Counting down...

2 days and counting until our closing. We should be hearing how much it will cost us to close anyday now.

This weekend we went and some of our close friends gave us a bunch of boxes and wardrobes to help us out with the move. That will be a huge help, as that stuff is expensive. We will start moving stuff this weekend, and probably start staying there then also. Most of our utilities will get moved over in the following week. It looks like we will be without internet the longest, so I will have to find a way to entertain myself without the world wide web.

Another nice thing is that the Sox are still cruising along towards winning the division. Currently the magic number stands at 26 to eliminate the Cleveland Indians, who now sit 8 games (10 losses) behind the White Sox. The Twins are in a more precarious position sitting 12 1/2 games out with a magic number of 22.

The White Sox now travel down to Arlington Texas to play the Rangers for 4 games, including a make up game, in which personal favorite Brandon McCarthy will pitch. The other exciting rumor is that Jeff Bajenaru will be among the call ups for this series. Glad to see some good guys getting a chance for a September showing with the big club.

Almost there...

Well we are only days away from being home owners... Wow. We are done with the underwriting process, and are officially approved for our loan. So now we are doing all of the getting ready stuff, buying insurance, flood plain assessment etc. By some stroke of luck they told us that our property is in a flood plain, but the house itself is not, so we don't need flood insurance, so that saves us $50 a month. We also have started a list of things we need for the new place that we have never had, such as a lawnmower etc.

Our closing date is going to be Wednesday the 31st.

Down the Home Stretch

Well things are really snowballing downhill now. We are looking at closing on the new place somewhere around Wednesday or Thursday of next week. Its incredible to look back even a year ago and try to imagine having a baby on the way, and buying a house in such a quick period of time. I would have laughed at whoever suggested it before. And now we are about 2 1/2 months or so away from having both.

On the baby front we did decide to name the baby Madison Susan, if it is a girl, and Alexander Michael, if it is a boy. According to the main ultrasound, it is probably a girl, but you never can know for sure. Hopefully for the babies sake it is a girl, because we got a whole lot of pink stuff flowing in so far. The baby has been getting more and more active lately. She is really kicking up a storm, even seemingly able to respond to our voices. Wow are things just flying by!

A bad day at the ballpark...

Well you know how the old saying goes... We had a great time at the tailgate before the Saturday Sox/Yankees tilt. Plenty of beer was consumed, and a great time was had by all. I even managed to get a catch in with the tired old arm holding up all right. Unfortunately then we went in and watched the game. The offensive woes continued as 3 times the Sox managed to get a runner to second base with nobody out and none of those three times did they score a run. Needless to say the Sox got shutout 5-0. We did head down to the Bullpen Sportsbar and drowned our sorrows in a few Miller Lites in order to make it all feel better. I can't wait for the next game.

But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night...

Let's just say that things are a little crazy at work now... First our Desk Back-up Supervisor took the week off for a vacation. Now that alone is no real big deal, as the other 4 of us, just make the adjustment and do a little more work. Well on Wednesday our Supervisor's mom died, and he left right away. That left the desk with 3 clerks, and none of us knew how, or had the authority to do anything that the Supervisors do. So basically I am standing in as the boss for the next few days, until the Back-up gets back from his vacation. It has been a baptism by fire in someways, but more than anything, it has really kept me on my toes and really busy. Thankfully I have only one more day of this, as Monday we should be close to normal. But at least I know now that being a Supervisor or a Back-up wouldn't be that difficult, especially with someone else to split the duties with.

The Party's over

Well softball is officially in the books for 2005 now. My Saint John's team really made a hell of a run to make it into the Final Four. We lost our first game of the tourney in double elimination, and then managed to run off wins in our next 3 games to make it into the final four. We won two of the games by the slaughter rule, but our run game to an end against a real good Full Gospel team. They beat us pretty handily as they had some real good hitters up and down the line up. I played pretty well playing mostly in the OF, but even getting into a little 1B action.

All in all it was a really fun season, and I look forward to playing with these guys again next year.

Bloggers new toy...

It looks like Blogspot now has the capability to host pictures, so I am going to test a few things...

First THE purple drapes, which were nearly the dealbreaker for the house.




A front view of the house



And finally a picture of me and the new kitten, Pods.

Softball update

Well the LBC season bombed in the tourney. We went 0-3 in the pool play, essentially losing three games that we should have won. We made tons of errors losing to the best team in the league, whom we had beat both times we played them. We also lost to the #3 team in the league, by a crappy call at the end of the game. And we even managed to lose to the worst team in the league, both through shoddy defense, and no hitting at all. I did have a homer and went 10-14 over the course of the day, but played awful in the field. It was a crappy end to a promising season.

ON the other page, the St John's season is still going on. We lost our first game of a double elimiation tourney, once again because of crappy play in the field. But we managed to come back and win two games on Thursday with our backs against the wall facing elimination. We slaughter ruled both teams and have moved into a final four matchup on Monday night. I played pretty well, especially at the plate hitting the ball really well.

We are two wins away from being champs, lets hope we can keep up the roll.

Home Update

So the last few days have been a whirlwind of activity. On Thursday I stayed home from work and we went and got a home inspector lined up for this weekend, and we got a new mortgage broker set up, who approved us within the sameday, plus got us an 1/8th of a point lower than the Credit Union was going to give us. We also might be able to close a month earlier than we had anticipated.

Today we get to do the home inspection, along with checking out somemore hand-me-down furniture from our generous realtors, that could go into the new place. As bursting at the seams as we are in the apartment, we have no where near enough furniture to fit into this house. We are literally doubling our square footage, and then some. I am borrowing a digital camera to get some pictures, including the infamous purple drapes that almost served as a dealbreaker.

Updates to follow as warrented

Houston, we have a house

Will wonders never cease... As many people know, we have had a hell of a time finding a house to buy. Almost everything has either been tiny and newer, or decent-sized, but old and falling apart. We did have the debacle on Elston Street (here are some links for those who don't know)

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Well we finally found something that was new on the market and had everything that we wanted. It is a 3 bedroom place, of which they added on at one time. The add on has a 11x17 family room, and a 11x16 dining room. They also have a connected two car garage to go with a covered deck in the privacy fenced yard. Here is the Century 21 link to the place.


2422 Ohio Street

The wife and I are so excited right now it isn't even funny. We didn't go too far underneath the asking price and our offer got accepted right off of the bat, which to be honest shocked us. The only things they asked for in concessions were to have a couple sets of drapes and if they could move up the closing date, which we have no problems with. I am still in shock.

Home and Away

Well we go back out tonight to look at prospective houses again. Its to the point where I am so apathetic about this, it is sad. The market for our price range consists of older bigger houses that have some sort of major problem, or newer tiny houses that aren't much bigger than the apartment we live in now. Meh, hopefully something comes of this tonight, but I am not holding my breath.

On another note, the year end softball tourney is on Saturday and I am totally excited about it. I don't recognize one of the teams that is in our group, but we have beaten every other team in our bracket at least once. There are two 5 team pools, you play each team once, and the top two records in each bracket move onto the final four. We have an excellent shot if we all show up to play.