Busy at Work

Currently Reading: Dune by Frank Herbert

You know spring is right around the corner when the snows start to turn to rain, the clouds clear away and the plants start to turn green again. This is a good time of year for me at work. Lately it's been a bit like the car wash after the snow melts. Lot of dirty dogs out there in need of a bath. This is also the time of year when dogs and cats start to shed their winter coats. I suppose you couls say spring begins for me when I welcome the first cat shave of the season. In that case, spring started yesterday.

Today provides even more evidence: 2 golden doodles, a rottwiler, an Australian shephard and a bichon. Suddenly, my slow week is not-so-slow.

All I can really say about that is: It's about damn time :-)

PS: blogging from the phone is a pain so I may not do it very often. Maybe just short blurbs.

Caught the Tenn Rep Theater production of Yankee Tavern. Great show. I'm going to have to get a copy of the script to see what I missed.

Mobile Blogging

Currently Reading: Dune by Frank Herbert

Well, I've managed to get my blog here linked to my mobile so hopefully when I have some spare time at work I'll remember to post short blog entries. CC also tells me you can blog via e-mail so I'll have to try that as well. I've already got twitter linked with Facebook so anyone who's following me on either of those pages will already see what's going on. I also added the little twitter box over on the side but honestly, I spend more time replying to the tweets of famous people than posting anything about what I'm doing at the time. Most of what I do is pretty boring.

I also tried to set up the deal here with sending pictures from the phone to the blog but according to Blogger the service is unavailable with my current carrier. It's probably one of those snobby iPhone things that requires AT&T or Verison. Doesn't matter though. I'll work with what I have now and try to remember to post pictures or links to pictures here from time to time.

More to follow after dinner . . . I hope.

The Big News!

Currently Reading: Dune by Frank Herbert

By now you may have heard the big news, but for those few of you who still haven't, CC and I closed on a condo today, right around 2ish in the afternoon. We've been working on this deal for a little while now, going back and forth with the seller about some minor issues, and we went through the whole mortgage process and all that and today we finally finished.

On the whole, it was a good experience. Nothing tremendously bad happened though it was a bit stressful on CC who hasn't been through anything like this before (they don't buy houses the same way in the Philippines as we do here).

Our agent was great. Got everything set up for us. The mortgage lender also did a great job explaining everything and getting all the paperwork done. Same thing at the closing with the title company. Everything went super smooth. We both got a bit of writer's cramp from all the signing of documents but otherwise, it went well.

About the best thing that happened over this whole process was us being forced to take a homebuyer's course. Initially I resisted this. Last thing I wanted to do was spend 8 hours on a Saturday sitting in a class on how to buy a house and blah blah blah. I mean, doesn't that just sound like about the dullest way to spend a day? We didn't have a choice though. Because this is our first house we qualify for all sorts of state and federal loan programs, great interest rates, help with the down payment, that sort of thing. Getting all of this means taking the course so in the grand scheme of things, losing 8 hours was worth it.

We actually learned quite a bit. Granted, a lot of it was common sense or things we'd already picked up from doing research on the internet but they were able to fill in a few gaps in our knowledge. In fact, CC and I were wondering why more people don't take this class before getting a home, even if they don't qualify for the assistance programs. You get quite a bit of practical advice and a really handy "how to buy a house" book.

Best part of the whole thing was probably the lecture by the home inspector. Now, these guys have pretty much seen it all. They go through all the houses and document what's wrong with them. They make recommendations on what to fix and how. They note anything that's not up to the current safety and building codes. To sit down with one of these guys and have him tell you exactly what to look for is SO helpful. He pretty much told us how to avoid buying a money pit. Right there, that's worth the time.

Anyway, now we're done. We've got the keys and everything. Tomorrow we start packing things up here at the apartment and Sunday we'll start trucking things over to the condo. It's not very far away. According to Google Maps it's only 5 miles. Takes about 10 to 15 minutes to get there, depending on traffic. It's about 10 minutes from where I work which means it will DOUBLE my commute time but I can live with that. (Probably had a lot of people making ugly faces at me on that one. A 10 minute commute!)

Pictures: you won't get any of those until we get settled in. Yes, we could go over there any time we want and get snapshots of an empty condo (like we did with the apartment) but I think this time we'll just hold off and post pictures only after we're done. You'll just have to be patient.

SO, if CC and I seem a bit distracted over the next week or two, if we have a bit less free time, don't worry. We're just moving again. And yes, we'll be sure to tell everyone the address.

Right, New Year, New Blog . . . Sort of.

Currently Reading: Dune by Frank Herbert

Ok, well I'm working on the idea of blogging more instead of just posting little blurbs on Facebook and Twitter. I'm not entirely sure if I'll be able to keep it up but I will try. I still have a few friends and family who don't use Facebook or Twitter and who also prefer seeing longer posts.

I've redone the overall layout of the page and gone with this brown template. That may or may not stay so if the colors change, don't be alarmed. They keep adding new graphics to Blogger so I may find something I like even more.

I'm also going to try and add more pictures and grooming stories. I'll leave out the names of the dogs of course and keep the stories more along the lines of general grooming advice. No reason to embarrass any of my current or former customers. (Generally CC polices this sort of thing. When she sees a message that she thinks might offend, bug, tweak, irk, etc. she lets me know and I either remove or redo it.)

I've also switched the bookshelves over to Shelfari entirely. This is mostly to save time but it also makes things look a bit prettier.

Oh, and I included a Twitter feed over there on the side so for those of you who don't have Twitter, you can read what I've posted there recently. Keep in mind though, some of those tweets are just replies to what someone else posted so I don't know that they'll all make sense. I follow a small and kinda weird group of celebrities and occasionally remark about something they said. Sometimes they reply, sometimes not. Mostly not though because they get way too many replies to actually read them all.

That's about it for now. LOTS of news of course but since it's already past 10 and I have to work tomorrow, I've got to get to bed. I spent a decent chunk of the day wrestling a very young, very friendly and very energetic golden retriever this afternoon (they're SO much fun) and I've got another one tomorrow so I need to rest up.

Night!