Last Updated : Sunday, 20 January, 2002 at 09:22 PM -0600
|
| Daynotes On a Budget Last Updated : Sunday, 20 January, 2002 at 09:22 PM -0600 |
 | ||||
|
|
|||
| ||||
Monday, January 14, 2002
I apologize for the weekend "silence". The Sunday post is up there now...
Sunday night, as Ann was watching Castaway and I was trying to get my post trucked up to the web (after posting hers), send an e-mail to one of my accounts with job data to review over my lunch hour, and other things, the laptop decided, after a week of full-on service, several sleep episodes, and other abuse, to say "Thank you, no, it's been long enough, here's your blue screen." I love Windows...
Oh well. Not much went on over the weekend anyway. Some good friends invited us over for dinner Saturday evening. Their daughter and Rhiannon are in the same Brownie Troop, and Jack idolizes their 13-year-old. So it's a big deal for the kids - and it's also nice for us. I did manage to get through about nine loads of laundry and church before the dinner, so that was cool. Memo to Church Decorators - simple can be quite cool. Our church had some new decorations up - basically a couple (well, maybe 20 or 30 or so) yards of see-through gold-colored fabric, and then silver and gold construction paper, cut into stars. The stars are hung by fishing line from the fabric. It looked quite nice - the air movement made the stars twinkle, just as twilight occurred outside. I tried to take it as a good sign.
Anyway, dinner.
She works for a local $27-billion non-profit organization which currently is dithering about with a $2-billion shortfall. She's in a new department within a much larger unit, and there's some question as to if they'll continue to exist at all. Since she was recently promoted and received her annual review and other adjustments, they felt they were doing well. Now they don't know. For he works as a mechanic in a construction company's truck shop, keeping the various vehicles they have going. They are both on thinning, but not thin ice. So they sympathize.
Her organization? That one led by that great big governor goof-off we have.
After a wonderful dinner of Turkey and mashed potatoes and green beans and buns and ice cream, I rudely fell asleep on their couch watching some sort of movie - I think it was the last third of "Fifth Element." We left a little after 11 pm, got home, put the kids to bed, then I sat up until after 2 am, worrying.
Got up the next morning determined to put it behind me, searched the want ads (there were a few interesting opportunities which will get resumes in the coming week) and we went and "drove" the house list we were going to look at Saturday morning. Two of them jumped out as ideal candidates. One a couple miles from Rhiannon's school, one considerably farther, but both would be "adequate" houses. Which is really all we're looking for.
Went back to McDonalds and tried to bury myself in a book while Rhiannon and Jack played in the playland. I did a semi-dumb thing yesterday - picked up a book called "constructing effective universes in your science fiction." Yes, it's true, I'm piddling with writing. It was one of my new-years goals - to turn out at least one semi-effective short story by the end of this year, and a couple of ideas for other things. Don't know how that will go now that I'm going to possibly be looking for a new job and all...
Anyway, got home, did some work on the cover letter and resume, and then when the computer packed up and went south, went to bed.
Whereupon I experienced another thing JHR neglected to note in the piece he did about winter - night brightness. Mind you, growing up in a fairly rural area, nighttimes during the winter were bright typically only when you had a full moon. I remember one night, after putting my father's station wagon in the ditch by a small amount while avoiding a drunk driver (the oncoming driver had swerved into my lane - since it was a pretty desolate country road, I swung into the unoccupied lane to get around the car) then cut the corner too soon, and put the front wheel into the ditch. I walked home, grabbed a shovel, and walked back. It was all of a quarter-mile, and a clear, full-moon night. I did have the presence of mind to bring the garage door opener to get in, so I could get a shovel out. I returned, dug the car out and then noticed, coming down the road towards me, was a figure. I kept shoveling, embarrassed that anyone would see my mistake, and as it got closer, recognized my mother's coat. She'd heard the garage door open, and close. She looked out the back door when she didn't hear me come in, and saw no vehicle. She did see the headlights from a vehicle out by the main road, and so she figured her eldest had done something ... well, unintelligent. She came out, and between the two of us, we were able to free the vehicle and get it out of the ditch, on to the road, and back to the garage. I don't know if she ever told my father, but I do remember, clearly, the single-digit temps, the "hard air" and the bright night as I dug through that snow to clear a path for both wheels (front and back, right side) to get through and out. Three rocks was all it took, too.
Last night, we had a low cloud cover, coupled with a fairly fine-grained (or dry) snow. Now, you might say "well, that's got to be dark then" but not really. We live at the top of a hill, south of four or five car dealership lots, a big gym's parking lot, and a mall. Lots of that light was reflected back down, and it was nearly bright enough to read.
Which was really odd. I finished, yesterday, reading the entire Little House collection. I started it last week, and so it wasn't exactly my fastest pass through the entire series (my record was three days, one summer - no, you don't need to believe it either), but it was the first in perhaps 20 years. The books are easy - they have a limited vocabulary, and are simply written to paint simple, beautiful pictures. And I found that reading about the difficulties Laura and Almanzo (or Manly) went through made the weekend just a little better. It seems that every generation is tested, and stressed, in new and different ways. We've got satellites and radar and ways to see what's coming, so we don't have to fear the horrible weather and the uncertainty they had in the 1800s. Due to the way we've managed to pack the planet, most of us are within a few minutes of health care facilities that would seem miraculous even by the standards of 50 years ago.
Some challenges never change. A career choice which offers uncertainty, confusion, and unexpected hardships and rewards, a life which is fraught with fear of, and for, many things. Bullies existed in Laura's time at school - they still exist today, as I wonder if my daughter gave up her morning snack to Newie or kept it. We'll just have to wait and see.
And in the mean time, we're just going to have to wait and see on all fronts. Which I hate. I much prefer getting up and doing something, anything, rather than waiting. I'm trying to keep busy, but it's tough to plan out your day when you've got stuff like this happening.
Let's see. Mental note - one certain way to insure heart failure in someone less robust than I (and a sphincter-clutching moment for me). Work on the third floor of a building, glance out the window, and see a man staring at you from two feet outside the window. Sheesh. I just about ... well, had an accident, to be polite about it. I wanted to yell out the window "Knock it off, buddy!"
And, from the "nothing so bad as we can't find a way to make it worse" department, we get a call today. Company that's arranging to ship our cubes to the corporate office. "Uh, aren't you also going to move some downstairs for installing down there?" "uh, no one told us about that." Now we're all worried. I keep telling people "It's possible that this is a cartage company, who packs and ships, and we're awaiting the call from a moving company, that disassembles and reassembles, or we might have to do it ourselves." We just don't know. I figure there's little point in worrying, out loud, about the possible problems when we've got plenty of real-live issues to deal with in front of us.
The good news is that he just didn't fully explain on the phone. He's got two jobs to do. One is to move things we won't need to Columbus, and one is to move the things we will need downstairs. We'll see how it goes. I knew it wasn't going to be totally bad. Of course, I'm somewhat of an optimist. After all, I have to be. I work with Microsoft products.
I guess it doesn't matter which role you find yourself in in this little drama. There's someone making up their minds on the keep and go lists. And you know that they know, somewhere in their heads, that each name is not only a dollar amount on a spreadsheet, but also a family, dreams, plans, and hopes and fears. It's not a pleasant position to be in either way, though I'd much rather be the fellow doing the deciding than the fellow on the bubble. You can be as hopeful as you want, but lying awake looking out the window at 4 am is a fact, and it doesn't help either way.
This, too, we hope, shall pass. I am thankful for the community we seem to have built here. I'm a "Johnny-Come-Lately" to the Daynoter community, and they've welcomed me and supported me through this sort of thing. I can't tell you how much the support of all of you has helped - I'm not one to look for stupid solutions (like suicide) - better the devil you know than the devil you don't, I figure - but there are times when it seems like it might not all be worth it - you folks do make it worthwhile for me. Thank you very much for that. It definitely helps.
I'm sorry I'm not more upbeat today; I wish I could be, but it's all just "waiting for tomorrow." Sheesh. My nerves are completely shot. Hope your Monday was so much better, and I most definitely hope and pray that tomorrow I come to you with a post that says "whew". No, I will not rejoice - my gain will be someone else's loss, most definitely. But I will be most relieved. Otherwise, you will see an "oh no, here we go again" post. Oh well. Nothing like a little drama, eh?
Tuesday, January 15, 2002
Well, it's 11:30 am. We know the board met last night. We don't know what's been decided. At all. But your support sure does help.
I saw a quote this morning which I hope helps. "Life is not about what happens to you. Life is about how you handle what happens to you." I need to be strong, calm, and focused. I hope I can pull it off.
GOOD NEWS! I'M SAFE!!!!!
That's official, as of 12:45 pm today... I've got to run to another meeting, but I've passed the cut. The unfortunate thing is that someone else in the company will be let go in my place. I'm very sorry for them. I don't know that rejoicing is appropriate, but boy, dodging a bullet like that can sure make you hungry. I suppose it helps in that it restored my appetite that's been gone for nearly six days now.
But thank you, ALL of you, who wrote in support. It gave me and my family strength. Which we needed. Thank you all. And Ann Thanks you as well.
It's been a couple hours now, and the euphoria, if that's the right word, has worn off. I'm still thankful, but now I get to worry about the other shoe. As I've been told, this upcoming quarter is typically the worst we have every year. So I'm gonna keep the resume mill going. Just in case. And we'll see where it goes. The powers that be who supervise my office (fortunately, not my boss) have made it clear to him that they were not happy with the actions he took, and in the future, we might be less well informed about what may be occurring elsewhere. Instead of taking advantage of a team-building exercise like this, they pretty much made it clear that we're all now on thin ice.
Good grief. I just don't get it. We're the only people who know our application inside out, and while it's a small part of the whole suite, we're the package they can ship this quarter. Am I stupid to think that we're valuable, or what? I dunno. It just doesn't make sense.
Well, it's over, and I'm thankful it wasn't me. I am so very, very thankful. And I'm thankful to all the Daynoters and others who've been so very supportive. I do really appreciate it. I really, really do.
I guess we can get back to the serious business of the world, like Pretzel-gate and Walker's charges and trial. And, of course, us going house-hunting. What is it with people who put a nice house on an acre lot right next to a lake, then equipping the thing with baseboard heat and no central air?
Wednesday, January 16, 2002
I slept poorly last night. Survivor's guilt, I guess. I'm feeling a bit guilty for Kaitlyn as well - I know there's no finite amount of "good luck" in the world, and it's not my fault. Still...
One of the things the fine folks at corporate have insisted on is a more detailed explanation of what we're doing during our days. Of course, they were non-specific, and I figured napping, drooling, and picking up dog poo wouldn't be appropriate for one who's just dodged the bullet, so I sat down and built a spreadsheet. A couple simple tricks, like Validation (if you've never used it in a spreadsheet, you don't know what you're missing) and a bunch of "=IF(A=B, 1, 0) statements can do wonders. I've got a weekly detailed record of what I've done now (as long as I update it), and I can hand in a single sheet which will show by major task (Product 1, Product 2, General IT, and Other), and by minor function (Config, Development, Documenting, Learning/Research, Meetings, Repairs, Internal or External Support, Testing, and training). It breaks percentages and all the rest, and as a long-time time-tracker with some experience in management, if you start reporting daily "8.00" hours, you've been goofing off and fudging your numbers. No one is 100% used all day, unless like me your days run 10-12 hours long, work-wise.
Hmm. It's a weird world when Groundhogs in Gobbler's Knob (a kinky name for a town, I grant you that) need terrorist protection. Wow.
Well, damnit. I'm finally coming up for air here (I missed last weekend due to some sort of major event or something), and I see that Nigel Hawthorne, Foster Brooks, and Dan DeCarlo passed away recently.
I'm sure most people would recognize Nigel Hawthorne nowadays - I saw him over the holidays playing a Santa Claus character in a cable-TV movie with Whoopie Goldberg and Victor Garber in it. I first saw him in "Yes, Minister." Our local PBS station started picking up British comedy series in the mid 1970s, and we were treated to 10:30 pm showings of Monty Python, Good Neighbours, Yes Minister, Flowers (I think the name was) and others which were quite fun to watch. Of course, we also watched All Creatures for years - there are some books I need to get the kids. I tell you, just one read through the time that Mr. Herriot had to go to a particular farm where the farmer basically fried up mostly pork fat, and said "I luv ta feel the grease runnin' down my chin" and I was off bacon for years...
I liked Python, because they appealed to my sense of the world (it was all bizzare back in the 70s and early 80s), but they were mostly finished with that by the time I was allowed to stay up until 11 pm on weeknights. Yes Minister and Good Neighbors were two which were a riot. Yes Minister was one I'll always remember. The befuddled "minister" of some British ministry being guided and directed and managed by Mr. Hawthorne's character (I think his name was Geoffrey, if I recall right) was almost always funny. And then the actor playing the minister transitioned to a neighbor in Good neighbors, and then there was this "Flowers" show which was part comedy and part soap opera, I think.
Foster Brooks, though, is a real throwback. Brooks was a riot when I was a kid, or so I thought. He showed up regularly on the old Dean Martin roasts (and now they're advertised on late-night TV, for crying out loud), always blurting out the things you expected a drunk to say, but he did it so funnily that I regularly came close to wetting myself.
Oddly enough, or perhaps it's a sign of our less-incorrect times, but I doubt we'll see another highly successful comedian with Foster Brooks' act. Drunks aren't too funny anymore. They're mostly sad and dangerous.
Most people might not recognize Dan DeCarlo, though. Heck, if I passed the man on the street, I wouldn't have known him to see him. But I'm telling you, it was easy enough to recognize his work in the Archie comics. The women he drew were... well, curvey. Any influence the man had on me has long since worn off, I should think. Ahem.
And rather than apply heavy-duty thinking powers to the issues of the day, I decided to reminisce for this week's "blathering down the garden path" as it were...
Well, Ann's falling asleep on the couch, so I'd best shuffle her off to bed. I want to get to work early tomorrow... G'nite.
Thursday, January 17, 2002
I will admit I'm not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. At one point back during my college days, I had massive delusions of grandeur, and as a semi-successful businessman, found myself contemplating the growth of a business empire that covered a grand, grand scale.
Of course, as any semi-successful businessman can tell you, the idea isn't to survive the ups, but also the downs. And when your "business" is wholly dependent on A) College kids, B) very seasonal (I could build all the lofts I wanted, but I had to get them installed in only two weeks at the beginning of school - preferably, the first four days of school, actually), C) low margin (I charged double the materials - on most lofts, that was about $40 - which worked out to about $1.50 an hour after I figured the amount of time it took me to get it designed, built, test-assembled, hauled to the install site, and installed), and D) Kill your market in the mean time (my lofts were so sturdily constructed that one friend purchased one I'd built third-generation (built for a friend, who sold it to someone this person bought it from), and it lasted her for about six years after college. And let's just say that certain things were done in that loft that "pushed the design and safety limitations to the utmost" and leave it at that), you tend to have a self-killing business.
But I'm... well, beyond irritated at Federated Department Stores. Seems the folks who own BOTH Macys and Bloomingdales purchased catalog retailer Fingerhut back about three years ago. Now, Fingerhut isn't exactly a sexy name when it comes to products, but in St. Cloud, it was the biggest employer for quite a few years. It's still number 2, with some 2700 people working in the distribution center up there today (some years during the Christmas season they'd bulk up to 8000-10000 people). There are something like another 1800-2000 here locally in the Twin Cities in purchasing, order taking, and general management jobs. Most of those people came to the Twin Cities from St. Cloud, promoted from within.
Federated bought Fingerhut with an eye towards integrating it into the coming e-commerce boom. Fingerhut had a lot of very smart people working in their groups, and a lot of hardworking people in their warehouses. One of Fingerhut's trademarks was in extending credit to the less credit-worthy. Sure, it lead to a huge exposure if people didn't pay their bills, but for the vast majority, they did.
Unfortunately, it appears that Federated has decided that Fingerhut is useless as an e-commerce hub, and they've got to go. Sure, that makes sense. Buy a company for $1.7 Billion, then flounder like a clumsy dog in shallow water, and finally kill it off, paying severance and other benefits, plus the bad publicity and ill will that goes along with it. That's unfortunate. And, perhaps, unintelligent. But perhaps I'm aboud 80% below (or above) an IQ level where that sort of decision makes sense.
With that lot of bile vented, today we get back to something approaching near-weirdly-normal. We've officially made it 323 days since our last below-zero reading here, and more importantly, as of midnight last night, we cleared the final hurdle - assuming we get a below-zero reading this upcoming weekend (as predicted by the weather-guessers), we'll have the absolute latest first below zero in recorded history in this area... Let me put that another way - in 1955, we made it to January 16 before we got our first below-zero of the winter. Today is (I think) the 17th, and it's possible we'll make it to the 18th before we hit the minus-digits.
Now, for those of you in warmer and/or centigraded folks, below zero isn't necessarily all that cold. Yes, it's below freezing. So what. It's just cold, that's all. The gentlemen from Canada suffer through more of this cold stuff than we do here, so that's not a problem.
The real problem is that my car is unhappy at zero or below... So we'll see how it goes tomorrow morning.
Well, we looked at a house which had a pretty impressive set of features on paper. In person, the feature set was ... well, we'll say "inflated" somewhat. The 3/4 bath turned into a half (my, and my realtor's, rule of thumb is Half Bath=Sink and Stool, 3/4 Bath=Sink, Stool, and Shower Stall or Tub without shower, Full Bath=Sink, Stool, and tub with shower (or tub and shower)).
I think we were both disappointed initially, but I keep thinking that if there's a lot of work to be done, there's a significant chance that we can put in minimal effort and get maximum benefit from it It needs a new bedroom in the basement, plus a lot of work all over the house. It's worth considering, at any rate. And it's got a beautiful view of downtown Minneapolis.
We'll see how it goes... G'nite.
Friday January 18, 2002
I don't know how it works in the rest of the world, but I have differing levels of approval and admiration as to whether the thing I'm looking at is natural or man-made. I can be awed and inspired by a large building, a 747, or the Space Station. They inspire me to work harder to achieve more. Whereas when I see things like a river or plain old "scenic spot" I'm more inclined to stop and look and think "wow, that's cool. Can't top that, don't want to try."
The reason this occurs to me is from a comment I overheard this morning on the radio. I appreciate my wife and daughter for the beauty and joy they bring into my life, but I'm also somewhat awed by the sheer appearance (and little else) of Pamela Anderson.
The reason THAT thought occurred to me is because, while pondering the comment on the radio mentioning Ms. Anderson in passing, it occurred to me - she's got a father. And there's a job I wouldn't want for all the money in the world (he said, hoping that his daughter didn't tend towards the same general career path as Ms. Anderson). Because you just know what 90% of the men looking at her are thinking...
Well, how did your Friday start out? Mine, too bloody early. No, nothing unusual - the typical 5:15 am "Eeep-Eeep-Eeep" of my alarm clock, same as always. Combine it with the first words out of the lady's mouth on TV - "Well, it's Zero right now folks, so it's a cold morning". Boy, glad she pointed that out.
Fortunately, my car, after the initial "I really don't wanna" did manage to start right up. And I retreated back inside to dress the children and get them off to school. And myself to work. Where I get to replace a shelf with a non-working light, what fun...
Well, onto the daily news... Seems Mrs. Olson is a bit perturbed by the fact that we, the people, should take exception to her being an accessory to the shooting of someone she and her friends took an instant dislike to. Seems to me that it's a fine line you have to walk. Or that she will, rather. Either way, it couldn't have happened to a more deserving person...
And today, like a bolt out of the blue, it hit me. I've got a desktop tower sitting on my desk at home which has full access to the hard drives which are installed. It cannot see the CD ROM drives I install, regardless of functional cable, drive, or combination thereof that I install. I know the CD-ROM drives are ATAPI bootable, as that's what they say (and do) when I use them to boot other computers I have in various states sitting around here (which my wife regularly considers to be an abomination unto God and is preparing even now to roast my innards over some slow fire, some day, unless we get out of this nuthouse and into a real house right quick). I know that the cable works, as it worked when I used it to boot the other machine and read the CD in the drive. I know the original cable worked in my box, as I tested it in another box.
So we have that. Working cable. Working Drive. The only part I couldn't remove and test was the motherboard.
However, the theory is that, somehow, one of the two IDE channels has become non-functional. Is that possible? If not, please let me know, because it will affect the following plan...
Moving from "Forest" mode (and I admit life has been more than a little hectic around here as all of you well know over the last week) to "Tree" mode, I thought "well, didn't people put IDE controllers in their computers back when IDE first started to replace the good old (and I do mean old) MFM and other drive types?" And if they did, I'm equally sure that such controllers are still available - after all, there's got to be more than a few people who suddenly found themselves bumping into an 8 GB limitation and holding a 10-160 GB new hard drive for an upgrade, right? So why couldn't I purchase a basic IDE Controller, connect it to the CD-ROM drives, and use that? Remember, the ultimate goal is to "patch" this box - I'm hoping to replace it with a built-by-me (well, I'm not going to solder up the motherboard traces, so I suppose "assembled by me" would be a better description, I guess) machine running a P4-2+ Ghz with 512 Mb RAM some time next year... Well, I can dream, can't I?
So, anyway, here goes the questions
Input to the usual bit-box, thank you very much.
There. That should help a bit.
And tonight, yet another sign we're all getting a wee bit older. When I picked up Rhiannon, she was telling me she found a dime at school. "Do you know who it belongs to?" "No, Daddy - I'm not stealing it, I'm cleaning my school." Well. How do you argue with that?
Anyway, we went to have our eyes checked. No change for me. Slight change for Ann. Rhiannon got her eyes checked. Unknown for Jack (the poor young Ms. Thang who had to check Jack's eyes ended up practically playing a video game to get him to hold his head still long enough to check his eyes with the machine). Guess who needs glasses. So, instead of ducking out needing to put down enough for half of one pair of glasses, we were looking at full price for three pairs of glasses. Lovely.
Oh well. I was eight when I got glasses. Ann was eight. Rhiannon's eight. Figures.
After watching Jack horse around, Dr. Fontana said "I don't think he'll need glasses until he gets to 20/100 - he won't sit still long enough before that." Good point. And I'll take six pairs of the cheapest frames and lenses you've got, thanks. Then just keep at least four pairs in working order.
Saturday, January 19, 2002
See Tomorrow...
Sunday, January 20, 2002
Didja ever have one of those days that is very good until the last half-hour or so, and that half-hour ends up identifying the whole day? That would be yesterday.
It started out good enough... We stopped by my office to pick up some stuff and then headed to St. Cloud. We stopped for a quick bite for lunch, then headed to St. Cloud. We visited my folk's house, and had Christmas #4 or something like that. Much rejoicing and playing with toys, and then we shipped off to a friend's house for cake-baking, dinner, and the Babylon 5 movie "The Legend of the Rangers". Very good.
Then, we proceeded home. And, twelve miles from home, just after turning from a busy I-494 with no shoulder to a less busy I-35W, the front passenger tire started to squeak. At first, I figured I'd make it about two miles down the road to the SuperAmerica where there was plenty of light and whatnot. Then, I figured I'd make it to a parking lot near that SuperAmerica. Then, I got to the point where I hoped to make it under a light. Which I did. And took a look at the front passenger-side tire, which was seriously chopped up.
And so we emptied the trunk, pulled out the toy spare, and put it on front - where I was again confronted with the inescapable fact that the front end of a car is a heck of a lot heavier than the back end. And a toy spare on the front end of a car is about as ridiculous a sight as a Ford Festiva doing 70 on a freeway.
And so this morning, I made ten phone calls to ten different places that sold tires. And six of the ten weren't open or didn't answer. Three of the ten didn't carry the tire (and these were places like Tires Plus, Fleet Farm and Wal-Mart), and only one said "we don't carry it, but I can call my warehouse on Monday. It's kinda spendy."
Lovely. A P255/60R16 tire. One guy thought it was for a truck. Leave it to us to fall into a good deal on a car, but the tires are $150 apiece. Great. That'll larn me.
LATER: Well, there's another Sunday gone. We got up late, I diddled the above, then we ran out to an open house. What was advertised as a "three bedroom, one and three-quarter bath" turned into a "two bedroom with the potential for a third, questionable, bedroom". Yum. No thanks.
So we drove one other house in Apple Valley, then headed over to Prior Lake, where we went past two ... country houses, basically. We found two, one with it's own well, in Prior Lake. One's in the north-east end, and the other's off in the country, southwest of Prior Lake. The furthest one out is probably about 30 minutes from Rhiannon's school, the other one's about 20.
What continues to amaze me about houses "in the market" is that it's an awful lot like reading resumes. You read the write-up on these houses, and you see the picture, and it's pretty impressive. Then you go inside and you see that the "wonderfully finished" basement is el cheapo paneling over two-by-two studs, and the definition of "bedroom" is occasionally stretched by the issue of whether or not you feel the need to put a standard-sized bed into the space, or if you can vary the dimensions by a bit.
I realize I've got a couple of constraints which might seem unrealistic - I'm looking for a house at, or just below, the region's median housing price, in the hotter suburbs in town, and I'm looking for something just above "four walls and a roof." But, in my defense, I'm going to be paying a lot more than I am for rent, and I'm going to be coming home to this new home, as it sits the day I move in, for perhaps as much as the first eighteen to twenty-four months we're there.
So it goes.
Not much else going 'round here, otherwise. I'm off to check the want-ads for job prospects, so we'll see how it goes. Oh, and clean out my mailbox, which my lovely bride shipped about half a meg worth of stuff into after I left work Friday - and filled the thing to some unknown limit that I now know about. I guess. All better now. I think. I deleted some 200 mail messages. I guess I should be flattered to be so well-liked.
Oh well. G'nite...
Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 John
P. Dominik. All rights reserved. No reproduction without express
written permission.
Opinions expressed herein are my own, and my fault. For further information, check out my
other home page.