blarg

so if you cant tell by my 5-6 month absence this year, ive either been busy, pre-occupied, or lost interest in this thing... im not entirely sure which is the winner. some morbid manifestation of them all? perhaps.

[cincy.house]
most of you are pretty up to date because one of the main reasons i started this thing was to update my long lost family back home on the status of the house and cincy in general [this was before the name change & relocation obviously] since relocating, i talk to most of you much more often and we discuss these things more often. but i suppose there are perhaps those of you out there that have read this blog from afar or perhaps dont stay in such close contact with me - to you, i do apologize, and will henceforth briefly update you.

the short answer is that nothing has happened. we finally finished reconstruction the last day of september, and we've paid everyone everything we owe them. we put the house back on the market, but had no interest worth mentioning in it since [nearly two months now?]

the crazy girl has popped up over and over and in the last 6 months we were forced to retain legal services and subsequently pay a shit-ton [i think thats metric] of money for essentially nothing. about every two months she pops back up with some nonsense amendment or letter that we have to pay to have our attorney, yet again, squash, disprove and render pointless... and then she disappears for two months.... i guess its about time for more of her nonsense? who knows. who cares. shes certifiable.

other than that, we discussed at great length the option of renting the house and have since gone through all the necessary paperwork and such to hire a property management company to handle things and get it rented out. they have another couple of weeks to find a tenant before the 45 day deadline - that come to think of it, i have absolutely no idea what happens after it expires. they seem certain that they can find a tenant before their time is up, so here's hoping they are correct. if we do manage to successfully rent this thing out it would cancel out the payments we're still making on it and in the end actually service as a modicum of additional income - sweet!

and that my friends, is the house update. such as it is.

[work]
work is good. staying moderately busy working on a handful of things. i still really enjoy my job and the freedom its granted me in addition to the obvious benefits of being gainfully employed. no worries here, i appear to be quite secure in the continued availability of my position as well as the continued happiness of my superiors. time and again i appear to have exceeded their expectations and they continue to assign me more responsibility, more respect, and more inclusion in things than i ever really could have imagined. as far as fellow employees go, i honestly like everyone ive met and have reoccurring contact with. there are certainly a few here or there that tend to have less than ideal personalities, but hey, to coin a common cliche - thats why they invented 32 flavors, eh? i dont mind. if im having a day where someone or someones are becoming an annoyance for whatever reason, i can simply turn up my headphones, shut my door and drown out my surroundings while i work away in the comfort of my office. [well, until i start to cook and have to allow in some ventilation, but those are sufficiently spaced intervals.] in summary, work is good.

[everything else?]
not really sure what to say. i could update you all on my wifes life, but really, shouldnt she be doing that? i dont really have the inclination.

||gadgets||
i did get a new toy for my birthday last weekend - yes, you missed it, and i'll only forgive you in the wake of lavish gifting - a kindle fire. you've probably seen them in the news, theyre supposed to be one of the most popular gifts this holiday season and are expected to be the only realistic rival to the ipad2.

i can say that in the few days ive had this thing it has completely abducted me. i am engulfed in its intricacies and discovering what all it has to offer. the main reason i wanted one was for games, movies, and books to take along on our cruise in a couple of weeks and so far im not disappointed in the offerings.

i havent yet started to purchase books for it, but ive done extensive wish listing on amazon and will soon make some decisions about purchase. the quality i can get in video is more than satisfying although i havent yet figured out how to get movies/tv shows directly to the device instead of streaming from the cloud... [apologies for all the tech-jargon if youre clueless] and lastly the games.

ive never been too terribly into mobile device gaming, but im starting to understand it a little better. other than a few word games that were mostly encouraged by the wifey, i hadnt really found any games that interested me much on them. oh sure, i test drove a few and they were fun for a little while, but after about 5 minutes, i was bored with most of them. not that i really have a ton of time for gaming anyhow, but its certainly part of the device experience these days. well, since acquiring my fire, ive found a few games im really enjoying. one is a pinball game that really took me back to pinball on our old win95. man its been years since i played that, but i rather enjoyed it then, and had a good time tinkering with it on the fire the other day. and then last night i really found some winners. i rediscovered mahjong [again, probably not since win95] and had a good time cussing it as i relearned the game, and even better was a crossword puzzle game. never been huge on crossword puzzles, but this proved to be very enjoyable as karen and i teamed up and spent a solid hour or two trying to solve the puzzles. we dont really play a lot of games together and this was actually a lot of fun for me, so that seems like a winner.

other than that, karen seems to be a bit annoyed with the thing, and im afraid shes starting to regret gifting it. i dont feel like ive really been playing with it to the extent of ignoring her or neglecting my husband-ly duties, but she certainly seems off-put whenever i pick it up. im not sure why really, but im obviously not seeing things from her perspective. honestly, im just really enthralled with figuring out all that it can do and how it does it, and once the newness and the mystery wears off, im sure itll be less enthralling, and hopefully less intrusive. either way, i am enjoying it. =]

||house||
the only other item i really feel inclined to comment on is houses. not the one in cincy though, here in houston. for those of you that dont already know, karen and i have taken a serious look at things and have decided we are ready to buy in houston, and as such, have begun the process. we met with a mortgage adviser at our bank and found out that i have awesome credit and we've been unofficially approved for a more sizable  mortgage than i had ever expected and with a very reasonable interest rate in my perspective.

we've enlisted the help of a close friend/realtor to help us with the search and have started scouring the city for that perfect house. so far we havent found it, but have been able to really start nailing down what things we do want, dont want, areas and neighborhoods we are and arent interested in, things we're willing to compromise on, and the price range we actually want to be in - and what that looks like in terms of potential houses.

its a process and its ongoing. ideally we'd like to close on something before january 1st for financial reasons, but at this point its not looking terribly likely. who knows, perhaps that perfect-for-us house is lurking just around the next corner. in the meantime we have some solid options that we're planning to try and get showing for by the end of this week. we've already done one round of these that was a little disappointing, but thats all part of the process, im not discouraged yet.

hopefully it all turns out.

hmm...
so i guess thats all i have for now. not much of an update, sorry. hope i didnt ramble too much. really hope you all had a happy thanksgiving - please do me a great favor and ignore anything and everything fox news is reporting about the president's non-official thanksgiving you-tube video. actually, if you really want to do me a favor, never watch fox news again - what a bunch of idiots...

okay, thats it.