Well, I did the home inspection this afternoon and it passed with flying colors. Best inspection he's done in a few weeks he said. Pretty much no major problems.. some cosmetic, but the seller was there and has already agreed to all the repairs. We review the report tomorrow afternoon sometime.
I posted some new photos of the amenites that the community has and I've rearranged the way the photos were organized on my Pbase site:
The first house located here was fabulous looking in person. When we get the CMA information back from our agent sometime today we're going to tell him to make the first offer. Quite nervous about the process, but we don't want anyone else to jump on this before we do.
Man, quite a gap in updates! House hunting will do that to you. I think close to every night and all last weekend were spent driving around Columbia. All the work may have paid off though when we drove into the latest subdivision we checked out. It's called Chestnut Hills and it's beautiful. We're primarily looking at two houses in that subdivision... there are links to them with photos (scroll down and click on Photo show for this property) here:
We are going to tour the houses inside in person probably tonight or Saturday. Then comes the real fun of going through pre-approval for the mortgage and working out a time frame of moving, ending our lease, etc. Tell you what, it's scary in a way... you kind of ask yourself, "What the hell are we getting into?"
I will really miss our view of downtown though, but I guess since I work on campus, I'll get to see downtown every day anyway. The commute to and from the subdivision wasn't bad either. We decided to leave work and go straight there to not only see the neighborhood, but to get an idea of what rush hour traffic was like. I've always thought the trip out I-126 towards Irmo was horrible myself, but everyone that lives out there has told me it's not really that bad. It only took 20 minutes to get there from Christina's building on campus. It takes us 5-10 minutes depending on lights to get to our current apartment about 2.3 miles from work. So, it's an increase, but the drive was really nice. You exit the interstate and have about a 7-10 minute drive through the Harbison State Forest and the road comes out of the woods right into the huge entrance of Chestnut Hills.
Good day... busy, but good. My boss Robert has been out all week on paternity leave (is there such a thing?) with a newborn baby boy. That's pretty much why it's been so busy. But the week has been going pretty well all things considered. Other than the Wings losing Game 4 and being swept by the Ducks, everything's been on cruise control and pretty good lately.
Walked the trail last night with Christina again. Needed to because we went to dinner at D's and I got the Wednesday night 24 wings and a pitcher of beer special. Always nice, but certainly needs to be walked off. It's the perfect time of the year for it and the water has completely receded now.
We talked about driving down to the beach this weekend, but since we're still peeling from the sunburns from last Saturday, it's probably not a good idea to get even more sun so soon. Frustrating too, because everyone in SC is tan it seems by mid-April. Girls in bikinis all over the Horseshoe on campus this afternoon on my way to lunch... damn students have too much free time! Course, I guess I shouldn't make that sound like I'm complaining... sometimes it's nice working on a college campus. heh.
Not a huge development, but we did start talking more about wedding plans the last couple days. How's that for switching gears in topics? Bikini-clad college girls to stuff about my wedding. Anyway, we've looked at a couple more places and Christina found a place in St. Thomas that gives you 5 nights free with a wedding package. It's an all inclusive resort & spa too and it looks really nice. Here's a link to the website for the place. Now, to figure out when and carve it in stone. It'll probably be an eloping thing, so most of the planning will actually be for the reception back home afterwards. Not sure when to have that, but we've talked about having it at the top of Finlay Park... they have a reception hall up there and it's a nice view of the park and Columbia skyline.
Carolina's annual Spring Game was yesterday and Christina, Jenn, Jen, and I went. A bunch of people from the Gamecock Nation message boards got together for tailgating before and after the game. It was a really good sized group that turned out and it was a lot of fun meeting everyone and putting faces with names finally.
Christina and I ended up so sunburned though... between that and the day-after-keg-beer feeling, it's been a long Sunday so far.
The actual game was pretty good too. Nice balance of offense and defense. I always say that you never really know what you want to see in a Spring Game because if your offense is good, maybe it's your defense that's horrible and visa versa. So, we just look for entertaining football... which, it definitely was yesterday. It was nice to be tailgating again and be at the stadium. Fall football season feels a long ways off though... can't wait.
Ahhh, and Detroit not only lost that game against Anaheim, they lost the second one too and are now down 2-0 in the best of 7 series. Time to start winning a couple, Red Wings!
Not a lot to say, but it's been a while since I've posted anything, so I figured I better put something up. Been too busy at work lately to spend time working on this... I know, what a shame.
It's been an even longer week thanks to the rain we've been getting. Every day since last Friday. And apparently it'll last until this coming Friday. As long as it's gone in time for the game Saturday. Carolina's Spring Game is this Saturday. Kickoff is at 1pm, but a big group of the people online @ the Gamecock Insiders message board are getting together for a tailgate party beforehand. Should be fun, everyone is bringing something food-wise and I think a couple people are bringing kegs. Maybe Christina should drive.
Not sure on the actual meeting time and place yet though... probably around 10ish at the fairgrounds I would imagine. Christina's going to make her Rum Cake and we'll bring that, beer, solo cups, garbage bags... and any other misc. supplies we can think of that they'll need.
Also, I've pretty much finished Cottonthekitty.com except for putting movies up there. I don't have many right now and they take up a lot of bandwidth for a site that's currently on Geocities. But, there are plenty of pictures there, so that's cool. Sad that one of my cats has a more up-to-date webpage than I do myself.
Detroit's first game in this year's Stanley Cup Playoffs is tomorrow night versus the Mighty Ducks (heh)! Go Wings!
Wow, what a quick Thursday. Pretty busy day, but fun for the most part. Set up a new HP Color Laserjet 2500n for one of our groups. A sharp looking color laser printer... lucky them. Spent most of the afternoon fighting with a PC out at Richland Hospital. It's wireless internet connection isn't working... a battle I get to continue tomorrow morning. Can't wait until we hire a couple additional people here soon.
Christina had a huge migraine and took most of the day off today. In fact, I didn't even see her really last night. Just once when she got up to get a bottle of water. I couldn't even imagine having a migraine that you have all day, go to sleep with, and wake up with again the next day. Hopefully some new drug treatments will be discovered soon and one of them will work for her. She's much better tonight, though she just said that she can't believe her head still hurts some.
Didn't go run tonight, went to Jin Jin's instead (chinese food). I'll spend the afternoon tomorrow lifting quite a few computers and monitors and setting them up for a new research group we have on Washington St. in downtown. That'll make up for it, right?
Faculty/Staff ticket applications started arriving today! $169/ticket for season tickets, plus whatever away games we might try to go to also. Kind of pricey, but since it's 8 home games this year, it's a lot of football and tailgating Saturdays (and maybe one Thursday night supposedly) for the money. After the recruiting success we had, the younger good recruits from last year improving and maturing, having a choice of a few traditional style, talented quarterbacks to play, and returning to the traditional 4-3 defense next year should really improve the season. I missed going to a bowl last year, hopefull we'll get more than 5 wins this season.
What a long, blah day. I hate inexplicable bad moods. All day I felt like getting out and running... ambition that doesn't come often. So, after work, I ran the nature trail, about 3 to 3.5 miles or so. It did wonders, that's all I can say. Still can't keep going the whole time and had to stop and walk a couple times. It's a bear getting back into cardiovascular shape. You never realize how bad it is until you go run in 80 degree weather.
Added links to a couple of online comic strips. If you're really bored, check them out or read them from the beginning. With Sinfest, you can click First Comic next to the current one and start from the beginning. Funny stuff...
A few Mic Ultras and a pair of cool VH1 shows (I love the 80's and Booty Call - a show all about booty) can sure make a night more interesting.
Btw, I'm evil... *twiddles fingers together*. (It's a thing Nicki does that's really funny... and perfect for today... April Fools Day.) Every year I say that I should have planned in advance. It would make the pranks so much better. I've thought of a few so far today already that I would have loved to have thought of earlier last week. Anyway, only did a couple things this year and neither were really great. I turned both the contrast and the brightness all the way down to 0% on my co-worker's monitor (very funny if it's someone who hasn't seen that before... takes them forever to figure out why their monitor is broken) and I condemned Jenn and Jen's house. Well, not really... see, they have a pretty kick ass house. I just forged a City of Cayce - Department of Inspections NOTICE that said the premises would be condemned if they didn't take action and I put yellow Caution Tape across their front door and drive way. Not as creative as I might have been if I would just learn to plan ahead a little. I'll have to work on that. It just seemed like a good one at the time since they JUST moved in and JUST got everything unpacked and such in their new place.
Here are some pictures: (click on them to get larger pictures)
Other than that, it was a pretty uneventful day. No pranks pulled on me or anyone else that I know of... if you know of some good ones, email me and let me know.
