Our House…

Our House

Is a very very very fine house.

I actually severely dislike that song. It is so gay. Also it bothers me that the two cats are in the yard. I mean, that means they’re outdoor cats because you can’t fence in cats and so they’ll probably get diseases and die or get hit by cars and die or get eaten and die. And no one likes a dead cat.

So yeah. We’re buying a house! Yay!!! We’re actually pretty far into “the process” but I just haven’t posted yet and I figured it’s about time I get around to it as I know that a year or so from now I’m going to want to go back in the archives of my blog and read what I wrote and think, “gee, wasn’t I so naive?!” So… We picked up “house shopping” after we got back from Dubai almost a month ago and, like I expected we would after spending money on vacation and feeling guilty about it, we found our house on our first outing out.

Our Realtor had plans the first weekend after we returned from Dubai, but I was antsy in my pantsy about getting out and looking at houses again, so we decided that I’d go without Alex the following Monday night while he was at Paramedic school. Alex’s mom, Patty, came along with us (since I can’t be trusted to remember details about things or notice important house condition stuff) and we looked at 4 or 5 houses that night. The first few were pretty scary and I was beginning to feel a little hopeless about our efforts that evening, but then we walked through the house on Bradley Blvd.

The hardwood floors were gleaming. The living room was huge. The dining room was open to the kitchen where the was a breakfast bar area. The kitchen had a separate cooktop and wall oven - perfect for my bad back. There were two full bathrooms, three nice sized bedrooms, a full attic and basement, and a family room off of the kitchen. Rare for Schenectady, there was also a ginormous over-sized attached two car garage. But to top it all off, it was sitting at the top of a hill, overlooking Central Park with a view of the lake. As our Realtor put it, it was “the find of the century”. He suggested that I call Alex and tell him to meet us there after paramedic school. Alex loved it too. We made an offer the next day and had it accepted the day after that.

We’ve had the inspection already and are following up on a few things - the house has a slate roof and the section over the front of the family room appears to have been tarred at some point, so we’re getting an estimate to see how much it would be to fix that. Also, the family room is on a separate zone of heat and when we were there for the inspection we couldn’t make the heat come on, so we’re trying to figure out what’s going on there as well. The final thing that came up during the inspection was a situation with the neighbors… They put up a fence that attaches to our house and garage and fences in part of our yard. Our attorney wrote to the seller’s attorney and asked them to get the neighbors to move the fence back to the property line. So hopefully all of that goes well.

Beyond that, things are progressing with the bank and we have a quote for home owners insurance, so we’re “homework-free” for now. The target date for our closing is May 20th and I know that will come up quick. I hope that there are no bumps in the road over the next three weeks and that we’re able to close on time so that we can move in during Memorial Day weekend - that’d be ideal.

So right now we’re researching appliances and trying to make lists of all the things that we’ll need as first time home owners. It’s all very exciting. And scary. I freaked out twice this week already - first over thinking that we’ll need like three times as much as I thought for the closing (which totally turned out to not be the case) and second because a guy that works for me and just bought a house with an older furnace (like we’re doing) woke up yesterday morning to find that his central air/heat wasn’t working. Hearing about that lead me to freak out over hte fact that we’re using all of our savings towards buying the house and that we won’t have a big emergency fund for something like that. Our furnace is definitely old so that worries me - although the home inspector said that our boiler is a “cast iron beast” that, while the life expectancy is only 30 years or so usually, he’s seen some like ours that have lasted 50 years, so hopefully the odds are with us there. I’m sure that wasn’t the last of my freakouts before closing. Poor Alex - he’s a freaking saint for dealing with me.

I hope everything works out. I hope all of my calculations and projections are correct and we do fine with the monthly expenses. I hope our neighbors don’t suck. I hope the place isn’t randomly haunted… I hope the next few weeks go by quickly - I wish I could just fast forward to the part where we’re already moved in and settled in and enjoying our house.

Exciting. Scary. Exciting.

I <3 Stewie & Brian

Alex and I will constantly start asking each other a string of questions like this. Hilarious.

Slideshow from Dubai

Here’s a quick slideshow I made from some of our favorite pictures from Dubai: Slideshow

What I’ve been up to…

I haven’t posted in a while, and that’s because I’ve been super hella freaking busy.  At work, I’ve been trying to bring on 3, now 4 new people.  So there have been tons of hours spent reading resumes, scheduling interviews, and performing interviews.  I’ve hired 2 people so far and have an interview today that I hope works out well… but even if it does, I’ll still need to keep looking to find a 4th person.  These are all Software Trainers that I’m bringing aboard for my department, since I lost 2 people at the beginning of January and since our projected sales for this year are through the roof.  LOTS to do there - working on revamping the way that we train and implement and trying to bring some order to the chaos.  Oh, and bringing new staff on is great, but it’s also super hella exhausting and so far I’ve been pawning off a lot of the training of the first new person who started to other people on my team, but next week I’ll go real hands on so I’m expecting to be exhausted every day.

The other thing that I’ve been up to outside of work is house hunting!  This part is fun, but it’s also really stressful.  We’re first time home buyers so everything about this process is new to us and buying a house, with the financial commitment and all of the unknowns is scary.  I’ll have to write an entire series of posts dedicated to all that, but for now here’s a widget from my Evernote notebook with the houses that we’ve decided deserve a second look:

Exciting.  Scary.  Stressful.  All of that.

Upcoming events: next Saturday, March 7th, we’ll be going to see Enter the Haggis at Revolution Hall in Troy.  I’m really excited for that show because I’ve had us on “going out and spending money lockdown” for the past couple of months and this will be our first “big night out” in a while.  The weekend after that is St Patrick’s Parade weekend, but Alex is on call for that weekend so we may not be going out (which suits me fine because I’m old and would rather not spend the money).  The weekend after that, we’ll be in Dubai!  Yep, we’re going to visit the family in 3 weeks - we leave the evening of the 19th and get back the afternoon of the 29th.  Very exciting!!  I just got my passport back in the mail after sending it out (very late) to get my name changed.  It only took 2 weeks to get it back (thank God)!

I must end this post NOW because what I SHOULD be up to right now is taking a shower and getting ready for work because it’s Friday!

This Seems Appropriate…

clipped from 112.gmodules.com

Injured Again

Wow. It’s been FOREVER since I’ve written. It’s not like there hasn’t been things that I’ve wanted to write about - ’cause there’s been a ton - but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to share with the world. Not like I think that the whole world reads my blog, but I do publish it online so there’s definitely the potential that someone else would read it. But more on all that later. Maybe…

Today, what inspired me to write is the fact that I’m injured. Again. What’s frustrating about that, beyond the hurtiness, is the fact that yet again I’ve injured myself within the first couple of weeks of being back at Weight Watchers and/or the gym. Argh!!! As I’ve whined before, it’s like God wants me to be fat!

This time I didn’t fall down the stairs (thank God!), but it was almost equally as enbarassing. I was leaving work around the same time as three of the people who work for me: Kelley, Jaime, and Chris. They were getting into their cars while I was walking towards my car when I suddenly rolled my ankle (on flat ground). I heard the familiar “Pop! Pop! Pop!” that happens when I roll my ankle hard enough to sprain it and felt the pain pretty much immediately. I started to fall, but caught myself on a car. Kelley, Jaime and Chris saw me holding myself up on the car and realized that I’d hurt myself.

I have to say, I love the people on my team. Even though it was freezing out and dark and the end of a long work day, they stopped to help me. They wouldn’t let me drive myself home (since driving a standard would be pretty much impossible with only one good foot) and since Kelley and Jaime were carpooling and only Chris could drive stick, Chris drove me home while Jaime followed in Chris’s car and Kelley followed behind them. Luckily, I live very close to work, but I was still super embarrassed to have inexplicably hurt myself on flat ground and to need their help.

So now I’m pouty about being hurt again. I’d wanted to hit the gym hardcore this weekend since I’ve got a couple work related functions this weekend and Monday where I’m not sure if there’ll be any healthy food available. Alex thinks I’ll probably be able to be back to the gym in a few days. I hope so! I’ve let injuries derail my weight loss plans in the past and I just really don’t want that to happen again.

I’m such a freaking klutz! Ugh.

So is this why I’ve been Obsessed with Tetris Party on the Wii lately?

clipped from lifehacker.com Tetris Wipes Out Bad Memories, Say Scientists According to researchers at Oxford University, playing the popular, classic puzzle game Tetris after a traumatic experience could significantly reduce emotional scars. Apparently Tetris—which requires serious brain power on your part—blocks your brain from storing those bad memories. The catch: It needs to be played immediately following the traumatic event, so break out your old Game Boys and stick ‘em in your emergency kit. Photo by Micah Taylor. [via] kflott 9:20 AM You have to arrange the bad memories so they fit together, each time you complete a row, that row of bad memories disappear. Unfortunately, the longer you do this, the faster the bad memories fall, making it harder and harder to keep up.

Hahahaha

clipped from 112.gmodules.com

Why I eat Junk Food:

clipped from 112.gmodules.com Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

I Want That

clipped from www.engadget.com Tuttuki Bako “poking box” lets you torment low-res creatures