A Scattered Brain

We are just one day away from the 2008 Beijing Olympics and I can’t wait anymore! I love the Olympics and always have. For me, the first week of the Summer Games are the best because that is when all of the swimming events take place. I am caught up in not only the events themselves but the side stories. Michael Phelps going for 8 Gold medals, Dara Torres competing at 41 years old; they are all so compelling. I will DVR every bit of content I can and will probably watch a bunch on the web as well. I will keep track of the medal count constantly hoping that the United States is always in first. I get almost as excited about the Olympics as I do the NCAA Tournament.

However, there are a couple of aspects of the Olympics that I feel are lacking and need change. The first; the IOC should have never chosen China to host. For all of the geopolitical reasons that exist, choosing China was irresponsible and arrogant by the IOC. There was a time I felt that the U.S. should protest and not send a team to China and I agree that we were right to not send a team to Moscow in 1980. However, I do understand that the Olympics are supposed to be about athletic competition, not the policies or politics of the host nation and the athletes should not have to suffer to serve a political end. That is part of why China should not be the host. When it is known long before hand that a country will be controversial for significant reason, that country should not be in the running for an Olympic bid. It isn’t like this is a new concern, people have been protesting this choice since it was made. So, while politics shouldn’t have an effect on the athletes, it absolutely must play a role in selecting the host and the IOC should be ashamed of considering China for the games and I believe they did so partly just to cause the controversy in the U.S. especially.

The second aspect covers all Olympic Games and that is the allowed use of professional athletes in the games. The primary reason for allowing professionals was understandable; to counter act the USSR and Eastern European Bloc’s use of ‘professional’ amateur athletes. The world knew that while they weren’t part of professional clubs, team athletes from those countries were by all accounts professionals. So, 20 years too late, the IOC allowed professionals for all events. Of course, that started in 1992… after the fall of the Berlin Wall… at which point, the need to allow professionals was greatly diminished.

This is another area where I have changed my mind over the years. I agreed with the use of pros for the primary reason that the Olympics should showcase the best athletes regardless of pro/amateur status. However, now I take the stance that pros are paid already to perform in their profession and are showcased already through the countless TV networks and internet. If you want to see someone play, you have ample opportunity to. However, rising stars and those currently not paid directly for their competition should get this chance to show off in front of the world. It was easy to allow professionals before, it should be easy to go back to amateur competition.

Despite some flaws, I love the Olympics, the competition, and the side stories. I think NBC does a great job mostly of presenting the Games (except for that nasty time delay issue that is hard to avoid) and I will look forward greatly to the next 2 weeks!

Second verse, same as the first?

Well, not exactly, but close enough.  I’ve decided that Houston doesn’t like me.  Yesterday, I had another client in Houston that I had to fly out to meet with.  I scheduled the same flights as before so that I could do all of my travel in one day.  Last time, if you recall, my flight was stranded mid-air and we were diverted to Austin and I missed my meeting and flew straight home as soon as I finally landed in Houston.  This experience wasn’t quite that bad, but it wasn’t good either.

The flight from Vegas to Houston was uneventful and we even arrived a little early.  Great.  I was able to meet up with my co-worker and we got to the meeting and the meeting went well.  Great.  Afterward, got to have Chick-Fil-A to eat.  AWESOME!!! Highlight of the day!  Got to the airport to fly home… and this is where the story unravels once again.

My plane was supposed to leave around 6:44 pm CDT and arrive in Vegas at 7:52 PDT.  I would have gotten home before 9:00 easily and still had some time to relax before bed.  Around 6:30, we hadn’t boarded yet and they finally changed the departure time from 6:44 to 7:16.   Not a big deal, that happens.  We board the plane and after everyone is on and they’ve closed the door, we get an announcement.  “Thank you for flying with us, we’ll be at the gate here for 30 minutes or so.”  Upsetting but whatever.  30 minutes pass by and the voice comes over, (using valley girl paraphrasing from our captain) “Umm, yeah, like there are 4 planes behind us blocking us in so, like, we’ll be another 30 minutes here.  Y’all can use your cell phones if you want to call anyone… oh and by the way, once we pull from the gate, we’ll taxi for about another hour before we take off, there were like, awesome storms that came through.  Totally cool, huh?”

About 45 minutes later we push from the gate and get the message (no paraphrasing). “Greetings from the flight deck, we’ve pushed from the gate.  You can probably feel us moving now.  It’ll still be about an hour before we take off as there are a lot of flights ahead of us due to the storm that passed by.”  That’s great, come on the speaker just AFTER we start moving to tell us we’re moving.  Our captain was a real winner, I think she liked the sound of her voice on the PA.

Now we’re on taxi and again the captain comes online and says, “If you’re on the left side of the plane you can probably see the really long line of planes we’re behind and that magnificent storm in the distance.”  I don’t care.  We’re on the taxi with the engines off, it doesn’t really matter how many planes are ahead of us.

30 minutes later, still on the taxi, the captain graces us with her presence again, “I’ve been asked to move the plane up so I’m going to start the engines and move.”  Did we really need to hear that?  Come on.  Around this time, almost 2 hours of sitting on the plane, they come around and offer a glass of water.  Great customer service.  Couldn’t they have at least run some programming on the TV’s during this wait; or even better not board the darn plane until we could have pushed away.  Continental’s customer service leaves much to be desired from my last two experiences.  It’s one thing to have delays, but the way the staff handles them could make things much more bearable.  Continental gets a D for service.

40 minutes later we’re taking off and I seriously hear clapping behind me.  What the ??? You’re clapping because we’re taking off 2 and a half hours late?  What an accomplishment!  As we’re just getting airborne, the flight attendant comes on and says, “Thanks for handling the short delay, we appreciate your business.”  Short delay, as if to say it could have been worse; which yes, it could have, but don’t try to placate me by pointing that out.  We took off around the time I should have been landing in Vegas.

The flight was uneventful from that point and I got home around 11:00.  Missed the entire Celtics game and any reasonable time with Kylah before bed.  Houston just doesn’t like me apparently.

I’m sure that when the time comes to fly again to Houston, I’ll be able to complete a saga.  Stay tuned!

So now comes the final chapter in our house hunting adventure… we finally moved in yesterday.  There were issues with worry all the way up until last Friday when things finally recorded.  Title was still working on some money issues due to a rate lock extension and the seller had forgotten to sign some documents but those all got worked out in the nick of time.

Originally, our plan was to rent a truck and move ourselves.  We had thought about hiring movers but decided against it.  Last week we changed our mind and did hire some movers… boy was that the smart thing.  Without them there is no chance we would have gotten everything over in one day.  No chance.

Even with the movers, Kylah and I were busy moving smaller stuff and keeping things organized.  Connor and Grandpa spent the day together hanging out at the houses.  Grandpa was amazing to keep company with Connor and Connor was just the bestest little boy in the world.  He took one nap in his stroller after he had been up for 5 hours and didn’t complain at all.  His second nap was in the new house just as soon as we got the crib and even though it was a new house and totally new environment, he went down like a champ!  I couldn’t have been any prouder.

There are still some outstanding issues.  We are getting our RO system serviced and Cable phone installed today.  We will need to get garage door openers and a mail key.  With bank repos, many of those types of items get lost in the shuffle and it is up to the new owners to correct.  Something we’ll take care of soon but at least we are all moved in.

Overall, we are over a major hump and that is very satisfying.  The new house already seems to fit us well and I’m excited to be there for many years to come.

So after the last two months of looking, submitting offers, waiting on very slow banks, and a lot of headache and frustration; we finally signed our paperwork yesterday afternoon.  We still have to wait a bit for (you guessed it) the bank to sign their part but it looks to be a done deal.

Our original plan had us moving today but that can’t happen so now we’ll look to move near the beginning of June.  Hopefully nothing more will hold this up.  Once we move we can more aggressively market our current house for rent or sale.

I’ll be so glad when this is all over.  I really thought the buying process would have been easier this time than last.  It wasn’t… different headaches, but still headaches one after another.

Greetings all.  Major things have started going with the new house.  The bank finally signed documents and we are in escrow.  All that is left in the air is how fast we can close and fixing one (hopefully minor) plumbing issue with the kitchen sink and hot water.  We hope to have that resolved today and all can continue.

Our closing date isn’t known yet, but should be no later than May 19th.  I’d like to close any time next week if title and loan documents can be ready by then.  Then we can quickly transfer utilities, buy appliances and move in!!  Once we move in, we’ll thoroughly clean our current house and touch up paint here and there.  If we can be fully moved before a business trip I have at the end of May, I’ll be ecstatic!  Things are finally starting to come along which is great.

Personal Note to the J: My excitement is back and you can be excited to look for your own house once again.

I went through a McDonald’s drive through for breakfast yesterday and I saw a very intriguing sign for a new sandwich: the Southern Style Chicken Sandwich.  On first glance it looks strikingly similar to my beloved Chick-Fil-A.  I looked it up and all of the press information confirmed my suspicion that this sandwich was created to directly compete with CFA.  I decided that we would come back here later for dinner to try it.  I knew it could never replace CFA, but if it was at least close enough to substitute from time to time I’d be happy.

I told my wife about it and she agreed we could go there for dinner.  Pulled up to the drive through and ordered 4 sandwiches, 2 with pickle (for her), and 2 without (for me).  They told us it would take about 6 minutes to cook up (must not be a big seller if they cook it to order).  We pull around to the parking lot and about 10 minutes later our food comes out.  Now for the taste test and results.

First, my wife loved it.  She thought it was a terrific sandwich and close to the original and for her would certainly work as a substitute.  For me, not nearly close enough.  Even though the sandwich has no pickles, they use dill juice as part of their seasoning because the whole sandwich had strong dill flavor to me.  I think this is probably because McD’s uses lower quality pickles and wanted to supplement that flavor.  Ok, if you like the pickle flavor.  Beyond the dill, the breading wasn’t nearly the fullness that CFA provides and fairly plain.  The chicken itself was tender white meat and did compare to CFA.

So, my wait for a Chick-Fil-A to come to Vegas will still be met without any substitutes; although I’m truly happy that it will work for my wife and I can find other things at McD’s if she is ever craving a Southern Style Chicken Sandwich.

Greetings all,

I received this interesting math trick via e-mail and wanted to pass it along. It is quite ingenious. Grab a calculator or if you really want to, or go ahead and do this in your head. This does not follow the order of operations so do each operation in full before going to the next step:

1. Take the first three digits of your phone number (NOT including area code)
2. Multiply by 80
3. Add 1
4. Multiply by 250
5. Add the last 4 digits of your phone number
6. Add the last 4 digits of your phone number again
7. Subtract 250
8. Divide by 2

Recognize the answer?? Again, I thought this was very cool and something different from my house hunting stories. Take care!

UPDATE: So on second look, this really isn’t all that clever.  It’s just a roundabout way of multiplying your first 3 digits by the necessary 10,000 and then adding your last four digits.

It has been nearly two weeks since we sent our signed forms back to the bank with their addendums.  We are still waiting for them to sign to be able to start our inspections and get moving toward closing.  It seems strange that a bank wanting to get rid of a property is waiting so long to sign the paperwork and keep the process moving.  We’re told that the house is still ours and they are not entertaining any other offers.  This could be just lip service, but without any indication otherwise has to be taken at face value.  We have gone forward and ordered the appraisal which should have taken (or will be) place today.  I’m not concerned about this appraisal coming in at where we need it to but still want to see the report regardless.

At this point, there is nearly no way to close in April, which may or may not be advantageous to us in the long run as there are other setbacks we will have to work through.  Mainly, there are still many questions about the current house and the refinance of the property.  We will have to look at all of our options and make some decisions.  I am intentionally vague at this point since we have a lot to work through at this point.  I know everything will work out, it is just a matter of how.

I will continue to periodically post updates with everything and once we know a plan for the current house, moving, etc. I will let you all know.  Take care and have a great week!

On to chapter two of the house hunting process - the bids. Two things we wanted to avoid this time around were having to bid on multiple houses and bidding wars. We are 0 for 2. After nearly a month of looking, we found a house we really liked. It was one of the 3 mentioned in the previous point. I will leave exact amounts out for obvious reasons, but here was the exchange between us and the bank summed up:

• House listed at $$$
• We offer a bid of $$$ - 20 asking the seller to also pay closing costs
• They come back with $$$ + 5. Yes, they countered with a price of 5 more than their list price.
• We laughed and walked away

That house was at the cusp of our spending desire anyway so if the bank had come back with something close it could have been a hard decision. At least this way it was very easy to walk away.

We went our looking again this past Tuesday but only at three houses. The first one was awesome and we thought we would like to make a play at it. We found out that there were already multiple offers so if we were to throw ourselves into the mix, we would have to come in above list price. The list price was pretty low considering the house so we kept it in mind. The next two houses (one with the same floor plan) both left us wanting; the one with the same floor plan was trashed and more expensive, the other was too close to a major highway and you could hear the traffic. That was a shame, too, because outside of that the area was quite nice.

We decided we would make a play for that first house. We started by offering list + a little more.  The bank came back with a blanket counter to all offers: withdraw, keep the same, or try to sweeten a little.  We didn’t want this going on forever, but we decided to offer a touch more to show we were serious about the property.

It worked!  The house is ours.  Now starts the long list of things to do to get that house to close, move, and get this house ready and rented.  It will be an exciting couple of months!

Greetings and salutations to all of my loyal fans (I think I may have 3 or 4 out there),

The last month has been quite interesting as we take on a new adventure; finding a new house. Nearly 4 years ago, we went through this exercise in an extreme seller’s market and bought a small house at a high price. We’ve have spent some time and money and have turned it into a home that we truly enjoy now.

But the market has changed qute a bit now. With all of the sub-prime mortgage woes, the market here has drastically shifted from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market and there are good deals all around. We are in a position to at least look into these deals to see if any work for us. Overall, so far we’ve scoped out about 25 or 30 houses over about a month. We were starting to get a little discouraged since we couldn’t find a good match between floor plan and location yet.

We are going to be very picky this time. Since we don’t have a need to move at all, if we’re going to, the house has to be nearly perfect for what we want. Most of the houses available in our price range and area are bank repos; which are very much a crap shoot. People can get angry when they are losing their house and often times ruin carpet, walls, and even smash in doors among other items in the house. Our budget is such that either a house has to be VERY cheap where we can spend some money to fix things up or has to be in great condition that won’t need much work. Until yesterday, there had only been two houses that were remotely possible and neither were perfect.

Yesterday some of that may have changed. We went to see around 7 houses and 3 of them were possibilities. The first is quite cheap and needs all new flooring and paint, but the floor plan is spacious and I could picture us living there. The 2nd was a nice house with an owner still occupying so they probably wouldn’t come down into our price range. The third is nearly perfect! Great house (over 2600 sq ft.) in a very nice neighborhood. The price is a touch out of reach but since it is a repo, we may be able to negotiate. Seeing this 3rd house trumped the 2nd so we are currently looking into putting an offer on one of these 2. We will go back today to get a better look at the non fixer-upper and if it is something we still like, we will write up an offer and see where it goes.

Overall, this is a much better situation since we are much more in control and aren’t in a matter of need like before. I’ll keep you posted if we offer on either of these houses or as more viewings come along. Take care, all!