Not Necessarily Interesting News

We did it. We bought a house. Actually, we bought the house we have lived in and rented from my parents for the past 7 years. It feels weird, that’s for sure. Signing paperwork for a six-digit loan is nerve racking. It’s amazing how simple the process was though. Applied for the loan 2 weeks ago and closed today. No fuss, no muss. I guess when you have good credit they don’t hassle you too much. We picked the perfect time to get a home loan too. Rates started rising the day after we locked in our interest rate. I don’t expect they’ll be that low for quite a long time.

If there’s one bit of advice for potential home buyers it would be to whatever you can to keep your credit good. Don’t run up a lot of credit card debt. Don’t make late payments. If you can’t pay cash for something you probably don’t need it too bad.

My wife and I had a little disagreement with our son tonite over the eating of broccoli. We wanted him to eat it. He didn’t want to. We said fine, but when you don’t eat dinner you go straight to bed. This was 5:30 in the evening. Needless to say, he wasn’t keen on the idea but he went.

My wife and I decided to get some exercise playing DDR after dinner. Once we were done I went into the computer room to play some games and I noticed that my son was stuffing a backpack. Oh boy, we get to go through the whole ‘running away from home’ thing. I didn’t let him know I saw him and let him finish. About 5 minutes later he snuck past us and went out the front door with his backpack on. Naturally, I followed him to see how far he’d take it.
(Read on …)

Heard that BNL was coming to town on March 10th so I went online to get some tickets. Went through the whole ordering process and when I got to the final submission page I hit submit and the agency’s webserver gave and ‘Unable to process’ error. I decided to call instead to avoid having multiple charges to my account because their webserver was hosed. I got a pair of reasonably decent seats over the phone.

About 6 hours later I got a confirmation email that my online purchase was successful and here’s my electronic receipt. Damnit, now I’ve got two pairs of tickets to the same concert. I guess I could call them up and return the second pair but I decided to keep them.

Anybody want a pair of tickets to the March 10th Barenaked Ladies concert at the Backyard in Austin at cost?

: Gringo In Belize by Jerry Jeff Walker

We were at the local mall last night after dinner and my wife expressed interest in Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix for our Xbox. I know you’ve seen this game at places like Dave and Busters or your local arcade. It’s the game where you have to stomp your feet in the direction the screen points while keeping with the beat. Not something I was ever interested in because I don’t dance. We tried EB who said they were all sold out of the game. All they had was the mat. We wandered over to Gamefellas and all they had was the game but no mats. We bought the game there and went back to EB and bought the mat.

Once we got home we hooked it up so she could have a go at it. All I’ve got to say is my wife is very white. If you’ve seen The Jerk, he’s John Travolta compared to my wife. She just could not keep the beat. After she tried it a couple times I decided to get up there and give it a shot. Dear Lord it’s hard. I did do better than she did though. The game is kind of neat in that it has a “Workout Mode”. You enter in your weight and it keeps track of your calories burned. All I know is that after a few times of playing it my calves were burning like hell.

I dropped in Tetris to see what it was like. It was very interesting getting a workout playing Tetris but it is still playable once your feet figure out what the hell you’re doing.

: Son Of A Son Of A Sailor from the album “You Had To Be There – Disk 1” by Jimmy Buffett

Apparently one of our neighbors’ kids backed into another neighbors’ car last night around 1:30AM. Ok, accidents happen but this idiot teenager decided to drive off after sitting and thinking about it for a minute. He drove off while two witnesses stood in the yard and watched. My sister had just gotten home from a night out with a friend and happened to be standing in the driveway talking with her friend when it occurred. The teenager saw them standing there and still drove off. This morning he was parked across the street, not his normal spot, and down the block from where he hit our neighbor. The idiot didn’t even bother to clean the broken glass out his his tailgateless pickup bed. I don’t know what’s become of the situation right now because I’m at work. He hadn’t dropped by the neighbors’ house to apologize or anything by 11AM which I think was more than enough time. I told the neighbor to just call the cops and let them handle it then.

We’ve been waiting for these teenagers to move out of the house for years now but apparently they are going to college locally and will be around a while longer. I almost shot one of their friends a few years ago after he decided my bushes were a great place to hide to avoid a drunken brawl that was about to occur after one of their many parties, that occur when mom and dad leave for the weekend, went south. When a man holding a .45 tells you to come out of a bush, you come out. Don’t try to make yourself even smaller and try to make him think you’re not there. Your alcoholic haze does not provide an invisibility shield. *sigh*

: It’ll Be a Long Time from the album “Smash” by Offspring

My Nana is the best. My wife was over visiting her yesterday and Nana gave her something she had been holding on to for many years. Nana told her that my sister and I used to fight over it. Yes, it is an actual working Parker Brothers Merlin from 1978. All I had to do was clean the battery contacts and drop in some new batteries and it powered right up after a bit of noise. This thing is built solid. How many GameBoys do you think are going to still be working after 25 years?

It plays 6 games. Yes, count ’em, six. That’s six exciting beep and blinkerific games.

It plays all your old favorites like:

• Tic Tac Toe
• Music Machine (It’s a lean mean beeping machine)
• Echo (A copy of Simon, another great game from the 70’s)
• Blackjack 13 (what it sounds like)
• Magic Square (Heck if I know)
• Mindbender (don’t remember this either)

This thing would amuse me for hours on end. It was the GameBoy of its era. If you’d like to try your hand at what we considered cutting edge in 1978 there is a Virtual Merlin. Yeah, it’s a Windows app. I had to find a windows machine to try it out.

: Been It from the album “First Band On The Moon” by The Cardigans

To the idiot in the Toyota Tacoma driving up Mopac this morning, in response to your sticker, I’ll tell you What Jesus Would Do:

He would use his fucking indicator and not cut people off. I should have just hit you. Lucky for you I wasn’t driving my Defender this morning.

: On A Bad Day from the album “Barricades & Brickwalls” by Kasey Chambers

Sunday was a BEA-U-TIFUL day here in Austin. 70-72 degrees and clear as a bell. We decided to go for a drive in the Defender with the top off to catch some of that warm sun. Hopped in the green beast and turned the ignition. Nothing. Could hear the fuel pump whirring so I knew the battery was good. Hmm, try again. Nothing. No click, not a noise from the engine. Crap!

Push it out of the garage to get some light on the problem. Everything looks good other than the usual Land Rover Drip©. Get out a stick and bang on the starter like a crazed monkey. Give the ignition another try and it springs to life. Yep, bad starter. While I had it out of the garage I decided to fix the speedo which has been acting up and I took off the running boards. Taking off the runing boards makes it look like I gave it a 2″ lift. I like the cleaner lines also.

Ordered parts from my favorite Rover parts supplier on Monday. They should be here Friday in time to pull and rebuild the starter. That’s how I want to spend what’s predicted to be another nice weekend.

: Shove This Jay-Oh-Bee from the album “Office Space” by Biz Markie

We got our first good rain in a long time last Friday. We got several inches which was enough to make some really good mud to play in. I was out at the ranch on Saturday and took the chance to ‘check on some roads’ that were supposed to be graded and worked on last week. The mud out there is mostly limestone so it is very thick and sticky. It clogs your tires in seconds leaving no traction but that doesn’t stop the fun. You just head into the muddy bits with a bit of speed and you’ll be just fine. I also got to introduce my son to the joy of mudding in a 4×4. I found a hole that had about 24″ of water in it and dove right in time and time again. The downside to the fun is the cleanup job I have this week because the Defender is caked in mud now.

I took this pic when I got out to scout an old jeep trail on the side of the mountain. You can see how caked the tires get out there.

: I.U.V. from the album “Dance Naked” by John Mellencamp

Went back to the doc today to have that nasty mole removed. It got me 6 stitches. Unfortunately I didn’t get a script for any drugs to go with it. The procedure was was fairly straight forward. Nurse led me back to the mini operating room and asked where the mole was. Since it was on my shin I didn’t even have to take off my jeans or shoes. She got all the stuff together for the doc and left.

They both came back in about 5 minutes later. He shot my shin full of Lidocaine. That was probably the most painful part of the whole thing. When he started to cut I flinched because it wasn’t quite numb. It didn’t hurt but i wasn’t gonna let him continue until I felt nothing. I’ve always needed about twice what others need in the numbing medication department. When he was about 1/2 done I started feeling hot and a bit light-headed. this was a new experience for me. I’ve never in my life felt like I was gonna faint. I don’t know what it was. I used to be an EMT. I’ve been on the scenes of some pretty gruesome accidents. Hell, I wasn’t even watching him do it. I was just laying down and looking at the ceiling. Whatever. I’ve had stitches literally dozens of times for various injuries. I mark it up to the fact that my grand total of food intake for the day was one small muffin 6 hours earlier. Doc was nice enough to get me an apple juice and wait around a few minutes taking my BP which he said was low. After a few minutes we both agreed I could drive home.

Looks like I’ll have another 2cm scar to add to the collection. Sweet.

: We’re All Gonna Die Someday from the album “The Captain” by Kasey Chambers