Decided on a condo. My first offer has been made. Now to wait and see if it is accepted!
*drum roll*
Got a lot of stuff to do, so thats all for now!
Turns out that she actually *hasn't* been employed there for a while now, but that she is coming back to work for them starting Monday. How weird is that?
I spent some time with the loan guy today, calculating different possibilities and the like. I was going to make an offer tomorrow on a really killer townhouse, but I decided that I was losing too much of my disposable income. I like my toys far too much to let myself be too limited. So rather than the 150k house I was about to place an offer on, I'm going to go take a final look at a couple of 125k condos that I had my eye on initially. That will give me a little more leg room to continue to throw my money away frivolously while still investing in property rather than throwing more money away on rent. Its win-win! =)
In other news... Lady luck seems to be with me at the moment. ;)
My mortgage company sent me an information packet filled with the usual Q&A's, instructions and the like. In this package was a cd labeled "common questions." I decided to pop it in last night before bed just for kicks. Suddenly I am shocked to discover a familiar voice coming out of my speakers. An old friend(and Jason's ex from back in my Albuquerque days) that I haven't seen or heard from in years was speaking, or at least it sounded like it. Sure enough, a few moments later..."This is Berta...." It boggles the mind. I wonder if she actually still works there. I guess I'll find out tomorrow morning!
I've settled on a neighborhood now. I actually somehow ended up with three houses that are all awesome in the same area. I will be making an offer on one of them soon. Yay! So I'm done with the "looking" for houses part now unless they all suddenly disappear off the market, which is unlikely. I'm meeting with my loan guy on Thursday to go over some more stuff. And speaking of Thursday, as it turns out, Carrie will be at some sort of rehabilitation clinic for her broken knee for the next few weeks, so she is no longer coming for a visit. As such, I suddenly have a 4 day weekend with no one to entertain but myself. Fun stuff!
I've settled on a lender and am going through the pre-approval process for a loan now...wheeee. I prequalify for a 190k home loan apparently. Thats nice. I imagine I'll only be buying a house in the 120-140k range though at most.
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For those that are interested in this kind of thing....
"At 6:00 pm PST on Wednesday, January 28th, the signup period for the World of Warcraft Beta Test will officially begin."
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I played some Xbox game demos last night and there is one in particular that shines out. Links 2004. I had a smile on my face almost the entire time I was playing the demo. If the demo is any indication of the full game, it's the best golfing video game ever --- Joe and Freddie take note! You should rent this for the Xbox and play it together. I think you'll both get a kick out of it. :) For that matter, maybe you should just buy it to play it with me on xbox live as I'm positive I'm going to pick it up as soon as my self imposed spending embargo is lifted(ie, after the house is bought).
Tycho over at Penny Arcade had this to say about Links 2004:
"The multiplayer matches we've had in Links 2004 quite simply compare with any - any - game we've ever played against other human beings. I'm as shocked as anyone, and in the abstract it's hard to imagine a game like this providing what you would call "addictive multiplayer." A host of intriguing golf scoring systems and methods of play reward different approaches to the game and require varying levels of teamwork - and nowhere, not in any other experience I've had online, have I had to rely so much on my teammate. When the whole game comes down to only forty or so individual inputs - for some game types, even less - they matter. There have been other golf games, other good ones even. I never got into them like I did Links 2004, which - despite some flaws in presentation - produces the most compelling round of golf out there, multi or no. "
Wheeee, huge boatloads of snow in the few hours I napped before work today. When I drove into work tonight huuuuuge fluffy flakes were falling and it was quite foggy. I couldn't see the big buildings downtown even when I was driving past them. :) Sadly, its gotten rather clear now and only a bit of flurry activity.
Anyway, I've had this entry in draft form for a bit now without publishing it so I could collect more links, so excuse me if some of it is a bit dated. :)
First I present to you, the amazing dancing robots!!! :) If you'd like to read more about these impressive things, here is the website for the impressive QRIO. They seem to have a ton of really interesting features!
Next up, this has been going around the net for awhile, so maybe you've already seen it, but here's some video from the Japan National YoYo contest in March of 2003. Take a look!
Here you can find yourself the full archived collection of political wartime cartoons done by Dr. Seuss. Thanks to Gaiman's blog for that.
Hamlet Text Adventure! Again thanks to Gaiman's blog. This is really fun to fool around with. =)
My aunt Nancy was down here for work today and I got to hang with her on my dinner break tonight. Yay. :) I forgot to bring my camera, so picture will have to wait until she sends me the pics from her camera.
In other news, my friend Carrie, who is "in theory" coming for a visit next weekend, slipped on some ice and broke her knee cap in half. OUCH. Poor thing. I can't even imagine that. Anyway, no idea yet if she'll still be coming out, but if so there will obviously not be much in the way of walking going on.
I'm going to look at some more houses tomorrow. I also need to talk to a few more loan guys to compare rates AND I desperately need a haircut. Oh, and my new watch's date dial is stuck on the 12th and nothing I do will move it, so I need to return that. Will I get all of that done tomorrow? Not likely, but going to try. :)
Joe, Chris, Jen and I went to a local bar yesterday for karaoke. I've been lots of times I'm sure, but I guess I've managed to wiggle my way out of actually participating every time before now. I sang Policy of Truth by DM. Fun stuff. I didn't get booed off stage and my "asshole" friends didn't taunt me afterwards and even proclaimed I did "good", when normally they'd be all about dogging me. So woot. :) There was a guy last night that did a Tool song perfectly. If I was listening to it on the radio I would have assumed it was Maynard singing.
Actually hung out with Joe both days of the weekend, which was cool as I don't often see him(sad considering how close he lives at the moment). Other than that, the rest of the weekend was pure entertainment. I put thinking/acting on my house stuff on hold for the weekend and finished up Prince of Persia for the Xbox(Fantastic Game), played some Crimson Skies, and watched Night of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead and Freddy Vs. Jason. Since Monday is a bank holiday, I'll probably continue the pure entertainment trend until Tuesday when I can resume persuing loan stuff.
I checked out a bunch of houses/condos/townhomes today. Found a couple sweet condos that I'm considering, as well as one really killer house if I feel like a serious fixer upper. Continuing to evaluate my options and look around. Tomorrow brings more loan stuff. Fuuuuun.
I found out today that Chris stopped paying the electric & gas in our place back in October.... Luckily I found out the day before they disconnected everything so I could pay it all off. Gotta love miscommunication. Sadly, that put a further damper on my current fundage for down payment and closing costs. So thinking of whoreing myself out now. Anybody want a go? ;) I'll rock your world! hahaha
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So Arnie gave his "State of the State" address to California the other night. I'm not big on politics most of the time, but I really had to make a point to get a copy of this and watch it. I think he's going to make a really good politician, at least based on his speech, and it was worth watching. In particular though, as soon as his speech was over, they cut off him to crowd reaction, but the mic was still picking up his surroundings, and you hear the guy sitting next to him say something to the effect of "That was some good bullshitting". I kid you not!! You have to hear it for yourself. :) I really can't believe the media didn't have some kind of field day with it. Go ahead and click the link below if you would like to download the 30 minute speech. Its about 200megs, so I'll only be making it available for the next week or so (or first 20 downloads, whichever comes first), so get it while its hot before I turn off the link. =)
Arnie gives a speech. (right click and save as)
Every once in a great while I actually go through my web sites statistics to look for interesting patterns or anomalies. Included in this are the phrases people have searched on to find my website. Now, given the huge variance in some of my interests and the amount of time I spend talking about entertainment, you'd expect a pretty interesting variety in search topics...and you'd be right. Typically though, the most common are actually people searching on things that will lead them to my Turkey Trip pages. "Pictures of mosques", "Travel logs from Turkey", and "Pictures of Roman houses" are all of the most common variety.
Invariably, however, there is always at least one search that is just completely out of place. It always scares me that my site was found based on these searches. Here are two ridiculous searches that led people to my site so far in January:
"ultrasound pic of baby with afro" -- The thought of this is just amusing, so I guess maybe I can understand someone searching for it. I happen to be the number 1 hit for this on google oddly enough.
&
"lou ferrigno current month t.v. schedule" -- Not only do I not understand why someone would be searching for this, but it frightens and confuses me that they found my site based on this. I tried that search in a few different engines and couldn't find my page on the first few pages of links. So not only were they searching for this, but they were exhausting all possible options in the hunt for the mighty ferrigno's appearances!
Oh, and 2% of my hits this month so far are from the Netherlands! With the usual smattering of a hit or two from places like Japan and Belgium.
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My landlord Jurgen stopped by today before work and showed our place to a friend's daughter that is going to be starting at a local college soon. Despite the fact that the place was a sty based on my standards due to the lack of any kind of notice, they both were pretty pleased and my landlord reiterated the fact that "we" can stay as long as we like, even going month to month if need be. I thanked him but made him aware that Chris has already moved out so I don't think he'll want to continue paying any rent past March when the lease is up. =) On the way out the daughter of the friend made a point to tell me how nice it was to meet me with a big 'ol smile. haha. She was cute. ;)
Tomorrow morning, Judy(My real estate lady and a former co-worker) will be showing me a bunch of houses(12) that I've found in my hunt so far. These all meet my basic criteria but are in a host of different areas all over the city. I am all nerves and excitement. This whole process is just enormous. Wheeeee.
I really am not quite sure why its taken me so long to return to updating after the holidays.
My trip down to Albuquerque was fantastic!! I spent a lot of time with the family of course, as well as breakfast with Tina & Jay, and a great evening of catching up with Margret. Much entertainment was consumed in the form of video games and movies over the holiday. And the obligatory consumption of mood altering chemicals on New Years(as well as a few other days, including a night that will not be mentioned other than to say that I was completely incapacitated...oops). I actually had the first champagne I have ever enjoyed on this trip, which could be viewed as a plus, I suppose.
Since I've been back, it's been the usual routine for the most part. The exception of course has been dealing with loan stuff and searching for a house to buy. I have to be out of my current place at the end of March, so in a perfect world, I will find a house I want and actually close on it and get moved in before then. I suspect that most likely I will not manage that quite as adroitly as I'd like. If I run out of time I will just move all my stuff into storage at the end of March and crash/leech at Joe or Eric's or something for a few weeks until I manage to get things squared away.
Finding the right house is quite a chore. I've made my own kind of hell by living so damn conveniently close to work for the last 2 years. Having no commute for such a long time really spoils a person. So I'm torn now. I could try and find a house in the area to buy, which will either amount to paying too much for too little or living in a ghetto, or some of both. On the flip side, I can try to snag something on the fringes of Denver somewhere like where I lived when I first moved out here and end up with a nicer place in a better neighborhood... But that will come at the cost of my sanity as I again resume hour long commutes to and from work. I still don't know which option I will choose, but I continue to view houses from both paths until I decide.
Anyway, I'm back, and updates should resume their usual haphazard frequency again.