Hard to believe times two!

We did something different for Mother’s Day this year…

Since Cakes had to work at The Bonefish Grill, Bunch and I went with an elderly couple (70 years old) to their family farm in Warrensburg, MO.

The conversation was delightful. They recounted how they met and got married, how they became Christians, etc.

Once we go to the property, we met all of the relatives.

We met a young man with an incredible story. He was our friend’s grandson. Then they adopted him and he became their son…I hope that is right…

Shortly after they adopted him, two “friends” were with him in his car and started to demand that he give them his money. He didn’t have any so they shot him 7 times from point blank range!

His two “friends” were especially malicious. They used hollow point bullets. For those of you who aren’t active NRA members, hollow points are designed to dramatically expand upon penetration. The exit wound is typically 3-4 times the size of the entrance wound.

One bullet went through his right temple. One was right between the eyes. One was in the back of his neck toward his face. One went through the top of his skull. Two more went through the back of his head.

The amazing thing is that he has lived to talk about it! Our friends (his grandparents/parents) prayed and believed God to do a miracle and He did!!! He spent 58 days in the hospital. He couldn’t talk for 263 days! But here he was standing before me!

But the story doesn’t end there…

He was wearing a sweatshirt with the Greek letters for Alpha Phi Alpha when he walked up to us. Alpha Phi Alpha is a black college fraternity.

Nothing particularly noteworthy about that except that the young man we were talking to is white!

He is the first white to join that fraternity at his school and only the fifth in the whole country!

What makes that even more amazing is that the two “friends” who tried to kill him were black! How many people do you know that could experience an inhumane assault like that and not be scarred with racial bitterness? Absolutely amazing!

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I wonder if I have stumbled onto something…

I went out to my mechanic’s house today…

I had to replace the entire sunroof unit in our Nissan Maxima.

Why did I have to do it? Well, he said that he would have to charge a bunch of money to do it and he didn’t think the car was worth it. The bottom line is that he didn’t really want to do it.

So, I went out and did it and saved a bunch of money in the process.

While I was there, I noticed two things:

1. I like rejuvenating old or broken things, making them work again.

2. My mechanic is STILL trying to sell half of his 20 acre property.

He is caught between a rock and a hard place. He has to keep working on cars full time to stay current on the mortgage. Therefore, he is having a tough time finishing his new house on the left half of the property.

He also doesn’t have the time to fix up the old house on right half that he is attempting to sell. Lots of people look at it. Lots of people like the property. The house makes them shy away.

That just makes me wonder…

Posted in Cars, Real Estate | Comments Off on I wonder if I have stumbled onto something…

Back to the drawing board

Back to square one…

Well, not quite all the way back…

Someone bid more on the house overlooking the lake.

I think I need a break. I’m a little tired of looking at houses right now.

Besides, when I go home and eat dinner with my wife on our 3rd floor balcony and look out that the little creek and the birds in the tops of the trees, I wonder why I am moving in the first place!

Posted in Real Estate | Comments Off on Back to the drawing board

Excuses, excuses

I don’t know if you noticed, but I have been running a little behind on this blog recently.

Searching for a house has been eating up quite a bit of time. However, there is another cause for my delinquency…

Last week, the news of the day compelled me to write on my political/culture blog, Counter Culture². And that has been proving to be very difficult.

Writing on this blog requires me to be able to tell an interesting story. Writing about politics and culture requires much more than that.

Inevitable, in the desire to be accurate and I want to provide sources that authenticate my claims. This requires research. Research requires time.

Then, I have to craft a reasonably persuasive argument. That takes more time and much more thought.

That being said, I have written about something that in my estimation is critical. Please, give it a read here

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Belatedly grateful

As I was listening to my favorite talk shows today, I learned that the Cumberland River had overrun its banks and that Nashville was flooded.

It gradually dawned on me…

“Hey, wait a minute…my daughter, Kimba, lives near Nashville.”

I texted her to find out if she was all right.

She is. However, she did said, “I really glad I don’t have a car right now!”

She doesn’t have a car because I took our Nissan back in September and have been spending money on it ever since. Here is why she said it…

This is one minute away from her apartment!

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Now, that’s progress!

I had a VERY exciting weekend!

No, I didn’t go anywhere special…

No, didn’t buy anything expensive. (I did whip up a little of my old magic and buy 5 books for $6.50! I love when that happens!)

So, what was so exciting about this weekend?

It all started on Saturday morning. I didn’t have any houses to look at and my computer was not going to be available until lunchtime because I was restoring my old operating system and files.

So, what to do???

I have a goal that I set almost every year and never hit…to read one book per month. Oh, I read (or write) nearly every free moment I have. But, finishing a book has proven difficult.

On Saturday morning, I realized that I had not made any progress toward it this year…

So, I finished up a book by a man who spent “23 Minutes in Hell” (that is not figuratively speaking) and then read a 350 page slice of life history of the Great Depression years titled “Since Yesterday” by Frederick Lewis Allen in less than two days!

I can’t tell you how many times I felt like I was reading today’s newspapers. I cannot tell you how many times I exclaimed aloud over something I had read. Did you know that during the “Dust Bowl” days, the temperature in Kansas did not drop below 108º for several weeks? And they talk about ‘global warming’ now???

The book was written in 1939 and is a fairly balanced look at the time period. I HIGHLY recommend it. In fact, I am going to definitely buy his book on the 20’s called “Only Yesterday”.

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Feeling like a salmon

We looked at a very interesting house after church today…

A 5  bedroom, 3.5 bath house with a view of a lake!

The bank listed it a little over one month ago but has already dropped their asking price  by 12%. We offered 12% below than that.

This house hunt has shown me how easy it is to be sucked into buying more house than one can afford.

I have written several posts making light of the numerous houses that I have looked at thus far. However, why is that? Because it is very difficult to find a house within my proposed budget. It would be VERY easy to pick out a VERY nice house if I was willing to pay 40+% more. After all, we make enough to qualify.

However, I asked my lender to qualify me on just my salary. Why? Because my wife will likely earn no income while she is attending nursing school in 2011-2012. While she is earning no money, I will still have to pay for that house.

And then, I asked him to limit my pre-qualification below that level. Why?

What if something happens to my income? You don’t think it couldn’t happen? No one ever does.

What if gas goes to $5.00 gallon? With health care now passed, how much will my taxes go up in the next two years? If our government passes the “Cap & Trade” bill, what will happen to my energy costs? Each of these three events will have the same effect as a pay cut.

I work in the aerospace industry. The Boeing machinists just authorized a strike in June. My hiring at the company I now work for was delayed by three months because of a Boeing strike. What will happen this time?

I don’t know. So, I am being very conservative. I am looking at houses that I will be able to afford even if the sky falls. And most of those aren’t all that nice. Either the house or the neighborhood or both are less than desirable.

And so, the search goes on…and I keep swimming upstream against the current.

Posted in Money, Real Estate | Comments Off on Feeling like a salmon

The old way is just fine with me

I am noticing a theme here…

Last night, I came to terms with the fact that I had missed out on my opportunity to get a $6,500 tax credit for buying my house. That would have meant that I would pay no income taxes this year!

Tonight, I made another decision to miss out on something else…

About one month ago, I finally took the plunge and upgraded to Apple’s latest operating system, Snow Leopard. After all, it was released nearly six months ago. It was about time.

Well, I spent most of the day downgrading my computer back to my “old” operating system.

I don’t care that it is not “as good”. I don’t care that is not nearly as powerful…or fast. I really don’t care if I will be missing out on the latest and greatest. I liked my computer the way it was. Besides, I don’t want to spend a bunch of money updating all of the third party software so it will play well with Snow Leopard.

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We gave it the old college try

Emotions are so tricky. In order to qualify for the $6,500 home buying tax credit, I had to have a house under contract by the end of the day.

My realtor e-mailed me three more possibilities while I was at work. I drove by all three of them on my way home. One of them was worth a walk through.

Our realtor quickly scheduled a showing. The house looked great from the outside…a nice yard with beautiful trees, a brick front. However, when we opened the front door, smelled the cigarettes and saw the small, cloistered kitchen, I knew this wasn’t for us.

Bye, bye tax credit! It isn’t like we didn’t try! But, what is the sense of buying a house that you don’t really like just to get a tax credit!

I passed…We’ll just keep looking.

Posted in Real Estate | Comments Off on We gave it the old college try

Victimized by an invisible, sneak attack

On Wednesday night, my wife and I went to our mid-week Bible study. A sharp, middle aged couple that has just relocated from Florida started attending two weeks ago.

Towards the end of the meeting, we broke up into groups of 2 or 3 people to tell our story of how we came to Christ.

I was in a group with the new man and the pastor. I learned that the new man had been a youth pastor for 13 years and an assistant pastor for 15 more in a Pentecostal church in Florida. He met our pastor when he spoke at their church.

Towards the end of the meeting, the pastor announced that there will be a men’s breakfast this Saturday and the new guy was going to be the speaker since the scheduled speaker cancelled at the last minute.

Before I knew it, out of nowhere, a dart of disappointment stabbed my heart. Where did it come from?

In several private meetings, the pastor has repeatedly told me how highly he thinks of me. He knows that I have a strong desire to teach and preach the Bible at some point in the future. I have had no illusions that anything was immediately on the horizon. In fact, I have been very peaceful and in no hurry. I realize that I am still a relatively unknown new comer.

Yet, before I realized what happened, when that little announcement was made, quite unexpectedly, my heart was pierced.

Oh, my head could make sense of it…The man has been in the Pentecostal church his whole life…he knows the pastor. More importantly, the pastor knows him and trusts him. Somehow, that didn’t help my heart…

Oh well, it’s not the first nor the worst disappointment in my life…onward and upward!

Posted in church, Friends, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Victimized by an invisible, sneak attack