i am surrounded by coughing today. last week, everybody in the office was out due to illness. today, everyone is back in the office, still sick. the office is peppered with coughing everywhere. i’m trying very hard not to breathe.

we met with our agent this weekend to do the final walk through for the house and on our way to the house, i get a call from the agent and he tells me, “there’s a problem.”

my heart sank. was there a problem processing the loan? is the house on fire? what could it possibly be??

it turns out that the owners of the house were currently occupying the house. WHAT?? the house was supposed to be empty 5 days prior to the close of escrow so they shouldn’t be there anymore. it turns out that the selling agent didn’t make this clear and the sellers were just hanging out in town for a little bit before leaving back to their other home.

we ended up canceling the inspection and rescheduling it for later. so that’s going to happen later this week. it should just be a formality, but while we are there, i think we are going to take some measurements to see how much carpet there is in the house and where we can put some furniture.

there’s something going around the office and people are dropping like flies. in my row of cubes, there are only two people who are in the office out of eight! the other person is showing signs of illness, too. things don’t bode well. it’s an epidemic, i tell you!

i’m trying to avoid everyone in the office. i don’t want to get sick. just thinking about it makes me feel a little sick. =P

today is the signing of all of the loan documents for the house. crazy as it sounds, i’m excited about it. sure, i’m basically saying that i’m gonna be in debt for a bazillion dollars for the rest of my life, but this is just one of those big milestones that you have to sit back and appreciate.

or you just completely freak out.

i was driving to work today and at the on ramp to the freeway was a homeless guy who was begging for money. what set this guy apart from the others was that while he was holding up his cardboard sign asking for money, he was listening to music on his ipod! there’s something wrong there.

so we’re in escrow now.

the above statement carries with it so many implications it’s hard to know where to begin.
1) we have to pay a lot of money to buy this house.
2) we no longer have any money. =P
3) we have to clean up and furnish this house now…did i mention that we have no money?
4) we still have a wedding to pay for…how that works out, i’m not entirely sure.
5) but mostly, i’m always left wondering, where did all my money go??

still, having a house is exciting. we get keys next week if everything goes to plan. hopefully a few weeks after that, we’ll have all of the things that need fixing fixed up. my mom doesn’t have a lot of faith in my home improvement skills. i guess we’ll have to see just how much i remember!

outside of the house stuff, wedding planning is still moving along fine. we’ve still got some time left so there’s not too much stress there.

i’ve been working on a new gallery and posting some new pictures up that have been waiting forever to see the light of day. hopefully that’ll be coming soon.

it seems like it’s been more stress than fun lately. i need to bring the fun back into my life. yes, i do. fun fun fun now that daddy took the t-bird away…

man, i have been watching way too much grease you’re the one that i want! that show is great though. i’ve been struggling lately with tv. i think that i’m all caught up, which seems ridiculous with the amount of tv that i watch. it’s almost physically impossible for me to ever catch up. i don’t get it.

i’ve decided to leave my monday night team. i think that i’m going to make mondays more of an activity day for me. maybe it’ll be the return of the bowling night. i think that i’m going to start hiking again, too. i’ll see if i can start a few hikes after work. with daylight savings upon us, i should be able to get out with enough light for a hike. i remember when i used to love hiking. i don’t know what happened to those days. i think i just got lazy.

next week i will be in ORLANDO. i will be staying at a hotel in the disneyworld complex, i believe. it should be interesting. i’m trying to get myself into some VIP parties while i am there, but trying to qualify as a VIP is much harder than one would think. you’d think that at tradeshows, being a VIP just means that you need to be breathing, but apparently that’s not the case. i’m going to be bringing my camera with me. i struggle bringing the behemoth of a camera because it’s such a pain to carry around, but i think i’m gonna do it. it’ll be worth it. i haven’t taken a picture in MONTHS.

there has been SO MUCH WORK lately in preparation for this show. we are doing really cool stuff, though, so i think that makes it worthwhile.

i had dinner with dardy the other day at the new mexican place on castro street. the burrito i had was DELICIOUS. delicious if you are into SUPER GREASY burritos. man…all that grease…is the word…

i don’t think that i can have a burrito like that again…i’ve been trying to eat more healthy lately. i’m not sure how that’s really going yet, but we’ll see.

oh man…i still have pictures from the cayman islands i need to post.

what has been going on lately? well, last week, i found out that i had to travel to the east coast for work. things have been nuts at work, so i’m trying to wrap up so that i can fly out. tickets are purchased, hotels are reserved, and i’m all set to go.

i get out to the east coast for what was supposed to be a two day trip (1 day travel, do the meeting and fly back that night). what ends up happening though is that the meeting gets postponed and we miss our flight back. so we book for the next day and i swear, i don’t know why, but after leaving the hotel a little before 8AM, i don’t set foot back into my apartment until 6PM. flying back to the west coast isn’t supposed to take this long!

the trip went well, the east coast is ridiculously cold. it snowed while i was there. brrrrr. cold. what possesses people to live in that kind of a climate, i just don’t know. seriously. what is the deal? i know, i know, i’m a big wimp, but i’ve been spoiled with california weather. i take it for granted sometimes, but it is trips like this that really make me appreciate what i have.

speaking of things that i have, what i don’t have anymore is money. yeah, christi and i made an offer to buy a house and with that offer, we put 3% down. i wrote the check for the 3% down and let me tell you. that is the biggest check i’ve ever written in my life.

i told christi that it was only after having met her have i ever written checks in the five digits before. she is an expensive girl! heh, i jest. i’m not sure what’s going to happen with the offer, but i’m hoping for good things!

we’ve finished up our marriage prep for the church so i think we’re all squared away there.

so let’s see, job, house, wedding…what else is there to talk about? oh yeah, i’ve caught up on all the tv that i’ve been missing and i now have nothing to watch. isn’t that amazing? nothing to watch at all. that’s just dreadful. i’ve even gone as far as to start watching BRITISH tv shows. that just goes to show you my level of desperation for some tv content.

so after being so busy for so long, i still have another business trip coming up at the end of the month. sheesh. all this hard word better pay off! i’m starting to get tired.

i feel like i haven’t blogged in forever. it’s probably because…i haven’t really blogged in forever.

things here have been crazy. wedding planning has slowed, but the house hunting is back in full swing. we’re looking at a house that we want and we’re taking the steps to make an offer now. hopefully we can get all of this paperwork done and we’ll see what to do from there.

on to other things, i hung out with geoff the other day and he told me about his honeymoon and what steps he has to take now that he is married.

ah, married life. i was recently told that in general, guys get married thinking that things will stay the same, but girls get married thinking that things will change. what a conflict that that could be if that is the case. i think that christi and i have talked about things and i don’t think that we would expect things to change too much.

i think that things do change when kids are involved, though. kids. man, i can’t believe that i’m thinking about kids.

so hopefully within the next month or so we’ll have a house. that’ll be exciting. i wonder how much money we will spend trying to furnish the house. i think that we may have to go with a minimalistic style of home decor, not so much out of personal preference as it is that we still have a wedding to pay for!

this weekend was filled with work. among all of the other things going on, i have a lot of work that i need to do for a product launch at the end of the month. it’s crazy. the only nice thing is that i will be flying out to orlando at the end of the month for the launch/tradeshow. i’m hoping to get some R&R during the trip. i’m not sure if i will be able to explore much while i’m out there, but i’m hoping that i’ll be able to do a little bit.

i never thought that a mouse and keyboard are things that i had much preference about. a keyboard is a keyboard and a mouse is mouse. you click buttons on the keyboard, letter appear. it’s all pretty simple. the mouse moves around and the pointer moves. all simple again.

but lately, my cheap dell keyboard has been having sticky keys. i suspect it is because of the construction of the keyboard and the dust around my place. the tracking ball in the mouse is gathering dust in the mouse and it’s now skipping around.

so i have finally broke down and ordered a keyboard and mouse. it’s supposed to come soon and i wonder if it will really make as big of a difference as the price of these items would suggest. we’ll see!

sometimes you just never really know how much you were lacking in life until one day something happens that just fundamentally changes your life. my life changed recently in such a fashion and now it’s going to change back.

i got my GPS last week and it has been wonderful. there is a problem with the GPS so i’ve contacted support and we’ll see if they can resolve the issue at hand. but that means that i am going to be without GPS for a week and the thought of that is just crippling. i don’t know how to get anywhere anymore with it. i’ll feel so lost.

many months back i was very excited about my PUR water filter. i was excited that it was a better filtering system than the brita filter due to its 2 stage filter. it got rid of all of these micro-nasties and it was all good.

now, 6 months later, i realized that i haven’t changed the filter…ever. i know, i know, gross! it’s ok, though, i don’t drink much water at home. instead, diet coke seems to be the drink of choice while i’m at home. but i went to target today to pick up a new shower curtain and passed by the water filter aisle. i decided to buy new water filters and when i got home, i replaced the filter.

the water tastes just oodles better now! go figure, huh? i need to find some way to remind myself to change the filter because the slow and gradual change in water quality wasn’t noticed by me all these months.