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Here are the floorplans for our new home to be.

Main Floor

Upper Floor

Heather and I spent the day looking at homes again.

I realized that the act of buying a home isn’t as bad as I had previously thought.

At this stage in my life I don’t see much wisdom in purchasing a pre-owned home. First we need to find one and both agree upon it (not a simple feat). Then we need to tender an offer and wait for it to be accepted. This creates a problem for us since we are currently leasing a town home and need some idea of a date to transition from one dwelling to the next. Once this is all done then we get to invest a bunch of time, effort, and money into changing things around (Heather watches a lot of HGTV) since the odds of finding a “perfect” house are on par with me winning the lottery.

For these reasons we decided that custom homes make a lot of sense for us since they provide the benefits of new construction and customization without the hassles of making all the arrangements ourselves. We decided to go look at some custom home developments we had looked at back in early February.

After spending a good part of the afternoon looking we have decided to purchase an Arbor custom home in Beaverton, OR. We found a floor plan we both could agree upon and the price was within our reach. We sat down with their finance guy and found out that my credit worthiness is much better than I had thought. We can easily get a mortgage for the amount we would need to get the home. We didn’t have the needed paperwork to actually apply for a loan, however, based on our credit score and our income it should be a done deal.

We put in a tentative offer in order to secure a lot since the current phase of the community is almost sold out and future phases will cost more money. Our offer is contingent on us successfully securing the financing for our home purchase. I want to see if my employer can offer us a better mortgage package than the builder’s finance people.

So today I’m 90% of the way to owning a home. Assuming we go through with everything it looks as if our new home will be complete in early November just in time for Heather’s birthday.

Since it is almost April I thought I should get around to posting our pictures from Christmas ‘02. My in-laws were in town and we all decided to spend Christmas day by the coast. The pictures are kind of dark due to the combination of the overcast weather and my poor camera skills (so much for my career aspirations as a Penthouse photographer).

I also posted a picture of our short lived Christmas tree.

Today I relocated Heather’s blog to its new home at www.heathercellini.com.

Enjoy

While passing one of my co-workers in the hall today we had the following verbal exchange:

Co-worker: Hey guess what I’m expecting twins.

Me: I didn’t know your wife was expecting, congratulations.

Co-worker: No, she is getting breast implants.

Me: Oh… well I guess congratulations are still in order. Did she need them?

I guess I’m spoiled that my wife came with some

Adam sent me this link which I thought was hilarious. I used to joke about doing something like this; however, it seems someone beat me to it. Optimus Prime now serves our country as a member of the Ohio National Guard.

This quote says it all:

“I got a letter from a general at the Pentagon when the name change went through and he says it was great to have the employ of the commander of the Autobots in the National Guard.”

I am dead tired today because I was up all night writing a presentation for my boss’s boss. It didn’t help that I also had an assignment to due last night for school as well. I really need to learn to try and start things earlier and manage my time better.

We went and saw Raiders of the Lost Ark at the Power Station Theater at McMenamins Edgefield. While the effects where somewhat dated (it came out in 1981) it was cool to see it in a theater setting for the first time.

I spent the rest of the weekend relaxing.

The full Animatrix trailer was put up today. It looks pretty sweet - the short with the Final Fantasy style animation looks astounding, almost as lifelike as the real actors in the first movie.

It should be a good DVD.

I just finished watching the final installment of the CoD miniseries last night. I thought the second and third installments of the miniseries (the actual Children of Dune story) were much stronger than the first installment.

With any adaptation of a novel a certain amount of creative license is necessary. Considering the scope and complexity of the stories of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, I believe the screen writers did a fairly admirable job.
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