Two mortgages, no homes

We closed yesterday on another home on the coast. It is a fixer upper (it had about 5 feet of water in Katrina) and will require a complete renovation. So now we have one lot, one gutted house, two mortgages and no home (I'm not complaining... I only share this to be funny; it's been the running joke around the Leavengood family, the kind folks whom we've been staying with). It is all good though. We're excited about the renovations and are confident that, Lord willing, it will turn out to be a very good investment.

I got to work on it today; a father and his two sons from Virginia joined me, along with Dr. Doug Leavengood. We pretty much gutted the workshop out back. Why, you might ask, are we bothering with the workshop, when the whole house needs work? Well, we plan to use it as a construction office/storeroom during the renovation. It needed to be gutted and it still needs new doors and windows. Anyhow, we should be able to finish cleaning it up tomorrow and start installing the doors/windows tomorrow or Monday.

I plan to take the camera tomorrow and will post some pics soon. I also plan to post a hi-level project overview (i.e. tasks that my faithful readers can sign up for).

By the way, we think/hope we are very, very well insured on this property. We have a fire policy, a wind policy, a flood policy and a liability policy. Basically anything State Farm was selling, I was buying.

Oh, and if you're looking for an outstanding banker, look up John Shappley at The First Bank in Hattiesburg. He took great care of us.

B

Road weary

My current vocation requires rather extensive travel; as our clients are all over the country, I typically leave home every Monday morning and return on Thursday night. I'm home now for the rest of the year and had a moment to reflect on how much I traveled this year.



Some quick stats, since 12/22/04:
Hotel nights
Marriott- 147+ nights, at the following hotels.
-Columbus Renaissance (best Hotel customer service ever, anywhere)
-Columbus Airport Courtyard
-Houston Marriott Westchase
-Casa Magna Marriott Cancun Resort
-Residence Inn Marriott Westchase
-JW Marriott New Orleans
-New York Marriott Marquis Times Square

Magnolia Hotel Houston- 1 night
Le Meridien Cancun Hotel- 2 nights
Total: 150+ nights

Flight Segments
Continental/Northwest
- 158 flights (plus a few extra that didn't get counted when I got rerouted on other airlines)
-89,081 actual miles (plus the extra flights mentioned above)

Points Earned
-American Express: ~48,758+
-Continental OnePass: ~95,000+
-Marriott Rewards: ~213,000+

Time away from wife, home, church and community
150/365= ~41% of total nights away
209/365= ~57% of total days away
~60 % of weeknights slept away
~80% of weekdays spent away

I could come up with more statistics of my lament, but I'll spare you. One huge upside of all this travel is that my job and subsequent income has been pretty much unaffected by Katrina, so we're still pulling in money to defray the costs. We're thankful for that.

B

Lagniappe Church

I mentioned on here a while back that Jean Larroux will be planting a church in Bay St. Louis. I seem to get alot of hits from people looking for him and/or the church plant.

So, if you're looking for him or just interested in his plans, check out his website:
http://www.lagniappechurch.com/

And now the not so good news...

According to this article, the money looks like it might be tied to rebuilding.

Grant recipients also must have had other homeowners' insurance. And they would have to agree to rebuild to meet new codes and to buy flood insurance on the rebuilt structures.

Holly and I are right in the middle of trying to purchase another home that flooded to fix up and live in. Rebuilding on our property had fallen down our list of alternatives for lots of reasons, not the least of which is the time necessary to build from the ground up... 150,000 is nothing to sneeze at... if this turns out to be true it may alter our plans.

B

Good news, I think...

The Federal relief legislation has passed in principle... which is really good news. Below are a few excerpts from the SunHerald article.

Senate and House negotiators officially signed off on $29 billion in spending for hurricane relief, including a bailout of uninsured South Mississippi flood victims...

...Pending its expected passage into law, Cochran's plan includes $11.5 billion in Community Development Block Grants to Mississippi and Louisiana, which the state has flexibility in spending. Mississippi plans to use the bulk of its share - expected to be about $5 billion - on grants to 35,000 devastated homeowners who didn't have flood insurance because federal guidelines said they didn't need it.

"The most likely scenario is grants of a maximum $150,000 each, with, of course, eligibility requirements," said Buddy Bynum, spokesman for Gov. Haley Barbour. "This would be for owner-occupied dwellings, not apartments or hotels. Subtracted from the amount would be any FEMA or insurance payments the homeowners had received."

Now, being a guy who has a pretty low opinion of government, especially at the Federal level and who loves Mississippi but often marvels at the decisions my state government makes, I am still slightly skeptical of how much this will end up helping people like us. I guess you could say I'm cautiously optimistic.

My concern stems from:

1. At the Federal level, the legislation hasn't yet passed and is attached to the defense budget which has some very partisan amendments included in it (ANWR drilling for example). Our Senators/Representatives expect to see it passed into law soon... it'll probably pass, but I'm not counting those chickens yet.
   
   
2. At the State level, I'm waiting to see what the 'elegibility requirements' are. I'm sure these are as outlined in the article as "owner-occupied dwellings, not apartments or hotels" and my skepticism is for nought, but given the propensity of the government thus far to almost exclusively aid those who are unemployed or who had no insurance at all, I am again cautiously optimistic.
   

On top of all that, my preference is that the insurance companies would just pay their claims. I'm in the "less is more" camp when it comes to government and am bothered by the likelihood that Holly and I will be on the dole. On the other hand, it will be nice to get a lot of my tax dollars back and frankly, I think we'll need the money.

Additional good news is that I think this is likely what our insurer has been waiting on to give us their decision. My guess is that they'll come back with a settlement offer soon that is pretty near our policy amount minus the 150,000 grant from the State. When you combine the two, that would be very good and put us in a much better financial position.

Please please continue to pray that the insurance company would pay their obligations, pray that I would live out Peter's admonition to the church to submit to the government:

1 Peter 2: 13-17- ¹³Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, ¹⁴or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. ¹⁵For it is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men. ¹⁶Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God. ¹⁷Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king.

and please pray that the government would be wise in its administration in general and especially in this Katrina relief.

Thanks,

Batch

Truth in Dilbert

Courtesy of my dad.

Thanks Pops.

Wisdom and media bias

James 1: 5- If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.

First of all, I am sorry for the lack of updates lately. There is alot to tell, but honestly there are so many decisions to be made and so many unknowns that factor into those decisions and the consequences of those decisions and unknowns so great that we are becoming overwhelmed. So, in the spirit of James, please pray that God would give us much wisdom; we are asking Him for wisdom and asking you to ask Him for wisdom for us and are confident that He will provide.

So, until I gather my thoughts for a more detailed personal update, there's this:

But it becomes more and more obvious that to national media, New Orleans is THE story - to the extent that if the Mississippi Coast is mentioned at all it is often in an add-on paragraph that mentions "and the Gulf Coast" or "and Mississippi and Alabama."

The television trucks and satellite dishes that were seen here in the early days have all but disappeared.

This is a very compelling article in today's SunHerald that discussed the media focus on New Orleans and the implications there are for the Gulf Coast. Give it a read and tell me if you've noticed the bias that the author describes.