jtj608 and head-injury D came over last night. jtj608 cooked: a chili dog casserole, the recipe is based on someone's entertaining 4-page post about the process of making the dish. It was tasty; and a very effective antidote to the bean/yam/veg curry I've been eating all week. ;-)

After feeding, we gamed for a while. A game of Dominion - I went with my preferred Smithy card strategy, and it went well. And then a game of Le Havre - and I won. Go figure. I got a lucky break on turn 1...but usually I manage to burn away such adavantages long before a game ends. I was a slum lord of boats and transported multiple loads of coke (the fuel, not the beverage), then invested the proceeds in some handy real estate. It was a tight margin on the win - could have easily turned out differently.

Work's going okay. I'm pressing my point on some of the things I'd like to get done - I'm aiming for polite-but-insistent. Seems to be getting some of the desired results.

I'm finally, finally getting around to actually doing the refi, instead of just poking at the idea. I've done my prelims: gathered the relevant numbers and papers, reviewd my credit reports, crunched some numbers so I have a ballpark on what to expect and how that meshes with what I want, etc. I'm not big on surprises, especially for this sort of thing; alleviating my sense-of-impending-surprise was a big part of getting the ball rolling on this.

I've started talking with one mort. company (Ameristar), but despite the positive reviews I've seen I'm just not totally keen on the vibe I'm getting from them. If dealing with a human is going to be annoying, then I'll skip as much of that as I can: going to throw my info to LendingTree and to BankRate and see what comes back. It will give me more information, anyway, and that's good. The current rate on my current mort. is ridiculously low - but that means nothing if I have other higher-interest loans on the side. I'm strongly considering a 15-year fixed - I want to roll in my current sins, but then I want to pay them down as fast as possible.

Current task is spiffing up the house for appraisal. Probably one will be required, and even if it isn't this is incentive to tidy my nest before winter locks me into it. I know how winters go sometimes: if I don't clean it now, then I'm going to be sitting in it or staring at it all winter.