No internet (or cable!) at home until Wednesday night, thanks to Comcast.  Haven't had it since last Wednesday either.  Facebook is blocked at school (but not Livejournal...) so no status updates for me!  

HUGE sad face, y'all.

Someday I'll post again.  Really.  But for now...

Jackson Christopher Housekneckt, 7lbs 7oz.  Delivered this morning by his firefighter father (my brother-in-law) in the parking lot of Abigail's preschool.

Always has to be something interesting.

I haven't posted in forever.  I just don't have the energy or interest, I guess.  I don't want to quit writing though.  Looking back at all the years I've had this thing, it's fun to go back and re-read.  So.  There.

I turned 29 last week.  It was actually one of the best birthdays in a while, and for no particular reason.  The weather was gorgeous.  My birthday was a Saturday, so we got up at a reasonable hour and went to the batting cages.  I had a great time sweating and swinging, and enjoying the day.  After that, we drove around and found a Jeep dealership and went for a test drive.  Then we had a late late lunch at Cheeburger Cheeburger and came home to presents and cake.  Ernie got me some workout games for Wii and some books, and overall it was great.  I got my strawberry banana birthday cake that I love so much, and just enjoyed the day.  On Sunday, we spent more time outside, cooked out on the grill for the first time of the season, and it totally felt like spring and summer.  Ahhhhh.  Very relaxing.

And now, my reality is writing my unit plan for the summer school program I have to teach.  The cool thing is that it's totally up to me to decide I teach (ESOL, obviously, but the content area is up to me.)  The scary thing is... it's totally up to me to decide what to teach.  I'm going with a social studies theme, focusing on symbolism in ancient and native civilizations.  It's all an excuse to take them on a field trip, which we are, to the National Museum of the American Indian. 

I have totally lost interest in this entry.  I also shouldn't had made fun of the swine flu craziness--everyone at one of our districts high schools gets a vacation because they closed the school over it.  No fair.

I haven't posted in forever. Partially because Facebook has taken over, and partially because I'm just too damn tired. Our househunt has become a nightmare. I'm so ready to quit, but then I look around at the craphole I live in now with my IN-LAWS watching every move, and we just keep on going. Maybe because our own house in so close on the horizon, I'm starting to become irritated by all the little things that never really bothered me before. Ernie's parents are great people, no question about that, but it's just having them around all the time. Every time I leave the house, someone asks where I'm going. not to be rude or nosy, but just to make conversation. Every time I sleep in late or watch TV at 3am in the living room, it gets commented on. Ernie and I can't even have a disagreement privately without others hearing it and butting in. Ugh. I want out!!

We are caving in and looking at townhouses now. There hasn't been anything new and decent on the market since the other house fell through, as far as single family homes go. If we can find a nice townhouse, we'll sacrifice the yardspace and freedom in order to have a nicer inside, and we'll plan to only be there for two years or so.

We can plan to only be there two years because Ernie has found a great program that he's going to go for as far as his education. And I know he's going to get it because he's such a rockin' candidate. Our community college has a partnership with the school system to provide certification for teachers in critical need areas. Ernie's degree is in Spanish Language and Literature, and Spanish is a critical need subject. He would have to take a couple of reading classes and pass the Praxis I and II, and he could be in the classroom teaching secondary Spanish for the 2010-11 school year, the same year that I'll start with my master's degree salary scale. After a year of that, we would defintiely be ready to move to a more desirable home.

In the meantime, we loaded up on U2 tickets today. We have seats for ourselves in DC, Charlottesville and Chicago, with extra seats to re-sell in Chicago and DC. We want to try and go to NY too, so hopefully we'll make enough on the resale to make that trip happen. I think we bought something like 20 tickets in all...!

Rocky is growing like a weed. He weighs ten pounds now and looks like a full grown cat. For perspective, when we found him, he weighed 1.8 pounds.

Work is going fine. I love one school, have mixed feelings about the other. I don't know where I'll be next year. Softball started last Friday and on my new team, we won 13-1. It was fun to play ball again.

I guess that's it. Spring break has arrived!!

So I never post anymore.  Sorry, Pir8 H fans.  I'm back in school for the spring semester, taking 9 credits again.  I have a big six-credit class on Tuesdays from 4:30-8:45.  That's grad school for ya.  But it's a good class and I like all the people in it.  It's really I good thing I like these people because we seriously spend a LOT of time together.

My sister is expecting again.  She's due in September, and that's good news.  So Abigail will have a daddy and a baby brother or sister all before she's old enough to remember it.  That's one of the things I want for her--to not remember what it was like without Chris in her life.  Chris is her dad, as far as she knows, and obviously some day they will tell her truth--though probably not that her real father was an asshole who abused my sister and died justly in a horrible fire before he even knew she had been created--but she's young enough now that Chris will be in every aspect her dad, and that's cool.  And there's not going to be any giant age gap between her and her siblings.  Three and a half years, that's pretty normal.

I have a cold, which sucks, and as usual, the cough is lingering.  I've had my humidifier running at night since day one, taking expectorant and breathing in hot steam in the shower, all in an effort to avoid bronchitis.  But I'm afraid it's inevitable.  WTF is wrong with you, lungs?  Come on, man up!

Lots of weird sports news--Jeremy Lusk dies in a bike accident, Robby Alomar has AIDS, Miguel Tejada could go to jail (of all the steroids people, TEJADA is the one who might go to jail over it?  Come on!), and the typical inaction of the Orioles during the off-season.  Ho-hum.

Rocky Cat is giant and adorable and we love him soooo much.  Just wish we could find him a house.  We were supposed to have settlement on Friday, but I guess that's not happening.  The bank that owns "our" house apparently doesn't want to sell it to us anymore and their choice of action is to just ignore our inquiries.  Disappointing.  I loved that house so much.  We've looked at some others, but it's depressing to think we'll have to start over, sifting through all teh crap that's out there in our price range.  And it is a LOT of crap.

Oh Brady. Forty-five years old and still lookin' good. And still a little gay. But that's cool. I'll always love you.



Yeah, that's his kid with some model.  Could you ask for better genes?

Oh Livejournal, Facebook has totally taken your place.

Classes started again tonight, so I'm back to having no life. I'm also going to start working at Stride Rite again, two nights a week. There's major house drama too. The bank (who owns the house) apparently thinks they do not have replace the carpet that they ripped up after the water heater blew up, after we had settled on a price. Well, good luck selling that ugly basement to someone else then. They will replace it, or give us money... or we'll start looking for a new house. I don't want to walk away because we love the house and we've already spent $800 on the appraisal and inspection, but for real.

My sister is pregnant again. She's due early September, and she apparently knew she was pregnant at the wedding, but kept it to herself. My mom still doesn't know because my sister wants to put some space in there so it's not sooo obvious that she got pregnant before they got married. I mean, whatever, but my mom would make a big deal about it.

And, to appease anyone, here are pictures of Aruba/Abigail:
( Read more... )

The iguana was purchased at a shop in Oranjestad, and Abigail immediately named him Rocky, after my kitty.  Surprisingly, she stayed with that name throughout the trip, and he/she (she alternated Rocky's gender) went EVERYWHERE with us on the trip--to dinner, out on the beach, shopping, etc.

Back.  Tan.  Excited.

So I'm leaving for Aruba in a few hours.  Hopefully I'll come back to a Ravens victory, but at least I know I'll come back to see a new president.  Our inspection was delayed and is now rescheduled for Teusday (after the swearing-in, of course).

I'll post pics when I return!

		I will marry Keith Olbermann.
		After a wild honeymoon, We will settle down in Mexico in our fabulous House.
		We will have 3 kid(s) together.
		Our family will zoom around in a pink metro bus.
		I will spend my days as a cat food taster, and live happily ever after.

Oh, by the way, WE GOT THE HOUSE!

details to come...

My favorite year end meme...

( 2008 Year in Review Survey )

This is sooo the longest day ever, as if 2008 does not want to go.  We heard back from the bank yesterday on our offer, and they countered with about $10,000 more than our offer.  thanks for taking that three friggin' thousand off the price, guys.  Srsly.  Still, we went in prepared so our first offered gave us room to wiggle.  We spent three hours with our loan officer today and went over numbers, and it turns out that if we go with our "top number" we will have about $40 higher in mortage payments than our original offer.  So we countered the bank's counter, and hopefully they will accept it.  This one is a mere $4900 less than the list price.  Really, do they want to sit with this vacant house not making them money over $4900?  I hope not.  But my concern is that someone else will come in and sweep it out from under us.

We took Rocky to the vet this morning to have him neutered.  I was so worried about him, and after the vet didn't call us all day, by the afternoon we decided to call them to see if he was ready.  So we call and call, and nobody answers.  I got a little freaked, afraid that they were closing the office early for the holiday and Rocky would be stuck there until Friday.  I was seriously prepared to bribe the overnight caretaker to let me take him home.  We decided to go to the office and see, but when we got there, the office was dark, and I got even more worried.  Luckily, after Ernie pounded on teh door, someone opened it adn told us they had lost power and their phone lines were down, and they locked the door ebcause the wind kept blowing it open.  And of course, they were using their cell phones to call people to pick up their animals, and hadn't made it to ours yet.  But Rocky was ready to go, sans his testicles.

He's doing well, mostly sleepy.  I know he's starving, since he couldn't eat after 8pm yesterday and they said today he would probably throw up any food we gave him, so he'll fast until tomorrow morning.  He's a good little kitty boy, my Barack Leo.

So there it is.  Ready to go take my annual shower and make some dippy dip, and just veg out with my man and my cat.  What a life!

Poor Rocky Cat.  On Wednesday, he won't be the man he used to be.

In other news, Christmas was awesome as always, and we celebrated by putting in another offer on another house.  This one I think has a much better shot and the house is in better shape.  If we get it, we'll be forgoing some of the luxuries I wanted in a home, but the trade-off will be that it is in move-in condition and any changes we decide to make to it will be improvements, not repairs.  It's just a cute little house for our cute little family with a cute little backyard and a cute little screened-in back porch.  The basement is nicely finished and will make a fun place for a rec room, and the main level is all hardwood floors.  I think we have a decent shot with our offer, not in the least because it's the holidays and this is traditionally an even slower time of year than the market already is.  And we also left some room--our top number is about $5,000 less than the list price, and we offered about $13,000 less than list price.  so even if they counter with something closer to list, we could still swing it.

Santa Claus was good to us--he seems to know we're house-hunting because we got a lot of tools, which is great.  Ernie got me a Zune, which I did not expect at all.  My Ipod has pretty much given me nothing but trouble since I got it for my birthday 2.5 years ago and we had to take it back for a replacement twice within the first year.  I got Ernie a Zune for Christmas last year and he has loved it and used it just about every day, with no problems whatsoever.  I had been talking about getting one later on, but he found the model that they aren't making anymore (16GB) so it was marked down.  A nice surprise, and I'm enjoying it.  I surprised him with a Cal Ripken Jr License Plate (no, the real plate, not a novelty) and some other goodies.  We tried to scale it back this year, but like always, we went way overboard with everybody.  But that's how it should be.

Good times, y'all.  Merry Christmas.

Dear almanzo ,
I don't really know how to tell you this, but I'm joining the convent. I think I realized it when I tripped on peanut butter in your apartment and I saw you put whipped cream on the elephant in the corner. I'm sure you're open enough to understand that I may pee my pants. I'm returning  our matching Snoopy underwear to you, but I'll keep my virginity as a memory. You should also know that I will tell the authorities that you did not steal that whale in the back yard and I will haunt you when I’m reincarnated as an Eskimo.

With tears of sadness,
h1joly 

( That was way too much fun )

Temp down to 100.  From 103 last night. 

1. Christmas tree is UP.

2. Fall semester is OVER.

3.  Aaaaand we're looking at fifty million more houses tomorrow. 

Score... Inauguration Day is officially a school holiday.  Nice.

So the house across the street from the house we bid on (and lost) was listed for sale today.  It's about $20,000 above our "top number" but let it sit on the market for 100 days and they'll come down ;)  I'll make a friends-only post with the listing (sorry, strangers!  Don't want ya tracking me down!)

From piperrhiannon


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No real comment here.  Interesting enough.