All right, so I’m in debt for the rest of my life, starting in January. KrisDi will be, too. We’re buying a house. Here’s a few pictures of the plot (we’re #340, so trees on two sides, neighbor on the third, street on the fourth), the floor plan, and the ‘elevation’ or face of the house (we’re “elevation A”). We also have some pictures of the foundation, pictures of the same model with Elevation B, and pictures of the interior of another model house with few upgrades, which will be pretty similar to the interior stuff we choose. You’ll have to read the descriptions under the pictures. The lot is tiny, the house is way bigger than we expected to get, the garage is barely two car, it’s actually in a good school district (the bad school district is to the left of the yellow houses on the plot map). Three bedrooms, two and a half bath, 2658 square feet. Jesus is this a lot of money.
We learned KrisDi and I have good credit (perfect is 850, mine is 802, KrisDi’s is 798 [I win!], and 690 is considered good). That’s good, since we want to borrow a significant fraction of a million dollars. Good thing I paid off my student loans in less than three years and bought and paid for a new car in one year (to the day). That probably makes me look pretty responsible. Ha! Fools! A strong command of simple math is no reason to think I’m a mature, responsible adult! Oh, and what I thought was hilarious is that the loan lady we talked to (from Chase) wrote my occupation down as “Pest Engineer”. I know I’m obnoxious, but this is legal documentation, pal!
Let’s see, what else? Monocular Ben has started a blog! That’s exciting. I finally learned why he doesn’t like jazz or classical or any other instrumental music.
We went to the Puyallup Fair with Mr. and Mrs. Pope. That was fun. We ate junk food (sans trans fat) and wondered how the hell E-Dubs and Pixel Chick (M-Wums?) managed to spend eleven hours there (“But this one goes to eleven!“). We rode the Bear ride, the correct name of which is unknown to me; I think it’s the same type of ride as the Teacups. The Pope and I can supply far more angular velocity than the average seven year old. I think we challenged the mechanical limitations of this infernal contraption. Then we all sat in the shade and panted for a while and thought, “Wow. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.”
—– Stuff I’ve read or watched or whatever —–
Stardust. Heck, that was good! Robert DeNiro was plain old hilarious, Michelle Pfeifer was good, Claire Danes‘ over-acting should have been re-taken until it didn’t suck but it didn’t kill the movie, and whoever played the billy goat guy was awesome. I think this is the first movie from a Neil Gaiman story I’ve ever seen, and I really liked it.
Lest Darkness Fall, by L. Sprague de Camp. This was a fun little story. It just goes to show you, you should become an archaeologist and pay strict attention to your history, just in case you accidentally slip back in time to the Gothic Roman era, and decide to use your knowledge of the past (which is now the future) to change the world.
Colony, by Ben Bova. Mars was better. To be fair, Colony wasn’t terrible or anything, but with Lord of Light and Lathe of Heaven as the two preceding books, my palette was a bit spoiled, and this failed to please.
Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K. Le Guin. It’s a book about a dreamer whose dreams change the world retroactively. Strange premise. I very much enjoyed it. So, hurrah to Ursula for writing good non-Earthsea books!