Tag: house

Another Year Over

Random Thoughts

2006 draws to an end tonight, and I’ll be celebrating with family and friends, as I hope you all are.

So, looking back, what did this year bring me?

The best thing of the year for me is easy… I bought a house. Sure, I saddled myself with a mortgage that I’ll likely be paying for 30 years, but owning a home is just… cool. I have a big back yard and I really look forward to working in it and on it in the coming years. The dog likes the yard too. The house is big… really big. I used to live in a 2 bedroom, 3 floor townhome apartment, and this place puts that thing to shame. Oddly enough, its also cheaper to maintain. My electric, gas and water bills have gone down despite the fact that I have more stuff, a larger place to cool and heat, and a yard to water. Its weird and awesome.

The worst thing of the year… that’s alot tougher. Overall, this has been a pretty good year, but in the end I’d say the worst thing has been having to watch my wife choose between leaving a job that was almost literally killing her and her best friend. Its a huge horrible mess that I won’t go into detail on, but lets just say it was bad. Hopefully next year will bring some healing here.

That’s me… what about you folks? You, if you are reading this, let me know… what was your best and/or worst thing about 2006?

I could go into a long post about events in the world, but mostly the year was pretty sad… this, however, I find disgusting. Please, don’t buy those.

The Monsters at My Door

Random Thoughts

October is over, my favorite month. And one helluva month it has been.

Last night was our first Halloween in our new home, an actual house in an actual neighborhood. See, when you live in apartments, especially ghetto apartments like I lived in, Halloween is scary for all the wrong reasons. You should be scared of the vampires and werewolves and other creatures of the night, you shouldn’t be scared of getting mugged or shot when you stumble across a drug deal. So, we decorated the house. A grave out front with a wheelbarrow full of bones, blood on the windows, a body hanging in the front bedroom window as a single bare light bulb swung behind it, and more… it was a hoot. And people seemed to really like it. Kids liked the scare, and parents stood in the street taking pictures.

The only downside was… well… we live in a fairly small neighborhood, and while we did get visitors from other neighborhoods, we really didn’t get that many Trick-or-treaters. So now we have this gigantic bowl of candy just daring me to eat it… bad candy, bad bad candy.

I was fairly happy with our visitors last night though… plenty of home made costumes, and not very many fairies and sports figures.

Sadly, though, staying at home means I didn’t go to the North River Tavern for their Halloween night… well, since I now know that kids stop coming around about 8pm, next year that’ll be when we close up the house and go out.

Hope you had a Happy Halloween.

Sometimes it is Worth the Splurge

Random Thoughts

The wife and I finished painting the kitchen yesterday, mostly because he had to. The cabinets are next, and they have to be done before Saturday. Why? Because Saturday is when the appliances get delivered.

We bought a fridge a few weeks ago. Found a good deal on one at Fry’s. Yesterday, we went to go check out hhgregg since they had some sort of super summer tent sale going on. Everything was still too expensive. But, Sears had a dishwasher that we liked for a good price so we decided to hit Town Center Mall and go ahead and buy it. While we were there, as usual in any store these days, we walked around looking at the ranges. Mainly, for anything that is stainless steel (the appliance scheme we have chosen) prices start around $500 for crappy basic gas ranges and go up to… well, if you so desire you can spend $8,000 or more on a new range. Anyway, we are looking around and see this really nice range. Basically, its just about everything we want. Gas, range with the flat cooktop, oven that is conventional and convection, etc… but it retails for $1,499, and that’s the price it was the last time we were at Sears. This time though, they have the floor model on sale for $1,099, four hundred dollars off. We talk it over, we discuss the budget and we decide to go ahead and buy it.

Wait, it gets better.

So we get the sales woman, Renee, to ring up our stuff, range and dishwasher. We are chatting with her about the house, it turns out she purchased a fixer-upper house a number of years ago and is still fixing it up. Then she rings up the range and it comes up $587. The wife blurts out, “Do we get it at that price? Like at Kroger?” “This isn’t Kroger,” Renee says. She voids it and scans it again. $587. She selects the item and pulls up the details to make sure it matches. It does. Then she goes to find a manager. When she comes back, Renee smiles and says, “Looks like you get it at that price.” Awesome!

We walked out of Sears with a $1,499 range for $587. That’s just more than 60% off. I still can’t believe it even though I have the receipt right here.

It is kinda funny with this house. We’ve got a major bad news/good news vibe going. My car breaks down, we get the house. I get flat tires, the inspection goes well. I burn the crap out of my foot on my father’s porch (I was barefoot, the sun had been shining on the wood for about 6 hours, I’m an idiot), and we get a new appliance for 60% off. Also this Saturday the cable is getting installed, and I’m trying to cheat… since I’m a new Comcast customer, they want me to pay $99 for internet installation, which I don’t need since I can do it myself, however if I were an existing cable TV customer self installation of internet is free. So, I’m getting cable TV done Saturday, then I’m going to call and add internet to my account with self installation to avoid the $99 charge. If my karmic balance holds, I wonder where the retribution will come…

I`m got house

Random Thoughts

So, Friday I bought a house. I then spent Friday night, Saturday and Sunday doing some work around it… putting up ceiling fans, changing the locks, etc etc… if I don’t post much in the coming two weeks or so, it is because I’m too busy with my house.

The Government Inaction

Random Thoughts

If you read here, you may know I am buying a house. This house is a HUD home. From the neighbors I have heard that there was a messy divorce, the husband moved out and stopped paying the mortgage but did not tell his wife (nor did she know who the mortgage was with, etc etc), so the bank repossessed the house, and eventually turned it over to the government. Or something like that.

Anyway, in our process of buying, we had to fill out a ton of forms. Mostly just signing and initialling stuff that came preprinted from the HUD website. We sent in the documents and then we waited. And waited. And waited some more. After sitting on the papers for two weeks, HUD finally looked them over and rejected them.

Not the sale of the house, that we are still moving forward on. They rejected the paperwork. It seems that their program did not include either my or my wife’s middle names. This isn’t stuff we filled out wrong, it is stuff their program printed out wrong. So they said we had to reprint out the documents and re-fill them out.

Well, that’s done, and hopefully today they will look over the forms and find nothing else wrong and sign the contract. Meanwhile, I am having dreams that parallel the movie “Moving” starring Richard Pryor. Since the house is already missing appliances and a few odds and end, and a couple more were missing the last time we walked the house, I dream that we get the house and find it nearly stripped bare of all fixtures and windows, the sinks and doors gone… I just hope my dreams are not prophetic.

Madness

Random Thoughts

So, the wife and I have been looking for a house. Again. We started some time last year, but it didn’t work out, then we started again and found nothing. This year we went and looked at a bunch of places but either they were too small, or too damaged.

But about two weeks ago we were told about a house which was just going on the market. A foreclosure. In fact, it was a HUD sale. So we went to see the house and… wow. It was perfect. Following procedures, I got myself preapproved for a loan again, and we put in a bid. See, HUD homes work like this, everyone who is interested fills out some government forms and puts in their best offer. Then HUD closes the bidding, reviews the applications and decides who wins.

We won!

Our House.

June Descends

Random Thoughts

I was doing really good there in May, posting nearly every day, and then June descended on me…

My younger brother got married on the 2nd, and the rehersal was on the 1st. On the 3rd, my wife and I went to look at some houses, one of which we really really like. On the 4th, we made our way to the last day of the Georgia Renaissance Festival and spent most of the day there. On the 5th, I was “on vacation” from my regular job doing work for my actual company (sounds confusing, and it is) and spent a bunch of the day talking to banks. On the 6th, having forgotten to pay rent I had to go get a money order to pay it, and worked yet again for my actual company, put a bid in on the house we like, and went to play trivia at the North River Tavern. On the 7th, I put in another day on the grind at the actual company and finally slowed down enough to watch a couple of movies with the wife (The Family Stone and Mr. Wonderful, it was her night to pick since I made her watch Shocker last time).

The rest of the week looks to continue to be crazy, and on top of all that, we are eagerly awaiting the results of our house bid which should come early next week. So forgive me should I continue to forget to post for a bit. I’ll get back on track soon enough.

Other People`s Heroes

Reviews

Along with my zombie books, I got some superhero books for Christmas too. One of them was Other People’s Heroes by Blake M. Petit. The book is about a world where superheroes exist, and one man has always wanted to be one. As a kid he was saved from a burning building by Lionheart, the greatest hero. As an adult, he finds out that he has powers himself and plans to starting fighting crime when he discovers that its all a sham. There are no real heroes and villians anymore, its like professional wrestling. The heroes all grouped up and put the real hard criminals away, and the other bad guys were offered steady jobs. Fights are scripted, heroes put on a show, real crime is down, and kids get good role models to look up to. But something isn’t quite right, and our hero aims to find out what that is…

Its a good book, a really good book. Blake weaves a solid tale of superheroes with the right amount of humor. It reads like a comic book without the pictures.

That said, I was disappointed by one thing about this book… the publisher. Having gone to a few writer’s workshops myself, and one with A.C. Crispen who co-heads up Writer Beware, I’ve been constantly warned about PublishAmerica (see Writer Beware’s exposure of the PA hoax, and this Washington Post article). Basically, as a Print on Demand publisher, very few, if any, small bookstores and no major national chains will carry the book. POD books are almost always non-returnable, so stores don’t stock them since they can’t return unsold copies. Many stores will let you special order through them, and with online sales picking up every year this is going to be less of a problem (however, for now, the majority of book sales are still done in brick & mortar shops). But POD publishers also don’t do much, if any, marketing for their books. I believe PA offers to do two local press releases, and they will send individual announcements to a list of people that you (the author) provide. Oh, and if you read PA’s contract, they own your book for 7 years. That means for 7 years if you sell the movie rights or get picked up by a large traditional publishing house, they get 50%. All this made me sad because Blake’s book is excellent. Shopped to the right publishing house he could have gotten a good deal and actually gotten paid well (or at least decently) for his book. I may have never known this book even existed if not for Amazon.com.

So, there you have it… good book, bad publishing company.

The Rising and City of the Dead

Reviews

For Christmas this year I asked for a bunch of zombie books and superhero books, and I got some. One of the zombie books I got was The Rising by Brian Keene. Its your traditional “zombies are overrunning everything” story that you see in movies all the time. Or at least so it appears… In this book zombies aren’t the mindless corpses seeking flesh and stumbling around of Night of the Living Dead. They’re not even the beastial “Brains!” zombies of Return of the Living Dead. These are closer to the deadites of the Evil Dead movies (1, 2 and Army of Darkness). They work together, they talk, they plan. They fire guns and drive cars. But they still have only one goal… kill everyone.

The book starts with Jim Thurmond, locked away in the fall out shelter he built in his back yard for Y2K. Jim decides he’s going to head outside and try to get away when his cell phone rings and just before the battery dies he hears his son, who lives with Jim’s ex-wife, plead for help, saying that he’s hiding in the attic, mommy is sick, and Rick (the stepfather) is a monster. This sets Jim off on a journey that takes him from West Virginia to New Jersey to save his son.

Jim isn’t the only character we meet. There is Martin, a reverend, who meets up with Jim fairly early. Frankie, a junky whore, whose trying to survive the living dead and kicking heroine cold turkey. And Baker, a scientist who might just be partly responsible for the whole damn thing. There are a number of other points of view, some very brief, to fill out the tale, and Mr. Keene weave the stories together beautifully (if rather depressingly), and keeps you at the edge of your seat wondering what could possibly happen next.

The book was so good, I ran out and picked up the second (and final) book, City Of The Dead , because I just had to know how it ended.

Now, I’m going to go into alot more detail, so I’ll warn you… ** Spoilers Ahead!! **
Read more

Let the hunting begin!

Random Thoughts

No, this isn’t a review for some game or anything like that. Jodi and I are looking for a house. Well, we’ve been looking… today was the first time we had the real-estate agent actually take us to a house to look at it first hand. It was pretty nice. Good house, nice yard, 1.2 acres… a bit far from work, but hey, I like the bus and there is one out there too.

But the house hunt has officially begun! Cry havok and let split the puppies of peril! (The dogs of war are stuck in Iraq, so its the best I could do.)