A Blog I Read

So, I've been reading this blog http://www.dooce.com/ for about a year now. She is very witty and funny, and is able to support her family with her site. Anyway, she changes her masthead once a month, and this month (which is also my name) it looked like this:



(Click on Picture to see it bigger)

I know, I know, I still need to lose like 20 lbs. of my baby fat, but did she have to announce it to the world?

It's Earth Day

I've always had a thing about wasting stuff, and I'm not quite sure where it comes from. I just have a hard time throwing things out. I'm not a hoarder, per se, but I would much rather see an item that is not useful anymore to be reused in some way or recycled, than end up in a landfill. As a kid growing up in New Hampshire, my parents saved money by taking their garbage to the dump on Saturdays instead of paying for the curb side pick up. We generally had 1-2 bags of garbage, and also a bag of things to recycle. The recycle bins were the first thing you saw when we drove into the landfill. I always had fun throwing the glass into the bin and hearing it crash inside. One day that we went, I found this little wooden school desk. It was perfectly in tact and we took it home. My dad sanded it down, and varnished it and we used it (until it was sadly stolen from my brother's garage many years later). I guess someone else out there saw value in it as well. And to think it would still be rotting at the dump had I not found it.

Sadly I think a lot of people in this world, and especially in this country, just have this attitude that the resources on this earth are never ending. Unfortunately, this just isn't the case, and we ALL need to do our best to reduce our global footprint. Many years ago I started to read a lot about the environment, and I started to make some changes in my lifestyle. One if which I started to recycle. Sadly, the town we lived in at the time did not offer a curb side recycling program, so I searched for places that I could bring my recycling to. In my search to be more environmentally friendly, I found out that eating meat is really bad on the environment. From the animal waste that gets piled up and contaminates our water, to all the water and other resources it uses just to get to my plate, I thought that giving up meat would be a really easy way to conserve.

Being conservative with our resources takes some effort, and there is always a balance with effort and convenience. I know that I have been more lax lately because I have fallen out of the habit of being more conscience of it, aka I've been lazy. However, with Earth Day today, and a new reason to care about the future of this planet (my son), I have decided to be more aware of my habits and start to change my habits to be more earth friendly. I also encourage everyone out there to look at their own habits and find new ways to conserve as well. After all we only have this planet to live on, we might as well care for it. Please Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.

Townhouse Drama

So, we countered the offer for 185 K, and the people countered back. The amount we ended up agreeing on was not as much as we had hoped for, but the reason their offer was so tempting was they put in their contract that they could close by the end of this month! This would give them less than 2 weeks to close. We are fairly skeptical that they can pull it off, but IF they can, that would save us another months worth of payments on that place. We have been paying for 2 households since mid-August, and who knows how far south the housing market will go this year?! We hear doom and gloom reports about it on a daily basis. Anyway, we will be so relieved to be done with the townhouse in more ways than one.

2nd Offer, Well 3rd Really

The first offer we got on our townhouse was a complete joke, they offered 80K below our asking price which was $229,900 at the time...we didn't even reply back it was so offensive! I guess it seems that people think since the property is empty that we are more desperate than we really are. I mean don't get me wrong, we REALLY want to sell our place. We don't like to make 2 payments every month, but we aren't going to sell so low that we end up losing $, or owing $, we aren't that dumb, or desperate (yet). The thing that was even more frustrating about this offer was the fact that we had decided to drop the price, but we wanted to wait until we saw their offer first. They kept telling our agent that they really liked the property, and they were really serious about it, and they were going to make a serious offer. They dragged it out for 3 weeks! Then they offer 150K, sorry, but in our area you can maybe buy an apartment style condo for that! So we dropped the price to $214,900, and started to get some more action. We got a second offer for $194,000, but we countered and agreed somewhere in the middle, but we aren't expecting this offer to go anywhere since it's contingent upon them selling their house. Anyway, last week we dropped the price again to $209,900, and we got another offer today for $185,000. This offer was based on the fact that another unit in our complex sold last year for this price. BUT, this unit was a foreclosure and the bank basically dumped it! The family that lived there left the place and took all the appliances with them, not to mention they did not have any updates, or the required block fence (all of which ours has)....so in a nutshell I feel that we are asking a fair price for this market, but I just hope that someone comes along and makes a fair offer....SOON!

Trying To Sell In The Real Estate Slump

We decided last year that we wanted to move from our townhouse. We felt it was time to move on. We really wanted our own yard for the dogs to play in, and future kid(s). We bought the TH shortly after we were married, and had enjoyed living there for the most part. We had entertained moving from the TH several times over the years, but when we looked at what else was out there, we decided that for the price, we had a great place. A few years ago we really did want to move on, but gave up after not finding anything we liked better. We decided to remodel the kitchen and baths, allowing us to make it just the way we want. We kinda ended up making it nicer than we should have because this time round we still had a really difficult time finding something we liked better. Finally, after 6 months of looking, we found the house that we LOVE. We went through it, put in an offer, and signed the offer all in the same day.

We moved in mid-August of 2007. It took a few months for us to move most of our stuff out and to get it ready to put on the market. We tried to advertise it on our own, but we got bombarded with agent calls. We figured we might have better luck selling with an agent, so we ended up signing with one in November. We originally priced it at $229,900, but unfortunately the combination of the housing market slump, the holidays, and the winter season, we did not get much action. We then decided to drop the price to $214,900. We did start to get more action, and we have received one offer, but it is contigent upon them selling their home. Last week we decided once again to drop it to $209,900. We are hoping to sell it soon because we have had 2 mortgage payments for nearly 9 months now! Our contract will expire in May with our agent, and we are anxious to move on from him. We have been quite disappointed with his service, and we feel we would be better off dropping our price and selling it on our own, and if that doesn't work, we will be much more experienced in finding an agent we want.

Blogging

So I've been blogging on myspace for almost a year now, then on facebook, and then after our baby was born I added my blogs to his totsite.

http://www.totsites.com/tot/4fayz

Then my blogs tended to be ALL about him, which is not a bad thing since he is such a great part of my life, but I thought, well maybe I need to have a place to blog about other stuff too....so here I am. There will still be a lot of blogs about Liam, I'm sure, but there will be random stuff too.

(Just had to add a picture, he's too cute!)

Wilhelmina

So what can I say about Wilhelmina...well, she is your typical Chihuahua. If you've ever owned one, then you know exactly what she is like. I “met” Wilhelmina on the day of our wedding October 13, 1998. I had a fish bowl that I wanted to put a pair of goldfish in to display at the reception. She was at the petstore in a box with a Minpin puppy. The Minpin was being mean to her, and beating her up. She was so incredibly cute, but being that it was our wedding day, I had to get what I came for, and go. I went home, and told my aunt about her while she did my hair. A couple days later I decided to return the goldfish to the store, and see if she was still there. She was! I mentioned her to Mike and one evening we were in the area and decided to see if she was there. She was! The Minpin was also still there, still beating up on her. We held her and decided to go get our kitty to see if she would be nice to him. She seemed to do OK with him, so we decided to get her. The kitty and her were about the same size when we got her. The kitty quickly started to get bigger though. We had Wilhelmina in a playpen when we were not home. The kitty could get in and play with her anytime he wanted. They had a love/hate relationship. We often came home to see 2 heads pop up out of the pet bed. The kitty put Wilhelmina in her place, which was good for everyone, since Chihuahua's tend to think they are the center of the universe. Unfortunately, the kitty had to find another home due to allergies, and all that he taught her about her place went slowly out the window. She now thinks she is the center of the Universe. She will bark at an ants fart...and thinks she can take on the neighbor's pitbull?! When she was still a puppy I took her everywhere with me including the grocery store. She was so adorable and small that nobody minded a dog at a store that sold food. Then when she got a little bigger, someone decided they didn't appreciate a dog at the store, so she had to stay home. She ended up growing to be a larger sized Chihuahua compared to most others. She weighs about 8 lbs., where most are around 3-5lbs. At one time she weighed 12 lbs.?! The vet was very concerned and recommended she be on a light diet food. Mike claims that he does not like Wilhelmina. He tells everyone that she is a horrible dog. But I know better because one day Wilhelmina got really sick, and we had to rush her to the emergency vet. They ran all sorts of tests, and could not figure out what was wrong. He was very concerned about her, and wanted her to get better! She did get better and she's still her Chihuahua-y self. Overall, Wilhelmina has been a fun dog, and regardless of her flaws we love her, and we think she loves us too.