A round of Happy Birthday's on the House!

Ok so the holiday threw me a bit off. Or maybe I just wanted to wait to post a happy birthday blog or something. Either way here we are. So I’m officially joining the OLD people (i.e. you guys) and I’m feeling a new sense of maturity about myself. I can hardly remember the last time I tried to urina…….hmm maybe I shouldn’t go there. So last weekend my wife convinced me to start working on my Crawler again and try to get the next part done before we have to move. So I pulled the rear axle out and trussed it. It went much faster and was much easier than I thought it would be. Now all I have to do is fabricate and weld on a few mounting brackets and build the tie rods and I am ready to mount my rear suspension. By this point I expect most of you to be looking at your computer screens like a chicken sizing up a chemistry experiment, that is if you haven’t skipped right on past the last few sentences. Anyway, it’s fun for me so poo on you (but that wouldn’t be fun for me, or anyone else I can think of so never mind). The house purchase is going well, we are basically qualified and ready to go. If anyone would like to come and see it before we buy it, we’ll be setting up a time to go and do the home inspection sometime soon. If your interested let either of us know and we’ll keep you apprised to the day and time we’ll be going. So only a few more days until the BIG Quake-fest/Dave’s B-Day party and I am getting excited as all get out. Tragically family affairs will detain Nikki and I for either Saturday or Friday night (cursed hey hauling). But other than that I should have a good portion of the time to spend there. I start my programming class (C++) on Monday, so I was looking at the syllabus and what not. It seems the first week is mainly dealing with things like “this is the processor, it thinks about stuff” and “this is NOT a cup holder” so I expect it to be kinda boring. That’s about it, besides Nikki having horrible craving for Lucky Charms last night. Oh, when does Heather come back, we miss her beating up on Dave…… and Jeff……and Shane……and anyone else who questions her integrity or mentions “her bidness”? Later!

What a bunch of Twonks!

Well it looks like I have some bad news. Some terrible awful news about sad and depressing things. Some news that’ll make you run to your window and scream with tragic enthusiasm that “these floors are dirty as hell (which WOULD be pretty dirty I imagine) and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Well…. Ok. Maybe I’m over exaggerating certain parts of transpired events while down playing others in an attempt to build suspense and make the reader (i.e. YOU) wonder ever more what this thing is which has set off a mood resembling that of a bombinated twinkie. (ok that was random, but it IS in the dictionary) So as you can probably gather, Nikki and I went looking at houses again this weekend. Things went well. We were able to find many more promising houses than what we’ve previously run across. Of course this is partially due to our acceptable price range creeping ever northward. However, the luck we had this weekend was very notable. In fact we found 3 houses that we were very impressed with and considering as finalists. Curiously enough, all 3 of them were within just a few blocks of each other. As Saturday afternoon came we found ourselves wondering which of these to look into further. After some long discussions, we came to the conclusion that we wanted to make an offer on one of them. The decision was mutual and we are both very excited. We met with the owners and began negotiations on the price, closing costs, included items and all kinds of goodies related to purchasing a home. After about an hour of conversing we were able to agree on a price and the terms surrounding it. We will be meeting the lady tonight to sign a formal contract and officially start the purchase process. Basically, we have just begun to buy a house. At this point, many of you may have some questions. They are probably along the lines of “What was the bad news?” or “What is this house like?” and possibly even “Where might this property be located?” well fear not cadets. The home was built in 2003, is about 2500 square feet and sits on .28 acres. It is located in a very nice and newer neighborhood in Payson. Yeah Yeah I hear you all grumbling. It’s really not much further that Lehi was from Orem. For those living in AF and PG it may be a bit further than that. Anyway it has 4 bedrooms, an office, a front room, a family room, an actual theater room (Quake room!) 3 bathrooms, plenty of storage and all kinds of other goodies that I’m sure most people don’t care too much about (and yes it does have a kitchen too). Anyway, the bad news is that I’ll probably have to pass on the purchase of my Glock for now ( :-( whimper) but I think it’ll be something I get within the next year so I’m not too sad about it. The sellers are building a house in Spanish Fork (or Springville, I get those two confused a lot) and it should be complete by around the end of June. This means that we would probably be closing on the house at the end of June. Nikki and I are very excited and ready to be done with the whole “living at my parents house while searching for one of our own” phase and looking forward to starting the “moving into our lovely new home with cool features and all kinds of niceness and maybe possibly if the planets align right and we just plain feel like it starting to try for a baby” phase! Yes I said it! Nikki and I just maybe might be thinking about starting to have a baby in the next year. This is more of a forced decision as I think waiting too much longer would result in us having children around long after we wanted them gone (which will probably happen anyway). But yes, it is something we need to start thinking about. And with us now having a house that we’ll probably be in for about 10 years, my mother is going to start hounding on me to “get busy.” Anyway, I’ll keep you all updated as details become available.

What d'ya mean you killed him Cha' Cha' Cha'!?

So, the experiment continues. I was well pleased by the response times observed on my last post. Thus I shall begin posting on a weekly basis. The house hunt continues and we are now considering building, again. If we choose this option we will be living a few blocks further west from where our last house was. So, not too far away and the house would be much nicer and newer than what we’ve been coming across. One sizable drawback is that we’d have to wait 8-10 months for it to be built. This would leave us staying at my parents place for much longer than anticipated but would also give us the opportunity to save a great deal more money than we’d originally planned. We’ll be making a decision on this option this week so hopefully I can give y’all an update next post. Nikki started her new job today and is hopefully having a good time in her new position as the “Director of Budgets.” My Fair Lady practices are moving right along. It seems that the Rehearsals are always on Wednesday nights, and almost never on Tuesday nights. Thus, for those who might be open I suggest that, only if possible and agreeable to all involved parties, we move HDR to Pre-HDR (i.e. Tuesday) for the duration of the Play. Again, it is only a suggestion and if anyone has any problems with the move, then I guess I’ll have to wait until the end of July to resume attendance. Work is going well. I get to play with new and unusual things on almost a daily basis. Not to mention having a bit of free time every day to explore further scientific interests. I have now registered for fall classes and am steaming on my way to graduating 2 semesters early. This comes as a bit of a surprise to me. I didn’t expect to be this far ahead after only the first 2 semesters. Also, I may be changing the Associates degree that I am going for due to a BYU admissions phenomenon which makes it easier to get in with an Associate of Science, as opposed to an Associate in Pre-Engineering. Whatever, the classes are almost identical and my long term goals remain the same. Currently I am in Trig (easy and kinda boring) and a History class (Easy, boring, and a guaranteed A). The later part of the summer I’ll still be in the history class and be starting Calculus as well as Introduction to Programming (which I’ll be taking online). Anyway, enough Psyco-babble from me, until next week “yo my peepin’ pimples!” (P.S. I've Updated my links to take you right to the latest comics in the case of Penny Arcade, Ctrl Alt Del and have added VG Cats since no one uses the Hotmail Link. Also if there are any other links that anyone would like then just let me know where you want it to go)

WHOA!! CREEEEEEEEEPY!!!

HOLY COW!!! Yes I know everyone will be shocked that I have updated this soon after my last post. If anyone objects then maybe I’ll go back to the old way of posting every other month and let you all revel in the skanky oldness that prevails in some of my posts. Anyway, it looks like Nikki and I may be passing on that house, although the jury is still out on the final decision. For those of you who haven’t heard, she was offered a position with the UVSC Athletics Department and has taken them up on it. She will be starting on Monday May 15. Needless to say, she is a bit on the smiley side today. Tonight marks our first actual meeting for the My Fair Lady rehearsals and, unfortunately, marks the beginning of my being late to, or missing altogether, HDR. This is, unlike last summer’s diuretic string of absence, only about 8 weeks and will end after that. Hopefully by that time we’ll be into a new house and can not only participate, but potentially host HDR. Our reasons for passing on the PG house are complicated and involved. It was not an easy verdict to arrive at. Basically, it had everything I wanted but left Nikki feeling left out. I couldn’t live with myself, much less her, if I were to get the house anyway and have her be miserable. Besides, it allows me to fall back on our prior agreement that if we don’t absolutely need the money when my birthday comes around, I can use my next bonus to finally get the Glock 21 I’ve been wanting for many years. This is thus far the tentative case, but is subject to change under certain circumstances. Hope all is well with ya’ll and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be posting soon. By the way, MORE REPLIES!!! >they make me giggle< :-). Oh and just i case you were wondering, the picture at the top is just for everyone to wonder about. toodles

Hummining with my Wii

Ok then, so it’s been a bit. Life continues as busy as ever. Nikki has finished her last class now and is mulling through the endless job opportunities in an attempt to land something decent. Her struggle should pay off here in the next few days/weeks. Finals are over now and I find myself….. right back in the middle of more classes. Yes my 3 day rest from school was nice but a bit on the short side. Anyway, I am enjoying the new job as it has me actually THINKING!! School is school and I find myself reminded of why I was so bored in a lot of the classes in high school. Fortunately, I am still taking half of my classes online so the craziness is tolerable for now. We have been looking for houses for a few weeks now, and recently it has become more serious and involved. We have found a really nice place in Pleasant Grove and are looking into the details. We have some reservations as it is on the higher end of what we are looking to pay, but it has a lot of features that, I feel, make it well worth it. If it DOES go through and we were to buy the house, we would have a few things that many of you may be interested, some more than others. For instance, it has a very large second living room downstairs which would lend itself perfectly as a Quake room, and help alleviate the stress on Shane and Ashley.

Furthermore, it has a separate entrance to the basement through the garage and a key pad. This means that, under preset stipulations, in the event the Nikki and I were to be out of town or singing and dancing, as the case may be, y’all could continue to party on down until we got home and were able to join. ALSO, this large living room is part of a complete 2 bedroom apartment in which someone could live. If this goes through I would present it to all of you, meaning our friends, as a possibility. I know most of you already have houses and condos and apartments and what ever, BUT it would be open. I can think of 3 that may be open to the possibility, Dave (though supposedly in charge of his parents place), Heather (although I don’t know if it would be in her interest to live down here), and Jamie (when she gats back from her trip to Europe). I will keep you posted on what may transpire in either direction. Toodles!