boys, girls. Cutest little pups you've ever seen. The thing is, Derek, I don't know what to do with them all. You're a nice boy. You just shared your Butterscotch Sundae with me and I'd care to return the favor. Would you… like a puppy?"
"How much?"
"For nothing,” Ned said. “For free.”
"You'll give me a puppy for nothing? And I can pick the one I want?"
"Sure can. They're at my place just down the road. Thing is, it's probably too far to bike there. And you're going to need both hands to hold on to the puppy. Hop in, I’ll give you a lift."
"What about my bike?"
"We could put it in the trunk but we're not going to be long. We'll be right back. It'll be safe here. People don't take things that aren’t theirs around here – especially when there's a lot of people around."
He remembered waking up on the floor of his apartment disoriented. He was late for work. He was still working as a salesman at the piano store. There was a big Labor Day sale still going on. Labor Day was always a big day for retail. The owner was a nice man and Ned wanted to call him and apologize but he wasn't sure what to say yet.
He hadn't planned on sleeping in. Forgetting work on Labor Day. The irony.
He saw the boy's underwear on his floor. They were tighty-whities from Fruit of the Loom. He thought of that every time he saw an ad for that company afterward.
They weren’t bloody but they were torn.
He remembered the sound of the filter on the aquarium he used to keep in his apartment. It was noisy but sometimes that was a good thing. He was very into Japanese Fighting Fish for a while until it became too expensive as they always killed each other.
There were no puppies obviously.
His apartment did not allow dogs.
His sense of disorientation and the ensuing panic prevented him from experiencing any of the usual remorse he felt afterward.
There would be plenty of time for that later.
The boy's body was in the bathroom just off the bedroom and he needed to get rid of it. He needed to get out of town. Out of Paducah. Out of Kentucky.
He placed the boy in a hardshell Samsonite suitcase, carried it out of his apartment, walked down the one flight of steps. He saw no one and he was confident no one had seen him. The suitcase was lighter than it should have been—a detail he never forgot—and he walked out to the carport where he saw his Riviera parked sloppily between the lines. He felt a wave of nausea come over him but he suppressed it. He opened his trunk, placed the suitcase in the back, and then looked around the apartment complex before walking back inside. He cleaned up with bleach. Showered. Hit the road.
There were no police gathered outside the Dairy Queen. It wasn’t a crime scene. He didn't look to see if the boy’s bike was still there; he didn’t want to appear suspicious.
He needed to get out of Paducah so he headed toward the freeway.
For a moment he briefly considered the Shawnee National Forest, which was to the north, but he stuck to his gut and took the newly-constructed Interstate 24 East toward Tennessee. Aside from getting out of Kentucky, he didn't have a plan. The asphalt was brand new and at times he felt as though he were floating across the highway. It took about two hours to get to the state line and once he was over, he filled up at a 76 Station in Clarksville, Tennessee. Only when he was filling his tank and had a moment to reflect, did he think about what was in the trunk. He imagined he had Superman's X-Ray vision and pictured the suitcase in the back, the boy's tiny body folded like a pretzel inside.
He missed both the readings, the Gospel, and the homily again. Then came the Consecration which was over before he knew it. It was time. He began to play "I Will Raise Him Up." In his rearview, he saw the communion lines forming and he thought he caught a glimpse of the new usher staring at him, but he couldn't be sure. He needed to concentrate on the song. People knew this one; people wanted to hear it exactly as they remembered it, and it was a full house, so the sustain pedal wouldn't save him this time.
Once he made it through the chorus, he knew he could relax a little.
The "DNA fingerprinting" in Pitchfork's case came from semen that was left inside of the victims.
Ned had made it to the outskirts of Nashville faster than he expected. He still hadn't checked in with Mr. Cory, the owner of the piano store. He desperately needed an alibi. Old Mr. Cory could probably send Ned to the electric chair if he wasn't careful.
He got on Highway 386 and headed north. After 20 minutes, he exited in Gallatin and drove around until he found an area he thought was remote. There was a road called Cages Bend.
He liked the sound of that.
It sounded hopeful.
He took that until he came to a gravel road, which looked as if it led to an even more secluded wooded area.
In the rearview, he remembered the cloud of dust kicked up by the tires of the Riviera he had inherited from his father, the drunk, who had done to him what he had gone on to do to others.
In the rearview, the communion lines were still going strong. No sign of that new usher.
He came upon a bend in the road that looked totally secluded, as if no one had been there in years. He cut the engine and listened for a moment. The invisible cicadas high up in the trees made it sound as if a giant rattle snake was slithering around him, preparing to strike. He got out of the car.
He didn't know if it was the trees or the fields of tall grass, but something smelled like semen.
He opened the trunk with his keys and pulled out the hardshell suitcase. When he closed the trunk there was a rustling in the tall grass but when he looked, he saw only a herd of white tail deer scattering.
Initially he had planned on dumping the body and taking the suitcase home with him. He didn't think to bring a shovel. Then he heard the sound of a bush hog—a piece of farm equipment with spinning blades that cut vegetation and cleared the land. He couldn't tell which direction it was coming from. He checked to make sure his suitcase didn't have any labels on it or name tags. He then two black trash bags in his back seat and wrapped the suitcase – one bag around the top, the other on the bottom, and secured it with masking tape. Then he carried it into the woods and set it down in some brush. He began snapping tree branches off to make cover but as the bush hog got louder and closer he panicked, leaving it only partially covered.
The communion lines had dissipated. Everyone was sitting now, even the priest.
Everyone always knelt until the priest sat and Ned should never be playing if the priest was sitting but somehow, Ned had missed his cue.
He concluded "I Will Raise Him Up" softly, using the sustain to ease himself out.
He looked in the rearview and saw the priest staring at him.
As was the rest of the congregation.
They would all be coming for him soon enough.
Unless he could make it back down to Tennessee and get rid of that thing once and for all – assuming it hadn’t been found yet.
Somehow, deep down, Ned always knew it was going to happen.
He was raised up, alright.
Now it was just a matter of time.
2024.05.29 03:18 Working-Elderberry43 Housing supply data?
This is probably a stupid question. I've been hearing, "the housing market is expensive because there's very little supply" for a long time now. Anecdotally, this seems far from the truth. When I pull up zillow and zoom out a couple clicks virtually anywhere on the map, it's absolutely covered with red dots, even after applying several of my favorite filters. There's homes for sale on just about every street when I drive around. Is this not supply? WTF are these people smoking? There's a D.R. Horton development near me with 22 homes completed in mid 2022 and only 3 of them have sold so far.
I tried Googling for data, and what I found is that the supply of new houses, while not close to all time high, is certainly in the top 20th percentile over the last 60 years. To me it seems the market is the exact opposite -> There is far too much supply, and very few buyers willing to buy this supply at the nosebleed interest rates so homes just sit on the market forever as seller's seem to be in no hurry and think huge rate cuts are right around the corner which will bring the demand back up.
So what's the verdict. Is it bullshit that the housing market is low on supply? Or where is the data that proves this?
submitted by Working-Elderberry43 to realestateinvesting [link] [comments]
I tried Googling for data, and what I found is that the supply of new houses, while not close to all time high, is certainly in the top 20th percentile over the last 60 years. To me it seems the market is the exact opposite -> There is far too much supply, and very few buyers willing to buy this supply at the nosebleed interest rates so homes just sit on the market forever as seller's seem to be in no hurry and think huge rate cuts are right around the corner which will bring the demand back up.
So what's the verdict. Is it bullshit that the housing market is low on supply? Or where is the data that proves this?
2024.05.29 03:17 BikerJedi Rounded out year 20 today. Holy shit.
(Long one. Sorry. TL;DR; I fucking love teaching and hate my salary for it.)
It's wild to me to say that. Over 20 years, starting 21, of teaching finished up today. That's just wild to me. Why?
Well, I'm Generation X. I grew up in an era where people had a multi-decade career or two and then retired. Having a thousand jobs like me was unheard of back then. My full resume is five pages.
I had my heart set on 20+ years in the Army before I got hurt and medically discharged. I loved that shit (Embrace the Suck!) and would have done it forever if they let me. Then I worked a series of part time and full time jobs. Security. Bar tending. Door to door sales. Yard supervisor for a roofing company. I hustled darts. Bouncer and doorman (and regular) at a strip club. Security again. Some day labor, which I didn't last long at. Worked as a cashier at an "Adult" toy and DVD/VHS store. (That was a wild job) At least ten other jobs I can't remember. During this entire time, I never made more than $20,000 a year.
Eventually, I made my way into college through a VA Vocational Rehabilitation program for disabled veterans. Although the VA provided a monthly stipend and my wife was working at Western Forge and I had a (VERY fucking small) VA disability check, I still had to work a few hours a week. So during my four years in college (a bit less actually) I worked a lot of jobs, some for weeks, others for a year or more. Some where half time, some where 3/4 time, but I was always full time in school. Together, we did a bit over $40,000.
Help desk. Lab monitor in college. More help desk. Internship in IT at an airline. More help desk. More IT. More consulting and contracting. Tier I support at an internet provider, who supported PC, Macintosh and LINUX (no one else could do that. Lol. Sorry, I was good and I like to brag a bit.) Eventually I graduated. I asked for a raise and promotion at the internet provider, and they denied it, so I gave my two weeks. I had put in over a year and was GOOD at it. I deserved it, so I would look elsewhere if they couldn't give it to me. I wanted to be a network engineer.
But I also had root access to everything, so I was escorted out 15 minutes later and paid two weeks severance. On to other jobs then.
In this order starting at $55,000: Technician on the NASDAQ stock market network upgrade for MCI/Worldcom (where I got fired after I 400 others got fired after they realized they could save more money paying out lawsuits, but not our shitstain boss who got promoted) to a cutting edge VoIP company that went out of business (just like Silicon Valley from HBO) to Ryder Logistics as a Project Manager making $100,000 a year.
Six figures. One of the last private companies in America to still offer a 20 year pension. Even as a contractor, AMAZING salary and benefits. All of my hard work had paid off. The Cisco certification I worked so hard for had paid off. My networking skills that got me the interview for this job paid off. I had MADE IT. I had so much money I didn't know what to do with it given our modest lifestyle. I was going to be with Ryder Logistics forever.
Then in 2000, the "tech market" took a MASSIVE dump. Hundreds of thousands of highly paid, highly certified and educated folks like myself were laid off. I was DAYS, just fucking days, away from being brought on permanently and taken of contractor status. Yay. I knew of a guy with a PhD who was stocking shelves at 7-11. So I'm out there competing with guys and gals with more education and experience, even though I had a great resume. And I couldn't find a damn thing even approaching half my former salary. Guys like me were a dime a dozen now, the vultures could afford to be picky.
I survived and provided for my wife and son by working a shit ton of various jobs. I would get up at 0200 and deliver newspapers and finish around 0600. Then I could home, shower, change and eat. Head into my first shift at work teaching at a college. Go home, nap, go back for night classes. Deliver pizza after work. Picked up consulting jobs on the weekends. Four jobs to support a wife and keep us from living in the woods - her grandmother took us in, but we were still "homeless" in that we had no place of our besides her basement. Eventually I saved enough to move us to Florida and buy a house, where I started teaching high school.
We lost it all. I managed to sell our house for a modest profit days before the bank took it and we were homeless. I had to sell my beloved (and rare) Harley 1992 Dyna FXDC. Eventually, I missed a mortgage payment, and things snowballed. The only thing we kept in the bankruptcy was our SUV, and only because I could barely make the payments on it.
I had to start over at $28,000 as a teacher. After over 20 years, I'm up over $55,000 now. My VA disability check is a lot bigger now. I'm grateful for where I am. But it is wild to me that I make so little after 20 years. I'm literally making the same (on paper) salary now as I did over 20 years ago, and I'm providing more value to society now than then.
Hell, it's wild to me that I did one thing for over 20 years. I know I've focused on money here, but yeah - twenty fucking years doing one thing.
ALL THAT TO SAY (sorry, I'm "lubricated" tonight) that I have never held a single job for more than two years other than my four years (a bit less actually) in the Army. Ever. And today I finished 20+ years. I'm going to be dean this summer for summer school. I'm interviewing for dean (WISH ME LUCK!) full time next year in a few days. I'm excited. I have a lot of great ideas about how to make our campus even more peaceful. I haven't interviewed for a job in a forever since I've been teaching (other than lateral transfers) so I'm a bit nervous. But I believe by boss is in my corner and I have a good shot. I hope so, because I WANT this.
I don't know what else to say. I love teaching. I love these kids, even the assholes. I want to do this for a while, even as I want to retire and take it easy with the old lady. But they keep sucking me back in. Lol. (Who gets that reference?) But I've said it before, without free, public education, our society will regress badly. One very proven way you make sure that a quality free, public education is provided is to pay teachers a good salary.
20 years. Holy shit. And even if I don't get dean, I'm teaching all 6th grade next year. That makes the year INCREDIBLY easy for me. The subject matter is easy, the kids are young and easy to engage and teach. And even though they are regular ed, I'll be teaching them the Advanced curriculum just like I have done for years with my 8th graders. They can do it, you just have to push them.
And I'll be all chill about it until another dean slot opens. The other guy is close to retirement so I'll have another shot soon.
I love you all. The editor started the process on my book this weekend he says, so hopefully I'll have revisions to make soon. Thanks for being here.
submitted by BikerJedi to bikerjedi [link] [comments]
It's wild to me to say that. Over 20 years, starting 21, of teaching finished up today. That's just wild to me. Why?
Well, I'm Generation X. I grew up in an era where people had a multi-decade career or two and then retired. Having a thousand jobs like me was unheard of back then. My full resume is five pages.
I had my heart set on 20+ years in the Army before I got hurt and medically discharged. I loved that shit (Embrace the Suck!) and would have done it forever if they let me. Then I worked a series of part time and full time jobs. Security. Bar tending. Door to door sales. Yard supervisor for a roofing company. I hustled darts. Bouncer and doorman (and regular) at a strip club. Security again. Some day labor, which I didn't last long at. Worked as a cashier at an "Adult" toy and DVD/VHS store. (That was a wild job) At least ten other jobs I can't remember. During this entire time, I never made more than $20,000 a year.
Eventually, I made my way into college through a VA Vocational Rehabilitation program for disabled veterans. Although the VA provided a monthly stipend and my wife was working at Western Forge and I had a (VERY fucking small) VA disability check, I still had to work a few hours a week. So during my four years in college (a bit less actually) I worked a lot of jobs, some for weeks, others for a year or more. Some where half time, some where 3/4 time, but I was always full time in school. Together, we did a bit over $40,000.
Help desk. Lab monitor in college. More help desk. Internship in IT at an airline. More help desk. More IT. More consulting and contracting. Tier I support at an internet provider, who supported PC, Macintosh and LINUX (no one else could do that. Lol. Sorry, I was good and I like to brag a bit.) Eventually I graduated. I asked for a raise and promotion at the internet provider, and they denied it, so I gave my two weeks. I had put in over a year and was GOOD at it. I deserved it, so I would look elsewhere if they couldn't give it to me. I wanted to be a network engineer.
But I also had root access to everything, so I was escorted out 15 minutes later and paid two weeks severance. On to other jobs then.
In this order starting at $55,000: Technician on the NASDAQ stock market network upgrade for MCI/Worldcom (where I got fired after I 400 others got fired after they realized they could save more money paying out lawsuits, but not our shitstain boss who got promoted) to a cutting edge VoIP company that went out of business (just like Silicon Valley from HBO) to Ryder Logistics as a Project Manager making $100,000 a year.
Six figures. One of the last private companies in America to still offer a 20 year pension. Even as a contractor, AMAZING salary and benefits. All of my hard work had paid off. The Cisco certification I worked so hard for had paid off. My networking skills that got me the interview for this job paid off. I had MADE IT. I had so much money I didn't know what to do with it given our modest lifestyle. I was going to be with Ryder Logistics forever.
Then in 2000, the "tech market" took a MASSIVE dump. Hundreds of thousands of highly paid, highly certified and educated folks like myself were laid off. I was DAYS, just fucking days, away from being brought on permanently and taken of contractor status. Yay. I knew of a guy with a PhD who was stocking shelves at 7-11. So I'm out there competing with guys and gals with more education and experience, even though I had a great resume. And I couldn't find a damn thing even approaching half my former salary. Guys like me were a dime a dozen now, the vultures could afford to be picky.
I survived and provided for my wife and son by working a shit ton of various jobs. I would get up at 0200 and deliver newspapers and finish around 0600. Then I could home, shower, change and eat. Head into my first shift at work teaching at a college. Go home, nap, go back for night classes. Deliver pizza after work. Picked up consulting jobs on the weekends. Four jobs to support a wife and keep us from living in the woods - her grandmother took us in, but we were still "homeless" in that we had no place of our besides her basement. Eventually I saved enough to move us to Florida and buy a house, where I started teaching high school.
We lost it all. I managed to sell our house for a modest profit days before the bank took it and we were homeless. I had to sell my beloved (and rare) Harley 1992 Dyna FXDC. Eventually, I missed a mortgage payment, and things snowballed. The only thing we kept in the bankruptcy was our SUV, and only because I could barely make the payments on it.
I had to start over at $28,000 as a teacher. After over 20 years, I'm up over $55,000 now. My VA disability check is a lot bigger now. I'm grateful for where I am. But it is wild to me that I make so little after 20 years. I'm literally making the same (on paper) salary now as I did over 20 years ago, and I'm providing more value to society now than then.
Hell, it's wild to me that I did one thing for over 20 years. I know I've focused on money here, but yeah - twenty fucking years doing one thing.
ALL THAT TO SAY (sorry, I'm "lubricated" tonight) that I have never held a single job for more than two years other than my four years (a bit less actually) in the Army. Ever. And today I finished 20+ years. I'm going to be dean this summer for summer school. I'm interviewing for dean (WISH ME LUCK!) full time next year in a few days. I'm excited. I have a lot of great ideas about how to make our campus even more peaceful. I haven't interviewed for a job in a forever since I've been teaching (other than lateral transfers) so I'm a bit nervous. But I believe by boss is in my corner and I have a good shot. I hope so, because I WANT this.
I don't know what else to say. I love teaching. I love these kids, even the assholes. I want to do this for a while, even as I want to retire and take it easy with the old lady. But they keep sucking me back in. Lol. (Who gets that reference?) But I've said it before, without free, public education, our society will regress badly. One very proven way you make sure that a quality free, public education is provided is to pay teachers a good salary.
20 years. Holy shit. And even if I don't get dean, I'm teaching all 6th grade next year. That makes the year INCREDIBLY easy for me. The subject matter is easy, the kids are young and easy to engage and teach. And even though they are regular ed, I'll be teaching them the Advanced curriculum just like I have done for years with my 8th graders. They can do it, you just have to push them.
And I'll be all chill about it until another dean slot opens. The other guy is close to retirement so I'll have another shot soon.
I love you all. The editor started the process on my book this weekend he says, so hopefully I'll have revisions to make soon. Thanks for being here.
2024.05.29 03:15 toyodaforever Try to even find a place anymore....
My dad said in the 70's, if you wanted an apartment, you literally looked in one place, the newspaper.
You then spoke to the landlord or landlady, gave them the deposit, and got your keys, most often the same fucking day.
Now apartments are spread across multiple websites, Craiglist, Facebook Marketplace, and still even the newspaper.
I've looked at 10 and applying takes multiple days. I've constantly been told "we've had so many people looking" or "we will make a decision Friday" only to get radio silence.
It's apparent there is a housing shortage, and it's funny how they constantly talk about people my age "not having kids any more", to which I say "so they will have no fucking place to live?"
The age of instant everything has slowed many things down and made it harder. Can't find shit like apartments or things for sale in one place like my parents did in the paper. Now you have to look all over.
My dad bought a house in 1970. It took less than 5 days to get a mortgage. Today the average is 30-45 days.
submitted by toyodaforever to lostgeneration [link] [comments]
You then spoke to the landlord or landlady, gave them the deposit, and got your keys, most often the same fucking day.
Now apartments are spread across multiple websites, Craiglist, Facebook Marketplace, and still even the newspaper.
I've looked at 10 and applying takes multiple days. I've constantly been told "we've had so many people looking" or "we will make a decision Friday" only to get radio silence.
It's apparent there is a housing shortage, and it's funny how they constantly talk about people my age "not having kids any more", to which I say "so they will have no fucking place to live?"
The age of instant everything has slowed many things down and made it harder. Can't find shit like apartments or things for sale in one place like my parents did in the paper. Now you have to look all over.
My dad bought a house in 1970. It took less than 5 days to get a mortgage. Today the average is 30-45 days.
2024.05.29 03:15 toyodaforever Try to even find a place anymore...
My dad said in the 70's, if you wanted an apartment, you literally looked in one place, the newspaper.
You then spoke to the landlord or landlady, gave them the deposit, and got your keys, most often the same fucking day.
Now apartments are spread across multiple websites, Craiglist, Facebook Marketplace, and still even the newspaper.
I've looked at 10 and applying takes multiple days. I've constantly been told "we've had so many people looking" or "we will make a decision Friday" only to get radio silence.
It's apparent there is a housing shortage, and it's funny how they constantly talk about people my age "not having kids any more", to which I say "so they will have no fucking place to live?"
The age of instant everything has slowed many things down and made it harder. Can't find shit like apartments or things for sale in one place like my parents did in the paper. Now you have to look all over.
My dad bought a house in 1970. It took less than 5 days to get a mortgage. Today the average is 30-45 days.
submitted by toyodaforever to LandlordLove [link] [comments]
You then spoke to the landlord or landlady, gave them the deposit, and got your keys, most often the same fucking day.
Now apartments are spread across multiple websites, Craiglist, Facebook Marketplace, and still even the newspaper.
I've looked at 10 and applying takes multiple days. I've constantly been told "we've had so many people looking" or "we will make a decision Friday" only to get radio silence.
It's apparent there is a housing shortage, and it's funny how they constantly talk about people my age "not having kids any more", to which I say "so they will have no fucking place to live?"
The age of instant everything has slowed many things down and made it harder. Can't find shit like apartments or things for sale in one place like my parents did in the paper. Now you have to look all over.
My dad bought a house in 1970. It took less than 5 days to get a mortgage. Today the average is 30-45 days.
2024.05.29 03:02 Soggy-Amoeba-2315 Best way to go about the next few months waiting to be employed again?
Me and my boyfriend are having a baby in just a couple months, I'm currently 30 weeks pregnant. Our current apartment situation is not the best. No air conditioning, bug infestations and holes in the floor that stops us from fully containing it, mold on the other side of the duplex, a severely broken fridge and a bathtub that floods the kitchen if filled. Birds live in the walls and the flooring is super uneven. The rent is being raised, we are on a month to month lease, and our apartments will be up for sale in July. It isn't sanitary for a newborn, but we are struggling to find somewhere else in our budget that also allows our cat. Family is not really an option, it's very very last resort for personal reasons.
I'm currently unemployed and probably will be until 3 months postpartum, at which point I'm planning on going to work in a factory again and having our son go to a family friends daycare, and we will soon be able to afford a nicer apartment and start putting money back for a house within about a year of being dual income again.
Our goal is to move by July first if we are going to move, because he has a bonus coming on June 21st that will be big enough to cover all our moving costs and deposits and such. We are just barely middleclass income so we make just too much for any help but not enough to really get by.
I guess our options are to -
•Lie about our cat to try and have more options. (Getting rid of her is not an option) •Go over our renting budget and REALLY struggle. •Try and push through here and just hope our apartments don't get sold because if they do our rent will skyrocket.
Or something else that I'm not thinking of? Any little bits of advice to just get through these hard couple of months will be so helpful.
submitted by Soggy-Amoeba-2315 to Advice [link] [comments]
I'm currently unemployed and probably will be until 3 months postpartum, at which point I'm planning on going to work in a factory again and having our son go to a family friends daycare, and we will soon be able to afford a nicer apartment and start putting money back for a house within about a year of being dual income again.
Our goal is to move by July first if we are going to move, because he has a bonus coming on June 21st that will be big enough to cover all our moving costs and deposits and such. We are just barely middleclass income so we make just too much for any help but not enough to really get by.
I guess our options are to -
•Lie about our cat to try and have more options. (Getting rid of her is not an option) •Go over our renting budget and REALLY struggle. •Try and push through here and just hope our apartments don't get sold because if they do our rent will skyrocket.
Or something else that I'm not thinking of? Any little bits of advice to just get through these hard couple of months will be so helpful.
2024.05.29 03:00 cas42439 Question to those with garage shops! Looking for recommendations on tool & material storage to surprise my spouse with his dream shop.
Titles are hard, so thanks for reading so I can explain better -- We're moving this coming weekend and my husband's shop has been on the back burner of planning and ideation. His dream is to have a standalone shop someday, but right now he will occupy the extra space attached to the garage. He's a craftsman that would use the space for carpentry and welding and a lot of things in between. He's been using half of our current garage for his shop. He's pieced it together with free shelves and tables to make a functional albeit mismatched space, and he constructed drop cloths for welding/woodworking. I'm just excited for him to have a new space with systems that he can bring over to the future shop. And as life goes, it could be a few years before we can break ground on on that project, so I'd like to surprise him with tried and true recommendations that he can use for a long time.
The current shop comes with a lot of tools but also a LOT of materials (wood boards and scraps, foam, paint/stain, fabric), and while some larger tools come mounted to tables, there is SO much stuff just floating around his current shop without a home. The new space is about 18' x 12'. There's currently a giant opening to the garage that will will close off for a more functional space and event considering removing windows.
Do you have any recommendations off of YOUR shops that you love? I don't want to disregard the need for material storage in addition to favorite cabinet sets and brand name systems. The budget he thinks we have is around $1k (Memorial Day sales made us both delusional), but I'd venture closer to $5k if recommendations included garage organization/storage as well. So maybe comfortably our budget is between $2k and $4k with the wiggleroom to go higher. Also if you have created your own shop space, share your DIY organizational systems! We're huge into making what can't be bought.
Plus - the new house needs a lot of work, so win win to set up a fun and functional shop and garage!
submitted by cas42439 to garageporn [link] [comments]
The current shop comes with a lot of tools but also a LOT of materials (wood boards and scraps, foam, paint/stain, fabric), and while some larger tools come mounted to tables, there is SO much stuff just floating around his current shop without a home. The new space is about 18' x 12'. There's currently a giant opening to the garage that will will close off for a more functional space and event considering removing windows.
Do you have any recommendations off of YOUR shops that you love? I don't want to disregard the need for material storage in addition to favorite cabinet sets and brand name systems. The budget he thinks we have is around $1k (Memorial Day sales made us both delusional), but I'd venture closer to $5k if recommendations included garage organization/storage as well. So maybe comfortably our budget is between $2k and $4k with the wiggleroom to go higher. Also if you have created your own shop space, share your DIY organizational systems! We're huge into making what can't be bought.
Plus - the new house needs a lot of work, so win win to set up a fun and functional shop and garage!