The Grass is Never Greener
I've lived a pretty uninteresting life, story-wise. I couldn't regale you with tales of riding on car hoods, or getting drunk and breaking into some place. I've never been drunk, never even touched a drug, and married the same woman that was my first kiss.
The one stupid thing I did in my life, happened the night before my wedding shower. Some friends and I went sledding at the biggest hill in town, and noticed a ramp someone had built at the bottom of said hill. I guess this is where my common sense throughout life failed me, and I decided to jump that ramp.
I couldn't tell you exactly why I had that thought, perhaps I was seeking some last attempt at a ridiculous story to tell before I got married. I couldn't tell you exactly why I told my friend to stand behind it until I was halfway down the hill so that I could steer toward it, and I'm sure he couldn't tell you exactly why he listened instead of telling me what a stupid idea it was.
According to him, I had to have gotten at least 10 feet in the air. The problem here is, I didn't fall off -- I stayed sitting flat on my butt, on a sled that was well off the ground, and landed it perfectly... against the upward slope of another hill.
The rest of my night is pretty uninteresting; hobbling toward the car with my friend's help, getting driven home while lying in the back seat, and falling asleep halfway through "A Scanner Darkly" while my friends snuck out aren't part of the epic sledding jump tale I should be telling. But like I said, I've lived a boring life -- to me, this isn't a "Oh man! You should have seen it!" story. It is a reminder of why I love the life I have chosen.
Like probably everyone else, my mind wanders sometimes. I start to think about the experiences I may have missed out on in life. I am not my Uncle Andy, able to talk about the time he was hiking through Scotland and ran into Phil Collin's property caretaker, who said he was welcome to stay the night at Phil's mansion if he needed a place -- no, he wasn't there before you ask. I am not even my brother with, I'm sure, countless stories about roommates, and bartending, and parties, and traveling the US to do bird counts, and past loves.
But everytime I stop and think about not having those stories to tell, my tailbone aches. A bitter reminder of the one time that I did do something worthy enough to talk about, and I regret it constantly. I may think that living on my own, and traveling the world, and getting completely wasted, would have been fun experiences to have, but they aren't the life for me.
I've found a woman I'm completely in love with, and had a daughter that brightens my day the second I walk in the door. I can handle not having any epic stories to tell. But whenever I think the grass may have been greener on the other life path, my tailbone hurts like hell, and I remember that I'm happy exactly where I am.
Ripped from the Headlines
A brisk October morning in New York City. The elevator door opens on the 17th floor of a swanky apartment complex. Out steps Chip Dipson, detective extraordinaire.
His rich brown, sturdy, leather dress shoes clap on the thinner-then-paper carpeted hallway floor. His perfectly creased black pants and the ends of his tan trench coat, sway around his ankles and hips respectively, as he confidently strolls past each apartment. He briefly adjusts his tie, and his black button-up shirt as he opens the door to apartment #29.
Inside the studio apartment, there are police officers standing in every corner. Pizza boxes are cluttered around the reclining chair that sits in front of the 36" HDTV. A couch with pullout bed is against the hallway wall, trash strewn about in the sheets.
In the kitchen, a massive pile of dirty dishes is stacked in the sink and cigarette butts are scattered across the counter top, as well as the entire apartment. On the outside wall, sits a computer desk, with a large, flat screen monitor, combination printer/fax, and dead man slumped over the keyboard.
"Alright Jim, what'd you get me out of my nice, warm bed for?" Chip says as he slides his left hand into his pant pocket and takes off his sunglasses with his right, a hint of frustration in his voice, like he's too good to be working this case.
"Well Chip, Oscar Madison over here seems to have gotten himself shot in the back of the head." He says nonchalantly, motioning toward the dead body laying on the computer desk, blood running from the bullet hole in the back of his head, down the side of his face.
"There a Felix, or Mrs. Madison?" Chip asks, still holding his sunglasses in front of him, open, as if ready to put them on at a moments notice.
"Doesn't look like it, he seems to live alone. Not that any roommate or spouse would ever put up with a mess like this." Responds Jim, as he precariously picks up a moldy, half-eaten piece of pizza from a pizza box balanced on the arm of the recliner and tosses it back down with a disgusted look on his face.
Chip, having tossed up the ends of his trench coat and perched the tips of his thumbs into his belt loops, strolls over to the dead man. He leans over his body, examining the bullet hole in his head, then turns back to Jim.
"This whole thing reminds me of the case we had last week," He declares, holding up a picture of another dead man on his LG Dare cell phone, "You notice any similarities?"
"That guy was equally trashy. Life didn't seem to be working out for either of them." Jim replied distractedly as he held up a porno mags sideways with one hand, eyeing the centerfold.
Chip was peering around the dead man, at the trash strewn about the computer desk, looking for some kind of connection between the two murder cases. His eyes panned across the desk, and stopped abruptly at the tray of the printer.
"Hey Jim,"
"Yeah Chip?"
"Didn't the last victim have an unemployment check in the mail that he was holding when he was killed?"
"Uuh, I think so." Jim said, as he tossed the magazine back down on the bed and began to walk over to Chip.
"Well, if so, then we may have found our connection." Chip said confidently, holding a freshly printed resume up for Jim to see.
"Are you saying we have a killer out there targeting people who've been laid off? With the job market the way it is right now, probably half the city is at risk!"
"It looks like it could not only hurt to have your resume up to date, but it may even kill." declared Chip smoothly, as he slid his sunglasses back on and strolled out the door to the apartment, rock music blaring.
Suddenly everything went black.
In a double wide trailer, somewhere in Ohio, the every man gets up out of his reclining chair. He mumbles obscenities to himself as he stumbles to the kitchen, limping slightly.
"Stupid fuc... CEOs and big-shot Hollywood writers... think they have a clue about what we're going through." He grumbles.
The factory where he works has been shutdown for four weeks now, and he's too old to keep doing roofing and construction jobs to make ends meet -- his leg is already crying foul. He grabs a half eaten ham sandwich out of the refrigerator and takes a bite as he limps down the hallway to his bedroom, still cursing big-wigs and television networks under his breath.
DEVO was Right
DEVO was Right is a regular post in which I will give absolute, without a doubt proof that we are in fact de-evolving. We are growing more stupid everyday. What is wrong with the world today? Everything in this column is wrong.For my first ever DEVO was Right, I'm going to post some videos that say it all much better then I ever could. These videos are from a special episode of Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. He dedicated the entire episode to healthcare reform and the idiots fighting against it. It's a subject close to my heart because I am paying out the ass for my own health insurance coverage and it's becoming increasingly difficult to continue doing so. So I beg you all to listen to Keith's words and understand the issue. Don't just assume they are taking your coverage away. Think.
This is a playlist, so be sure to watch all 5 parts.
A Profile in Pictures
He REALLY likes video games.
And music.
His birthday is September 8th, and he is 23 years old.
He lives in Michigan.
The first thing he remembers wanting to be was an astronaut.
Then an inventor.
Then a writer.
When he was in middle school he would write pages and pages of stories based on ridiculous anthropomorphic animals that he created, fighting other anthropomorphic animals that he also created.
They did not get raped by tentacles.
His entire life is spent making this woman happy...
...as well as this one.
She will be molded into a nerd.
He delivers newspapers, which means he uses and abuses his car everyday.
And listens to a LOT of podcasts and music while he does it.
He always leaves every single one of his systems plugged in just in case he wants to play an old game at the spur of the moment. He's been on a Starfox 64 kick lately.
He would prefer to display his video games, but hasn't won that argument yet.
He hasn't yet lost the argument for his dvds though.
The big one in the upper right corner is his most prized possession (Shaq is a god).
His most recent life goals include:
being an electrician (He has very little experience),
owning an arcade (He's not sure why he thinks that this would be successful),
and writing for a site that pays him. Be it his own, or anothers.
That's probably all you care to know. He's glad to have shared.
The Proverbial Stick Up Your Ass
What has become of our beloved society? It used to be that people treated each other with kindness and respect. Nowadays it seems everyone has a stick up their ass and is looking to cuss out the first person they see in order to make themselves feel better.
I started a new paper route this Monday. When starting a route, the first day or two usually go pretty badly but then things get progressively better. On my first day I had a friend come with me to help and he was a lifesaver. On the second day however, I was on my own. But things went pretty well except for half of the route that I still hadn't gotten a list typed up for. So I was left to flip pages on an alphabetical list and try to number things as I went along.
I thought I nailed it, I had no extra papers left. When I started to type up that second part of the route though, I realized I had forgotten a street with 2 houses on it. It was already somewhere around 7 at night and like I said, I had no extras so I just added them to the list and took what would inevitably be a complaint. Little did I know it was far more a complaint.
You see, this man was one of those previously mentioned people with sticks shoved so far up their asses that they can taste them. When I pulled up the next day he was getting out of his car, so I drove up to hand him the paper directly.
He immediately launched into a stream of vulgarities that ended with something about the paper always being left in the rain. I kindly told him that I had just started on Monday and since it hadn't rained that it couldn't have been me that ever did that. Then he demanded to know where his paper had been the day before. I apologized nicely despite having already been swore at excessively and told him I was still learning the route. This still wasn't good enough for him and he kept demanding to know where it had been the day before, as if I hadn't already explained and apologized for it. At this point I was fed up and yelled back "Do you have any idea how hard it is to learn over 200 addresses in a day?!"
This left him with an angry grimace and he just walked away. I told my manager about it and he said that it should be fine because the guy probably feels like an ass now, but the whole situation leaves me wondering. When did the entire world become raging pieces of shit? What has made your life so terrible that you feel you need to take it out on the first person you see? Doing that just simply spreads the anger around more and eventually everyone is yelling at everyone else.
So anyone who is reading this, please do me a favor. Go and be really nice to someone today. Tip your mail or paper carrier and tell them what a great job they've been doing. Thank the kid at McDonalds who takes your order and tell them to have a wonderful day. And if you aren't willing to do any of these things, then just stay confined in your house and yell at the TV. It'll do the world good.
Burning Bridges
Dear You-Know-Who,
Our situation has not yet come to a conclusion. Things need to be said, and so I'm going to say them here. I am not sending this to you directly because it is not about you, it is about me. I'm tired of thinking about it and I want to be done with it, so I will say what I need to say now. If you truly care at all about what happened, you will find this, though I can't guarantee that it will matter anymore.
Let's get this out of the way. My entire childhood I looked up to you, I wanted to be just like you. In fact before all of the events of the last year or two took place I still looked up to you, though maybe not in a wanting to be like you way. We went in our own directions and that was fine, but you were still like a brother to me.
At first it was great having you around, a constant companion. We always had the same sense of humor, a lot of the same taste in music and video games, so it was like having a best friend always there. I miss that, but you took advantage of it.
I am not sorry for anything that happened. If I had that night to do over again, I would do the exact same things. Know this one thing, I will never apologize for anything I've done. But if you think an apology will make anything that you did right, then you are mistaken.
I gave you access to everything I have. I let you be around those who I would protect with my life, and you endangered them. I gave my word to the people who've given me everything I have, that you were trustworthy. You lied to them, and you stole from them. If anything hurt the worst, it was that you seemed to be unaware of what I knew. I'm not an idiot.
All I ever asked for was honesty. I knew the whole situation would be hard, but if you had been honest about it all we could have worked through it. You wouldn't have slipped into old habits if you had just talked to me openly, and nobody that truly wanted to change would have kept their past with them. For all the times we talked about not burning bridges, you sure burned a lot of them.
The best part of this whole situation is that Emmy won't remember you, and I don't ever want her too. If she goes her whole life without knowing you then it will be for the best, because she wouldn't know the person that I knew. Maybe one day that person will return, but I'm not holding my breath.
Let me be clear, this is not the opening to a dialogue. This is what I need to get off of my chest so that I will stop thinking about what I would say if I ever saw you again. This is me ridding myself of the situation. That's it, it's over now. I've said what I've needed to say, and if you care then you'll find this. The ball is in your court, but I'm done with the game and am moving on with my life. There are only two words with which you can start a further conversation with me, but getting me to trust you, believe you, talk to you, or even want to see you again will be a much greater task.
Emmy 18 Month/Family Pictures
Emmy just turned a year and a half, so we went to get new family pictures as well as ones of just her. Thought I'd make a slideshow of some of them and post it here. Theres one of them that we call the "Hulk picture". See if you can guess which one it is.
Finding My Place in the Gaming World: Is There a Place for an Arcade Today?
This is sort of the journal entry of a soul searching individual. You see, I have no idea what I should do with the rest of my life as far as a job goes. I'm happily married, and have a beautiful daughter, but keeping the bills paid has become more and more an exercise in repetition. It's come to the point that I've decided I need to find something I enjoy doing, instead of just doing whatever comes along. My only jumping off point in this search, is my love of video games.
The world of video games is a big beast though, so where do I fit? Since I was little, I loved writing. I would create characters and tell stories of their adventures, I would even plot out and write sequels to my favorite games (not the perverted kinds). Around high school that all died down, but now I wonder if I could find a place in the struggling video game journalism field. It's the reason this whole website exists actually, so that I can get as much practice writing as possible and maybe get noticed while doing so.
Whether or not that pans out, there's another side of games that I want to explore. My family has the small business owner spark running all through it. From my fathers athletic store, to my uncles men's clothing store, to their fathers painting business, the Young's have always tried their hand at owning businesses. I definitely have that spark, and in searching for a business that I would want to run, I thought of video games.
My small town has very little to do in it, in fact most Saturday nights during high school were spent hanging out in 24 hour gas stations for my friends and I. If you weren't uncool like us though, you drank somewhere, or did worse. I would love to combine my fondness for video games, with a business that might give kids in my town a place to hangout, and an arcade is my best idea to do that. The only question is, can an arcade thrive in this day and age?
Before I got married and my income was still expendable, I got right to work achieving this dream. I hopped on eBay and before long I had a coin-op pool table and 4 arcades, Space Invaders Part II housed in a Space Invaders Deluxe machine, Captain America stuffed into a generic 2 player cabinet, a 1970's OXO pinball, and the unique but failed experiment that was Hyperball, a blend of video game and pinball that I can't get enough of.
But now I'm forced to pay bills instead of buy new machines, so the next step is a much harder one to make. I need to go back to school, as well as start searching for a better paying job that affords me some amount of extra income, and once I have that to fall back on, dive in head first by getting a loan to get a ton more machines and a building for them to go. I'm just not sure if I can take that step with the sinking feeling that it will ultimately fail.
I could bail out now and just sell Captain America on eBay and OXO to my dad (he's a nut for pinball machines of that era), and then keep the others for myself, but I'll always kick myself for not trying. So its do or die time. I don't know how it will work out, but I have to at least try. Let's just hope my town appreciates me trying to keep their kids out of trouble, and supports it.
Getting in Shape
End Weight: 230
Total Weight Loss: 18.5 pounds
So that's it, I've made it to the end. I must have messed up my calculations in there at some point because I thought I was at 19 pounds. It might be a little weird though because the 230 weigh in was done after being up all night working and during the week I always weighed myself in the morning. I think there's a difference in your weight when you first wake up but I don't know exactly what it is.
Now, let's break down the game with a nice, convenient list of the good and bad, because everyone loves lists.
The Good
- Takes what Wii Fit started to the next level: Wii Fit proved that people would buy fitness games, unfortunately it was extremely flawed. EA Sports Active helps take this blossoming genre the next step by fixing many of the things that Wii Fit did wrong.
- Workout is strung together: One of the most annoying things Wii Fit did was kick you back to the menu after every activity. Not only did this break up the flow of your workout but it left you to decide what to do next, and when people are given the choice they probably won't choose the tough exercises very often. Active makes up its own routine for you, which can be tweaked, so that it can concentrate on different parts of the body and keep your workout moving along and your heart rate up.
- Doesn't punish or scold you: The last thing I want my video games to do is to yell at me for being lazy when I've been too swamped to get in an exercise. Several days during my 30 day challenge we had to do hay, meaning I got plenty of workout tossing and stacking hundreds of heavy bales. When I returned to Active the next day, it was nice to see that it had simply counted my missed day as a rest day and let me get back onto my schedule without any problems.
The Bad
- Janky Wii controls: You can't really fault the games very much for this type of stuff on the Wii. It can still be frustrating when the game has to stop you if it didn't read that you had lifted your arm because the Wiimote or Nunchuk were facing the wrong way, or you moved it too fast. Perhaps Motion Plus will fix issues like this in the future.
- Poor quality equipment: The pack-in accessories for this game are some of the worst I've ever seen. My leg strap ripped in the first few days and only held together because of the edging, and reports are rampant of broken resistance bands. Even if the resistance band doesn't rip, its the flimsiest thing I've ever seen and provides almost no actual resistance without folding it over a ton to try to make it shorter.
- Could make better use of the balance board: The balance board seems tacked on. I imagine they were trying to separate their game from Wii Fit in consumers minds so that people wouldn't think they needed a balance board to play it. Still, the activities that actually allow the board offer little to no extra benefit from using it.
I hope that the fitness genre keeps improving. Active comes much closer to my ideal fitness game, but it could do so much more. I want a game that not only caters to already fitness conscious people, but to those who haven't exercised in years. You could allow the game to offer up advice on eating habits, calorie intake, stretches, and a slew of other things so that those who know nothing about being active can have help getting into a healthy lifestyle.
It was daunting for me to adjust my eating habits as I didn't have any experience with dieting. I wasn't a fat kid, I have just gained weight slowly over the last 8 or 9 years since I quit cross country after my freshman year of high school. It would have been a much easier transition if Active was the trainer to help me through it.
Like I said though, EA Sports Active is a huge step in the direction of how I want to see fitness games go, and given that its only the second major release in the genre (unless you count that EyeToy fitness game) that's impressive. It has been the first step on my way to getting back in shape, I now have the confidence to get outside for morning runs which I will probably do from now on instead of playing the game. Still, it's nice to have around in case there's a rainy or muggy day and I want to stay inside to exercise. Instead of doing it on a boring, monotonous machine I can play Active. So while I may have sounded harsh against it sometimes, I do think it's the best game out there right now for getting into shape, and would recommend it to anyone who's looking to do that.
Retroactively Follow my Saga:
Random Updates
I haven't updated here in a long time so here are some random tidbits. Unfortunately since our external hard drive has crapped out with all of our stuff on it we have no room to unload recent pictures, so I can't post any.
Emmy has grown extremely fond of the word "no", and says it for pretty much everything. When you try to give her a kiss and she doesn't want one she'll yell no and turn away. When you try to take something away from her she'll yell no and run away with it. She doesn't always yell it though, she's also mastered the sweet and innocent way of saying it that almost makes you want to give in.
She's also obsessed with the "Where'd it go?" game, which is hiding anything and then asking where'd it go over and over, then pulling it out and laughing hysterically. Her version of where'd it go is more like ere'd ee go however, and her favorite where'd it go item to hide is the television, meaning she'll turn it off on us and then stand there asking us where it went.
She enjoys watching us play EA Sports Active and grabs another one of the wii remotes to start lifting up and down along with us. I've been working on cleaning out a room for her to eventually move into and have a place to keep half of her toys as they are taking over the living room. That's about it for now. Maybe I'll have a montage of pictures at some point soon as eventually I'm just going to buy a new hard drive.
Story
I wrote this story quite awhile ago. I've always been interested in paranormal stuff so it figures I'd choose to write about that. I'm also fascinated by biblical type stories even though I don't believe in god, so it doesn't really mean anything. I would like to see something someday though, help me decide what I believe. Anyway, this story was getting lost in the Internet forum I posted it on so I thought I'd resurrect it here. I wrote it after a night of brainstorming while doing papers, which means I was on no sleep, and I've yet to really attempt to edit it or anything. Hopefully this will motivate me to expand details on whats already been written and write more, I just don't know where to go with it. Any constructive criticism or ideas for continuing the story is more then welcome.
You’ve always wanted to see something like it, at least that’s what you’ve always said. There are thousands of stories, but you’ve always wanted your own.
When you think about it there are more positives then negatives, delivering newspapers. That’s if you don’t weigh their value. That’s if you don’t assign them a certain point system based on their importance. Good money, only a couple hours a day, easy, no boss to answer to day in and day out. The one real negative though, is boredom. Mind numbing monotony.
On your first day, you think you’ll never be able to remember all those houses. Then your first week you start remembering parts of the route. Soon you stop using your list altogether. It’s not long until if you stopped and thought about a specific house, you’d have no recollection of ever doing it. You delivered to it alright, but if you stop and think about it, you don’t remember it. You don’t think about it anymore. You just do it. Day in and day out you drive the same route. You do it subconsciously now.
Nothing can satisfy your insatiable appetite for music. Every day you download several CDs and everyday you exhaust them. Soon you turn to audio books, anything to combat the silence, take your mind off the utter repetitiveness of it all. There are only so many books in the world though. So many stories to be told.
Out there with no one else around, everyone asleep in their beds, your mind begins to race. You begin praying for something to happen. You imagine pulling up upon a raging inferno, the family screaming from the windows. You dream of happening upon a white van with no windows backed into the driveway of a house that you know the residents are gone from, masked men loading electronics into the back. You beg to see silhouetted figures, one on knees with hands up in fright, one with hands clenched together, the shadow of a knife facing downwards.
Just so you can have a really good story to tell. Something to come from the boredom you face everyday, besides paying the bills. How you raced into the inferno, pulling kids out as the fire trucks pulled up. How you watched from down the street as the police pulled into the driveway just before the white van took off. How you sat on the witness stand and pointed toward the defendant saying loudly, “It was him!”
The story you get however, isn’t the one you'd hoped for.
One moment it’s just another day, another paper to deliver, but as you look back to the road, your life changes. A white flash, all it takes to start a spiral. You glance up and a bright, glowing flash of a white… thing, flies across the road in a matter of seconds. The left side of the road where it came from was a deep valley yet it appeared to have come from no lower then the road, so it must have flew. It only took a second or less for it to be up the hill on the right side of the road and gone.
It’s at this point in your reiterating the story to family or friends that you’ll inevitably see eyes roll and hear countless theories. It was just a deer and you didn’t see it well. You were tired and your eyes were seeing flashes of light that weren’t there. You’re crazy.
This is however Michigan. Doing a paper route during all hours of the night you see endless amounts of deer. You can’t even keep count. None of these deer, however, glowed white, no matter how bright you had had your lights, and even if they had they wouldn’t have done so the entire time they went by, just as they passed in front of you. Not too mention you have never seen a deer move as fast as that thing had moved. You weren’t tired at all as well. You hadn’t started to doze, you didn’t feel tired, you showed no signs of exhaustion. As for the crazy, well, that’s for others to judge.
After it had passed you just stared in disbelief, forgetting what you were even doing. You always wanted a story of your own. A real life, in your life anyway, paranormal experience to call tell at will. Proof for all those years you had believed without any proof to offer. A reason to have believed all the Sylvia Brownes in life.
You didn’t realize that this was nothing. You didn’t realize what this would do to you. One moment your safe and ignorant and believe just because you want to believe. The next you’re grasping, clinging to any scrap of proof to prove your point, desperate to have something to show all those people who think your insane that you aren’t. You failed to realize that all this story would get you was ridicule. It started you down a life obsessed with what you thought was the necessity of proving to anyone and everyone that you are right, and what you saw was real.
One thing leads to another and before you know it…
Whoever said curiosity killed the cat wasn’t bullshitting you.
Whoever said ignorance is bliss wasn’t fucking around
P.S. I was definitely channeling Palahniuk when I wrote this.
Sappy
So, this is going to be extremely sappy. It might be because I've been up all night, but I feel like saying it.
Since high school, I've had no clue at all what I want to do with my life. I've gone back and forth trying to decide what degree I should be working toward and what career I should pursue. Luckily though, I found the woman I love very early. She was always very set on children. When this subject came up, I was always scared beyond belief. I knew I would want children, but I still had no idea what I was going to do with my life.
Now however, it's fairly obvious to me. I want to be a father first and foremost. Emmy has changed my life. Watching her play, and laugh and ramble in seemingly another language. When I get home after work and she sees me, and throws down whatever she was doing and runs across the room to me. When shes climbing up the stairs and stopping every few steps to make sure I'm still behind her, or holding my hand as we walk.
It doesn't really matter anymore what I want to do with my career, because I know what my life really is. My career is just simply a way to pay for that. I could do the worst job in the entire world and coming home to my children will make it all worth while.
2 Years
More Emmy Dancing
The band Fake Problems said that they wanted videos of babys dancing to their music. So I figured that would be a good follow up to my previous video of her dancing. Unfortunately she wasn't very into it and wouldn't stand up and dance like she usually does now because she was more intrigued by the ipod. Either way, here's the video that resulted.
The Cyclical Nature of Life
As suspected, my previous route in Ionia was essentially removed. I always thought I was immune to any talk of restructuring the routes because they would always go to the stores. I guess I never thought about them putting the stores on another route.
I wasn't abandoned though. I was offered one of the routes that they made out of all the foot routes in town. It's 4 or 5 of them made into a motor route, 2 of which were the foot routes I did as a teenager. So I'm back where I started, although it pays a lot more so I guess I can't complain.
Still, I feel like I'm on a sinking ship. Can't somebody please throw me a life jacket before I go down with the SS Paper Industry.
Joining the Breadline
Home Sweet Home Pt. 2
So, they didn't accept. First, they never called well past the 7 days they were supposed to call in however and no matter how many people I called there was no way to contact them directly. Then they finally called today and asked if we would go to $35000. Thats quite a steep jump from 20. We weren't going up any though, as we can't really. So they rejected. It's disappointing sure, but I'm sure we'll find another place. For now I'll concentrate on getting another job before the sinking ship that is the newspaper industry capsizes. I was looking forward to having a home to call our own though, and getting started on little Levi.
Home Sweet Home
I don't know a whole lot of this home purchasing stuff. Lots of terms and such that I don't fully understand, but as it stands we're working very hard to secure this house for our own. It went up for auction at the beginning of the week and we were the high bidders with the low low price of 20k. The house is definitely worth that, the problem is that everything we had set up before the auction for getting preapproved for that much money was based on getting an FHA loan. The auctioneer was kind enough to hand Zoe a sheet of paper stating FHA loans aren't accepted after she had already signed on the dotted line. We should be able to get a loan from someplace else and I have confidence it will all work out but needless to say its been a stressful situation. Why aren't homes selling in this terrible economy? Maybe it's because it's so needlessly complicated for first time buyers, people with lower incomes, and those that are self employed. Fix this shit Obama!
Emmy is Gangsta!
You have to start them on good music as early as possible. She was around 8 months here. She actually stops screaming in the car when I turn off the kids music and put on mc chris or They Might Be Giants.
