09/14/2007
For all the people seeking me....
I'm glad to hear from you. I finally figured out how to find your e-mail address when you make a post, so I've spent some time responding. Check your e-mails.
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09/06/2006
Moxie
I should be ashamed of myself that I haven't written about Moxie sooner.
Moxie is our girl. She came to our house when she was about 8 weeks old. Nobody knows where she came from, but she was found on a tobacco farm near the Kentucky River. From the start, she's been very passive. She didn't play as a puppy, she just slept.
<>We think she's a border collie/pitbull mix. When I got her, I started training her using Barbara Woodhouse's books. Moxie doesn't lick, doesn't jump up on people, and barks very rarely. She adapted very well. For the last year and a half, she goes to work with me almost every day. Everyone at work loves her. One of the ladies even taught her to 'shake' in order to get cookies. I never thought she'd learn a trick. She always acted insulted when I tried to teach her.
Now that she's approaching her 8th birthday, she doesn't play frisbee anymore. She can't run fast enough to catch the frisbee before it hits the ground. We've even had to cut back on the tennis ball, because I think she's getting arthritis. She hobbles around for a good day after a game of fetch.
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07/31/2006
Moved in!
OK, we've been moved in to the new house for just over a week now.
<> My parents and mother-in-law were a huge help during the move-in. Dad did a lot of the basic handyman stuff around the house, Mom cleaned and unpacked boxes, Mother-in-law did landscaping work. We couldn't have done it without them.
Our city provides us with garbage cans for garbage, recyclables, and yard waste. We haven't received the recycling and yard waste cans yet, so my first lawn mowing wasn't a bag job. It still took about 45 minutes, and the skies opened up and rained on me about 5 minutes before I finished. Mowing and bagging is going to take even longer.
<> Our big purchase for the new home was a 50" LCD HDTV for the family room, where we spend most of our time. Once the DirecTV people got the satellite installed, we got to watch some serious HDTV. For those of you who don't know, HDTV is amazing. I've been watching the HD channels just to see HD programming. We're excited to find out Arrested Development is going to be on HDNet.<> I also can't wait to see the new season of LOST in HD.
<> My big project for the rest of the summer is to tend to the yard. Currently, it's infested with weeds. I learned from my Dad that taking care of a lawn is a big project, but making your lawn beautiful and weed-free is a glorious thing. I'm gonna have to get lots of weed killers to get it up to shape, and it's going to take time, since I refuse to use a lawn-care service. Here in Kentucky, we've got a particular weed called wild violet that is a pain in the butt to kill. It took years to get it out of my last lawn, and when the neighbors don't care to get it out of their lawns, it doesn't make things easier.
<> More updates to come....18:48 Posted in Blog | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
07/17/2006
Another house update
OK, we've hopefully gotten past all the mortgage issues. They tried to drop a $1400 addition to our scheduled closing costs, but since I did some research and found this to be an error that shouldn't have been made in the first place, the bank agreed to eat the entire amount out of their fees. It actually lowers our monthly mortgage payments slightly. Hooray!
Closing is on July 21, and we can start moving our stuff in immediately afterwards.
The worst thing is that the weather is predicting temps in the 90s with a chance of thunderstorms. The temps are to be expected for late July, but the chance of precipitation really stinks.
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06/26/2006
The house hunting update
Good news from the house-hunting front, so far.
We found a house, a split level, 3-bedroom, 1.5 bath in a good area of town. It took us all of about 45 minutes of negotiating to settle on a price, which was almost $5000 less than the sale price, and $13000 less than the original asking price.
We're currently waiting on the appraisal to satisfy the bank, and the inspections will be done Wednesday.
<> Tune in later for further updates.20:56 Posted in Blog | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
06/18/2006
Why I've been away
For anyone that actually reads this, I apologize for not having made any entries in a while.
I've been otherwise occupied as my wife Michelle and I have been house hunting for our first home. As neither of us has much idea about the process, we've been getting a crash course from friends and parents and realtors and loan officers. It is occasionally a headache.
But we aren't making irrational decisions. We've figured out how much we can spend without stretching the household budget too thin to account for unplanned/emergency expenses. We're learning how to use the local Property Valuation Assessor's website to decide how overpriced some of these houses are for their neighborhoods, and we're praying that God lead us to the house He has intended for us.
But the mortgage process is purely a work of Satan. You'd think that the interest rate you get charged would be sufficient for the bank to get its money, but no, they've got plans to bleed you for thousands of dollars more in other fees. For the sake of comparison, I wonder how it would work if you got your loan on the black market, or just somebody with cash on hand that was satisfied collecting the interest associated with such a loan, with the deed as collateral.
Anyway, we're taking the next week off from work to really hunt for a house. Hopefully, I'll have good news by then.
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04/24/2006
'Dragging' my past behind me
I’ve got something to admit to everyone who doesn’t know me from way back in the day.
I have, on multiple occasions, dressed up like a woman. Nope, that’s not a typo. I’ve been out in public, and seen by others, dressed like a woman.
The last time I walked on the pink side, believe it or not, I was doing the Lord’s work. I was on a mission trip to Pittsburgh, Pa., where I wore a pink dress, that when stuffed with balloons, looked quite shapely on me. I had makeup on my face, but no wig or something that would substitute for one. Lack of resources. It was a part of a skit where about ten of us were wearing the girls’ choir outfits and singing something I can’t recall. There were photos taken, but I sure don’t have any of them.
Looking back, it seems like I could be accused of conspiring to get more and more people in on the act, because the second time I dressed like a woman, there were only two of us doing it. I was part of a brainstorming session for our high school’s Project Graduation group, though I can’t figure out why, other than I knew the guys who were in charge. We needed ideas for a skit that we would perform in front of the entire senior class hyping our drug & alcohol-free post graduation party. Well, from not knowing how I got to the meeting in the first place, I ended up being one of the two guys dressed up, on stage, like the ‘Men On Film’ characters from the sketch comedy series “In Living Color.” Our skit wasn’t as baudy, but we really played up the gay accents, and got to make comments about a prize winner who had to come up on stage to claim his prize, and we ‘accidentally’ dropped his prize so he’d have to bend over to pick it up and give our characters a view of his backside. (On a side note, he never pounded me for that – he was a nice guy.) There was, at one point, video of this, because it was on the local news the next afternoon, but I hope there’s no pictures.
The first time was solo, and as I recall, I volunteered because nobody else, not even the girls in my group, were up to the task of Queen Guinevere. It was fifth grade, my first year at the school, and I was in an Olympics of the Mind group. Another group had some sort of challenge involved with reading Moby Dick. I know one of the kids in that group read the entire book, I don’t know about the others. Our challenge was themed on the Adventures of Camelot. We had to maneuver a maze shaped like the walkways around the top of a four-walled castle. But each person going through the maze was blindfolded, and guided by someone who could see, but couldn’t communicate with voice. Once a blindfolded person reached a checkpoint, they removed their blindfold and served as a guide for another person. Anyway, the main guide was Guinevere, and I was the only person who could do it. So, I dressed in my mother’s old purple robe, put a tiara on my head, and went out there dressed like a woman, with my classmates cackling the whole time. The girls were the worst about the heckling, and all I could do was grab their hair and threaten to slam them to the ground unless they shut up. That was about all my father would let me do to defend myself without beating me to a pulp. Why that is so is for another story….
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02/01/2006
A shout-out to Ryan and Jen of The Transmission
Got a podcast yesterday from Ryan and Jen, the original LOST podcasters, that announced the demise of their awesome podcast, The Transmission.
While it's disappointing to see them go, I'm glad they made the decision on a repeat week so we LOST fans wouldn't have a conniption when the next new episode airs.
I really enjoyed their contributions to the podcasting world, and wish them the best in whatever they do in the future.
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01/25/2006
How many blades does your razor have?
I remember back when Saturday Night Live and MAD Magazine lampooned the introduction of the 2-blade razor.
Do you remember who was laughing when the razor companies introduced three- and four-blade razors?
Well, one of the commercials you'll see during this year's Super Bowl is gonna blow your mind. The Gillette FUSION skipped the oh-so-unnecessary five-blade design (sort of) and skipped ahead to SIX blades! There's five on the face, and a sixth on the flip side. And there's also the version that's powered by a AA battery.
How much are these refills gonna cost? Can they just slice off a fingertip with my FUSION instead?
I'm only writing about this because my wife received a sample razor free in the mail today, and it's boggled my mind.
I hate to see what's next.....
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11/10/2005
Senseless Humor
Who Farted?
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10/10/2005
Remembering my Grandma
My aunt griped that this was both inept and insensitive, so I've deleted it.
I hope this makes her happy.
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10/08/2005
Life at Work
I learned on vacation this week that the corporate world is not for me.
I always knew my Dad had tales of woe that caused him such anguish that when I handed him a Dogbert book he read a few pages before retreating to his bedroom to cry -- his pain was too real to see this as comedy.
So my oldest friend was at the house for dinner when I was visiting my parents, and he works in a very similar location in the corporate/manufacturing world. They communicated about their woes like they had worked side by side for decades though they barely know each other. The additional details my friend provided after dinner only cemented my dread of their world.
Whatever I do in life, I'm not going to be trapped in a building where meetings and bureaucracy and induhviduals sap your ability to not only be productive but also to leave work without bringing the stresses of it home with you afterwards.
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