Month: November 2007 Page 1 of 2

We have been working very hard getting ready for the second trial run with a big customer at work.  The algorithms I am developing are critical to the success of the product.  I have been at my new company for six months now and we have made great progress, but we do not yet know if it is good enough to meet the aggressive goals set by our customer.  We will find that out between now and the end of the year.  My alloted time for input into the system is now over, so I will move on to work on other ways to improve our product for future opportunities.  I have enjoyed my work very much in this new position and done everything possible to get the system to where it is.  We all believe that we will hit our goals, but we do not want to count our chickens before they are hatched.  It is nice to have this part of the project wrapped up with an opportunity to start on the next project with a clean slate.

This weekend, Christian and I are going to work on the cat tower some more.  We would really like to get it finished before we move into the new house.  I will try to shoot some video of it, too.  As for Kelly, I am hoping to film another recipe with her this weekend.  It was so much fun to do the first one that I want to follow it up with something else, now that we know a little more about how to do it.  Maybe we will able to get the last one completed so we can put it up on YouTube this weekend, too.

Today, Lorena and I are going to meet at the DMV to get our vehicles registered.  I have this theory that the culture of the DMV is the most monolithic culture, certainly in the United States, but probably in the entire world.  There is NOTHING different between what we have experienced in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Oregon, North Carolina, Monterrey, or any place else where we have had dealings with the DMV.  It is amazing how disinterested the people who work in such places are about providing the service they are paid to provide.  I think the joy derived from visits to the DMV rank right up there with joy derived from dealing with those who sell insurance and automobiles.  Fortunately, we do not have to do this often.

Kelly had a little bit of a sore throat last night so we stayed home together while Lorena went to work out at the gym with Christian.  We had a great time.  Kelly chatted with a couple of her friends on the computer, called a friend from Oregon and just generally filled me in on what was going on while I worked on finishing Christian’s homeschool schedule through the beginning of next year.  I finished Kelly’s schedule over last weekend.  We got all the leftover stuff from the turkey Kelly and Christian cooked on Saturday, put it in a pot with water and put it on the stove to simmer for the night.  On the way home from her workout, Lorena got some garlic cloves and a few other things to put into the soup.  It is going to be great!

We were supposed to go to the Spanish language bible study last night, but we had so many things going on we missed it.  I always feel bad about that.  The studies have really been great.  I met with Über real estate sales guy Joe after work to pick out the last of the appliances that will go into our new house.  By the time I got home, it was too late.  We spent the time working through the kids math.  I still have a good amount of corrections waiting for me tonight.  I am trying to get all the homeschool planned for the rest of the year so that I can have some free time to work on the move.  Things are starting to fall into place, but we need to not get too excited until the time comes to actually make the move.

We received a great old photo from my old travel partner, Bryan along with some Thanksgiving wishes.  It is of Kelly and Grandpa Milo with one of Aunt Julia’s products.

Kelly and Grandpa Milo

We had an absolutely fabulous Thanksgiving this year.  First, our favorite football team (whoever is playing the Ducks) won.  Warren made his annual trek to have Thanksgiving with us.  He went with us to hang out with the Steljes family for a couple of days, eat way to much food, and just have a great time visiting with everyone.  When we got home, we decided that we really needed (NOT!!!) to cook another turkey so we could have some leftovers to make turkey soup.  Warren and I ran down to the Harris-Teeter to find the smallest turkey we could find.  We found one a little over twelve pounds.  Then we had the surprise of our life.

I wanted Kelly and Christian to cook the turkey on their own so they could know how to do it.  Not only did they do that, but they cooked mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli, and dessert.  They even made some great turkey gravy with the drippings from the turkey.  To top it off, Kelly did the vast bulk of the cleanup all by herself!  Wow.

Then yesterday, we all went to a potluck with Lester and Esther.  Again, there was WAY to much food.  We had curry chicken, stuffed jalapeños, ham, and Kentucky Fried Chicken.  What a great time for a potluck:  right after Thanksgiving.  Christian got to play with Hunter and Sterling and there were a bunch of other kids there, too.  We saw Warren off at the airport and then rolled ourselves in bed.

My friend, Warren spends Thanksgiving with us every year.  He will really be the first person beside Mom and Dad to visit us here in North Carolina.  We are going to pick up him up at the airport right after work and drive to the Charlotte area to spend the night and Thanksgiving day with Robert and Terrie.  It should be a great time.  There will be a Columbian family there and a bunch of Robert’s family.  Lorena is taking shrimp and pies.  It is going to be a super time.

As part of the deal to get our new house, we were able to get the builder to change the appliances out for exactly the ones Lorena wants.  The number one thing she wants is a Thermador cook top with a vent.  We do not have room in the kitchen design for a 36″ cook top with a grill like we had in Oregon, but the 30″ one should work just fine.   Of course, we will want the blue knobs, not the stainless ones shown below!  I hope we can get it all worked out.

Yesterday, we got a phone call from Über Real Estate agent, Joe telling us that the builder had signed off on everything.  All I have to do is put my initials on the paperwork and we have a house.  We are very glad that is all over.  Tomorrow, I will go buy the new appliances the builder has agreed to install as part of the deal.  Some of our friends have a big truck and have offered it to us to help us move.  Everyone has been so AMAZINGLY helpful.  Last night after our gospel meeting we went out for an ice cream cone with a couple of families of kids at Ben and Jerry’s.  As a good republican I tried to lead us to a Dairy Queen, but we could not find one so we had to settle for that other stuff.  We have our ministers, Ian and Robert staying with us for a couple of days.  They are great guys.  Life is all good.

In the middle of all that, Christian took an awesome picture of the view out the back window of the place we are renting.  It almost makes us not want to leave.

Christian’s photo of the lake out our back door

I will post a link here, later today of the how-to video as soon as Christian finishes it.

Kelly and Christian eat the homemade bread

This weekend, Kelly and I have decided we are going to do a trial run on our braided bread.  We are going to try to get Christian to record it all on video, edit it together into a video with titles and music, and then put it up on the YouTube “how to” section.  We are planning to do boiled egg bread with sesame seeds.  Kelly is going to get all the stuff.  Kelly, do not forget to get the SESAME SEEDS!!!

The NEW plan for weekend bread making!  Click here.

Well we got most of the problems worked out in trying to move into a new house.  There are a couple of sticking points left, but we have to have them worked out in the next couple of days.  We are very excited about the move.  I am hoping to get back to work on some cool projects with Kelly and Christian over the next little while so that we do not have such a bland blog.  Kelly and I have decided to try to cook up a batch or two of bread before Thanksgiving while Christian and I will continue to work on the cat tower.

I am proposing to Kelly that we make this bread.  Braided bread is the best and you cannot go wrong with sesame seeds.  If we make up 7 or 8 loaves of this for Thanksgiving, I bet they will all be eaten before I go back to work on Monday.  What do you think Kelly?

We went out and looked at some other houses last night.  It helped us confirm that we really like the one that is by the community college.  We made more progress toward getting the purchase worked out.  In the meantime, we have been working to keep up with homeschool, exercise, music lessons, etc., etc.  After the house purchase either works out or falls through, life will be way busier than will allow me to write much, but it should all be over one way or the other in a few more days.

Well, well, well.  We were quite surprised yesterday evening to get a phone call from our Über Real Estate agent, Joe.  He said, that after a lot of posturing, the builder of our new house wanted to sell us the house we want for the price we want, but he wants us to give him 1300 sq. ft of the our lot to give to the house next door so it will have a little better back yard.  The price of the house is now about where we think it should be, but there are two problems:  We do not mind giving up the 1300 sq. ft. to help the builder if he gives us 1300 sq. ft. some place else to make up the difference.  In exchange for that flexibility, we want him to change out the appliances in the kitchen for the ones we really want.  We would contribute the difference in price for the exchange of the appliances if he contributes the labor to install the appliances and run the duct work for the range hoods.

We think it is a very good deal for him and an OK deal for us, but if the builder is amenable to doing it that way, we want to look at the lot line changes before making the deal.  The builder wants us to close before the end of November.  That means we could be in the house before the holidays.  Joe is taking the deal to the builder’s real estate agent and we are waiting for a call from Joe.  It could be an exciting day or it could put us back to square one.

We had a fairly odd weekend.  We spent most of it running around looking at houses.  We picked one out that we liked, made a good offer on it, happened to run into the builder when we were looking at it, and then had the whole thing fall through because the builder wants to change the property line to give an odd chunk of the land to a neighboring house.  He did not say anything about that when we put the offer in on the house.  It only came up after the fact.  The deal is not dead yet, but it has a very erratic heart beat and is breathing very shallowly.  That is OK.  We have found that there are lots and lots of great deals out there.  Our real estate agent, Joe is awesome.  He works very hard and really advocates for us in a way that is beyond professional.  Joe was born for this kind of work.  The good news is that we can wait as long as necessary to get the right house.  We have a good rental that is closer to my work than we will be able to buy so there is even an upside to that.

The really good part of the weekend was that we had a great time at lunch after meeting on Sunday.  We got together at a Mexican restaurant named La Rancherita with a young couple from our meeting.  They are engineers (well, one of them is a computer scientist, but that is close enough) and seem to be kindred spirits.  They do computer junk and even write some code when they need to.  Kendall runs a Free BSD server at his house.  How cool is that?  Linux is great, but, if you are a hacker, Free BSD is truly the choice of purists.

Unbelievable. I rarely get the chance to see the kids swim anymore. Right now, I am sitting at the health club to which we belong watching the kids swim laps. It is truly amazing. It seemed just like yesterday that I was watching them struggle to swim the width of the pool. This is a twenty-five meter pool. Both of the kids will have swam 33 laps (down and back 33 times = 50 yards per lap * 33 = 1804.461945 yards = 1.02526246875 miles. WOW! That is over a mile of swimming! VERY impressive. No way I could do it. I think Aunt Alma could. Not me. It is very impressive to have done this. Their form is nothing like I ever remembered. I am glad we started them swimming early. It was a gift my mother gave to me. I am glad that it was something I could give Kelly and Christian.

Even though the builder has not yet accepted our offer, we are very excited about the idea of getting into a new house.  Right now I am at the Holly Springs Public Library drinking coffee (of course) and writing in the blog.  In a little bit, we will make the critical drive from here to the new house to see how long it takes.  It is not that we will quit coming here if the drive is longer, it is just that it will be fun to know.  My working theory is the drive is about the same, but we will not know until we punch it into the GPS, hop in the car and make the drive.  The house is on a lot that is more than twice as big as the Albany house lot.  The house has a much bigger kitchen, is newer, and in a much nicer setting with a better view than our old house.  We hope we are able to get it.

We are going out with Joe one last time to look at the house we want and to look at two or three others just to be sure that we are picking the right one.  If our offer is accepted, we will post a link to some pictures of the house.  We are very excited about the whole thing.

We have pretty much decided where we want to buy a house.  We even know which one we want.  Still, there are a lot of nice houses in that same neighborhood that would be fabulous for us.  We were going to look in a couple of other neighborhoods, but when we found that the community college is only about ten minutes away, we decide this area would be about as good as we could ask for even though the commute to my work is a little bit further.  Kelly will be starting at the Community College next year, probably for only one class per term, but Lorena will be going there, too, so it will be very convenient.  These houses are quite a bit nicer than the one we had in Oregon and on lotsWe will put a photo up as soon as someone accepts our offer.

Last night, Lorena, Kelly, Christian, and I all went out looking at houses.  We saw seven or eight of them of which there were two that we really liked.  The one Lorena liked best was really only a single story house.  There was a big bonus room above the garage that has a full bathroom — a very cool feature, but we would probably do most of our living downstairs.  Like all of the houses we can afford, this one has only and electric range.  Lorena really wants her Thermador with blue knobs and an electric griddle.  I cannot blame her.  We are going to ask the builder to change out the range for an oven stack and add a ventilator and the Thermador cooktop, add garbage cans in the cabinets, screen a section of the porch, and add a double mud sink in exchange for finishing the deal by the end of the year.  We think they will go for it.  We will keep you posted.

We have started another house hunting binge this afternoon.  We believe there might be an opportunity for a good deal if we are willing to finish the deal before the end of the year.  That would really be nice.  We are getting a little antsy to get into our own place.  As soon as we find something we will try to post it here.

Congrats to Cousin Trisha!  She passed her board exams for her field and there is nothing now in her way to get into grad school!