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There's a little for everyone in this one. Please read? :)

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My pokemans! Let Me Show You Them!

Thanks to for the pointer.

Also it is important to note that the party at my house on Saturday is not my official "house warming" party but mostly a venue for the amusingly named annual event "strippers and dirty magazines" which is not as illicit as it sounds, I promise.

Actual housewarming party plans will exist in August or so. We will be actually moved in by then. It would be earlier but some people require at least 2 weeks notice, as well as my ailing grandma who cannot travel out to Detroit will be in town back home, and we need to go visit her, and that's in late July / early August. All the timing for that is up in the air but it will actually likely be really close to our first anniversary as well. Yay? 🙂

If you will be in attendance THIS SATURDAY, and seek to sit somewhere other than my back step, crosslegged on my porch, or the grass, you are advised to bring a chair. We have 4 with our patio table. We account for two of them.

Utilities ordered to be changed: Check. Power/Gas/POTS Telephone/Cable TV and (temporary) Cable Modem will be ready Friday.
Appliances ordered: Will arrive Saturday, Check. Ever bought a stove and refrigerator from the parking lot of a random bank?* I now have. Sprint PCS EVDO and The Home Depot combined make it possible!
Insurance purchased: Check. Muhaha. Thanks .
Loan paperwork and arrangements finalized: Check
Financial instrument to reimburse previous owner for overpaid property tax: Will be acquired before closing.

Less than 36 hours until I drop more money than I've ever spent in my life on anything. Yikes.

I filed an ASR for our A Links today.

I gave a rural school district more bandwidth than I thought was possible in their neck of the woods today.

I saw fireworks.

Something something something south central L.A.
so I say it was a good day.

* I was making a pit stop cause my car was being a bitch and I happened to pull into a flagstar bank lot.

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Inspection went quite well. We need to replace and upgrade from the electrical drop to the fuse panel. We need to replace the fuse panel and put in breakers. The furnace is scary old but functional.

Pictures of the inside are included in the gallery too now

Dad and (Step)mom like it.
Mom likes it.
I like it.
Becky likes it.

Closing date like to move up to 06/29/2007 from 07/07/2007.

Need to get house a colonoscopy with the cool ass camera doodad this week. But that's the only blocking issue before we close.

Secret work thingus in under 12 hours.

OMGS

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Purchase offer is signed, just waiting for the signature from the seller which is likely to come in in the next few hours or so? UPDATE WE HAVE A HOUSE NOW THE AGREEMENT HAS BEEN SIGNED BY BOTH PARTIES

Home inspector is scheduled for Sunday at 4.

Everything's ready for The Awesome Thing At Work on Monday. (PS: This is an offshoot of an earlier mentioned "Secret Project ACCNL") We even have a Danger Cart.

[I tried for an hour to find a picture to back my aqua teen hunger force reference but failed. :(]

Minion's desk is ready.

This is going to be fucking insane.

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omg omg omg omg

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Heh

It's starting to hit me that one of my little dreams is coming true Monday when we get our cool thing at work. Most of you already know what it is but I'm not supposed to say what it is until we have it. All preparations have been made and it's pretty much down to getting everything finalized tomorrow. Wow.

My second little dream… I got a call at 5pm. There was a counteroffer on the property within my acceptable limits. The seller says it's non negotiable and final, and he's rejected at least 5 other offers that did not reach that minimum. My agent believes this to be truthful.

So the plan is to buzz by, take one more look, and then basically accept the counteroffer as proposed because it's ideal, exactly where we wanted it, what we wanted it to contain, everything. And the price is good for the neighborhood and it's a nice looking neighborhood. Pending inspection then, we basically have a house.

It's more than I hoped to pay for a house by a long shot when I started this exercise. But honestly we can afford it still and since it meets more of our 10 year requirements than our 5 year, it's likely that we'll buy it and stay there for the remainder of our days. We won't have to replace it when we have kids as it was specifically chosen to scale to that. We have to get appliances but we have savings for that, so ultimately there's really no downside to it. I'm just being nervous…. Probably because we will have to look at our expenses and adjust them so we can keep putting the same amount in savings as we currently are. I like not living paycheck to paycheck and having a big buffer. I'd like to get it up to 3 months income at minimum. It's currently at 1 month after all the stuff settles with appliances and stuff. I can only imagine how it will be like when I pay my dad off in the next few years. An additional $500 a month with no extra effort put in would be a great thing.

The good news is that the income from the LLC could make the house payments by itself if it had to, AS IS. There'd be no money left over for food or other bills, but frankly if I had to live that way, it's likely because I would have found myself with a bunch of unexpected free time on my hands. Even if I land on my ass somehow I'm set. But given the way things are going that is incredibly unlikely to happen. I just like the safety net.

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It's been a great 3 day run

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+ new minion
+ other thing at work I'll talk about later
+ yearly review coming up at work
+ just saw a house today that I want to put in an offer on. It's *perfect* in every way.
+ the buyer's agent that I thought was really a douche came through for me on the above. yay!

– car needs gas, it's out
– had a two hour long power outage today
– saw a house prior to the one I loved that still has my allergies going. It was a foreclosure but wasn't listed as such or I wouldn't have bothered. All the lightbulbs were taken, everything was a mess, and someone punched a hole in a bedroom wall. Paint was missing as was wallpaper pretty much everywhere. It would have cost at least $15k to get it all where I wanted it. Pity, because the floorplan and outside was great. Busy trying to build a statewide telecommunications network, no thanks.

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A quick post because I'm in a hurry…

Some of our wedding photos

Some of our honeymoon photos

I'm still accumulating all the images from our 3 cameras, and awaiting some images from our other attendees.

The guy with a shaved head is 's brother Brian. His dad officiated the wedding. Brian is autistic, and wandered into shots on multiple occasions. It just adds a unique twist to an already unique wedding.

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We made it home safely. I'm sore but happy.

A few more things:

* Gas was only $2.89 in some town just north of Flint. What a happy surprise when I was running on fumes.
* I would easily pay $20/night more for a hypoallergenic hotel room. I had serious issues with dust mites and the soap, shampoo, and conditioner. Serious enough where I woke up gasping for breath a few times last night. Yay for inhalers, but not cool.
* Butterflies are awesome.
* I'm not sure I really missed the internet all that much. That's a great thing.
* We need to get the oil changed before we go back to West MI this weekend for Renee's bridal shower.

I have site installs tomorrow and friday.

I need to pay for fall semester next week.

I'm glad to be back.

I'm tired as hell and going to work tomorrow would suck if I totally didn't love my job.

I've never been this happy in a long time.

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Even more things I learned…

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* Sprint's roaming partner in the UP delivers/allows sending of SMS. woo.
* GSM roaming is still more awesome than CDMA. I honestly was unaware that my blackberry was roaming until I popped the sim into my laptop card.
* Nobody takes debit cards in the UP.
* The Sault St. Marie Locks have all sorts of menacing Department of Homeland Security stuff around them, and you are subject to search even being in the observation area. (Again, only because I read the signs, not because I found this out firsthand)
* Every hotel but mine has "free wireless internet". I think it's a good thing that I'm forced to use the internet sparingly though.
* I can't spell Tahquamenon Falls.
* When state parks say "nature walk", they absolutely mean it in every sense possible.
* There are few things more important to carry in your pack than Naproxen Sodium.

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More things I have learned this trip….

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* lcp-echo-interval 0 is your friend when trying to stay connected to the internet using cell phones or GPRS modems of any sort in linux. LCP Echo is evil and will always screw up a perfectly good IP session, no idea why 🙂

* When you're in St. Ignace, and want to view a first run movie, don't ask the locals where the nearest first run theater is, they'll just laugh at you. Snakes on a Plane? Well, we have snakes, and we have planes…..

* Ditto with Meijer.

* It costs $9 to change your name at the Secretary of State.

* The Kewadin gold tokens only work in special slot machines, ones that won't take the casino player card, though you can continuously insert the thing forever trying, since they don't bother to label that on the machine anywhere.

* Tribes have their own police department. Fortunately, it wasn't me or mine that found this out the hard way. I just giggled as I drove past.

* Finding food after 10pm here is non-trivial.

* It is still possible to walk into a bar in the state of Michigan, and have EVERY SINGLE PERSON STOP WHAT THEY ARE DOING AND TURN TOWARD YOU. Go to Garden, MI and try this.

* Garden, MI and Garden City, MI are polar opposites (though I knew this beforehand, though not how truly different they were 🙂 )

* Only the nickel slots are honest at Kewadin. The rest won't let you cash out just your winnings, or play a nickel at a time or whatever. (and it IS possible to make a profit playing slots if you know what you're doing)

* It is possible to get SBC to install a POTS line at a campground in a ghost town. I can't imagine how much flack you must get filing the service order, but someone managed to do it. Color me impressed.