armlessbear.com

Virgin Mega Store in Chicago

I smell a road trip.
There’s a Virgin Mega Store in downtown Chicago.
Woohoo! It’s not Times Square, but then again, maybe it will smell slightly better outside.
Very exciting.
WooooT.

I’m now going to have to plot out an entire shopping trip to Chicago now.

Ikea
Container Store
Virgin Mega
Outlet malls(?)
Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Only 132 miles from Madison to Schaumburg. If this wasn’t July 4th weekend, I would be out the door tomorrow morning.
Good thing it is, otherwise I’d be spending money we don’t have (yet).

Housing Insomnia

I keep waking up in the wee hours of the morning.
I panic
I plan
I worry
Who handles the mortgage stuff?
What about utilities?
Where will we put the armoire?
Would we really risk many bumped heads in a certain master suite? Why didn’t I ask? Would it be weird to call and ask?
How much money will we really have?
When is the Fed going to raise rates again?
Why can’t I sleep again until its almost time to get up?
How will this all end?
Stay tuned.

Why I Hate Fax Machines

Yesterday we received the contract for our house in Ashburn (the Albatross on Laceyville Terrace). Inexplicably, the people who are buying our house are desperate to move in ASAP. So much so that even though they have closing set for July 28th, they want to close July 14th. This is OK.BY.ME. But we had to read (ok, skim) 12 pages of real estate documentation, sign and initial in 259 distinct places. I had the luxury of receiving the fax at work and signing it here. All I had to do was get it to Mike, have him read/skim, sign, initial and fax it back to VA by 11:59:59 June 27th.
Easy, right?

Woooooooooooooooooo Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

So this morning we found out we’re getting a contract on our house!!!!!!!

OK, so it’s not nearly as much money as we wanted, but it is selling.

Closing date: July 28th, although these people would like to close July 14th if at all possible.

It won’t help us with the July mortgage payment, but at least I don’t have to worry about increasing debt through December.

Now, the mad dash to find a house. We have one in mind, I’m just not sure if we want to keep looking.

woohoo!

You'll Laugh So Hard You'll Cry

There is this column called On Balance on WashingtonPost.com. It’s a column about motherhood — stay at home, working moms, working dads and stay at home dads.
Today she asked for people to write funny stories about parenthood.
This one, written by a guy who calls himself Father of 4 is hilarious. Seriously. I laughed so hard, I cried.

It was around the time when my first daughter was 10 months old. I called my wife from the office. I noticed that there was a different hello message on the answering machine. First I noticed a “bam, bam, bam” then my daughter cooing, babbling and drooling all over the answering machine a few inches away, and in the background, I could hear what sounded like a porn flick. I thought to myself, “What the hell is going on here? Why would my wife change the answering machine’s message to something stupid like this?”

Random Musings

I coined a new word today. Or, at least, I think I did. Maybe I should Google it first.
Damnit.
Someone already thought of Pregzilla. It isn’t very original, so I’m not surprised, but I still thought it was pretty damn funny.
Musevia is (finally!) engaged and starting out her year+ long journey of wedding planning.
It’s exciting and mind-boggling all at once. I don’t mean that particular engagement, just weddings in general. Volumes have been written about planning for weddings and wise people have written books about planning for your marriage. Still, I’m glad that it’s something I’ll never have to do again.

Why I'm glad I don't live in Tennessee

Today, the following message (edited to remove identifying information) came through on the notification list at work

Subject: Emergency Maintainence Notification


	
Location: XXXXXXX, TN

Event to take place: Replace fiber span between XXXXX, TN and XXXXX, TN

Reason: Someone has shot through the cable at this location

That’s some fancy shootin’, Tex.