Agonotheta

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January 31, 2006

She's Out of My Life

It's a hard life, but a good one. I haven't been writing recently for several reasons. First, I lost the condo I was buying. Reader's Digest Version: It wouldn't appraise for the value and it seemed for some reason (pride) the seller's agent was stubborn and wouldn't negotiate. I really wanted that place, but such is life and I'm sure it will work out for the best.

Actually, that's a canned response. To be perfectly honest, I have been very depressed about it. I don't believe in fate, but it sure feels like I'm not supposed to own a home. I've been looking for a year and have been under contract on three homes and all of them have fallen through. It may not seem like it should be that big a deal, but buying one home is stressful enough, and buying three homes unsuccessfully is even worse.

The other thing that has been keeping me busy is some freelance projects I'm working on. To give you an idea, I've been doing php coding for an insurance company, home flyer designs for a real estate agent, and a couple of newspaper ads for a book store.

In addition, I was contacted recently by another school district, a smaller one, that wants me to create a design for them. That should be a big job, but I'm really excited about it.

Another thing that has taken a toll on my emotional health is that I sold my WRX. I really loved that car, but with buying a condo (yeah, right!) I decided to get a more sensible one with a monthly payment that isn't the size of an apartment. It's been a good two years that I've owned it and it was hard to say goodbye, but I don't regret my decision.

January 18, 2006

Sitting, Waiting, Wishing

I'm doing my best to wait patiently. But it's hard.

I'm waiting to hear whether or not the seller of the home is going to lower his price or not. I got word yesterday that apparently the appraiser was only able to find one "comparable" property. Since these condos are so new, only one of them has been sold. It also turns out that the seller's agent missed this one "comp" when pricing the house and subsequently overpriced it by about $13k.

Obviously, no bank would give me a loan for a house that costs $13k more than it's worth. So, we (actually, my agent) proposed to the seller (actually, his agent) that he drops the price about $10,000. We'll see if he goes for it. Honestly, he'd be silly not to. He's going to run into the same problem if he tries to sell it to somebody else.

January 17, 2006

Inspection Inschmection

Friday afternoon I took some personal time off from work and met the inspector at the condo I'm buying. It took about and hour and a half at a cost of $250 that I paid out of pocket. A couple of people I know suggested I don't bother with it considering it is still under warranty and less than two years old, but I decided prudence was a good idea in the purchase of my first home.

Now, in retrospect, I wish I would have listened to them. There was one warning made by the inspector on a plastic pipe that is too close to the water heater, but shows absolutely no sign of wear. Other than that, the place is perfect. Yeah, it's nice to know that it is in good condition, but at the cost of $250 it stings. I guess thats what it's like owning a home though. I had better get used to handing out large sums of money for seemingly pointless things.

January 11, 2006

Only Four Jobs Mon?

Rewind two years ago. I was asked by the manager of a local adult education facility to teach a web development class. I agreed and we tried to work out the details, but because of some details like, oh, she didn't have a computer lab with more than ten computers, we had to scrap it.

Rewind two weeks ago. I receive a phone call from that very same manager stating she now has the means for me to teach the class. We begin discussing terms and details.

Present day. Tonight is the first week of an eight week course that I will be teaching on web development. It should be interesting to say the least. I've certainly taken part in teaching sessions at leadership seminars and helped others by providing "expert-level knowledge" for trainings. But for the next eight weeks, I will be on my own. Going into it, I feel quite confident with my technical skills and knowledge. But I also feel some nerves about my teaching skills.

On another note, I have recently been hired by a catering company to bartend during the Sundance Film Festival later this month and early next month. I doubt it will be a permanent thing, as is my bartending gig over at the Grand America. But it's funny because technically right now I am employed by four different organizations. In addition, I have three freelance web design projects I'm working on. What a hard working boy I am!

It reminds me of that skit on that old Fox tv show In Living Color. The sketch was about a foreign family living in the United States and all of them had several jobs. "Four jobs?! What lazy kind o' mon only have four jobs?"

January 09, 2006

Under Contract

Well, I'm under contract. Well, not me, but I have a condo under contract. It's about time, right? I finally found a place that I like and that I feel comfortable living in. I would have preferred to find something closer to downtown, but everything I saw that was in my price range was either really, really small or needed a good amount of work done to it. In addition, everything I looked at that I really liked was 50K more than I wanted to spend. The last few months have been a very frustrating time for me.

But anyway, this condo is less than two years old, has a good location in the central part of the Salt Lake Valley and will be perfect room for me. We will close at the end of the month, and since it'll be on my mind you may read about it a couple of times on here.

I'll get pictures as soon as possible.

January 02, 2006

First Day Back

Yeah, so today I'm working. That's right working. I know what you're saying though. "What are you complaining about you've just had the last ten days off?"

Well, I just don't feel like I should have to work when everybody else in this country has it off. Apparently there was a scheduling error made three or four years ago wherein the scheduler didn't realize that New Year's Day landed smack dab on a Sunday so we should get Monday off and we are now paying for it.

Every year, this is the hardest day of the year for me because after all that time off I have a real hard time getting back into the swing of things. Anyway, enjoy your days off bitches.