They're married! Rhyno and Meghan tied the knot this weekend in a beautiful ceremony and a superfun reception. I was successful in most of my best-manly duties, and gave what I thought was a pretty darn good speech. The day was a lot of fun, and I offer sincere congratulations to both of them. Have fun in Cabo.
Yesterday was the anniversary of my birth. I am now officially 32. Funny, I don't feel a day older than 31. Har har har. It was a pretty low-key day, as the mornings after big weddings usually are. I took my tux back, did some hanging out with my parents, racked my mead, played some video games, read some more geek book, and watched most of a movie with Kerry. It was nice.
Kerry got me a kegging system! This means, ladies and gentlemen, that I will have my own homebrew on tap at my house. That is sofa king cool. No more running upstairs for beer during D&D sessions. Oh no! Just reach over to yon tap and fill thy frothing mug with ale! My lovely wifey also got me a Flogging Molly T-Shirt, because she rules.
Yesterday afternoon, our 2nd realtor came over after having done a market analysis. It was like night and day compared to the first lady that came (see previous post). The news was much more to our favor, and this lady really has her stuff together. The last chick seems to have been doing exactly what I thought: Trying to get a quick, small payment now rather than wait out the winter. Well, good luck to her in her endeavors, she won't be selling our house.
It sucks to be back at work, because the weekend went by like lightning. That's always the problem with a power-packed weekend. So, here goes. Time to work.
Hung over, boring, unlucky and clumsy
Well, I made it through the crazy bachelor party weekend, but barely. The problem wasn't the party itself, but the day after. I had to wake up fairly early and drive back to Minneapolis, which wasn't fun at all. I think that my hangover lasted until around...Tuesday.
The rest of the week has been fairly boring. Life is fairly boring right now. Oh well. Like some jabberboarders have mentioned, there is no boredom, only boring people. I guess that makes me a boring person this week.
This weekend my friends Ryan and Meghan are getting married. They've honored me by asking me to be the best man (thus the whole bachelor party planning and whatnot) and I'm very excited to celebrate with them.
So far, this week has been a bit of a series of unfortunate events. Last night, during my break from class, I went to get a coffee from the gawd-awful-coffee-machine at school. I put in my dollar, made my selection, and watched in horror as all of my coffee went not into a cup but instead directly down a drain. Apparently the machine was out of cups. Last night I filled out a document for a class, only to find that when I tried to save it it cleared the form completely, causing me to have to do it all over again. This afternoon, hankerin' for a snack, I went to my work vending machine and purchased some cookies. I jammed my finger, rather painfully, whilst trying to retrieve the delectable snack, which I then took downstairs and proceeded to spill all over the floor and myself when I tried to open them. It's these little things. They're adding up. In fact, I just found out that I have a 7:00 a.m. meeting tomorrow. Barf.
Maybe it's anxiety about the wedding. I'm not stressed about the wedding, but there might be a tinge of nervousness about giving a speech or something. Maybe it's my upcoming birthday. I turn 32 on Sunday. Maybe it's just the initial symptoms of lycanthropy or something. Either way, I tend to go through these extreme periods of klutziness and bad luck every once in a while. Such is life.
The rest of the week has been fairly boring. Life is fairly boring right now. Oh well. Like some jabberboarders have mentioned, there is no boredom, only boring people. I guess that makes me a boring person this week.
This weekend my friends Ryan and Meghan are getting married. They've honored me by asking me to be the best man (thus the whole bachelor party planning and whatnot) and I'm very excited to celebrate with them.
So far, this week has been a bit of a series of unfortunate events. Last night, during my break from class, I went to get a coffee from the gawd-awful-coffee-machine at school. I put in my dollar, made my selection, and watched in horror as all of my coffee went not into a cup but instead directly down a drain. Apparently the machine was out of cups. Last night I filled out a document for a class, only to find that when I tried to save it it cleared the form completely, causing me to have to do it all over again. This afternoon, hankerin' for a snack, I went to my work vending machine and purchased some cookies. I jammed my finger, rather painfully, whilst trying to retrieve the delectable snack, which I then took downstairs and proceeded to spill all over the floor and myself when I tried to open them. It's these little things. They're adding up. In fact, I just found out that I have a 7:00 a.m. meeting tomorrow. Barf.
Maybe it's anxiety about the wedding. I'm not stressed about the wedding, but there might be a tinge of nervousness about giving a speech or something. Maybe it's my upcoming birthday. I turn 32 on Sunday. Maybe it's just the initial symptoms of lycanthropy or something. Either way, I tend to go through these extreme periods of klutziness and bad luck every once in a while. Such is life.
Arrrrr
Arr arr HEEyar arrrrrrr arr. Happy International Talk Like A Pirate Day, ye scurvy sons of sea hags! Tis September the Nineteenth today, and I can hear the wail o' the wind an' smell the salt o' the sea, callin' ta me, down ta me boney bones.
OK enough of that.
It's been a pretty uneventful week for me, unfortunately. I can't really recall anything particularly spectacular that's happened, it's just been kind of the same old situation. Work's been workish, school has been schoolish, and everything has been trudging along. The week has plodded it's merry way toward today, blessed Friday, and the utter awesomeness that is a weekend. This weekend in particular.
Of course, I have to get through class tomorrow morning, but that oughtn't be too tough. It's a pretty entertaining and engaging class.
Tomorrow at approximately noon, I set sail (parrrrrdon me seafarin' references!) for lovely Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, in wanton celebration of the death of Rhyno's bachelorhood. Don't worry, Ryan...it's not such a bad thing to lose. If I know anything about you, it's that you're ready to get married to that blushing bride. First thing's first, though, and that first thing is a party.
So that's what we're a'gonna do.
Other than that, we've got the second opinion realtor coming over tonight. That should be fine. We'll see what she has to say (doubtfully anything of substance tonight, we'll find out more later)
I'm playing pirate ballads at work today. People are confused, but when they ask, I just tell them that I'm celebrating the holiday.
OK enough of that.
It's been a pretty uneventful week for me, unfortunately. I can't really recall anything particularly spectacular that's happened, it's just been kind of the same old situation. Work's been workish, school has been schoolish, and everything has been trudging along. The week has plodded it's merry way toward today, blessed Friday, and the utter awesomeness that is a weekend. This weekend in particular.
Of course, I have to get through class tomorrow morning, but that oughtn't be too tough. It's a pretty entertaining and engaging class.
Tomorrow at approximately noon, I set sail (parrrrrdon me seafarin' references!) for lovely Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, in wanton celebration of the death of Rhyno's bachelorhood. Don't worry, Ryan...it's not such a bad thing to lose. If I know anything about you, it's that you're ready to get married to that blushing bride. First thing's first, though, and that first thing is a party.
So that's what we're a'gonna do.
Other than that, we've got the second opinion realtor coming over tonight. That should be fine. We'll see what she has to say (doubtfully anything of substance tonight, we'll find out more later)
I'm playing pirate ballads at work today. People are confused, but when they ask, I just tell them that I'm celebrating the holiday.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
In other, less depressing news, today marks the birth of my lovely and intelligent wife, who is (hands down) the most wonderful person in the entire universe. I am completely blessed to have her for a companion, because she is (in my opinion) perfect in every way.
And hot.
Love you honey!!!
And hot.
Love you honey!!!
Well that really sucks.
Ugh. All I want to do is sell my house. Well, not all – I’m still holding out for the offer to open for Clutch on tour. Selling this house is a big priority right now, though. It doesn’t really matter when – I graduate next May, and don’t take the bar exam until July, so I’m fine with sticking around. It would be better for us, though, to sell the house early and have to live in an apartment than to not sell the house and have to stay in my crappy job ad infinitum. This brings us to our sordid tale of woe known as the current mortgage market.
Let’s start from the beginning and bore you with details. As much as I would love to blame George Bush for the current state of things (I’m sure he’s got something to do with it, right?) the fault can be placed on the shoulders of idiot lenders that gave mortgages to people that really shouldn’t have had them. Said idiot lenders were handing mortgages to other idiots who would then idiotically buy houses that they couldn’t afford. Due to an extremely sharp rise in the prices of houses, a lot of these houses were actually selling for considerably more than they were worth.
Suddenly, the terms on many adjustable-rate mortgages came due. Like a shotgun, people that were barely making interest-only payments at 5% or less now had to pay three times what they were paying before, due to a higher rate and having to pay principal. (Lost? Sorry if I’m skipping definitions, I’m trying to be brief. Heh.) Long story short, these people (and there are LOTS of them) couldn’t make their payments. Their houses went into foreclosure, and are now being sold dirt cheap by the banks that took them back.
What does this mean? It means that in my neighborhood (and likely yours too) there are 47 houses for sale in a 6-block radius and 30 of the 47 are foreclosed properties. This produces an effect that makes me want to go on a violent rampage: Person A has a house for sale at $200,000. Person B got their house (similar in every way to person A’s) foreclosed upon because they couldn’t afford it. Bank C sells person B’s house for $30,000. Person D, a generic consumer, sees two identical houses, one for $200,000 and another for $30,000. Yeah. Tough choice.
As a result prices of houses everywhere go sharply downward. (Yes, I know there’s more to it. I’m simplifying here. There’s a story, after all.) The infuriating result of this is that when Kerry and I contacted a realtor, she said that our house could sell for a maximum of about $60,000 less than what we want for it.
That’s a lot. That’s out of the question.
There’s more to it than that, even. I may very well be projecting here, but I’ve got some severe misgivings about the realtor we spoke to. See, I know that she’s in a difficult financial situation (because I’m a snoop, a spy, and a person who knows people), and I know that she’s done some kind of shady things in the past. I’m thinking that she wants to sell a house immediately, because she wants a smaller commission now rather than a big one later. It might be wishful thinking on our part, but either way, yeah…not gonna be going with her, I’m thinkin’.
Wait, why did we call her in the first place? Because she's a very nice person who was our agent when purchasing the house, and we wanted to see what she could do. Yeah, not so much.
Let’s start from the beginning and bore you with details. As much as I would love to blame George Bush for the current state of things (I’m sure he’s got something to do with it, right?) the fault can be placed on the shoulders of idiot lenders that gave mortgages to people that really shouldn’t have had them. Said idiot lenders were handing mortgages to other idiots who would then idiotically buy houses that they couldn’t afford. Due to an extremely sharp rise in the prices of houses, a lot of these houses were actually selling for considerably more than they were worth.
Suddenly, the terms on many adjustable-rate mortgages came due. Like a shotgun, people that were barely making interest-only payments at 5% or less now had to pay three times what they were paying before, due to a higher rate and having to pay principal. (Lost? Sorry if I’m skipping definitions, I’m trying to be brief. Heh.) Long story short, these people (and there are LOTS of them) couldn’t make their payments. Their houses went into foreclosure, and are now being sold dirt cheap by the banks that took them back.
What does this mean? It means that in my neighborhood (and likely yours too) there are 47 houses for sale in a 6-block radius and 30 of the 47 are foreclosed properties. This produces an effect that makes me want to go on a violent rampage: Person A has a house for sale at $200,000. Person B got their house (similar in every way to person A’s) foreclosed upon because they couldn’t afford it. Bank C sells person B’s house for $30,000. Person D, a generic consumer, sees two identical houses, one for $200,000 and another for $30,000. Yeah. Tough choice.
As a result prices of houses everywhere go sharply downward. (Yes, I know there’s more to it. I’m simplifying here. There’s a story, after all.) The infuriating result of this is that when Kerry and I contacted a realtor, she said that our house could sell for a maximum of about $60,000 less than what we want for it.
That’s a lot. That’s out of the question.
There’s more to it than that, even. I may very well be projecting here, but I’ve got some severe misgivings about the realtor we spoke to. See, I know that she’s in a difficult financial situation (because I’m a snoop, a spy, and a person who knows people), and I know that she’s done some kind of shady things in the past. I’m thinking that she wants to sell a house immediately, because she wants a smaller commission now rather than a big one later. It might be wishful thinking on our part, but either way, yeah…not gonna be going with her, I’m thinkin’.
Wait, why did we call her in the first place? Because she's a very nice person who was our agent when purchasing the house, and we wanted to see what she could do. Yeah, not so much.
Weird week thus far
My earlier stated goal of writing and recording three songs in some limited amount of time took a little longer than I had expected. The good news is that I’ve written 5 songs now, rather than three. The bad news is that I haven’t recorded them yet, for lack of time. The good or bad news, depending on your musical tastes, are that the songs are all the type intended to be played by A Flock of Kobolds. So, if you dig songs about Vikings, drinking, seafaring, soldiering, and/or wandering vagabonds, you’re in for a treat. And really, how could you not?
I’ve had a weird week so far. My work week has been filled with random meetings, every day, always at 2:00 PM. My home life has been (unsurprisingly) filled with homework. My school week (consisting of only one night thus far) has been filled with awkward Bioethics conversations about abortion, which (again unsurprisingly) ended up being monopolized by a complete douchebag who decided to evangelize for a while. He got completely pwned by my friend Kristian (inventor of the reset stick, incidentally) but the results and politics of that conversation are going to be dropped from the rest of this blog. My mission here is certainly not to attempt to sway people from their current way of thinking.
This past Sunday, I took Gwennerpants to the zoo. It was super fun. She adored the Giraffes. However, there was a moment of interesting shock: We were observing a rather angry-looking 400 lb. gorilla, who was just kind of sitting sullenly in a corner. Suddenly he LEAPED from his sitting position and crashed his fist against the Plexiglas. Gwen’s reaction was delayed compared to the rest of the crowd’s shock, but she was soon wailing. I was already on my way out of the gorilla viewing area. Heh.
I’ve had a weird week so far. My work week has been filled with random meetings, every day, always at 2:00 PM. My home life has been (unsurprisingly) filled with homework. My school week (consisting of only one night thus far) has been filled with awkward Bioethics conversations about abortion, which (again unsurprisingly) ended up being monopolized by a complete douchebag who decided to evangelize for a while. He got completely pwned by my friend Kristian (inventor of the reset stick, incidentally) but the results and politics of that conversation are going to be dropped from the rest of this blog. My mission here is certainly not to attempt to sway people from their current way of thinking.
This past Sunday, I took Gwennerpants to the zoo. It was super fun. She adored the Giraffes. However, there was a moment of interesting shock: We were observing a rather angry-looking 400 lb. gorilla, who was just kind of sitting sullenly in a corner. Suddenly he LEAPED from his sitting position and crashed his fist against the Plexiglas. Gwen’s reaction was delayed compared to the rest of the crowd’s shock, but she was soon wailing. I was already on my way out of the gorilla viewing area. Heh.
I'm happy with my geek status.
I’m excited to go to the Ren Fest this weekend. I’ve been there a billion times, and there really isn’t anything that changes, but I love the Renaissance Festival like other people love the State Fair: It’s this happy place that satisfies a craving for scotch eggs, mead, and bread bowl soup while at the same time providing nostalgia on about a billion levels: First, nostalgia from my youth. See, from high school until now, I’ve gone to the Renaissance Festival at least once a year. Sometimes (hush now) I even wore a costume. The second type of nostalgia is from my past lives: See, I’ve been a Viking, a Pirate, and a British serf in my past lives, so…wait, no. I’m totally kidding about that stuff.
Speaking of Vikings, I’m brewing some mead, so far it smells really good. Unlike beer, I can actually smell the mead through the airlock. I tried to convince Kerry to let me get a good drinking horn from which to gulp my honey libation. I’ll grow a crazed beard like my friend Johnny and shout “SKOAL!” with mead dripping from my drinking horn as I guzzle. Perfect. That’s the life for me.
On a tangent – last night I was playing WoW while drinking my homebrewed IPA and eating my father-in-law’s homemade venison and elk beer sticks. See, my father-in-law got a spiffy sausage maker for a retirement present, and the results have been delicious. Talking over my snack with friends produced the suggestion that we get my father-in-law and move to the woods somewhere and survive off of beer and sausage for the rest of our lives. Sounds like heaven. Might need to recruit some gatherers, though, or the ol’ bowels might suffer from lack of roughage. Of course, Lundo suggested that maybe we would just evolve to be some sort of beer-and-sausage culture. Like Germans.
In furtherance of my quest to become the ubergeek, I’m playing some Dungeons and Dragons after the Ren Fest on Saturday. I don’t know what’s going to happen – all of that geeking might cause me to turn into a druid or something. I predict best day evar!!!!11
Speaking of Vikings, I’m brewing some mead, so far it smells really good. Unlike beer, I can actually smell the mead through the airlock. I tried to convince Kerry to let me get a good drinking horn from which to gulp my honey libation. I’ll grow a crazed beard like my friend Johnny and shout “SKOAL!” with mead dripping from my drinking horn as I guzzle. Perfect. That’s the life for me.
On a tangent – last night I was playing WoW while drinking my homebrewed IPA and eating my father-in-law’s homemade venison and elk beer sticks. See, my father-in-law got a spiffy sausage maker for a retirement present, and the results have been delicious. Talking over my snack with friends produced the suggestion that we get my father-in-law and move to the woods somewhere and survive off of beer and sausage for the rest of our lives. Sounds like heaven. Might need to recruit some gatherers, though, or the ol’ bowels might suffer from lack of roughage. Of course, Lundo suggested that maybe we would just evolve to be some sort of beer-and-sausage culture. Like Germans.
In furtherance of my quest to become the ubergeek, I’m playing some Dungeons and Dragons after the Ren Fest on Saturday. I don’t know what’s going to happen – all of that geeking might cause me to turn into a druid or something. I predict best day evar!!!!11
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