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!