A Scattered Brain

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.

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!

Wow! I’ve traveled more in February than I ever have in the past. Three trips in three weeks (the first two already documented below). This last and final trip was to Elekta’s Atlanta headquarters for a Project Manager’s meeting. The meetings went well and were worth the time in general. Whether we needed to have them during the middle of 4th quarter (by far our busiest team) but now I am back in the office for the foreseeable future and ready to hit the ground running.

One very good thing is during my time in Atlanta, I was able to have some Chick-Fil-A! It was as good as always and I would have really been upset to go to Atlanta and not have some Chick-Fil-A.

I’m finding that travel really takes all of your energy in general. All of the trips have been short (1, 2, and 3 days) which makes for a lot of flying time in a short period and I’m worn out. Getting sick in the middle didn’t help either and I felt hopeless while away and having the rest of the family sick as well. We’re all getting better so it looks like we’ve turned the corner.

On a different front, I will soon be announcing the launch of the Stanton family web site. I’ve found a good content management system to use and have started to build some pages. I hope to officially debut it during the first week of March.

Take care everyone and have a great weekend!

A semi-live blogging event.

Here was how yesterday was supposed to go:

• 4:00 AM PST – Get up and head to the airport.
• 6:40 AM PST – Fly to Houston and arrive around 11:35 AM CST.
• 1:00 PM CST – Attend Kick Off Meeting with a client.
• 3:00 PM CST – Conclude meeting and head back to George H. W. Bush Intercontinental Airport (that has to be the longest name for an airport around) .
• 6:30 PM CST – Fly back home to Vegas.
• 7:30 PM PST- Arrive in Vegas and go home.

This would have made for a quite long day with about 10 hours of travel for a 2 hour meeting. If only it could have happened that way.

Now for the real story:

• Throughout the night – Wife and baby were sick with colds and fever. We all had rough nights sleeping.
• 4:20 AM PST – Got up and went to the airport.
• 6:40 AM PST – Fly to Houston… so far so good.
• 11:00 AM CST – Announcement overhead stating that there are storms in Houston and we have been requested to hold over San Antonio for about 30 minutes. No big deal at this point. I’ll still have time to meet my colleague and get to the meeting.
• 12:00 PM CST – Announcement overhead stating that we have been requested to hold for an additional 30 minutes. This makes things really tight but ok. Ah, but the message wasn’t over. After a brief pause, the pilot announced that we don’t have the fuel to stay up for another delay and we are going to land in Austin. Day ruined.
• 12:30 PM CST – Land in Austin. Call work colleague and tell him I won’t make the meeting. He had already seen the re-route and was ready to go by himself. While we are waiting on the tarmac to get refueled, I was able to call home and found out my wife was going to take our son to the doctor for his cold. I really hoped all was well and couldn’t stop thinking about them. If I had known that this would have happened, I could have stayed home and taken care of them rather than fly half way across the country and back (dressed up nicely at that).
• 2:00 PM CST – Get in line to take off to Houston. Decided to start writing this out on paper to pass the time. I’ve had nothing to eat or drink today, not even water.
• 2:10 PM CST – Announcement that we will be able to take off at 2:40. Not holding my breath.
• 2:53 PM CST- We have liftoff! Should be 31 minutes to Houston.
• 3:35 PM CST – Touchdown! At this point, at least I’ve had one small glass of ice water. My plan was to eat at the airport and then try to find my way back home.
• 4:00 PM CST – I look on the flight board and see a 4:10 flight back to Vegas. I don’t think I can make it in time but I also don’t see any other Vegas flights on the board (including my scheduled flight) so I skip food and try to make this flight. SUCCESS! I’m on my way back home, even if without food.
• 4:35 PM CST – I’m in the air and heading home. I am so hungry I could eat a horse. Not sure exactly when I’ll get home but I’m glad this long ordeal is almost over. I watch Gladiator to pass the time.

I made it home around 6:00 PM with Burger King in hand. Such a long day with no real purpose. I’m glad it’s over.

NOTE: My apologies for the inconsistency regarding time (sometimes using present tense sometimes past tense). I knew I was switching back and forth but don’t want to worry about fixing it. 🙂

After about 2 years of blogging (less than regularly at times) on MySpace, I have decided to move my blog to a more permanent home.   This is nothing against MySpace and without it I probably would have never started to blog or have any desire to do more web development at all.

I have recently decided to create a family web space.  I have a grand plan and hope that it will serve as a long time portal for my family to share news/pictures/videos and also allow for family members to have their own web pages if they so desire.

I’m starting mine out with just a blog.  I have taken the time to copy most of the posts from MySpace (not including comments) and will remove the MySpace entries in time.

So, Spencer, where is this new blog of yours so I can keep track?  That is a wonderful question and I’m glad you asked.  The new blog is called (until I come up with a better name) A Scattered Brain.  My hope is to continue or even expand my posting and with a dedicated blog, I believe that will be easier to do.  I still have a bit to learn with all the capabilities and options but I’m excited about the future of this blog.

Greetings all and Happy New Year.

I hope you all had a safe and fun holiday season.  Mine was very nice and it was awesome to experience Connor’s first Christmas.  I’m sure in the years to come I will love getting to see Christmas through the eyes of a child once again.

This year I have a couple resolutions:

1. Continue to lose weight.  I’m about 225 right now and would love to get down to around 200 by the end of the year.  I know I won’t be able to change my eating habits too much but will try to eat at home more and exercise regularly.
2. Blog more.  I know that you all have been eagerly waiting a new blog from me for months so this year I plan to write a bit more and have some ideas for running topics.  I will start doing a “game of the week” (or month or whatever) which will be a link and review to usually simple but fun online games.  Look for the first one next week.  I may also try to get back to more regular bowling updates as well.  However you can always visit here to see the list of scores and records for my team.

I wish you all a terrific New Year.

Well, I’ve been a father now for 2 weeks and it is amazing the transformation that is happening in me.  First, I never knew I could love as much as love both my son and my wife.  Just that feeling alone is enough to bring a tear to my eyes.  I honestly don’t know what I would do without either of them now.

The first few days were quite surreal.  Even after we got our son home from the hospital, it still didn’t fully set in that he was mine, and furthermore, that he is my responsibility for years to come.  Over the last week that realization has set in and most of the time I feel like I’m ready, but there are other times when it scares the heck out of me.

One of the biggest adjustments is the lack of sleep.  One thing my wife and I both love is our sleep.  We knew that when our son came that would all change since they have to eat every 2-3 hours for a while which means little sleep for all of us.  At times, it has hit me like a ton of bricks and I find myself in a bit of a fog most of the time.  Hopefully I’ll adjust to the lack of sleep soon; I’m sure it’ll happen just as he starts to sleep longer, huh?

Probably the biggest impact this has had on my is a much greater respect for my parents.  For the most part, I’ve always gotten along with them and since I’ve been on my own for the last 12 years, my relationship with them has been great.  Having a child of my own though has helped me realize all that my parents did for me that I never knew nor could I have understood prior to having a child myself.  I also know that all of our work now won’t be understood until our son has a child of his own.  Makes a lot of other parts of life seem so insignificant.

Overall, the last two weeks have let me feel nearly every emotion: joy, satisfaction, fear, love, love, and more love.  My life will never be the same.  My priorities are completely shifted, and finally my life has a true purpose.  I won’t be defined by my success at work.  I won’t be defined by any of my hobbies.  I will be defined by my job as a husband and most importantly as a father.  My success or failure will be made apparent through my son.  I know I will make mistakes, I’ll lose my cool, I’ll get frustrated.  But I can also promise this.  I will do my best to be the example my son needs and deserves to have in his life; just as my father was to me.