Update on my computer woes:

The main problem seems to be that Vista doesn't recognize my monitor as a PnP monitor, and will only install the drivers as a generic non-PnP one. So even though its native resolution in 1680 x 1050, it's insisting on telling me the monitor can't handle it.

Funny enough, I go to the monitor's website, and it doesn't even offer drivers since the whole point of these monitors is that they're PnP and therefore do not NEED special drivers.

Sigh.

Xeowolf, however, managed to at least get Vista to install the latest drivers from Nvidia. Apparently, updating video drivers from Windows Update is a bad idea. They rarely have the latest ones.

Argh. Too much computer troubles!

So the other day, after a perfectly normal night of WoW after a long day at work, I shut down my computer. A notice came up saying that it was installing 1 of 2 updates, and then it would shut down. There had been a lot of Windows updates lately, so I thought nothing of it.

Well, the next time I logged in, my screen looked horrible. My monitor is a generic, PnP 1680 x 1050 widescreen monitor that I had picked up at Costco. It had been working fine for years now, and suddenly, my graphics card couldn't support that resolution anymore. It was set to 1440 x 900 by default, and I couldn't for the life of me put it back to 1680 x 1050. I downloaded the latest drivers from Nvidia, even tried using their beta drivers, but none of those supported that resolution. I finally had to create a custom setting for that resolution, which I could only use after I checked off on Windows to not hide "non-supported" settings.

So I managed to get my desktop back to the normal size, albeit with the possibility that my monitor will explode in the near future.

But here's the worst part: it's made WoW run horribly. First off, WoW no longer has the setting to make the resolution at 1680 x 1050. Secondly, the framerate went from a decent 25 to 50 frames-per-second to 9. Sometimes 6, sometimes 16. But the framerate sucks now, and the game is laggy as hell.

I thought it might be due to the high population areas the graphics card was having trouble drawing in all the characters. But then I went to locations where there were virtually no one, and it was still laggy with a low framerate. I even set the effects to the lowest it could (without looking like absolute crap), but that didn't help.

Sigh. I don't know what the hell Vista is up to, but it just took a perfectly good set up and made it crap. The fact that my decent graphics card can't even support the native resolution of a friggin' plug-n-play monitor is the crappiest thing it's done lately. I don't know who to get mad at, Vista or Nvidia.

From some googling, this appears to be happening with a lot of other people, though I don't know what's the common ground. Some of the people suggested turning off all anti-virus and un-installing the current drivers before re-installing the updated ones. I've tried all that but so far no luck. Sigh.....

I got yet another character to level 70 today. That's it, no more leveling alts for me. With Wrath of the Lich King coming out in 3 weeks, I hereby vow never ever to get another character from 1 to 70 again.

I hunger. Latez!

Halloween is coming! We got a couple of pumpkins which we're going to carve jack-o-lanterns with, and I'm excited about toasting the seeds. Odd thing to get excited about, perhaps.

There's a zombie invasion going on in Azeroth! It looks like the zombie apocalypse is upon us. Are you prepared?

I'm so tired from working too much. No overtime this weekend. Sadly, looks like there's no end in sight to overtime weekends. At least it's every other weekend. I'd go nuts if it was all the time.

What I really want to do sometime soon, though, is to go to the Oasis at Lake Travis. It's the sunset capital of Austin. Last time we went, it was the middle of summer, and the sun wasn't going to set for another 4 hours. There's only so much hanging out at a restaurant you can do before you wanna leave. Now, the days are getting shorter, and it's already dark when we get out of work. Boo!

My realm's down, so I actually have time to post!

This will a more thoughtful post. Anyway, I was thinking earlier tonight about my job. It's been kinda tough since today was overtime day. Technically we've been working about 46 to 48 hrs on the week we have it. And it looks like there is no end in sight. Things picked up for us and will only get busier as the holidays approach.

Still, as I see it, I do enjoy my job. I like my co-workers, I like the company, and I even like helping customers, as rude as they can be. In fact, my only complaint is the low-ish pay (well, customer service in general is low) and having to take a crappy schedule if you want to advance.

Anyway, I was thinking, being in Austin, I could really try pursuing a career doing 3d animation/modeling. But doing that would require me putting a lot of time into building my skills back up, making a decent reel, and networking. And a lot of that kind of work is also contracted, so it's not steady and you constantly have to be searching for the next gig. And since the bulk of that work is offered by the video game industry, where companies are notoriously one title away from folding, it's a risk with every job you take that that company won't be around the next year.

I was thinking that while it would be nice to pursue an artistic career, I'm really enjoying spending time with Whateley, playing WoW together, just doing things together (and having the time to do so), and basically not stressing out about climbing the ladder. And when we start raising kids, I definitely want to be there for them. I mean, my parents raised me and my sibs with less money than we're making. And I just want to make sure I can be there for the big moments.

Well, I can't say for sure I'll be where I'm at in 10 years, but I'm kinda happy being where I am for now. Laterz!

WoW overload. Too much WoW this weekend. It took us three nights to finish Karazhan due to guild members not being there and/or getting sick. And as good guild leaders, Whateley and I sucked it up and showed up all three nights and ran it. Which basically meant that we got virtually nothing done this weekend.

Well, part of it was due to patch 3.0 dropping. That means a new profession, which meant farming for hours on Whateley's herbalist, and farming for hours on mine. And staying up way too late tonight trying those stuff out.

Okay, good night!

(Sorry for the delay in getting this post out!)

Austin City Limits recap:

Friday

So I didn't bother to find out exactly where Zilker Park was, and Whateley had a vague idea where it was, and thinking that we may take the free shuttle from a nearby downtown park, we just drove to downtown and parked at the first lot we found (for an outrageous $20, what a rip-off!). We then started walking... and walking... and walking.... Past the South Congress bridge (home of the famous Austin bats), past a smaller park, past buildings, and we just kept walking. We were joined by more and more people heading off in a general direction. We opted not to take the shuttle since the line for it was gi-normous. We saw more and more people and stores advertising the sale of cold water and other drinks and food. The number of scalpers started increasing. But the end was just not in sight!

Finally, after what seemed like an hour of walking, we finally managed to get to the park (with Whateley and me going, so this is where it is! We should totally come here when there isn't a festival going on.), we went through the line and got in!

I gotta say, Austin weather this weekend was miles of improvement over the summer. There were clouds, a nice breeze, and very little humidity. I think, actually, that September/October and March/April has the best weather in Austin. Still, taking all that into consideration, the conditions were still endurance-breaking. At least until the sun starts going down. Texas is just a really hot state. I made the mistake of wearing jeans and it was soaked in sweat. Every breeze was a welcome relief.

We saw Gogol Bordello first, and they were a hoot! Gypsy punk music... can I say any more? BP and SP, our old roommates from Cali, joined the crowd up close and spent the entire hour jumping up and down. Whateley and I, being old farts, decided to sit off to the side under a tree. Yes, we did spend most of the weekend watching TV in a park with a bunch of strangers.

Afterwards, we got something to eat and drink and waited for David Byrne. Sad to say, when these names were presented to me, all I can say is... who? He was in the Talking Heads, apparently. There was one song I recognized called "Once in a Lifetime" but that was it. But man, as Whateley put it (and he was stealing from Patton Oswalt... ah, Patton...) David Byrne is catnip for old people. There was an older crowd and people were totally rocking out to him! This gray-haired lady was dancing like a maniac, like a maniac, on the... grass. He had these dancers that were doing weird, channeling-the-spirits, interpretative dance moves. The only clue that they were actual dancers and not just stoners he picked up off the streets was that first, it was rehearsed, and second, one of them did a pirouette and it was actually good.

Last performance of the night (that we saw, at least) was Manu Chao. He was fun, though I don't know if any of the songs were in English. It's hard to describe his style of music, other than it's international and very energetic. And he thanked Austin after each song.

We walked back to the car and vowed to park closer the next day.

Saturday

We debated getting to the festival early to catch a local band consisting of a 16-yr old, 14-yr-old, and 13-yr old boys. But we opted to sleep in instead.

We managed to find a paid parking lot (only $10!) which cut our walk down to less an 30 minutes, most of it through a shaded park. Much better! We got in in time to watch Erykah Badu. She was... okay. I'm not that into soul, and the only reason we went to see her was basically because I recognized her name.

Afterwards, we decided to check out John Fogerty based purely on the fact that he got a larger segment in the program than the other guy on the other big stage. Turns out, this guy was really popular back in the 60's and 70's when he was part of Creedence Clearwater Revival. Um... yeah, I had to look that up. Anyway, turns out, I recognized a lot of his songs, including the one that goes "theeeeeeere's a bathroom on the right." Yeah, I know, #2 on the most mis-understood lyrics list, right after "'scuse me while I kiss this guy."

Finally, after that, we had a choice between Robert Plant & Alison Krauss or Beck. (I'm not going to link these guys since you probably have heard of them before.) We went to Beck cuz Whateley really likes Beck. Well, him and a million other people, it seems. We got a nice spot, spread our blankets, and then people started to fill in around us. They got as close to the edge of our blankets as we could, and then got closer. Then the drunk guys behind us got drunker and spilled their beer on our blankets. Then one of them tried to stub out his cigarette at his feet. But since his feet were at the edge of our blankets, he ended up stubbing it out on our blanket. Ugh. When we shared that story, people said that they would've punched those guys out. Except that they were really, really apologetic. But they're drunk, so it's not like they can keep themselves from doing stuff like that. We packed up our blankets anyway, which we had to wash later that night.

Beck, surprisingly, was also not a great stage performer. He just went in from one song to another with hardly a break in-between. He didn't say hi, he didn't even thank the audience after each song. That, and where we were standing, we were too far away from the front speakers and not far away enough for the rear speakers, so when people decided to sing along, I couldn't hear anything but the people around me. And I was reminded of an SNL skit with Matt Damon who was playing a south Bostonite at a Bruce Springsteen concert. He yelled to the crowd, "Yo, I came here to hear the Boss sing, not you losers. So when he sings, you better shut the hell up." (paraphrased) Well, I was thinking, I came here to hear Beck sing, not a bunch of drunk college kids.

Anyway, Whateley was getting mad also, so we ended up leaving and caught the last 20 minutes of Alison Krauss & Robert Plant. Their crowd was much less rowdy. We should've gone to that concert instead.

Well, Beck ended his set 15 minutes early, so we met back up with BP and SP, and we got back to the car and headed towards Kerbey Lane. We called up some of our friends so they could meet BP and SP, especially since BP is in our WoW guild. Fun and good food was had by all.

Sunday

We headed out to the festival earlier than usual to catch some of the smaller bands. We went to the same paid parking lot, but the guy wasn't there. But we saw that people were parking on the street there, so we did too. Free parking!

We first caught The Octopus Project, which is actually a local band from Austin. Their sound can best be described as "weird." I'd say it was techno-ish, except that they're a band. They don't sing, they switch instruments between songs to keep things interesting, and one of the instruments they use is the Theremin. When the girl was playing it and the camera zoomed in on her hands, it just looked like she was waving her hands in the air in some funky dance. Whateley liked them a lot, so we ended up getting their latest CD.

We then caught the Massacoustics (cuz they're from Massachusetts). It was funny to go from Beck, who was probably used to playing in bigger stages than the one he was on so he gave a so-so performance, to this small band playing on the smallest stage in the festival in the middle of the day and being really excited about it. One brother is the lead singer/guitarist, and the other brother plays the drums, back-up vocals, and the bass guitar... at the same time. Yeah, he's playing bass and drums at the same time. It was funky. I liked their music a lot too. It was catchy rock/pop with quirky lyrics. We tried to get their CD, but they weren't selling many at the music tent and they were sold out by the time we got there.

Afterwards, we tried to catch another guy, but his stage was next to some shady trees, so we spread out our blankets, got some food, and ended up napping during the performance. Oh well, it was a tiring weekend.

The next performance was for Blues Traveler which I had been looking forward to all weekend. Except that I realized I only knew one of their songs, which is "Runaround" which, it turns out, is totally unlike the rest of their music. They're a jam band, which means that songs like more like a jam session than a carefully laid out song with arrangements. Turns out, I'm not that crazy about jam music. Sad.

Next up was Gnarls Barkley. BP and SP were excited about them, and I wanted to see what they would end up wearing on the stage, since they're known for their outrageous costumes. Well, turns out, it was rather tame blue suit for the guy with the fro and black duster jacket for the other guy. Their music was okay, but not my cup of tea. Whateley and I ended up just walking around and checking out the Raconteurs, which includes Jack White, from the White Stripes. They sounded pretty good too.

We ended up catching the very beginning of Tegan & Sara which is a band consisting of two identical twin sisters. They were very cute, though their music can best be described as "femme rock." (Or to be more accurate, "lesbian femme rock.") It was cute though, that they thanked the audience with the same inflected "thank you very much." They're from Canada, you see. =)

Finally, the last performance of the festival was the Foo Fighters. Now, they put on a good show. The lead guy was chatting it up with the audience, getting them to cheer, and while introducing the band, he had the guy playing the triangle play a triangle solo. It was actually pretty good. I didn't know that triangles could be played solo.

We learned our lesson from Beck and sat in the back to avoid the drunks up front. But we were still able to see and hear them (thanks to speakers and big screens). We had to leave 15 early since SP had to log in to take a test by a certain time. But it was an altogether enjoyable show. I even recognized a few songs.


Anyway, we might do this again next year. Even though the park's grass turned to dirt by Sunday, and there was icky black stuff coming out of my nose at the end of the night. And there were more than a few times where I blew my nose and grass parts came out. Ewwww. Perhaps next time, I'll get a straw hat to keep the sun off my neck, get a kerchief to put over my nose, and perhaps a portable lawnchair. Eh, I've got a year to mull it over.

I had more thoughts about it last week, but I was too tired to post it. Anyway, it was good to finally experience something this city's known for, we got to try some good food, and I found out this city has a lot of hippies... and people smoke a lot of pot. Heh, latez!

No need to worry, my gentle readers, Hurricane Ike will only be a drizzle for us. The newspapers had even been warning us that traffic would get bad because of all the evacuees, but we didn't actually see it during our drive to and from work today.

Anyway, just wanted to share that. I've been dead tired lately for some odd reason. I'm just really glad that it's the weekend.

So I have to make this post cuz Whateley thinks I'm over-reacting, and I think all my readers from California would totally understand:

I had a hankerin' to make curry for our game night tonight. We haven't had curry in awhile, and I was also in the mood to make a rice dish. Anyway, I checked our pantry and found that we had used up the last of the curry mix the last time we cooked, so we needed to get more. I figured we can pick it up when we pick up the carrots, onions, and potatoes anyway, so off we went.

Whateley had to pick up something from Home Depot, so we went to a different H-E-B (the major Texas grocery store) than the one closest to our house. It's a much newer store, in a slightly fancier neighborhood, but it had a Home Depot right next to it. So after I picked up the produce, I went to the "Asian Food" section (which consisted of a shelf) but I couldn't see it. In fact, the main stuff in that section were the popular Thai food kits, like the ones where you just add hot water. There were boxes of fortune cookies, and that was it. Nothing truly Asian, just "white-people's-pseudo-Asian-food." They also had a sushi section which feature more Asian imports, but all they had in terms of curry was Thai curry paste. I asked someone at the store, and they looked at me confused like they've never seen it before. One guy showed me a container of curry powder, but that would require knowing how to make Japanese curry from scratch.

Anyway, that's when I felt really sad. I haven't really been feeling homesick for California lately, especially after we bought our house. But in SoCal, which is the mecca of the Asian-American population, I could go into any of the major grocery stores and find boxes of this stuff:

I mean, I was used to finding tons of brands of these curry kits in the Asian markets. I thought you could only get them from there. But then, in Anaheim, one night I found them at a Vons. And that's when I realized that there was enough of an Asian-American population that major grocery chains would carry them too. So I started taking it for granted that all grocery stores carry these.

So when not only could I not find them at this H-E-B, but the people that worked there had no idea what I was talking about, it really got me down. It was just kinda sad to think that I had to go back to finding these only at Asian markets. And since we live in a suburb of Austin but not in Austin itself, we'd have to drive for 20 minutes to even get to the nearest Asian market.

Whateley told me to relax, that this store was in a pretty white-bread neighborhood, and they were also trying to be an H-E-B plus (which is like Target trying to be a Super Target), and almost a third of their store space was taken up by non-grocery items, which meant that they couldn't get as diverse in their non-best-selling items. So we went to the H-E-B by our house, and again, their "Asian Food" section featured no real Asian grocery items, but Whateley jetted for the sushi section, and lo-and-behold, there was boxed curry. They were smaller boxes than I was used to, and they only carried two brands, but my faith in Texas was renewed after discovering that. This store was also not an H-E-B plus, it was slightly more ghetto (hence, more "ethnic" shoppers), and the sushi section took up an entire corner, which meant they also carried Japanese rice and actual imported goods. I gotta say, I liked the other H-E-B more at first since it was cleaner and newer, but now, I like the one by our house much more, and I will avoid shopping at that other one as much as possible.

Anyway, it did remind me that I took California's diversity for granted. And by diversity, I mean the Asian-American population. One of my concerns when we moved to Texas was the lack of Asian people, but I cared more about being able to afford a house. This was the first time in a long while that I felt a slight pang for California. It's weird how something as stupid as boxed curry can evoke such emotions outta you.

(BTW, the curry was a big hit at game night. Xeowolf, one of our friends who also moved from SoCal, loooooves Japanese curry, and I think he would've eaten the entire batch if other people didn't also have to eat. We've only managed to find one restaurant that sells Japanese curry around here, sadly. Funny enough, it's a sushi/Japanese restaurant that's owned by Koreans.)

Las Vegas was fun. I won $150 in one pull from Megabucks. Of course, that was only one pull, and we definitely put more in than we got out. Sigh.... Why does the Millionaire lifestyle elude us?

Whateley and I were talking about how when we have kids, we probably won't be able to go to Vegas until we can saddle them on someone for a weekend or else they're old enough to take care of themselves while we're gone. So yeah... not for a long while.

I had a lot of thoughts running through my head, but I suddenly got tired, so I'm not sure if I have the energy to rant. One thought that crossed my mind was that we didn't get an extra bonus this month that we thought we were going to get. I'm not sure of the reasons why, but I'm guessing that means profits are down. Though, in this economy, I'm not surprised.

It got me thinking about what we're going to be doing in the future. I don't want to work customer service for the rest of my life, but on the other hand, it's a lot more secure and steady than trying to get an art job. And with us talking about having kids sometime soon, secure and steady is a lot more appealing than trying to break in to the 3D animation industry. I just wish our job paid better. Us not getting the bonus means we'll have to dip into our savings to get an elliptical machine. And we need to exercise more. There is no way I'm gonna put on more weight than what I've already got squirting out a baby.

I'm glad we got out of California, though. There, I'm not sure how we could've raised kids on what Whateley and I are making. We could probably barely afford rent, let alone a mortgage.

And on top of that, I slept funny on my neck last week, and my neck and shoulders and upper back have been aching all week. I actually called out sick since I couldn't move around without it hurting. I can at least get on and off the bed and couch now, but it still aches. It feels like how it did right after my accident all those years ago. I don't know, perhaps I never fully healed from it, and this is a relapse.

Sucks.

It's been a glorious overtime-free weekend! And next weekend is Vegas trip!

I know, I might've mentioned before that we're trying to save money after the cash-drop that was part of buying a house. But the Star Trek bar is closing!

The Star Trek bar (and the experience) is one of the first things Whateley and I did together when we went to Vegas, even before we were dating. And we went there after our wedding reception, where a Klingon woman heckled me about becoming coupled.

Anyway, so since the Trek Experience is closing, we're gonna go have one last hurrah and give a toast (in a giant, bubbling fishbowl full of booze) to a most nerdy place that has a special place in our hearts.

Later!

Wow, it's been awhile since I posted.

Whateley got worried that I was complaining about our marriage in my last post, so I told him I'd make a post about how he's a great husband. It took awhile since last weekend his parents came to visit (which I'll post about on a later date.) Since then, we've seen Mamma Mia (which is a fun movie) with his parents. And he's even taken me out to sushi a couple of times, where he enjoyed a california roll while I had my sake and hamachi nigiri.

Anyway, while no marriage is perfect, I say that Whateley and I have a great marriage. We laugh together a lot, we have a lot of fun together, whether it's in WoW or other things, and we have the same goals in life. I can't remember the number of times I had asked for a back rub and he happily gave it. Or the times he's rubbed my feet. And I love how we're just walking around, and he'll turn to me and say, "I need a kiss." He's kind of like a puppy. He likes affection and he likes giving it. Growing up in an Asian family, affection isn't something we showed towards each other. Some might say I was affection-starved, though I don't think any more than the average Asian family.

I love how we can have the greatest time just snuggling in front of the TV. And I love how he tells me I'm beautiful and how sexy he can make me feel. I have to be honest, since we moved to Texas, I've put on some pounds that I'm not too happy about. But Whateley tells me I'm hot all the time, and then I don't feel bad about my weight. I love that we still hold hand wherever we go. And I really love Whateley's sense of humor, which meshes with mine, and we have those stupid/weird/gross conversations that would either horrify or confuse anyone else listening in. Let's just say, there have been many conversations that include us laughing our arses off and saying, "Oh, we are going to hell" or "We are horrible people." You know those conversations.

And even when we fight, I love Whateley because he never stoops too low, he doesn't get petty, he doesn't bring up past fights, he apologizes when he's wrong, and he thanks me when I apologize for when I'm wrong. I can't say the same for me, so I'm very lucky that Whateley's better at this stuff than me.

And Whateley is one of the very few people in my life that I don't mind spending all of my time with. You know how even with your closest friends, sometimes being around them too long can grate on your nerves and you just need a break from them? I mean, you love hanging out with them, and you can spend all day with them, and all night even, and possible all day the day after, but after that they've just worn out their welcome? I remember reading in Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus that men need time apart to rejuvenate their love for their wife. That men need to go away to their "cave." And we totally agreed when that time came, Whateley should go into his cave. But the funny part is, in the two years we've been married, he's never gone in the cave. He said once that he thought he might have to, but he decided he'd rather spend that time with me. And the only times I've ever wanted time away from him was to watch Hannah Montana or Project Runway, which he has watched with me on some occasions but refuse to do so for the most part. (Though part of this may be that we both enjoy surfing the web and reading, which we can both do separately but still sitting next to each other.)

I have asked on occasion whether or not it's healthy for a husband and wife to spend almost 24/7 together. After all, we work at the same company, sit next to each other, take our breaks together, drive together, and take our days off together. The few times we were separate was when he or I was sick and stayed home. But so far, I like it. We really enjoy each other's company, and that's just made our marriage great.

Anyway, my apologies to any of my readers if this was a rather sappy post. I'll be sure to whine and complain in my next one. After all, it'll be about my in-laws. (Oh no she did-unt!)

Our 2nd wedding anniversary is coming up in less than 24 hours. Weird. On one hand, it feels like we've been together forever. On the other hand, I remember our wedding like it was yesterday. Two years, though. That's hardly anything. Though to be fair, we've known each other for 13 years now.

We've been lazy about getting errands done and cleaning the house. We've run out of excuses, though. Whateley's parents are coming to visit in just 10 days, and we still don't have the guest bedroom ready. And they're all prim and proper people, so I'm guessing they won't just live out of their suitcases like my family does.

Life is just plodding along. Things aren't changing, but considering the amount of change I've been through in the past two years, I'm a bit glad for the boringness of non-change. But as life goes on and we get involved in the lives of our friends, I'm so very, very glad that I have Whateley, and we are in it together. Life can be hard and difficult, and I do have to say, it'd be much more hard and difficult doing it by yourself.

Though, I do have to say, things aren't by all means rosy and happy like the movies. It still takes a lot of work. I think I've seen more zombie movies in the past three years than I had ever seen previously combined. And I've eaten less fish per year than I used to average per month. Whateley feels bad about it, but I'm not going to force him to eat more fish, and I'm certainly too lazy to cook separate meals of fish just for myself. Not to mention, I'm not too crazy about the frozen fish selection at Costco, and I don't go shopping often enough to get fresh fish from the markets. (He has, however, discovered that he likes California Rolls. So the next time we go get sushi, he'll happily get a few of those.)

Now that we have a house, Whateley and I are finding ourselves to be real homebodies. Which is cool since our friends don't have houses (or else they have roommates) so our house became the hang-out place. I'm reminded of my rich aunt in SoCal (I'll call her Aunt Luna in my internet world) whose house is the hang-out place for our family. Every family gathering is pretty much held at her place. But her house is the largest, there's plenty of space for everyone to hang out without getting into each other's faces. Not to mention my grandparents live with them, and that means they don't have to get in a car and be driven for an hour to get to someone else's house.

Anyway, what's cool about having our house be the hang-out place is that we don't have to worry about getting to someone else's place on time (though we do have to worry about cleaning up before everyone gets here) and we don't have to worry about driving late at night or drinking. For 4th of July, everyone came over and we got steaks from Costco which we cooked on the Griddler. And then other people brought more meat and some side dishes and booze. And the steaks were really, really good. As were the margaritas. :-)

And the great part about that was that both Whateley and I could drink (though I certainly drank more than Whateley...) and not have to worry about being sober enough to drive home. We just had to crawl upstairs and climb into bed. And hope we wouldn't throw up.

Anyhoo, not much more news to report. This summer is definitely hotter than last, and not as wet either. Which is good, I guess, for guests. But not so good for our lawn. Lame that there's tons of humidity but it doesn't get cold enough in the mornings for it to dew, so our lawn ends up parched still. Blah humidity!

Gotta get cleaning for game night....

But it's been so nice to have a lazy weekend day where I was finally able to get some sleep!

Ugh, this past week has been a nightmare. I'm not sure if I really suffer from DSPS (Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome), but my body has always preferred going to bed after midnight (preferrably between 3 am to 6 am), and waking up after 8 or 9 hours of solid sleep. No matter what schedule I kept, my body would just naturally fall in to that pattern if given the chance.

Anyway, this past week, converting to day-walker schedule was horrendous. It seems the only way I was going to get a full night's sleep is with melatonin. I tried some generic sleeping pills (I believe it's the same active ingredient as those in sinus medication) but it just made me wake up in the middle of the night after the pills wore off. Melatonin was a bit better in keeping me asleep, though there was a night where I wasn't tired when I took the pill and went to bed, and I ended up waking up 4 hours later.

So the trick is to get tired, even just a bit, and take melatonin an hour before bed, and hopefully it will keep me asleep for at least 7 hours so I can make it through the next day.

Whateley had an even worse time than me. The sleeping pill made his heart race (though that may have been psychological more than physiological), and the melatonin only helped when he was really tired to begin with. But he would wake up after only 3 hours of sleep, and he'd toss-and-turn for hours, end up going downstairs to watch TV, and dropping off to that. Since the TV seems to help him sleep, lately, he's tried just falling asleep to the TV, waking up after about 5 hours, climbing upstairs to bed, and finish sleeping for another hour or two. Anyway, he has a much harder time with anything sleep-related, and once he wakes up after sleeping for a couple of hours, he is up and cannot go back to sleep, no matter how tired he is. Let's just say, he's been rather cranky all week.

It's odd joining the rest of the world. For one thing, everywhere we go, there are tons more people around. We've never had to wait in line at a supermarket checkout stand before, and suddenly we're waiting in line everywhere. There are more cars on the road when we're on the road, and it's been annoying not only having to deal with rush hour traffic, but just any traffic at all when we're driving.

It's been odd going to a restaurant and having to wait for a table. And Whateley got rather bright-pink doing yard work the other day, since before, the sun is usually on it's way to setting when we'd even consider stepping outside.

Still, it has been nice being able to run errands and getting things done without having to rush out the door as soon as we wake up. We can even go to Costco after work, and pick up groceries for dinner at other places besides the Walmart. And as soon as we get off our duffs, we can even enjoy some of the weekend activities this city has to offer that we've missed out on for over a year.

Anyway, in case anyone missed it, our new work schedule is 8 am to 7 pm, Tuesday through Friday.

It's already 41 minutes past my bedtime....

Whateley and I officially became daywalkers today with our new shift that begins at 8 am. Let's just say, switching to the new bio-rhythm is sucking hardcore. After two nights of trying to go to bed early and still waking up at 2:30 am, I resorted to sleeping pills last night, and it actually worked. I felt like a baby that slept through the night for the first time. Too bad I still had to resort to two cups of coffee and Excedrin to keep me going through the day.

Hopefully I'll get used to this soon! After all, it's supposed to be the normal circadian rhythm for normal people....

So I don't know if you had heard, but central Texas had some really bad weather just a few days ago. Tornado warnings and severe thunderstorms, actually. Whateley and I ended up having a pretty scary experience.

The day began normally, the night before it rained, but otherwise it's a typical May. The air was really humid and warm though the sky had been filled with gray clouds. After running some errands, we jumped into a bookstore really quickly to look for a book, when the clerk told us there was a funnel cloud spotted not too far away, and that storm was headed straight for the store.

Well, we looked very quickly and got out of there quickly. While we drove, we noticed it started sprinkling, but nothing too bad. We got off the freeway at our normal exit and headed towards our house. The rain got a big harder, but it still wasn't bad. There was thunder and lightning lighting up the sky like mad, but we've seen it all before, so it wasn't fazing me... much. We did see lighting strike the ground not too far from us which ended in a bright spark. That may have been a transformer being hit. Then, we crossed a bridge and suddenly, the rain got very hard, very fast. Our headlights were barely illuminating the road ahead of us, and we just noticed a wall of water pouring from the skies... from left to right. It was really thick. We slowed to a crawl, as did the other cars around us, and I could see Whateley gripping the steering wheel tighter and tighter.

After about five minutes, the rain let up and the driving got a bit easier. But just a couple of minutes later, the rain began pouring again, and the wall of water was back... only this time from right to left.

We drove for a few more minutes, but it looked like the storm was not going to let up anytime soon, and the wall of water just kept pouring down like a flood from heaven. Finally, after we had to slow down to a snail's pace, Whateley decided to pull over and wait out the storm. There was only one place open, a Domino's, so we ran inside to seek shelter. They were nice enough to let us behind the counter and away from the giant glass windows.

The Dominos people were really cool. One guy had a fancy cell phone which he used to look up a website tracking the storm. It was big, but moving very fast. (We found out later that the southern portion of the storm was cycling, which was where the funnel cloud came from, but it never cycled enough to create a full-fledged tornado. And we were driving through that part of the storm when we had to pull over.) We watch the storm buffet our car for a while, and a half-hour later, the storm had died enough that we decided to head home. It was barely above sprinkling by that point.

Our house weathered the storm fine, and we left a bottle of weed killer out in the backyard, but even that came out fairly unscathed. A couple of more storms passed during the night, and thunder and lightning raged through the wee hours, but in the end, Whateley and I and our house is fine. And we won't have to water our lawn for at least a week now. =)

I had forgotten that May is thunderstorm season here. Perhaps one day I'll get used to them like I got used to earthquakes.

I realized that the first anniversary of our move to Austin came and went and I didn't blog about it. It was 4 days ago, on May 3, 2007, that we crossed into Austin and drove up to our new apartment and signed the lease. That trip was difficult but exciting, and I still remember most of it. And thinking back, it was the craziest thing we could do, but sitting at Whateley's desk in our new house... it was worth it!

I mean, there are still parts of me that wonder if we made the right decision, to uproot from all that we've known and away from all our family and move three states away to a city where we didn't know anyone other than the co-workers that moved here too. Since then, we've made some friends, moved up in the company, and we got our first house. And life is good. But there is a part of me that's scared that in the end, it is just me and Whateley, and all we've got is each other. I mean, our friends will help out if need be, but when it comes to family matters, we're it. What can I say, the paranoid part in me is fearful that Whateley will die or fall into a coma or get kidnapped and be a missing person forever.

If we can have it our way, we'll get Whateley's parents to retire over here. They're already looking at various out-of-state retirement options. I know I can entice Whateley's step-mom once we squirt out a kid, but that won't be for at least another year. What can I say, it'd be nice to have the option of dropping the kids off at the grandparents when we need a break.

Anyway, life in Austin is pretty damn good, and I'll go more into it at a later post. Right now, I'm just really tired and wanna go to bed.

We took another step into adulthood today... we got one of those box-o-wine.

I know!!!

The box-o-wine is one of those things you joke about cheap people pretending to be classy things, though it does make sense to keep wine in such a container to keep air from oxidizing the wine after you open it. Besides, you can just keep it in the fridge, and it's really easy to pour.

Whateley and I joke about this cuz his parents have been drinking the box-o-wine for years. He jokes that we're turning into his parents. I say that's not funny, it's scary. Though what would be funny would be if we ended up turning into my parents. I'm not sure if the whole immigrant experience translates across generations. After all, there are so many issues that I just won't have with my kids that my parents had with me. Being able to communicate fluently in the same language, for one. Though, I look at the state of kids' communications skills nowadays, and I fear for our nation's future.

We got a massive amount of groceries today from Costco. We sort of had the excuse while we were moving to eat out more frequently. We didn't want to move a bunch of food, so we were cutting back on groceries a lot before we moved. And then after the move, the house was a mess, nothing was organized, and we were exhausted cleaning and taking care of bills and accounts and whatnot. But now, we're getting settled, and the kitchen, for the most part, is usable, and all the appliances are functioning, except for the dishwasher, which we'll call the home warranty people for soon. So no more excuses, we're going to eat at home more. We're also trying to bring our lunch to work and not buy food from the office catering. There is this Chinese restaurant that they recently got to start coming, and they're actually coming during our shift instead of the earlier ones like many of the others. They're really good, but it's getting rather pricey since it costs $10 for a plate, even though it is a lot of food. I think we're going to limit ourselves to them only once a week. The sandwich girl is much cheaper, though it seems like the sandwiches are getting smaller. The pasta place, everyone agrees, is not worth it, even if they are the cheapest. It's kinda sad cuz the alfredo tastes like water and the marinara is okay but I've tasted better out of a jar. All we can think is, this place is a restaurant? They serve this stuff there?

Wow, this has turned into a really long ramble that says absolutely nothing.

Umm... I'm going to run my first pen-and-paper RPG! It's gonna be Star Trek, and I hope I don't suck!

We're just unpacking... slowly.

While I do have to say it's a thousand times better to live in a house rather than an apartment, there are still drawbacks. For one thing, an apartment is small, so when Whateley gets thirsty, he can go to the kitchen himself to get a drink. But in our house, since our computers and our room is upstairs and the kitchen is downstairs, when Whateley gets thirsty, he has to resort to complaining about his knee and/or making puppy dog faces, or just general trickery, to get me to get him a drink since it does require going up and down a flight of stairs as well as across several rooms.

We're also unpacking our books... and well, let's just say we've got a lot of books. Most of it's Whateley's actually. I wasn't much of a book buyer before. I was more into libraries. Them being free and all. Anyway, we've got two bookcases full of gaming books in our awesome gaming loft, and we put two bookcases in the guest bedroom, and they've already been filled. We have a fifth bookcase which we put in the spare room (it'll be a kid's room as soon as we squirt one out). So now we gotta decide whether or not to leave that spare room as storage/mostly empty so that once a kid arrives it won't take much work to turn it into a nursery, or to use it as a study or something until a kid arrives and then re-arrange everything.

But we've got a lot of books.

Wow, it's been awhile since I've updated. That's what moving will do to ya!

Last week we bribed our friends with pizza and beer to help us move our furniture to our house. Funny, the week before it was cold, the week after there's a cold front so it was cold, but on our moving day weekend, it had to be swelteringly hot with tons of humidity.... I felt really bad for the guys doing the heavy lifting. The promise of beer was helping to motivate!

Well, today, Whateley and I grabbed the last of the stuff from the apartment, cleaned the best we could, and turned in all our keys. Well, actually, since it was late, we put them in an envelope and dropped them in the night slot. I hope that'll be okay enough for them.

Anyway, with that, that is the last remnant of our apartment life, and we are fully moved in to our beautiful house. There soooo much work ahead of us, though. We've been unpacking slowly, getting things organized. It's weird having an entire house to fill with our stuff. Before our last apartment (when I had two rooms, the bedroom and living room), I've only had one room for all my crap. But now... storage galore!!! And yes, there will be pictures coming, I swear!

Our #1 concern finally got settled today. We hooked up the TiVO and updated it with the new cable company info, and it's all settled and happily recording away. Last night we took care of the #2 concern, and got the cable modem all set up. We can play WoW at home now!

It's been exhausting the past few weeks, and after we're all settled, we need a vacation. And as we head in to the wettest month of the year for Texas, it's approaching our one-year-anniversary of our move to Austin. Amazing, innit?

Okay, something in the universe is preventing us from using our dryer. I swear it must be the fates conspiring to keep that dryer from ever being turned on, and possible destroying two-thirds of the universe.

After we got our new dryer delivered, the delivery guy said, ooh, looks like the socket's wrong, we can't plug the dryer in. But he suggested going to Home Depot and just getting the correct socket and replacing it ourselves.

So we went and got the socket and the next day, Whateley tried to install it. He made sure to turn off all the circuits that said "Washer" and "Dryer" though oddly enough, there was no "Main" breaker for us to flip. But we figured, that was enough. We even bought a gadget to measure volts or amps or whatever the heck it was, and Whateley poked those prong everywhere on that socket and the wiring and there was no juice... or so we thought.

Cut to ten minutes later, I see a bright flash and loud bang... and then Whateley saying in a alarmed tone, "Whoa."

Apparently, as he was trying to pry the plug off its wires, his screwdriver came into contact with one wire and then the other. There was still some juice in those wires, it seems, and when the circuit connected... and let's just say it left a burn mark... on the frickin' screwdriver! It burned in between where the two wires touched the screwdriver shaft. That's metal, we're talking about here.

Anyway, since we didn't want Whateley accidentally dying by having 220 volts (and however many amps) shot through his body, we decided to call an electrician to handle replacing the plug.

... Ay ya ya ya yaaaaa....

How hard is it to get an electrician to come to your house? Apparently pretty difficult.

Since this happened Tuesday night, we stayed up until Wednesday morning to call electricians to see if they can come that day. Many were not available, but I got one that was fairly close by, who, when asked if he could come by at 4 pm, said he would. Now, maybe I should've gotten the clue when he didn't ask for my name or a phone number he could reach me by. But 4 pm came and went, and by the time 6:30 rolled around, we figured he was not going to show. I left at least two messages on his machine, and I haven't heard from him since. Yeah, never gonna call him again.

So I then called a rather big company to schedule an electrician, even if it was the next day. Which I did. I even called out sick at work so I could be there.

The window was from 5 to 8 pm. I was dead tired and fell asleep at our house, expecting my cell phone to ring to wake me up. Come 7:30, I'm awake and no calls, and I'm paranoid thinking they came, knocked on the door, I didn't wake up, and they left. So I called the company to see what was going on.

The lady on the phone was very nice, told me I was still on the list, and put me on hold while we found out where the guy was. Ten minutes later, she come back on, apologizes profusely, and says they had me under "air conditioning" instead of "electrical" work, and they didn't have anyone qualified to come do our work that day.

Let me just say... I was not happy.

She re-scheduled me for tomorrow morning, but I don't think she realizes what a hassle that's going to be. For three days now, we've had to stay up at least two hours past bedtime and/or wake up three hours early to handle getting people to our house to work on it. I specifically took the day off so I could meet this electrician for what would most likely be a five-minute job.

And yet... we couldn't get this done and over with, we're going to have to get up four-and-a-half-hours earlier than usual, just to meet up with an electrician for a five-minute job.

This world hates shift-workers. Especially those that work swing or nights. I know that company didn't do it on purpose, and mistakes happen, but their little mistake is going to make an already sleep-deprived, stressful week even worse. And they can offer to make it as easy on us as possible but the only way they're going to do that is if they can send someone at 4 o'clock in the morning, and no company would ever do that.

And I'm absolutely sick of people thinking we're lazy because we sleep during the day due to our work schedule. We haven't been able to sleep more than five hours straight every night for the past three days! Let's see if you can function on that kind of sleep! What, you think we should conform to your "non-lazy" schedule and sleep only three hours each night so we can be up by 8 am?

Boy, owning a house is a lot more work than you figure. The seller left a fancy vacuum cleaner behind, and we thought, ka-ching, free vacuum! Well, it turns out, everything he left behind, he did for a reason. Mainly, the vacuum was broken.

Basically, the seller must have bumped the vacuum against something hard and broke one of the sides. That dislodged the brush enough so that it wouldn't turn. So essentially, it became a glorified dust buster since only the attachments work. But I was able to use it to clean the floor moldings and suck up all the cobwebs and dead bugs. But those darn floor moldings.... How often should you vacuum them anyway? There are a lot of moldings in that house. It would take hours out of the week if I have to do it every week. There's a reason why I like to enforce the no-shoes-in-the-house rule. Well, besides me being Asian, I'm also lazy and it keeps dirt and dust from being tracked in the house and requires less frequent vacuuming.

The TV the seller left... well, it's not in perfect condition, either. It's got a built-in DVD player, but that is broken. He did, however, leave a regular DVD player which does work, so we hooked that up to the TV to watch some movies while we worked.

Anyway, it's making us realize that all the stuff he left behind... he did it on purpose and he didn't really "forget" anything. Which is making us wonder... why are we going to give any of it back if or when he contacts us about it?

It seems like there's a never-ending list of things to do when moving into a house of your very own. We've been taking boxes over there, but we're realizing that we've got less than month left to completely move out of our apartment. The thing that's been holding us up is partly due to my OCD. (I don't really have OCD, just obsessive tendencies. I don't want to offend anyone with actual OCD.)

Anyway, I don't want to move furniture in until we've got the carpet thoroughly vacuumed and shampooed. But I don't want to shampoo the carpet until the tile has already been laid. And we're just getting our rooms measured in about 6 hours (so I better go to bed!), and it might take another week or two to schedule the workers to come and lay the tile. Meanwhile, I really want to clean up the pantry/laundry room, but things have been rather slow-going.

Meanwhile, we're trying to do all this without taking any time off work. And we're still trying to hold game night once a week. We might have to put game nights on hold in a couple of weeks if we keep going at the pace we're going.

Argh. If you're of the prayerly-persuasion, please throw some heavenly prayers our way. Thanks.

So now that we have electricity in our new house, we discovered the source of the nasty funk emanating from the garage. It appears that the previous owner left not one, but two bags of food when he was cleaning out the refrigerator... using rather thin plastic trash bags... which he left untied... on the floor of the garage, so that trash juices seeped through and made a puddle on the garage floor... which broke when I was moving it which spread trash on our neighbor's lawn since they allowed us to stick the trash bags in their trash cans....

Ew, ew, ew, ew, EWWWWWWWWW!!!

And the worst of it? He left a bag of frozen chicken breasts in the trash can... LAST FRIDAY!!! So by today, it was a gross, stanky mess that left Whateley gagging like crazy while he tossed it away. It was soooooo incredibly gross!

We were a bit pissed and we're seriously not thinking of returning any of the crap the guy left behind. Or else just toss it on to our front yard and tell him to come get it.

On a better note, Whateley's happy that he got the tables for the gaming room today. It's going to be epic. D&D nerd beware... it's going to be hard to resist!

We also arranged for tile estimates from Home Depot. We picked out the tile and grout (which came in all sorts of colors... even bright red which was called "lipstick" which we were wondering who would ever use), and they should call us sometime soon to arrange a time to measure. The tiling, aside from the closing costs of the house, will be our largest expense for the house. Our savings are starting to dwindle... though we were saving diligently precisely for this purpose. But alas, I get a bit antsy whenever I have to fork over a big chunk of change.

Anyway, we have until the end of April to move and get out of the apartment. I'll keep everyone updated through this blog!

Wow. We love our new house!!!

The seller of the house was moving in to his girlfriend's fully furnished house. So when we went on our final walk-through, he was still packing and offered us a nice couch, his dining table set, and a few other items. The couch is fantastic (he says at retail it was worth $2000, though with the stains on it, you certainly couldn't sell it for that much) and it's actually long enough for Whateley to stretch out in. The dining table set is better than what we have, though to be fair, our set is third-hand (we got it from our old roommates who got it from someone else) so it's not much of a comparison.

Well, when we got the keys and walked in, we were rather surprised. I guess he figured since we were taking him up on all offers of furniture, he was going to leave behind everything he didn't want, and letting us take care of disposing it if we didn't want it. Well, that and he had a lot of stuff and not enough time to move all of it out and get rid of junk.

Anyway, the biggest thing he left behind that we didn't expect was the refrigerator. That will save us about a grand, though Whateley is a bit disappointed since he really wanted to get a stainless steel one from Costco (it's just black). But it's a good refrigerator, and it just doesn't make sense to pass up saving a thousand bucks. He also left a bunch of stuff in the kitchen such as a crappy little microwave, a deep fryer, one or two slow cookers (there was one high up on a shelf that looked like one), and some dishes and mugs. He also left a coffee maker, a whole bunch of cleaning products, and I believe he didn't take a single trash can with him. Though they are nice-looking and stainless steel.

He also left a DVD player, and in the bedroom, the TV stand, complete with a TV and a VCR. Suddenly, we've become a three-TV household. He also left his workout bench and a couple of dumbbells. We were thinking of canceling our gym membership and making a home gym, and with those we pretty much decided we're gonna do it. We got a pretty good deal on our membership before we got married, but it's still not worth it if you're not using it. It's been hard trying to make it to the gym after an 11-hr workday.

The seller was also a big hunter, so we're now the proud owners of a set of deer antlers mounted to the wall. I'll leave that for Whateley to play with. Who knows, our D&D group may encounter a giant-antler-monster in the coming weeks. With the exception of a few generic photos which the guy obviously didn't take, he took all his photos. Well, except the one of his now ex-wife on their wedding day. We found that funny. I think we're going to put some photos from our wedding in the frame. It's a nice frame. I wonder if it's disturbing to paw through the souvenirs of another man's failed marriage, but hey, he left them behind.

The garage was full of junk too. There was a shovel, a watering hose, and I believe some potted plants. I couldn't quite tell since the electricity was shut off so we couldn't turn on the garage lights. In the backyard, he took his rusted smoker, but left his gas barbecue. It's a nice-looking barbecue, though it's crusted with dirt and other stuff. He did us the great favor of dumping the charcoal ash in the weed-ridden grass and taking the propane tank out. Yaaaaay....

We're thinking one of the improvements we would like to make eventually would be to make a covered patio outside. Currently there's just a small concrete block, just big enough to hold a barbecue. The door to the backyard hasn't been caulked or sealed, so there was some water damage to the door frame from all the rain that falls here. Whateley thinks having a covered patio will at least keep the water away come the rainy season. I was just thinking if it would be feasible to have my dad come visit us for a few weeks and build it for us. He may be sixty years old, but he's still pretty spry. But it's probably not feasible since he wouldn't be able to bring his tools with him out here. That and I don't know what he'd do with himself while we were at work with our wacked-out schedule.

Hey, here's a question I'd like to throw out to my readers:

Which room should we use as our guest bedroom? One is bigger and it's right next to our room, the other is smaller and across the foyer. It's also partially over the garage, so in the summer it will bake and in the winter it will freeze. So the bigger room will be more comfy, but it shares a wall with our room, and then we can't be... ahem, loud... in the middle of the night.

I'm also thinking that when we finally squirt out a CHUD baby, we would rather make the bigger room his or her room. So if we make that room into the guest bedroom, we'd have to move it once we become in a family way. And if there's one thing Whateley and I are, it's lazy. We'd much rather not have to move furniture around later.

Anyway, to wrap up our initial visit to our new house (we couldn't stay long since it was getting dark and there's no power), we called our realtor and told him of all the stuff that was left behind. One of the things is a basket full of clothes and a really nice hunting knife. That made us wonder if perhaps some of the stuff he meant to take with him and just forgot. I'm figuring, he left it, it's now ours. But if he does contact us and want some of his stuff back, we're not going to be dicks and say no. But we're not giving back the workout bench or the TV.

T minus 10 hours until Whateley and I become homeowners!!!

Wow, we got the final figure for our closing costs. Whew! Good-bye savings!

We also renewed our Costco membership today. A slick salesman had convinced us to upgrade to the Executive membership a few months ago, so we thought we'd give it a go. Turns out, even though Costco is the Asian mecca, even I don't spend enough to justify the extra $50 per year. But then we realized that we were going to be making some large purchases this year (such as appliances and other home stuff) so we decided to continue it for one more year. That and we got two extra months free cuz we renewed through our work. Hey, whatever I can do for free stuff.

Speaking of Costco as the Asian mecca, as Whateley and Xeowolf (a co-worker and friend) were talking about Costco, another co-worker on our team, who is the only other Asian member of our team, was asking about the stuff they sold there. Well, I jokingly asked how he could not know about Costco since it's the Asian mecca. Whateley shushed me on that because apparently I have problems knowing what is appropriate or not to say in the workplace. And whereas I have always followed the I-am-Asian-therefore-I-can-make-fun-of-Asians rule, in a workplace of mostly white people, I should watch my mouth lest they determine it's an "HR issue."

Funny enough, when Whateley and I first got to Austin, I was worried that there wouldn't be a lot of Asians here. We read the statistic as anywhere from 3 to 5% of the population. Considering that I was more used to 10 to 15% (and waaaay more in school), I thought it would suck. And during the first few days, it felt that way as Whateley played the game of "Spot the Sole Asian" in the crowds. Well, as soon as we stepped into Costco, the Asian population just boomed. It's not as much as SoCal, but it's kinda comforting to see Korean being spoken as a middle-aged couple paw through the merchandise. And seeing Asian children run around and then get chided by their parents for being too loud.

We haven't been to the Korean market in awhile though. Mostly cuz we bought a large box of the brown-rice-green-tea instead of the smaller one. That and Whateley's developing high blood pressure (Damn genetics! The males in his line have been cursed for generations. In fact, by the time his grandfather reached Whateley's dad's current age, he had already had two strokes. I believe Whateley Sr. has actually outlived his previous generations' life spans.) so we're trying to not have ramen. And I know it's not that good for you all-around. But they're so convenient when you're trying to make a quick dinner!

Later dudes!

Okay, we've got our closing date: March 21st!

Texas sure has weird weather. The past week it fluctuated daily from warm, to almost-freezing cold, to rainy. Poor neglected Pip at least gets the bird poo washed off of her during the rains. Can't wait to have a proper garage to park her in.

Just waiting for closing at our end. It's the second weekend in a row where we didn't have to get up early and do yet another house-related thing. All the paperwork that needs to be turned in has been turned in. I had to get an un-official transcript for my last year at Santa Monica College to explain having only a part-time job during 2006. But to access it, I had to re-enroll. And then they wouldn't let me re-enroll because I still owed the school money.

It was one of those stupid stories. The short of it was that during my last semester, I had that whole issue where it looked like I made a lot of money when I really didn't. So I didn't qualify for the Board of Governor's Fee Waiver, which would waive all fees (except parking) for community colleges. Anyway, as part of that, I owed a health fee of $14, which goes towards the student health center on the main campus. But since I was at a satellite campus and never used the student health center, I was rather indignant about having to pay that fee and never did. Well, that came to bite me in the ass. I had to pay that fee before I can re-enroll just so I could print out a stupid unofficial transcript to explain why I made so little money two years ago. Yet another cost of buying a house! And I'm realizing more than ever, that this country will eventually collapse under the weight of all the paperwork generated by everything.

Anyway, Whateley and I are pretty anxious wondering when our closing date will be. I'll keep everyone posted!

A little more news on the house front. The mortgage lady is working to close by the end of the week. If not, then we have until the middle of March to do so. Then we'll be homeowners!

To answer your question, Bleusky, we probably won't start moving until April-ish, and if we can help it, we'll take a whole month to do so. The work never ends. After we close on the house, we have to set up utilities at our new house, and then transfer over our cable and whatnot. But probably not before we fix up the house a bit. And then we have to buy appliances, such as a fridge and washer and dryer. And then we have to move our tons of crap over, and then clean our apartment before we leave for good.

And then some time after that, we have to get TxTags just in case we're running late and we want to take the toll road instead of the non-toll one. There's just a lot to do.

And we're pretty sure we're going to have the guest bedroom ready pretty soon. So all of you that want to visit, you can have a nice bed to sleep in! I think Whateley's parents are claiming a few days in July, though personally, the summer is not the greatest time to visit due to the heat. And we can totally go see the bats fly out for the night! Hey, Austin has the largest urban bat population!

We're dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's in the war front. We've filled out a bunch of paperwork with the realtors, a bunch of paperwork with the title company (which isn't that much, but I'm being poetic here), and the bunch of paperwork with the mortgage company (which is just a hair over an almost-literal mountain of paperwork). We're still not done with the mortgage stuff (Damn, who knew they'd scrutinize everything! And we learned yet again that the next time my parents want to purchase anything in my name, refuse and run away!) And later in the week, we'll end up signing a bunch of paperwork with the insurance company so we could get homeowner's insurance. Which, of course, got a bit more complicated since it was cheaper if we got auto insurance with them too. We're just surrounded by paper, and it's driving me nuts. I need a friggin' secretary to organize everything and keep things filed. It irks me to no end to have to turn the apartment upside down every time we need to find something.

We gave our 60-day notice to our apartment. Basically, we told them we're not renewing our lease. It's kinda funny. In California, I never had any problems getting out of a lease. But here, they were going to charge us a buttload of money to break it. And it seemed far easier just to pay rent until the end of our lease rather than break it a month early. But what's nice about that is that we have plenty of time to put our house in order and buy appliances and make some repairs before we have to move in. We're definitely going to have to do some tiling. I mean, 2 out of the 3 bathrooms have carpeting! And it's one thing to have a little carpet by the vanity or whatnot. But by the shower and toilet too? Did the house designer never have a toilet that overflowed, or stepped out of the shower to grab a new bar of soap while soaking wet?

Of course, all the toilets are low-flow, and with my monster-crap, we're probably gonna have issues.... Hmmmm... I wonder if we can get a standard 3.5 gallon one and designate that as my crapper-toilet.

Well, enough about my ass, please feel free to leave a comment!

Hello everybody, this is the husband hijacking the Blog for a bit. So don't read this unless you have Delta Green clearance or better ;p

Money is a funny thing, in general you are pretty happy when you have extra money. But you really never think about money costing you anything. But yeah apparently we made just a little bit to much money last year, and because of that we can't get into this awesome mortgage program our bank offers for first time home buyers. Instead we have to go with a lame normal mortgage loan. What is superduper lame is because of this we are going to end up paying more per month for our mortgage, and we have to put more money down than the amount we are over the programs cap. So basically because we did well last year and had just a little bit to good of an income, we are going to end up paying more for a house. Sigh....

On top of this because of the sub-prime crisis mortgage interest rates are going up really fast. Yesterday we could have gotten %5.85 interest rate, today that jumped up to 6% at breakfast, and 6.125% by 4pm. And from what our mortgage lady told us today, it may go up to 6.5% or more tomorrow. Once things settle down we can likely refinance, but still things are kinda crazy in the home buying market right now. And the mortgage companies are freaked out because of it. Oh well its still all worth it, because at least we are paying off property, instead of paying somebody else for the privilege of living on their property. Plus the house is really pretty :)

We got a house!!!

Well, the story requires me to rewind a bit. Anyway, so we had found a nice 4-bedroom, 2-bathroom house (though, that 4th bedroom is meant to be an office, or a tiny room for your least favorite kid) within a subdivision that we really liked. It had a spacious living room and a formal dining room which we were going to use for a gaming room. (That's D&D for you non-gamer-geeks. What with the game getting as big as 7 people, all our books, pewter miniatures, the map grid, and all the snacks, we want to get a very large dining table to fit everyone.) However, the listing price was waaaay higher than it should be. It may be worth that much in a booming economy or a seller's market, but in this market, they set their asking price to be about ten grand more than the house is worth. (And remember, this is Texas, so houses of that size in that area are going for less than $150k, so ten grand is a big percentage of the house value.)

Anyway, we gave them a lowball offer in hopes that they'd come to their senses. They didn't. They lowered their asking price to about $5k more than we thought the house was worth. Our realtor suggested asking them to get the house appraised so they can put their money where their mouth was. That house was just not worth what they thought it was. And there's a reason why that house has been on the market for months.

As I've said before, they were comparing this house to another one that sold last summer, but that house didn't have holes in the walls, funky paint, smoke permeating the walls and carpet, and worst of all, tenants that didn't treat the house too carefully. Let that be a lesson to all home-sellers... if you have tenants, they will lower the value of your house. If you're lucky, you'll get non-smoking old people with no kids or pets who are obsessive-compulsive about cleaning. But chances are, you won't, and they'll just trash your house.

But the sellers were adamant that they won't go any lower. So then Whateley thought, what else is available for the asking price that these sellers were asking? So we searched again in that subdivision, and found a 3-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom house with two hundred more square feet!

So we checked it out, liked it, and said screw it to the previous house we bid on. Which, funny enough, then they lowered their absolute lowest price to be $2.5k lower than their previous absolute-lowest. All I can say is... too late! Good luck trying to sell that house with that kind of mindset.

Anyway, we made a bid on that bigger house, and we got a verbal acceptance! In the next few days, we should sign the contract and begin the house inspection and all that dealio. But we're very, very excited!!!

So in the coming weeks, I'll keep my faithful readers apprised of our situation. But here's a picture of the house:

More news on the house front!

We found a house we liked in a nearby suburb that will address all our space needs for now as well as the future. I don't want to go too much into it since we just made a bid and haven't heard back from the seller yet. The house has been on the market for awhile now, as many houses seem to be nowadays, probably because it had tenants so it didn't show as well, and also because they priced it waaaay higher than comparable homes. So we made a really low offer so that will give us room to negotiate. Our realtors did a comparison of homes sold in the area and there was one house that was the exact same floor plan (though the photos look like it showed a lot better because the sellers had actually lived in there, and they did some nice landscaping and whatnot) and sold for more money than the buyers should have offered just before this whole sub-prime mortgage crisis really came to national attention.

Anyway, we'll have more news in the coming weeks.

Ever since we got on the house hunt, I've been watching a lot more HGTV. There are some interesting ones where they show how to fix up a home to raise the value of it. That was going to be the case with the house we bid on before. This one doesn't quite have a fixer-upper feel to it, other than repairing some light cosmetic damage. Anyway, those shows on HGTV are always painting an optimistic light and the price that the realtors say they would list the house for seems much higher than it would actually sell for. The shows which actually show a house being sold show them selling for a lot less than they list for. And many of them show that houses are on the market for a long time before they end up selling.

It's got me a little nervous. I know it's years away, but eventually, we will probably end up selling that house, either to upgrade to a bigger one, or to move closer to town, or if our kids are grown and have left the nest and we want to get a fancy condo downtown. And it's kinda scary to think of the prospect of selling a house. Though I may be worrying about nothing since this is a complete buyer's market and the economy is on its way to a recession. If we're smart, when we want to sell, it will be in a seller's market, or at least a more neutral market, and when the economy picks back up.

Anyway, wish us luck on this house. By the time our lease is up on our apartment, we may be well-and-moved in to our new house. Well, we were thinking of taking a month to move anyway. The last one we did just wiped us out from any more moving experiences. Though, to be fair, it was a move across three states. :)

Oh, and we're gonna have a guest bedroom and a nice living room with two couches. You know what that means... you have to come visit!

So we found out the reason we didn't get the house we bid on.

First off, a short sale is basically when you're trying to sell the house for less than you owe to the bank. Usually, that's due to declining house prices or if you got an outrageous ARM that just increased your payment beyond reason. Well, it turns out that there's a law or something from the FHA where they won't allow short sales for houses that were rental property. We were surprised that the seller's agents didn't know this considering they specialize in short sales. So that house will instead have to go into foreclosure, and if we're still house-less in 5 to 6 months, we may be able to get at auction.

To which we say, screw that. No house is worth the hassle.

Wish us luck on the renewed house-search! We've already got a few prospects, but we're not 100% sure yet.

Cloverfield is a great movie. Genuinely scary, and a lot like how you'd expect things to be if your city is attacked by a giant monster. My only gripe? I should've taken some Dramamine before going in to the movie. It didn't take long for the shaky, hand-held footage to get me nauseous. And I was feeling too queasy to have more than a glass of the pitcher of Woodchuck cider we got at the Drafthouse. And you know me, I hate to waste food.

Not much more news. Our second week of overtime began today. Bleh.

So there are a few of you that know that we put a bid on a house shortly before Christmas. It was a house we were severely low-balling since it was on the verge of foreclosure so they were going for a short sale, and the house was pretty trashed (cosmetically, anyway). Anyway, we got news back, and sad to say, the sellers were not approved for a short sale. I'm not sure if that means that the bank would rather foreclose, or if they think they could get a better offer. But it looks like we're back on the house-hunt.

We are in luck, however, since it seems the Fed is going to lower the interest rates again. I'm not sure how low it will go, but it's only good news for us. And we've been very good squirreling away money (and our Christmas bonuses =D ) so we're in a good place if we can find another fixer-upper, or just end up having a nice down payment.

But it's kinda bad timing, though, since our company got rather busy during the holidays and we're on overtime. We're working a fifth day in our 4-10 schedule, and that means only two-day weekends for us to go on house showings. Yeah, yeah, that's what normal people have, I know. But it is pretty tiring to have several 50-hr workweeks in a row. I wonder how those work-a-holics do it.

Oh, and don't forget to wish Whateley a Happy Birthday, everyone!

Okay, so more on Christmas....

We stayed with Whateley's parents since we figured most of our friends were in the OC area or else it'd be closer from there than my parents in Chino. We were suppose to take a family picture with my family, but we couldn't get it all organized in time, so it's postponed. It's kinda sad, though, cuz we weren't sure if we could make it next year for Christmas. I think if we budget our vacation days, we should be able to swing it.

So yeah, the bed in Whateley's parents' guest bedroom was what can be best described as "a rock." Maybe we've just gotten spoiled by our memory foam mattress, but it was just very difficult to get comfortable. Yeah, we woke up each morning very stiff.

We juggled Christmas Eve and Day the same as last year, though we visited my family before Whateley's on Christmas Eve rather than later. We got my siblings gift cards (aren't those wonderful?), but due to the no-gift-card rule for Whateley, we got everyone T-shirts that either said "Keep Austin Weird" or some of the more funky ones from the Alamo Drafthouse. Well, we got a few gift cards for the picky people. The shirts went over well, I thought, especially the Alamo Drafthouse ones. We were going for an Austin theme for our presents. I'm not sure what we're gonna do for next year. You can only do the "new area" theme for so long.

Funny enough, due to the $10 limit this year, Whateley's step-sister-in-law ended up getting 4 or 5 tongs, and his aunt ended up getting about 4 boxes of Cheerios. It seems that people went for the first item on the list rather than the others. Good thing I didn't end up getting 3 copies of Deceptively Delicious.

Whateley's family was wondering why we were asking for a book about feeding vegetables to kids. No, I'm not in a family way. We just needed a way to get vegetables in our diet that was palatable for Whateley. We're trying to eat healthier but it's hard when he hates the texture of vegetables.

Anyway, it looks like we're gonna wait until we get a house before we begin to do all that sneaking vegetables.

The rest of our vacation was spent visiting friends. It seemed like we were just eating all the time, since everytime we ended up going out to eat. We made sure to eat at In-N-Out a couple of times, though. There ain't no equivalent in Austin!

Anyway, there isn't much more to tell. Oh, and it turns out, we're allergic to Texas, especially Whateley. That must be the case for my sinuses to be clear while we're there and for it to be all plugged up here. Whateley ended up with his ear canals being stuffed up. Cedar Fever, they call it.

Sigh. The sad part is, my eczema-ridden skin hates California and the dry air. They confiscated my lotion at the airport (forgot that whole liquid/gel over 5 oz prohibition), so I ended up using my petroleum-jelly-based moisturizer, which I can't quite put all over me as I can the other one. So my skin was not liking SoCal, even though my nose was happy. My body is a warzone, and they just won't get along!

Okay, if I think of anything else, I'll make another post!

I keep checking the blogs I usually frequent and wishing that they'd update. And then I realized that I haven't updated my blog in awhile. Ehhh, whatevah.

So how was our Christmas? Pretty good. We bought our tickets before we had a finalized schedule, so we ended up having two days off before our flight. We spent one having game night with some friends, but after a couple of people flaked out, we decided not to run the adventure which Whateley wanted to run and instead decided to watch movies. One of the ones we watched was an episode of Showtime Master of Horror series, called "Imprint," by Takashi Miike. He's the director who made Audition, which I hear is a really disturbing horror flick. Well, the episode never aired on TV since it was called "the most disturbing hour of television" by the network execs. And this was Showtime, which isn't necessarily known for shying away from showing stuff on TV.

We all thought, how bad could it really be? Well, turns out, it was really disturbing. So much so that we had to watch something light-hearted and funny (Galaxy Quest) afterwards to keep from tearing out our eyes in our sleep. We all agreed that an hour went missing in our lives somehow.

Anyway, so we were able to pack easily and do some shopping before we flew to SoCal for Christmas. I'll finish this post later. WoW calls!