there is
NOTHING TO SEE HERE
so what are you looking at?
What makes me happy
my wife
my son
writing
books
listening to music
comic books
movies
fantasy football
man's exploration of space
law & order
unemployment
========
What I dislike
Working at uninteresting, unfulfilling, jobs
My wife on PMS (hey, at least I'm honest about it)
Ignorant people who are unwilling to learn
========
One current obsession
Digital Video Creation
========
Sequential artwork I've recently read
**** out of *****
========
If I were single, here's who I'd like to ask out and inevitably be turned down by...
Sanaa Lathan
========
Serialized television viewing
DEADWOOD
****1/2 out of *****
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
Recent posts
Sunday Morning Shuffle 6/25/2006: Ultimate Playlist
Graphic Novel Review: Blankets / Star / Octogenarian Murderess / Hump Me
African-Americans & A New Racism / Baseball iPods / Money & The Wife
Fight Club / Life Between Jobs / Homing In On Home
Sunday Morning Shuffle 6/4/2006: 1990s Playlist
========
Sites I visit regularly
========
Reading or Read Recently
========
Listening
***1/2 out of *****
========
Cooler than a penguin's feet
Venus and Earth
===========
(most recent article on top, earlier articles on bottom)
June 26, 2006: 1539 hours
NEW HOME WEIRDNESS
I was thinking of a few things that have crept into my mind recently to put a few nagging second thoughts about buying it. I hate this thing my mind does when I'm about to spend a lot of money, or even no so much money. Hell, I've had second thoughts about buying a fucking fantasy football magazine. Serious fucking second thoughts, as if I was deciding whether to go to Harvard or Smithee's School of Medical Billing From Home.
Here are the things nagging me today:
* When I went to the house Friday I pulled in the driveway and opened my car door. I swung one foot out and placed it on the ground. As I rose out of the car and spun around to drop my second foot, I just happened to look down and what I saw made me simultaneously freeze my lowering foot and hop sideways with my other foot.
A dead rabbit lay on the ground. A bloody dead rabbit. A bloody dead rabbit surrounded by dozens of huge horseflies. A dead bloody rabbit surrounded by dozens of huge horseflies hovering over and crawling into a hole at the end of its neck where its little rabbit head should have been.
I didn't think much of it at the time. I assumed a neighborhood dog had caught the rabbit and bitten its head off. Later, when my stepfather arrived, he looked at the rabbit and disagreed. The decapitation, he said, was too cleanly done to have been the result of a dog's teeth. No, he said, someone with a very sharp knife sliced that rabbit's head off, then dropped the carcass in the driveway of the house I'm due to buy this week.
Draw your own conclusions.
** The seller agreed to complete a list of repairs prior to closing. As of yesterday, five days before closing, some significant items have yet to be completed. Of the ones he has completed, a couple were not done to my satisfaction.
Overall, none of these are true deal breakers, and I would have agreed to purchase the house had he agreed to fix only half of them. But, dammit, he agreed to repair them all! And it doesn't seem like he will, or if he does, it appears that they won't be fixed in a professional manner.
That really irks me. No, it pisses me off. No, it makes me fucking angry.
*** We're moving to a location removed from the city proper. It's not so far that we have a long drive to get anywhere interesting, but it's far enough out that once we get home, we can feel at peace with the world. It's far enough out that if I set up a telescope on the back deck, we can see the heavens without the view being diminished by light pollution. As an added bonus, our home is at the top of a hill, putting us a little closer to the heavens.
When we chose the house, it appeared we would never have many neighbors in the immediate vicinity. There are three other houses to the left of ours, each on half-acre lots; there is one house to the right separated from us by an empty half-acre lot; there's a small expanse of semi-wooded land behind us and beyond that the land drops precipitously, leading me to believe no one would ever build back there.
On one of my regular visits to the house, I walked a little ways beyond the back yard and discovered there was more flat land back there than I originally thought. There's probably enough to build a couple or four houses back there if the lots were small and access could be gained. Also, a builder bought the empty lot between our house and the neighbors and has already advertised the new house to be built there.
The prospect that we might possibly have more neighbors than I envisioned doesn't please me. It displeases me. A lot.
****
One of the houses across and down the street has a lawn jockey standing
beside the driveway. Though
this site says
otherwise, I was always taught that lawn jockeys were a symbol of
racism. The picture on the right isn't the exact one I saw, but it
gives you an idea of what a lawn jockey is, if you haven't seen one.
Basically, it's a statue of a black man holding a lantern to "guide" the
prosperous, victorious homeowners back home. This
Philly Burbs article seems to clear the air, noting the racially
benign origin with ties to the father of our country, the glorious
Underground Railroad history, and the later co-opt and corruption of the
symbol by racist jerks. [note: If you click on the picture,
you'll be taken to a site that sells them; it's interesting to note that
the Caucasian lawn jockey is posed in a stance of pride, while the
African-American lawn jockeys' poses don't symbolize pride in any form.]
I realize that moving away from the city proper also means moving nearer to less civilized people. Not all, by any stretch of the imagination, but more people who might be uncivilized in certain veins. The statue doesn't bother me much, because I can't imagine the man who lives there would dare do anything overt to me or mine. What bothers me a little is one day having to explain to my children why that guy feels the need to display such a statue. Maybe we'll have hopped on to our next home before that day comes.
The weird thing is this isn't the sort of neighborhood where you would expect such things. There are other minority households on the street, and the larger neighborhood is very much integrated, maybe as much as 50/50 or greater.
Anyway, those are some of the thoughts buzzing through my head regarding our new home. Maybe a beer will remove them from my head. Hell, it's worth a shot. Maybe even a shot and a beer.
June 26, 2006: 0654 hours
HEADING INTO THE HOME STRETCH
We're moving into the home stretch for buying our new house. If all goes as planned, we'll close on the house on Friday, and be completely moved in by the end of the weekend. Actually, we probably won't be completely moved in, as I expect to be moving a lot of non-essential items over the course of next week. However, everything we need to go about our day-to-day living should be moved by Sunday afternoon.
We've been doing a lot of things to prepare, which most people will probably take to mean acquiring boxes of various sizes and packing up our belongings. We're doing that, but I'm also referring to other preparations.
As I mentioned in previous posts (most recently here) my wife has been buying various household items and making plans to buy other items. In addition to those knickknacks, we've settled on a new couch for the family room, as we're going to move our current living room furniture into our new living room. We only have a living room in our current house, so we will have an extra room to furnish.
I've been adamant that we not purchase one of those living room in a box (LRiB) arrangements. We did that when we moved into our current home and I've regretted it ever since the first day. I feel that's taking the lazy path to home decorating, and also that it's just plain cheesy. I much prefer the option of choosing separate pieces that look great together, rather than seven pieces selected by some tepid corporate decorator who has put together an arrangement based on what market research has indicated will appeal to the widest range of the lowest common denominator (check out the second definition) section of the general public. No, the preferred option should be using your own creativity and overarching preferences to create a unique set of items that pleases you.
More importantly to me, I've been working hard the past couple of weeks to earn money to both replenish (to a point) my war chest, and allow us to purchase select items I deem necessary to get us off to a good start in the new home. My wife says she should also have a hand in deciding which items are deemed necessary, but I disagree. Not that she should have an even hand deciding, but that any items which we disagree on should be financed by the individual that deems that item to be immediately necessary.
Among other things, I want the new sofa, a couple of puppies, and I want to finish off the partially closed in garage to create a space for my home office. That's what I'm putting my money toward. We both agree on new furniture for the baby's room, new window treatments (of which there are none in place), and new paint colors in some of the newly painted rooms, so we'll share the costs in those areas. My wife wants other things, such as a wine rack, but I disagree that is a necessity because we rarely have more than one bottle of wine in the house at any given time; an extensive supply of baby clothes; new dishes; and other things. I think it's fair that she spend her money on those items.
To the end of generating more money, one thing I've done is take on a heavy load of newspaper routes. By the end of the week after we move, I will have done a route nearly every morning for a month. Some days I will have thrown multiple routes. That alone should come to more than a couple thousand dollars. This busy schedule (other life tasks are keeping me busy elsewhere) has wreaked havoc on my sleeping pattern, disrupting it to the point where I go days at a time only getting three or four hours a day.
The lack of sleep caught up with me last Thursday when I laid down for an afternoon nap and slept for six hours, sleeping through the alarm, phone calls, and my 5:00 pick-up time at my son's daycare. My wife came home from work and, her voice fraught with panic, shouted, "Where's our son?!?!?" She'd thought that I'd picked him up, came home, fallen asleep, and that he'd wandered outside and gotten lost, or worse. I calmed her and immediately went to get our son, but I don't like upsetting her like that, so I'll have to ensure I get enough sleep to keep that from happening again.
Further on the money generation front, I'm selling some land I own to generate some immediate money in the mid-four-figure range, and down the line generate quite a bit more. Certainly, I won't utilize even a significant portion of that money for house-related items, but I will use some for things like a new fence, a stand alone freezer, and maybe a two-car garage in the back yard. If I get particularly ambitious, I may even get one of the pre-built garages that include a separate one-room second floor apartment. It'll be nice to have a place for company, as our new home won't have anywhere for overnight guests other than the sofas.
I know, I'm planning big before we even get settled, but hey, that's the fun part about moving to a new house. The not so fun part is packing and actually moving. Speaking of which, I'd better go so I can get back to packing.
June 26, 2006: 0332 hours
CD RECYCLING VIA LALA
I'm
an avid music listener. Though I fight it more often as I grow
older, I'm also a collector by nature. Add those two things
together and you get hundreds and hundreds of compact discs.
As the years pass, my love for music continues and even expands into hitherto under-heard genres. However, I realize that my physical collection doesn't need to grow as much as my musical horizons. In the past, I've purchased dozens upon dozens of CDs from used CD/book stores, but I've never sold any. That's mostly due to my collector nature not allowing me to lessen the collection. Also, I hated the idea of buying a new CD for $11-$15 and selling it for $3. So, my collection continued to grow, but never shrink.
Enter, Lala, a new internet site that allows people to remove CDs from their homes that they no longer listen to, and trade them for music they want now. It works like thus. You enter the CDs you own and those you want into your Lala profile. When a member lists a CD you want, it is shipped to you. When Lala locates a member who wants one of your CDs, it notifies you and you decide whether or not you really want to send it away. It's that simple. To keep things simple, Lala provides you with CD clamshells and pre-stamped mailers to ship you CDs in. Each CD you receive costs you only $1.
Currently, Lala is in beta mode and membership, while free, is regulated. However, as a current member, I was given the right to invite new members. I've already passed out a few, but I have a few left. If anyone would like one, just drop me an email and I'll forward an invite to you. Believe me, it's well worth it if you love music and love saving money.
nothing to see here
Overworm is a writer available for work and/or agent representation. I write mysteries, tales of suspense, and African-American fiction. I also write articles for web and print, and marketing collateral.
nothing to see here