First Christmas

It's 10 PM on Christmas Day. There is a gentle snow coming down outside. The events of the day have come and gone. I'm sitting down writing this on my computer while listening to Casey Kasem's Top 40 Christmas songs. Bing Crosby is singing "I'll Be Home For Christmas".

In some ways I don't feel that I've been able to enjoy Christmas as much this year for various reasons. This is my busiest time of the year at work. We have to do the budgets for 2006. It's a painful process that usually starts sometime around August, hits hard this time of the year, and at some levels will not be finalized until May or June. We joke around at work that budget season seems to be longer than the NBA season including the playoffs.

We're still unpacking and putting stuff away for the move. The move has kept us busy so I have had little time to even notice that Christmas was here. We had the living room cleaned this morning and now it's worse than it was the whole last week with all of the moving boxes to unpack.

Cooper has more toys than he could ever want. At this point he is oblivious to the trappings of Christmas and would probably be satisfied with a few boxes and some paper. Instead he has many elaborate toys that blink, play music, dance, sing when you push a button or perform a certain action. We're living in a bigger house, but now we have to find room for all of these toys. I'm definitely not ready to move yet.

I can't wait till next year when Cooper has some understanding of Santa and Christmas. He did help open some of his presents he seemed to be interested in most of them. It took so long that he fell asleep about halfway through opening them and we had to wait a little while to finish unwrapping them.

Since I'm still blogging on dial-up this post is incomplete. I will be adding pictures of the day's events over the next few days. We may have DSL up and running by Tuesday.

Merry Christmas!

Blogging On Dial-Up

I'm online via Juno, which is free, but slow and I'm accustomed to a 3 megabit connection. Our broadband connection is supposed to be up by Wednesday.

We're fully moved in but we're still unpacking. There were so many cords and cables just to get this computer up and running. If I were a millionaire, I'd probably throw everything away and start anew. There's just so much stuff in a household. Moving was semi-painful, but not horrible.

There's only 6 shopping days left until Holiday!

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Only 5 more days of work this year for Daddy.

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Cooper and I watched the Bengals beat Detroit to clinch the AFC North and a playoff berth for the first time in 15 years.

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Cooper celebrated by stuffing his face with corn poofs.

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Obviously It Was Not The Last Post From Ohio

I was going to pack up the computer this evening. However the time I would've spent doing so was spent on the highway in a snowstorm with an emotional, hormonally charged pregnant woman in her second trimester who was sitting next to a hungry infant that does not appreciate being restrained for more than 15 minutes at a time. The trip on a normal day with no traffic would take less than a half hour. With normal traffic it tends to be a 45 minute to an hour commute. Today it took more than 4 hours. On top of that, Micole spent two hours driving from school to pick me up from work. She has spent most of the last 6 hours in a car.

I think for at least an hour an half, I clocked us going about .8 miles per hour. Most of that hour and a half was spent behind a semi truck with a sign that said "Owner Operators Get Home More Often". I wanted to get a sharpie and write on that sign "BUT NOT TONIGHT!".

We did get off the highway after about three and a half hours. We found an IHOP. Coop got to eat which relieved Micole. When we got back on the highway a half hour or so later, traffic was moving at the rapid pace of 25 miles per hour. So we got home just around 10 PM. Of course the work is not done there, because the garbage cans had to be dug out and returned to the garage, the other car had to be excavated from the snow, and the driveway must be cleaned to ensure another easy commute in just about 7 hours. I let the dog run free. Thankfully, he came back without me having to chase him down.

Cooper did pretty well in spite of the circumstances.

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My Final Blog Post - Last One Out Turns The Lights Off

I've given it a lot of hard thought and reflection...This is officially, unless I change my mind the last time I will post on this blog. Well, at least it will be my last blog post from my house in Ohio (hereinafter to be known as the "vacation home"). I plan on packing the computer up tomorrow evening. I'm not sure exactly when I'll be able to post again from my new home in Kentucky (hereinafter to be known as "Hillbilly Mansion"). Certainly I won't have broadband for at least a couple of weeks.

At best I'll have me some free Juno dial-up, which will allow me to do almost nothing. I'm not sure if at this point in time if I will even get a home phone. Both Micole and I have cell phones, so it seems redundant to pay another 30 bucks (or more) for landline phone service.

I'm going to miss this house and this state. I've lived in this house for 7 years and I've lived in this state for all 31.75 of my years. My neighborhood is such a great neighborhood. I call it "21st century Norman Rockwell". There is something here that you don't see everywhere. Maybe it's all an illusion, but it's my illusion. I can't tell you how many times I've forgotten to lock the door at night or close the garage door. Kids are kids. They actually play outside and sell lemonade. One time I was walking the dog and I came upon these two young blonde brothers selling lemonade. Since I didn't have any money on me, they gave me a glass for free. Good kids. That's my favorite memory of this neighborhood.

Home isn't going to be home anymore. I remember the feeling I had when I left for college. I kept thinking that my world was going on without me in it. The people here had the nerve to build new restaurants, play high school football games, and go on living without me. The nerve!

It will take a little while to adjust to the move. On the other side of the river, people are just a little bit "differnt" than what I'm accustomed. Not necessarily bad mind you, but if you go to the mall you notice it. It's one of those things I can't explain, but when I see it, I know what it is. At least there are some Buckeye fans on the other side of the river.

So you may not see me around for a little while, but I certainly will be back. I know how to email posts, so if I can't get online at home I'll drop one off at the library or from work. Just in case I don't get back online before then, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!


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Vegatables and ham. A Mini Cooper favorite. He ate all of it except for what was left on his face.

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A Little Song and Dance

Here's a little video from tonight's action. Please excuse the mess. Normally our house isn't this messy. (I can't believe I said that with a straight face.) I like messing with Pinnacle Studio. Maybe someday I'll make some serial two minute internet films.

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After his bath time last night. I would've blogged this picture last night, but I was in bed before the end of "Two and Half Men".

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It's official. We take possession of the house on Friday, so we will be moving down to the hills of Kentucky this weekend. I just can't wait to go barefoot.

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Cooper's happy.

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Cooper got into this box of pictures tonight. They are lot of pictures my mother took over the years with her camera. Most of the ones he picked out were of me when I was just about his age. We look a lot alike at that age, but my face was longer, while his is more rounded.

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Who Dey!

The Bengals beat the Steelers today. This victory gives them a two game lead over the Steelers with 4 games left. It also gave the Bengals their first winning season since I started driving a car.

We got a lot of our packing done this weekend. Grandma Stella came up yesterday and really got us going. Our plan is to move next Saturday and Sunday.

I'm on midget patrol this evening, because Micole is out Christmas shopping. It has been pleasant except that Cooper won't go to sleep. We re-watched the end of the Michigan game on our Tivo and I think that got him too excited. Actually we watched it twice. Then we watched the Purdue game from 2002 (a late come from behind victory for the Buckeyes during their national championship season). Brent Musberger - "Touchdown! Touchdown! Michael Jenkins on fourth and one. Would you believe it? Craig Krenzel strikes with a minute and a half left!... Holy Buckeyes!" Cooper crawled up and hit the tv screen on that one. I wonder what the world record is for oldest recording kept on a Tivo, because I really have to be close.

A photo from Thursday.


Feeding time Thursday evening.


Cooper tried to help us pack yesterday, but we almost wound up packing him.

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Cooper and Dobie looking outside at Grandma.

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Asleep this morning.

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Cooper looking outside at Dobie this afternoon.

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A little video of Cooper getting vocal on Friday night.

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My New Kentucky Home

It's official. I now own two houses. Now comes the hard part. What do I do with my 1st home? Lease it? Sell it? Burn it down for the insurance money? I just don't know.

(Let me just state for the record in the off chance that my house would burn down, I was just kidding about the burning the house down for the insurance money part. I did not do it. Of course, you never know I may just be saying that to give myself an alibi. I mean who would say they're going to burn their house down for insurance money and then do it? That would just be stupid, right? It's sort of like the plot line for the movie Basic Instinct. Of course, I'm kidding and I don't want anyone to believe I would really burn my house down, because that's just plain stupid... Okay, I admit it. I've had a couple of celebratory beers this evening and I'm in relaxed and joking mood tonight.)

It was a tough day. Nothing seemed to quite go my way today. We didn't know until 1:30 that we would close at 6:00. I didn't get much done today at work because Microsoft has some bad bugs in their software, which effectively rendered my afternoon efforts useless.

It wasn't until 4:57 that I finally got the call on how much we had to bring to the closing. The bank closes at 5:00. Of course, I needed to bring a cashier's check to the closing. So I sprinted down to my bank. I get there just in time. Only three people in line. They all take forever. I finally get to the teller after about 15 minutes and I get the dumb one. I've had to get cashier's checks before and it only took 2 minutes, but this time it took 10. You spell it "M - I - C - O - L - E".

We got to Countrywide right around 6:00. The title agent who did the closing got there about 6:45. He was running behind from some other closings. Nothing went the way I hoped today.

It's all worth it because, now I have two houses (I swear I will not burn down either of them intentionally).


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It's Closing Time

We're supposed to close on the new house tomorrow, which is good in theory, except of course they haven't given us a specific time when said closing will occur. Micole absolutely despises the mortgage broker. I won't go into all of the specifics, but if you say you're going to call someone by the end of the day with information they need, you darn well better call by the end of the day even if you don't have the information. A simple, "I just wanted to let you know that I don't have the information you need yet, but I'm calling to let you know I haven't forgotten about you...", would suffice.

I've been through two other closings (Micole's first), neither were as painful or difficult as this one. Until a few weeks ago the whole process seemed to be moving smoothly. It started with a low appraisal on the property. The appraisal came in substantially less than the county had appraised it for tax purposes, which we found very odd. I read the appraiser's report and truthfully I can't find anything wrong with it except that his judgement always goes to the low end of the spectrum.

What is an appraisal? It's someone's opinion of what a property is worth. If you had ten appraisers you would likely have ten different opinions. I really think this appraiser was at the absolute low end of the range. I'm an accountant and what accountants are trained to do is establish and measure value. So I ran the numbers about 16 different ways and I came up twice close to the appraiser's number, but I also came up with numbers that were substantially higher. Even higher than we needed the appraisal to be, to do the financing the way we wanted. With the number he gave us we had to redo the whole purchase contract and find a new way to finance it.

One way the appraiser assessed the value of the property was to look at sales of similar homes in a one mile radius. He then compared those properties to our soon to be home. Our home he appraises at the low end of these other houses. I looked up the county tax appraisals for each of these properties and found out that each of these houses sold for at least 4% higher than the 2004 tax appraisal. The property we're purchasing he appraised about 5% below the 2004 appraisal. So my thought was what gives? I suppose the county could have been overestimating the value of the property, but I doubt it. Heck, our original agreement was 4% less than county's estimate, but we didn't even get that from the appraiser.

I've run on enough about that appraisal. My co-worker in the adjoining office has heard me rant enough about it already. What burns me up a little bit, is that they didn't take our concerns about the valuation of the property into any consideration. It was just like "Well, you have to get the price down... You're overpaying...." There was no way to challenge it. For our sake it didn't really matter if the price was a little more or a little less. If it had appraised where we feel it should've, the deal would've been done by now, sans headaches.

In the end, we're going to be paying a little less than we would've based upon the original financing plan. It is a better plan, but even if the contract on the house was at the original price, it still would have been less. I don't know why the mortagage broker couldn't have put this plan in front of us at the beginning. It would have saved us a little aggravation.

So that's me, frustrated, but nearly done with this process. I will never recommend Countrywide Home Loans to anyone. They weren't horrible or completely incompetent, they just weren't very good.

Cooper's mood changes so fast from satisfied to upset to bored to crying to happy...

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It can all happen in a matter of 20-30 seconds.

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This look represents how we sometimes felt about Countrywide.

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He's on his tiptoes. I wouldn't be surprised if he takes his first steps by Christmas.

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2nd Anniversary

Today was our 2nd wedding anniversary. We went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner. We each ate one slice of cheesecake there and brought one slice home. It's been a quiet evening except for Cooper getting into everything and putting everything into his mouth that he can find on the floor.


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Dobie got a little overly aggresive with Cooper earlier and made him cry, but I think they're back to normal.

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Catching Up

Thanksgiving was good, but also sad. It was the first Thanksgiving without my mother. It was good to be with family, but a few times I sat there and I could envision her sitting at the table making an offer to help my Aunt Joan ( when I was little I called her Uncle Joanie) or laughing at my Uncle Tim and Uncle Steve as they go about their normal insane chatter. I honestly don't know how I hold myself together at times like those, but I do.

My family eats early and Micole's eats late so we can attend both. It works out very well for the both of us. Two good Thanksgiving meals. Nothing to complain about there.

The babysitter taught Cooper this "bah bah bah" thing. We were at a restaurant on Monday and he wouldn't stop doing it. He was doing it very loudly. I wish I had some footage of that evening, because it was gut-busting hilarious.

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Play time.

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Cooper watching a skit at Thanksgiving dinner.

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Cooper wants to climb the steps at Aunt Heather's house.

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He's getting all over the house. I have to be sure to close all the doors so he'll stay in the living room with us.

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Asleep last night.

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Asleep today during the Bengals game. I think the Bengals fell asleep about halfway through the 3rd quarter. They were up soundly 34-0 and wound up winning 42-29. For a little while it looked like they might just blow it.

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Watching the 1st season of Lost on DVD this evening. I've watched 2/3rds of the 1st season just since yesterday. I've picked up on a few things, but I'm still pretty much lost with where everything is going. The whole series is just one big soap opera with a thousand cliffhangers.

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The Best

Cooper and Micole spent last night at her sister's house, so they could go shopping the next morning. I had to work and I was the only one there. I got a fair amount of work done, but it was BORING. The only people I talked to all day were Micole (who told me about everything she bought) and the restaurant cashier (who so eloquently asked "Do you want fries with that?").

After work I headed over to her sister's house. I walked in and Cooper was playing on the floor. I sat down on the couch. He eventually looked up and saw me. He immediately crawled right to me. That was just the best thing ever.

Post #300

Well, I was hoping to title this post "Oh My God, part II", but the Bengals failed to make it a perfect weekend by knocking off the Colts. They did give the Colts just about everything they had. At least the Steelers lost.

We lost Cooper's penguin hat the other day, but we still have this snowman hat.

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Coop in his reindeer jammies.

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We found another Bengals outfit today. In this picture, Cooper yells at the refs on what was a questionable pass interference call.

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C. Johnson. Perfect.

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Making a mess with his Biter's Biscuit.

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Oh My God...

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We almost grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory. Michigan should've never been in the game, but we let them play with us. No complaints. I'm still young enough that a game like that won't give me a heart attack.

I never thought we would drive it 81 yards for a touchdown with about 4 minutes left. I hoped, mind you. Still I never believed it would happen. Certainly a fumble or interception or a dropped pass would stop us, but it didn't. We made the plays we had to when we had to. Instant classic. This is definitely one of the sweetest victories I've ever known against that "school from up North".

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.

Go Michigan State! Beat the Nittany Lions!


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