January Poker Winnings

Well, it looks like my ability to make a little extra cash is seriously hindered. Neteller (member update) has stopped processing deposits and withdrawals into the different poker sites for U.S. citizens. Luckily I only had $400 in my account when they stopped. They say that my funds are safe, it will just take awhile before they can process it back to me. As per the updated resolution that I made on my June 26, 2006 post, I have withdrawn $400 of my goal of $500 from my poker bankroll this month. YTD=+400. '06-YTD=+$600. I am going to have to lower my goal to $200 per month until the online poker landscape becomes a little clearer. My next withdrawal of $200 from my winnings is due by February 28, 2007. Please continue to wish me luck and keep me accountable.

Go Bears!

(I had to post this one, it was too good)

This morning a Gary, Indiana kindergarten teacher explained to her class that she is an Indianapolis Colts fan. She asks her students to raise their hands if they are Colts fans, too. Not really knowing what a Colts fan was, but wanting to be liked by their teacher, their hands flew into the air.

There was, however, one exception. Susie had not gone along with the crowd. The teacher asked her why she has decided to be different. "Because I'm not a Colts fan" she reported.

"Then," asked the teacher, "what are you?"

"I'm a Chicago Bears fan," boasted the little girl.

The teacher asks Susie why she is a Bears fan. "Well, my Dad and Mom are Bears fans, so I'm a Bears fan, too" she responded.

"That's no reason," the teacher said. "What if your mom was a moron, and your dad was an idiot. What would you be then?"

Susie smiled and said, "Then I'd be a Colts fan."

Prayers Needed: Fatal Accident

It will be a somber day at The Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind today. "Reid Hunt, 32, died after [accidentally slipping and] falling down a series of ice walls near Old Stage Road, south of Seven Falls...Hunt was supervisor of student life at [CSDB] and oversaw athletics, dormitories and the transition program, said school spokeswoman Diane Covington. He had worked at the school for three years."

Lisa had met him and said that his wife Rona also works at the school. Please pray.

See this story for more: Local ice climber falls 170 feet to his death (where some people are leaving the most insensitive comments at the end of the story)

Day One: Searching For A Home

Yesterday was the very first day that we went out and looked at houses here with a realtor. We were able to look at five houses in the morning and another three in the evening. Lisa had her binder in hand and was taking meticulous notes on seemingly every tiny detail. We saw a lot of good things and a lot of bad things. By the time we arrived at the last house at around 6:30, we were ready to go home. Things changed.

I recently read something that because we are in a buyer's market, buyers are going through homes looking for things wrong in order to eliminate the house from the vast list of potential homes they have. That is what we were doing throughout the day. Trying to find things that were wrong. Some of these included: smell, dog next door, worn carpet, old kitchen counters, paint color, price vs size, backyard size, dated plumbing fixtures, old light fixtures, etc. We had a hard time finding things wrong with the last one we looked at. We really liked this one. Our realtor, perhaps jokingly, said that she had paperwork in the car if we wanted to make an offer. Since it was nighttime we could not get a good view of the outside or what the inside looked like with sunlight. We thought that it would be better to sleep on it and come back and see it in the morning.

Our realtor called the sellers' agent to see if there were any offers in the works. He said that there were people who had already seen the property three times. He was waiting to hear something back from them. This house had only been on the market for five days (a very short time compared to all of the others we had seen). It was definitely priced to sell at $315k. We felt that we needed to decide quickly.

Lisa and I were married less than a year after meeting each other. Lisa became a Catholic less than a year after first stepping into a Catholic church after we were married (I followed three years later). Our decision to homeschool was fairly impulsive after I attended a homeschool convention (on the spur of the moment). We decided to make this move to Colorado Springs after spending only three days here this past August. So, as with other important life changing decisions Lisa and I make, we took another leap of faith.

We decided to make an offer on the spot. It was a good thing that we did. Early this morning, the sellers received another offer (presumably from the people who looked three times). The sellers were able to look at both offers. We offered $5k below their listing price and the others offered list price with a $5k credit for closing costs. Basically the same bottom line, but the sellers accepted ours, even with the contingency of the closing on the selling of our home, scheduled for February 9th.

Hopefully everything will work out in the end. If it does, then we can move in on February 28th! We thank all those who have been praying for us.

This house was built in 1996 and has 5 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, a finished walk-out basement, 3040 sqft (about 1000 on each level), a huge 13598 sqft lot, incredible views of the mountains & the city, and is very clean & well kept (and on and on and on). I 'borrowed' the following photo from the realtor's listing:

Many Choices

We met with a local realtor yesterday. We are very excited about our dream home search. We have so many choices. Our first group of listings that we received had about 40 different homes to look at. That was after inputing a fairly fine filter on our search.

This is such a contrast to the last time that we purchased a home five years ago. The only thing that we could afford was the home that we eventually bought. I suppose that was an easier decision back then. Do we want to buy or not? Now, we need to narrow down the listings to a manageable number, look at the properties, compare the properties, then make a decision.

What a difference it is to be the buyer in a buyer's market rather than the seller. We are lucky that our home in LA was 'only' on the market for about 2 months. Some of the homes we have been looking at here have been on the market for over 6 months. You can get a whole lot of house here for $275,000. We are looking at homes as high as $350,000. We just need to prioritize what is most important: school district, new home, finished basement, living area square footage, lot size, neighborhood, price, drive time to work, etc.

I took a look at the sales statistics for the area. The average sales price for existing homes in 2006 was $243k, up 5% from the previous year. That is a big difference from Los Angeles where the average was around $500k. We made that right decision to move (another affirmation).

Pictures Are Coming

We have not been able to take any pictures since before we left California. We assumed that our digital camera was buried somewhere in storage. I was seriously thinking about buying a new one so that we could take some pictures. We have no photo documentaion of our transition to Colorado Springs.

I found the camera! It was with all of the karate gear. Lisa had taken it to their last karate class with Master Kwon. I kept the gear out of storage because I thought we might start karate here soon. We had it with us the whole time. Coming soon: Photos!

Accepted Offer

I received an email from our realtor that our counter offer has been accepted by the potential buyer. It was a long (in my opinion) negotiating process. There was the initial offer plus three more counter offers. Hopefully the negotiating phase in the selling of our home was not indicative of what our closing phase will be like. We are praying that we will have a smooth and fast escrow period and close.

Only in America...

Only in America.....do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.

Only in America......do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke.

Only in America......do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.

Only in America......do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage.

Only in America......do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.

Only in America......do we use the word 'politics' to describe the process so well: 'Poli' in Latin meaning 'many' and 'tics' meaning 'bloodsucking creatures'.

Only in America......do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering.

(unknown author)

Your Tax Dollars at Work II

Just got back from a trip to the post office. This was a different experience than the trip to the Social Security office (see previous post). When we walked in, there was no line, but there were 7 windows open! Granted, each window had a customer in it, so we might have walked in when they were trying to clear the line down. I would rather have too many lines open rather than too few. Although, the person who helped me did make a disparaging comment about my Chicago Cubs cap. He was a Pittsburgh Pirates fan so who was he to talk. And the clerk next to him (a dreaded Cardinals fan) had to pile on.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

We had to go to the local Social Security office yesterday because Lisa needed a physical card as part of her employment. The office opened at 9:00 AM, but they open the doors at 8:30 so that people can come in and take a number to be served. We didn't know about the early open, so by the time we got there at 9:00, there were at least 75 people waiting in the office.

They started with two windows open in the beginning, and I noticed that at most, there would be three windows open for business. Lisa was able to finish up her paperwork at around 10:45. She was on company time.

While we were waiting, a big truck pulled up to make a delivery. I was hoping it would be computers so that they could open up more windows. Nope, it was about 6-8 high back super-deluxe office swivel desk chairs. If I were to guess, they were probably around $250 each. If it were up to me, these particular federal government workers should be sitting on those $6 plastic chairs from Wal-Mart.

Well, now that Lisa is a Colorado State employee, she will not be contributing into the Social Security system. That is fine with us. We were not planning on receiving anything from it when we retire. So we are saving 6% of her pay in Social Security taxes. Thank God for small favors.

The Power of Punctuation

An English professor wrote the words: "A woman without her man is nothing" on the chalkboard and asked his students to punctuate it correctly.

All of the males in the class wrote:
"A woman, without her man, is nothing."

All the females in the class wrote:
"A woman: without her, man is nothing."

You decide which is the correct statement...

Harry Potter Book 7!

There is feverish excitement in our household as the title of the seventh (and final?) book in the Harry Potter series is announced: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Akeelah and the Bee

We all watched Akeelah and the Bee yesterday. I would recommend this movie. What was strange to me was the fact that of all the movies out there to choose from, Alex and Marisa wanted to see this one. It kept their attention throughout. Perhaps it was because Alex has an interest in entering a Spelling Bee. And Marisa looks up to her brother.

The movie is about a young girl living in a very 'tough' neighborhood in South Los Angeles. She has a gift of spelling. Hence the title of the movie. OK, I admit that the movie was very predictable and seemed to play up the different racial stereotypes a bit much. But it was very inspiring and there were many good messages and lessons throughout. You won't be disappointed.

from movie: "...Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." --Marianne Williamson (incorrectly attributed to Nelson Mandela in the film)

The Rambling Post

I haven't been able to post anything lately, but I have a little time now so I'll just ramble on (reflect) about the past few weeks.

We have been in Colorado Springs now for about 2 weeks. Even though the weather has been a little out of the ordinary (a lot of snow and cold), we are all in agreement that we made the correct decision to move out of southern California. The way I look at it, if this is the worst that it will ever get here in the winter, then we have been handling it well and we will be able to survive the 'normal' winters. That seemed to be the biggest concern for Lisa.

It is all about perception. We are temporarily living in a furnished apartment until our home in Harbor City sells, then we will have funds to purchase a home here. It is kind of funny that a couple of the 'locals' here have said to be very careful because we are living in a bad part of town. What? You do not know what a bad part of town is. In the LA area, this would be considered one of the better neighborhoods.

We have gotten a few offers on our home. What we have found is that the people interested in our home are looking for a starter home. Can you believe it? $390,000 for a starter home in Los Angeles. Offers have fallen through because potential buyers have poor credit or are trying to buy with no money down or just can't afford it. A starter home here in Colorado Springs would probably be around $150,000 or so (I'm guessing).

There is definitely a different culture here. I have noticed that (w/o exception) the people here are a lot friendlier. The employees in stores actually look like they enjoy their jobs. It shows. There seems to be a lot more teenagers working in positions here that would be taken by people working because they need the income to live in Los Angeles. For instance, in the grocery stores, the cashiers are young high school or college age kids. In LA, these positions are taken by people who have been working at the store for 15, 20, or 30 years.

Speaking of grocery stores, you cannot buy wine and they have a very limited selection of beer there. You must go to a liquor store. And because of the law, all liquor stores are closed on Sunday.

I have seen the following message on at least 3 different billboards around town: "Abortion is always wrong. --God." This is something that would be out of the ordinary in LA. It seems to be the norm here.

Lisa started her job on Friday. It seems that she will really like her job. I drove her into work during a snowstorm. I am getting used to driving in the snow and ice. We actually 'discovered' that our minivan has front wheel drive! Something that was not too important in a warm weather climate. We hit a major traffic jam on the way to work. Luckily we left a little early because of the storm and we got to her work in 10 minutes instead of 7.

Things that we still need to do (pray for us):
--sell our home
--buy a home here with at least 4 bedrooms and a big back yard.
--find a parish
--decide whether we will continue to homeschool
--continue to enjoy Colorado Springs' awesome scenery