DLand - What Do Stupid People Do?

My old boss Harry used to say when we were stuck with some problem, \"What do stupid people do?\". He has a doctorate in physics and I'd like to think I'm no moron. So if we were having that much trouble with something, what did the stupid people of the world do? That's how I've felt the past few days. Even just making an offer on a house is more complicated than it ever needs to be. It must be something about me or my family. My father says that the rest of the world can do things that we can't do just because that's the way it is. I wish I could just sign something and go on about my business. But I had to get plats of the property and comps for the neighborhood and the coup de grace this morning was when I called the city planning office.

The house we're looking at has been built by the owners over several years. I called to confirm that all building permits were closed. After 30 minutes on the phone with the woman downtown and a 28 page fax, I found out that almost none of their building permits have been completed, including the furnace and the gas fireplace! Am I the only one who sees a problem with hooking flammable gas up to something that hasn't been inspected? I'm sure they're all fine, but open work permits are an issue when you sell a house. And after all that we find that someone has beaten us to the offer and counter offer (because we \"wasted\" time finding out how this house came to be) so we may not even get the place. If only we were blind and clueless, we could have made a hasty offer days ago. And probably been screwed. Ugh.