Umbral Echoes Blog

I now have pellets, and a calibrated scope. Fear! Of course, it’s getting cold, so there probably won’t be many more squirrels trying to chew my deck away this year. But I’ll be ready for next year! Fucking tree rats with beaver*-teeth.

In other news, Jared and Niquie came down to help us with painting the old place. Thank goodness for that — we were supposed to have more people, but the only other person that showed up was Kirstie’s boss. A shame, too; had Grem shown up, there would have been 3 people there with biology degrees, and they would have undoubtedly hatched some plan for world domination through the genetic engineering of amphibious raptors with computer hacking skills.

The new house is great, but sweet Jeebus will I be glad when we’re completely done with the old house. Still need to get a few odds and ends out, and hire a maid to clean the place. New carpet is going in tomorrow.

* The dam-building sort, not the “IT HAS TEETH!!!” sort, you sicko.

…to the Notheast Side? We signed on the house yesterday, which would have taken 25 minutes (we were signing the papers faster than the lawyer could handle), except we had to wait around for an hour or so for the confirmation on the wire transfer that was supposed to have taken place earlier that day. But that finally came through, and all was well.

The previous owner had some stuff left in the garage still, so when he came to get that afterwards, he also gave us a walkthrough of the house — showed us how to work various things, told us about any little quirks, etc. He also let us pick through some of the stuff he was about to move out, in case we wanted any of it, and he even gave us a pellet gun (we live in a wooded area, and squirrels are a problem). The women out there will probably have horrified expressions right now at the thought of shooting a cute little furry thing. Squirrels are tree rats with bushy tails, and some have even taken up residence in our chimney. I plan on getting in a lot of target practice.

Awesome Features of New House

• Cell phone reception – Not a featuer per se, but we didn’t get this at our old house. This will be very refreshing.
• Lots of room – This house technically has 5 levels — Garage, then basement slightly above that, then main level (kitchen, great room, dining room), then the bedroom level (master + 2 spare), then the loft. Plus the deck, of course.
• Deck – Speakingof the deck, it’s a quite nicely constructed deck, and also a great vantage point for squirrel-sniping. It also has a…
• Grill – Old owner left the grill, whbich he actually converted to natural gas, and hooked into the house’s gas line. Se we don’t have to worry about buying propane tanks (apologies to Hank Hill).
• Water softening system – Something new for us; once we figure out how to program it and set it up, anyway.
• Large driveway – We’re in a cul de sac, plus the driveway is wide enough to park 3 cars side-by-side. This will be handy for parties.
• Star Trek HVAC system – Well not really. But the thermostat has all sorts of advanced controls for making the house different temperatures on a schedule (can set different schedules for weekdays and weekends, as well as summer and winter). So we can use less energy during the weekdays when we’re not here, and in the middle of the night, but still wake up/come home to a nice temperature.

Obligatory pictures are beneath the cut. There are too many rooms in the house to post pictures of them all, so these are just a few highlights. Continue reading

We got final approval on our loan, and were also approved for a closing date of the 26th (pending that being okay with lawyers and agents and so forth).  Woot!

We will be having a combination housewarming/Kirstie’s-birthday party on Saturday, November 17th — we’ll probably start it around 6-ish, but details to follow.  You’re invited.  Bring friends or random miscreants if you dare.  Birthday presents are not compulsory; your presence is a more than adequate gift.

Last night was White Wolf’s official office opening party. There was a snake dancer, a fire eater, a magician, and of course… an open bar. Two, technically. Cary was already drunk when we got there at 9, and things only got more interesting from there.

I got to catch up with some people I hadn’t seen in a while, and let everybody know that I’d be moving near the office.

Now that I don’t fear jinxing it, Kirstie and I are officially moving to a new (well, pre-owned, but new to us) house in Stone Mountain, about 3 miles from the White Wolf office.  The inspection was yesterday, and we actually got to meet the previous owners — one of them, anyway, as it seems to be a divorce situation.  His name was Marcell, and he was very cool.  The inspection went well, and Marcell will be fixing everything that the inspector found wrong, other than some double-pane windows that had the seal between them broken.  Those cost about $5,000 to replace, so I don’t blame him.  Slightly less energy-efficient this way, but it also makes the windows fogged — which is a good thing, since the windows in question are bay windows around the bath tub.

We sign on the 30th, and have the movers booked for the 1st.  For some reason, Kirstie didn’t want to move on Halloween — go figure.  Then, next month, we are going to have a big housewarming/Kirstie’s-birthday thing.  There will be beer, and grilling, and strippers.  Okay, maybe no strippers (unless we get Cary drunk enough, but that’s not hard to do).

Pictures of the new digs forthcoming, since the pictures on the MLS site don’t do it justice.

Then will be the annoying part… getting our current house ready for sale and putting it on the market.  Cleaning, painting, recarpeting, cleaning… and then some more cleaning.  And then waiting for it to sell, which we expect to take at least 6 months, probably more like 8 or 9.

Looked into house buying, and got some good and bad news.  Good news is that if you’re buying a house right now, then you’re in luck.  Bad news is, if you’re selling… not so much so.  The market is over-saturated with houses, and our neighborhood in particular has like 12 other houses up for sale.  So to sell our place, we’ll need to do lots of cleaning-up, and even then we can expect it to take 6-8 months, and possibly more.

So, looking at our options for house buying, we figured that if we lived close to work and put ourselves on a shoestring budget, we could actually afford our current mortgage, plus that of a new house.  With some financial aid from our room mate Cary, this is actually a very solid possibility.

The plan now is that we get a new house ASAP, move in there, clean up the old one, and then put it on the market.  The only kink in this plan is… we’re not sure if the bank will actually give us a loan for another house.  But, we’ll be talking to our loan officer tomorrow.  And if that goes well, we’ll look for a new place starting Monday (as well as begin packing).

So, wish us luck!

Went to my friend Sam’s birthday party on Saturday evening, which was good times. Lots of wine, and Monkey came out for the occasion too. Met two Marcs, and Sam’s neighbor Yarra (no idea how it’s spelled), who was a European gal — I believe she was from Denmark or something — that could have been Steffi Graf‘s younger sister.

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In preliminary news, I added comments and stuff to the DragonCon photos — or the Friends album, anyway.

Warning, roleplaying stuff ahead.  For those that could care less, feel free to skip it.

Played the first game in Monkey’s evil-based D&D campaign last night.  Man, I’m so used to playing good/hero characters in tabletop, I really had trouble getting into the groove of things.  My best evil contribution was along the following lines:

Bear: If someone goes too near that graveyard, the restless dead will wake up and eat them.
Grem: [with typical Grem insane fervor] I need parchment, and a bottle.  I’m making a fake treasure map to lead some poor schmuck to that place, and putting it in the corner of a bar or something.  So some adventurers will find it and go to their deaths.
Me: Bar? Screw that, put it somewhere kids will find it.  You know kids can’t resist that shit.  Treasure map + kids + zombies = crazy delicious.

Oh, also our first mission involved making some rival priestess go crazy, and we were instructed to leave her physically intact.  So I asked, “As long as she’s physically intact when we cast the spells to make her go crazy, is that okay?”  (We have a healer in the group that can heal pretty much any physical harm.)  And the answer was yes… we could feel free to torture her or do whatever else we wanted, so long as at the end of it all she was physically intact.  This made my character very happy (he has mommy issues, and a feels a particular sadistic urge toward women).

So I shall endeavor to think more evil-like.  If I can’t make the Dungeon Master and every other player in the game recoil with, “Holy shit, Mike, you are one twisted bastard!” then I haven’t done my job.

Sadly, DragonCon is over, but it was a blast.  Highlights this year include seeing members of the Battlestar Galactica cast on a panel (best show on television right now, in my opinion), a drunken game of Asshole, and crashing a pirate party with ninjas.

The pictures are up in my photo gallery, though I haven’t named them or added amusing captions yet.  All in due time, my droogies.  Here are a few highlights…

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Well I’m sitting in the food court by the DragonCon hotels right now, with their craptastic/spastic WiFi connection (but it’s free, so I guess I can’t complain too much). Got checked in to the room early to get one close to the ground floor — Marriott room 312 for anyone reading this who’s going to the con.

Pictures (and possibly video, since Dave has a shiny new HD video cam) shall be forthcoming. I can only hope that DragonCon lives up to GenCon’s dicebagging glory.

In other news, the Bagwells have been staying with us this week, which has been awesome. I’ve missed ya, you Gumby-lookin’ bastard. I fully expect you to bring back some terrorist bone fragments from Iraq. And I really wish I could roleplay with Christy more — that was always a blast. Stupid time being spread so thin.

The smell of food is making me hungry again, so it’s time for second dinner now.