Moving In

OK enough of the bad stuff at work, how about something good like,

WE FREAKING MOVED INTO OUR HOUSE!

I tell you what, buying a house is one of the scariest things and yet one of the happiest moments in my life. We are now in debt more than ever, you don't realize it till you see the mortgage papers and that number that has six digits. Then I have to be in charge of making sure everything works. I no longer can call a super and have him fix it... I am now Snider! Then there is the one good thing. It's my freaking house! I don't have to deal with attached neighbors, because we don't have any. We don''t have to worry about being kicked out because the owners got an itch and want us out. As long as we make our mortgage payments we are golden!

We signed on Friday and I started moving boxes that day, the only problem for me was, it was FREAKING 96 DEGREES that day. Since we only had one dolly and not enough room in my car for a lot of boxes with the dolly, I had to lug out boxes from Fried Chicken Drive to the car by hand. I could usually get three big boxes and two medium boxes and five small ones in one trip so that meant I had to make six to seven trips by hand. After five round trips to the new house I had to sit for a while, then lay down and pass out for 20 minutes while Lucy tried to figure out what was going on with this new place. Saturday went a lot smoother, well except for UHaul giving me the wrong truck, We had about 20 people helping us and we got everything in the house before 11:30.

The biggest thing I have found about buying a house is all the things we need. We have faux hardwood floors so the floors hurt our feet if we go barefoot for more than 20 minutes. We had to buy a couple of floor rugs to solve that. We needed more shelves, temporary blinds, curtains in the bedroom (don't want to give the neighborhood a show). Then we have the outdoor stuff, I bought a lawnmower and a weed eaters. I could have bought one off craigslist, but I'm not mechanically inclined so I have no idea if someone is trying to sell me a lemon so I just bought a new one. Even though I have spent more money this week than I have ever spent, we only put the lawn mower on a credit card.

Even after a week we still have boxes everywhere, but the house is starting to look nice. The Wife did a good job in the living room and bedroom and I'm slowly getting things organized in the office. I feel like I'm now forced to be a grown up, I own land and I guess I have to be responsible and stuff. Who am I kidding, I'm a dork and always will be one

Boxed In

We are a week away from moving into our very own house and I can't wait. The new reason is not the fact that we will own this house (well, that's one reason), but I am tired of looking at boxes. Every room I enter there is a box; the kitchen has boxes, the bedroom has boxes, the living room and I am currently typing with a box next too me. They cause me to trip over them and then I can't find things because... it's in a box.

The awful thing is I know we are going to need to go out and buy more boxes. All the crap we have won't make it. I can't stand it, I have to go get more boxes! I'm at my wits end and when this is all over I'm going to stack all the boxes up on the street, make a small jump and go all 70s cop move on those boxes (4:50 into the clip)!

It's a Done Deal

Today I was forced into helping with a "it's hurricane season" special when I get a call from the mortgage company, I was worried till I heard the words, "what time of day do you want to close." Those were the greatest and scariest words in the world. We are now home owners. We got the house and we sign the papers on the 27th! We have a lot to do over the next few weeks, no more free time for me. I'm either going to be packing or working. Crap we have a lot of stuff.

Ain't No Kinda Man

One of my favorite movies is O Brother Where Art Thou and one of the memorable lines in the film is Delmar talking about getting the family farm back and he says; "You ain't no kind of man, if you ain't got land." Well, The Wife and I are about to get land. That house over in the upper left will hopefully be ours by the end of June. We had the house inspected and the people fixed everything we wanted and even did some of the other stuff as well. Then today we were told by the mortgage guy to go ahead and tell give Fried Chicken Dr our 30 day notice.

I'm a excited about owning something this big, but at the same time... I'm now in charge of taking care of it. When something goes wrong I can't call the super or the property conglomerates, I have to fix it or pay someone too. I have to mow the lawn and take care of the plants and flowers around the yard. As a kid I hated to mow the lawn and on top of it I am allergic to fresh cut grass. With all the bad, I can't wait to move in and create a place of our own.

House Shopping

We met with our realtor today and look at 7 houses. It's feels a little weird going into someones house while they are away. I felt like I needed to steal something or look in their drawers, I did neither by the way.

We saw a few empty houses as well and it's interesting to see how it actually "looks better" when there is furniture in the house. I always thought it would be the other way around, but you get to see how the couch could go or where to put the bed. I can use my imagination to see where everything will go, but sometimes it's easier if someone already had it laid out. I also noticed we have a lot more crap everywhere. It's not that we are cluttered, it's just they have less items presented. When we move we may have to store more stuff instead of having it all out in the open.

We saw a few houses we liked, the best was in a small subdivision, the big thing for me and subdivisions is cookie cutter houses and fees that you have to pay. Luckily this subdivision has different looking houses with lots of different sizes. To be honest this house is right on the edge of our price range. If it was a year from now when we have paid off two more bills, it might not matter. Right now it does and I'm a little worried. We have been pre-approved for a loan larger than this house, but still, you have to be able to afford to live there. this is the only problems with past financial transgressions. They will come back and haunt you... stupid aught 5!

Why Are You Calling Me!

OK, I was going to wait to do this, but people are forcing me to reveal this a little earlier. We are looking to buy a house... again. So I was looking for property values and since the house is technically in a small rural county, they don't have any of that information on the web. To be honest, they barely have anything on their webpage.

So I go to Realtor.com to look for property value, because I know the house is not worth that much. Well, you have to go through some hoops to get the value; including a page for buying a car and selling a house. Stupid me did not use a fake phone number. As I am driving to pay for my car licence I get a call from a chevy dealer. He thinks I'm interested in a Aveo. I inform him that it was the first car I could put down so I could move on to find the property value. Two hours later another Chevy guy calls me another hour later I get a call from a lady asking if we need help selling our house. Obviosuly we don't have a house and who would want an Aveo?

This is what I get for using the internet to find information.

Stupid Random!

I've been busy, and have been wanting to post, yet I haven't found the gumption to sit down and write one. I didn't even do a Lost post this week! Well I am forcing myself to get at least one post out, so I might as well make it a random one.

"Back" in the field

OK the back sprain is healing pretty good and I think I am ready to go shot again. Well, it might also be that I am sick of show editing. I've not touched a camera for two weeks now and I need to start up again. I've got a small amount of discomfort when I sit, but we will see about carrying heavy items around. At times I fell the station thinks I want to get out of shooting, why else am I always getting injured? I just need to do more preventive work like stretches and actually lifting the proper way. My goal is no more injuries for at least one year. Stop laughing.. seriously, I want to be injury free for a year. OK, I'll go for 6 months, that's a good start.

Dog Watch March 08

For the last year we have had a battle of will in our house, baby vs dog. You can probably figure out who wants what. My argument is that we start with a dog and then we can see how we do there and then go for the baby thing. It's kind of like The Wife's brother and his wife, they got a dog, everyone but them realized she was going to be crazy and now that they have a baby, she is well, crazy.

Well The Wife decided to meet some of our neighbors and guess what they had... A PUPPY! and she fell in love with it. To make things even more awesome, they told her my idea was a good one. I finally won a battle!!!! I felt like there should have been balloons and confetti dropping from the ceiling. We started a search and came across Odie on craigslist. We have been emailing back and forth and then we could not check our email on Sunday and from that point on it went quiet. I emailed twice on Monday and no response, finally I open my email and see a message from the woman... Odie may be adopted to someone else. The current owner for some reason took no emails on Sunday as several days. We both would love to have this dog, now it looks like we may have to move on. We'll try and give updated.

"You Ain't No Kind of Man if You Don't Own Land"

That quote came from the movie O Brother Where Art Thou one of my favorite movies, and from it you can probably figure out we are looking at buying a house... sort of. This past Sunday, we had lunch with some friends and they happen to live near a house for sale. We look at it and it's a nice house and then we see the price has been dropped. The builder is actually selling it for less than it's worth. Then an agent just happens to show up. We are thinking this house has to be for us what are the odds of all this happening?

We look at the house and think it would be a great place to buy. Then comes the part I feared the most... figuring out how we can get a loan. You see back in aught 5 I subconsciously decided that credit was not that important and well, destroyed it. Money wise, I'm fine, yet they look at that score and cringe and usually hang up. The Wife's credit is much better, but she doesn't make enough, so we have constant problems with anything that involves credit.

I call a group that specializes in first time home mortgages and amazingly enough we get approved and at 6% fixed. Considering that is no money now... not too bad, then the bad part, the payments are 180 dollars more than we pay in rent now. We could probably make that payment, but things would be tight. We have done well in getting rid of some of our debt, I'd have to see us revert back to having problems. It's kind of hard to get that close and then find out that everything is just out of reach. At least I now know that I can buy a house if we want to.

Basketball Postseason

For the past 6 years I have been able to cover some form of basketball post season. I thought I was about to make it 7 till I was pulled from the ACC women's tournament because of "overtime" issue. Then I threw my back out and the point was mute. It just feels odd not having to travel cover pressers and rushing around trying to feed out video. It was always a lot of work, but I loved it. It all started with the MAC tournament when I was in West Virginia, I got to see Antonio Gates play basketball not football. I covered three years of high school basketball in Ohio and got to see OJ Mayo, Raymar Morgan and Bill Walker play. Last year I covered North Carolina in Winston-Salem and then East Rutheford, New Jersey.

There were rumors that I would run the sat truck, but they installed new equipment and I have no idea how to work the truck now. There could be an outside shot, but I'm not holding my breathe. We are short two photographers and no way are they going to give anyone up to sports. Yet another era for me ends.

Birthday

This will be the first time in 6 years I won't have to cover basketball on my birthday so that's a nice trade off. I normally hate birthdays and usually bad things happen around them. Nothing horrible, just random bad days that make me not want to have birthdays. This year I was hoping to get Odie, but now I might get to go to the Bentonville Battlefield reenactment. I know a Civil War reenactment... I'm a dork. I like the Civil War, it was an interesting time in our country and I live near the final battle sight so I'm going to see the reenactment.