Sheep Guarding Llama

In theory today was supposed to be a holiday that I would get off.  We are treating it like a floating holiday at work as part of the market is open today and part of it is not.  I was on the list of people supposed to have today off.  That did not pan out.

I was up and online early this morning and found that there were a lot of people needing my assistance.  I ended up working all morning pretty frantically trying to keep up with the work until we had to leave at ten to run down to Coldwell to meet our Real Estate Agent so that we could go out to look at houses.

Before heading out to see the houses we ran over to McDonald’s to get breakfast.  Dominica was very ill from a lack of food this morning.

The houses today were generally much better than the houses that we had looked at in North Irving.  We are in Carrollton today for the first time seeing more than a single house up there.

All of the houses today were decently acceptable.  We pretty much ran through the list in reverse order of interest – just because that is how it worked out.  The first house was not a winner but wasn’t all that bad.  It had a horrible kitchen but some interesting living spaces that would have been pretty workable.  But it wasn’t going to make the cut so we moved on pretty quickly.

The second house was pretty good.  It was very inexpensive and pretty nice.  Up for consideration.  It didn’t grab us but it was a rather nice home.

The third house was somewhat more expensive and in rather poor shape but it was larger and very interesting.  It has some high ceilings, neat architecture and a very good use of space.  We were quite wary of it because of the amount of work that we would have to put in to really make it a house in which we would want to live which is not what we are going for at this point.  We do not tend to be in houses for very long so it is pretty important that whatever house we choose is one into which we are able to move right away without any additional hassles because those items that are a problem for us could easily never get addressed before we move out.

The four house is the one that we were most interested in.  Middle of the road in price and from the pictures it seemed like something that we would really like but you can never tell from pictures. We learned that lesson a few days ago.

We were both in love with this house from the moment that we walked into it.  We liked it pretty well from the outside as well.  The house and the grounds are in really good shape.  The house was built in the late 1970s and when you enter it you’d swear that you were stepping right into the 70s – the house feels new, but new like it is still the 70s which is very cool.  Everything is in perfect condition.

The living room is very large and just filled with light as there are windows all the way around.  There is a nice fireplace right in the middle of the living room.  The back yard is just what we want for Oreo and Liesl.  Big enough for them to use but well protected and safe and in good condition.  The kitchen is very dated, no getting around that.  Two car garage, outdoor atrium that is perfect as a formal dining room.  Three bedrooms, two baths which is not ideal but it will have to do.  A room just off of the living room that will likely service as the kids’ play room and den area.  There is room for our small dining room table in the kitchen’s eat in area which works out well.

One of the coolest selling features of the house is the complete bar that is at the back of the living room.  And I mean full. It is a bar meant to be staffed by a bar tender with a sink and plenty of space against the back wall and the normal serving bar in the front.  It has a fake roof for it on the inside of the living room and three small windows looking into the atrium.  It is a perfect place for all of our wine and coffee items.  We have always wanted a bar.

The house is a ranch which is what we want.  We do not walk small children or the blind Boston Terrier dealing with stairs unnecessarily. Just dangerous and we don’t like how they make the house feel.  Everything on one floor is the best.  I don’t like running up and down stairs every time that I need something.

We were decided in no time and put in an offer while still in the house.  It was around twelve thirty or many one by the time that we were all done house shopping for the day.  Now the long, drawn out Texas house bidding process begins.  Heaven only knows when we might actually hear something about the house.  We are very hopeful, this is the first house that we have seen that we really, really like.  The price is good, at the top of our desired range but less than five thousand over what we had said that we would spend so close enough that we are not fretting it at all.

On the drive back I timed the trip and in the middle of the day it took eighteen minutes to get from the house to the office in Las Colinas.  A lot farther than I had wanted to be but not a far commute like I was used to in New York, DC or New Jersey over the years.

After we got back I worked for the rest of the afternoon for the office.  No additional work on the house today.  I will have to go back into the real estate office tomorrow to sign some additional paperwork.

We ordered in some Domino’s pizza this afternoon and watched 30 Rock.  Overall we did very little today after the house hunting was done.

This weekend Dominica has been doing some additional research on houses that we are interested in and today there were two that came up in our searches that were very interesting indeed.  We decided that we were interested enough that we really want to get out and look at these.  We spoke to our agent today but she was not available because she was running an open house.  But since tomorrow is a sort-of holiday (which no one celebrates, thank goodness) we are going to go out tomorrow and see these houses instead.

Today was another day of playing Oblivion and just hanging out at home with the family.  I made great progress on Oblivion and I bet that I am nearing one hundred and ninety hours of game time at this point.

It is the beginning of the holiday weekend!  Whoo hoo.  This weekend is all about relaxing.

Today I spent much of the day playing Oblivion.  I am really making some significant progress now.  I am working hard on the Thieves’ Guild and on the Dark Brotherhood storylines.  I want to get those two wrapped up at a minimum before Fable III releases.  At the rate that I am going, however, it will be so long before I am ready to play Fable III that I might need to just hold off on getting it until I have some additional time in which to play it.  That will make me sad but I did get Fable II and play it with little baby Liesl sleeping beside me so maybe playing Fable III with the yet to be names Miller baby in a few months will work out well and be a sort of family tradition.  That would, in theory, give me time to complete both Oblivion and Fable I which I am only about halfway through at this time.  We haven’t even hooked up the XBOX 360 since moving to Texas.

Very little to report today.  We literally did effectively nothing.  I did a few hours of work, nothing significant.  Mostly just Oblivion, 30 Rock and playing with Liesl.

Like I often do on Fridays, I worked from home for a little bit this morning.  Then it was off of to the office.

Today was crazy busy.  I did manage to come home and hang out with Liesl over a very, very late lunch that I had to shorten considerably as it was so late that it was running into the evening deployment schedule.  So it was a rush back to the office and a very busy afternoon for me.  It was so busy, in fact, that I had to turn off my Microsoft Communicator at the office and tell people that I was turning down any work that wasn’t production support.  Exhausting.

After work, Watson came over from Dallas and picked me up then Jeff and Dan came along shortly later and we all went over to Blue Fish for happy hour.  This was my first time going to Blue Fish.  The place feels like a Manhattan (well, Queens or Brooklyn) bar but the drink selection was definitely Texan.  The food was really amazing though.  I ate a number of the happy hour samplers and that made a great dinner.  The salmon tar-tare was especially awesome.  I’ll be going back there again for sure.

I got dinner to go for Dominica and Watson dropped me home.  The evening was spent mostly just relaxing.  I did need to work a little bit this evening but mostly it was time for Dominica, Liesl and I to hang out and watch 30 Rock.

We’ve been doing some house buying research and have been finding some stuff that we are really interested in up in Carrollton and in Lewisville.  We are encouraged that the houses up there are looking even better than the stuff in Irving.  There are more houses in our price range.  And it is only about five minutes farther from the office and La Cima than we would be in Irving.  Farther than we want to be but not so far for it to be a problem.

Today, Dominica discovered a house that had just recently gone onto the market up in Carrolton that was way too cheap for the pictures that we could see on Trulia so we called our agent and rushed up there to take a look at the house.  We were hopeful that the house would be perfect for us.  The pictures online looked great and the price was amazing – so we knew that something was wrong.  It had to be.

This was our first time looking at a house up in Carrolton, a town that neither of us have even ever been in previously.  The guys at work had turned me on to Carrolton as a good option for getting houses in the area.  So we expanded our search to include that town and this amazing-looking house had come up on our radar today.

Before we even went out to look at the house we found out that it was a short-sale that is already under contract.  There was a chance to put in a backup bid, however, so we figured that it was worth our time to go look at the house anyway – especially as it would give us a chance to see the town as well.  So worth the effort either way, we figured.

The neighbourhood of the house was great – located on a quiet culdusac with rear alley access which is pretty nice.  The front of the house was awesome.  The inside was pretty good, lots of community space but small bedrooms.  The yard, which we had been pretty excited about, turned out to be mostly a disaster.  The house had shifted significantly and the patio and foundation had ripped apart.  The outside of the house was supposed to be the highlight and turned out to be where the most work and money would have to be spent.  Not what we were hoping to have found.

Our excitement was a bit tempered.  It was good that we came out to look at the house today but we are undecided, but unlikely, to put in a bid on it.  It is probably selling at a very good price but the overall house is just not well suited to us – especially the backyard dominated by a pool that we would have to completely fence inside of the small yard ruining the backyard completely.

Back to work, disappointed that we still have no plans for a house.  We need to find something in the next two months.

After work, at six thirty, several of us from the office as well as Dominica and Liesl went out to Las Nenas for dinner.  It was nice getting out with the work crowd and my family as well.  We had a nice dinner but were not out very late.  We left the restaurant at nine.

Dominica had some shopping that she wanted to do at Target so we headed there.  Our most important purchase was a new set of cordless phones for the house.  Our old set has been driving us insane.  They have not been working at all for months now.  When someone calls they will ring but the moment that you attempt to answer them the phone itself will crash, likely due to battery issues, and reboot itself so you have no way to answer the call.  It used to be a matter of careful battery management and learning to answer the phone very, very quickly.  But now there is pretty much nothing that we can do to get it to work.  So we bought a new set of phones.

I finally bought the Apple iPad that I have been eyeing for a while.  I got the WiFi only, 32GB model.  It seemed the most practical model for me.  I don’t plan to use it while traveling extensively, 32GB is a good amount of storage and I didn’t want too spend too much on a first tablet as it remains to be seen how much user we will actually get from one.  I anticipate quite a bit but that might be quite premature.

I sent up the iPad tonight and am already loving it.  Using it while sitting on the couch is better than I had thought that it would be.  Almost instantly Liesl got interested in it and started playing with “My First App” which is a cute colour-matching video game designed for toddlers that only cost $.99.  She was able to use it the moment that she saw it.  The touch screen interface is perfect for toddler hands.  This is going to be an amazing learning tool for her.  Way better than the junk that they make dedicated for toddlers.  This is a high quality, general purpose device with good toddler content available.  We are very excited to see how the iPad and iPod can be used for her education.