Why does everybody want to argue with me today?

Posted on 05/16/2010 by RLW3

Yesterday didn’t end after the long talk with my wife. About an hour after we concluded “talking it out”, I began negotiating the purchase of a house through my realtor.

“Well, they are willing to accept your offer. But, they don’t want to put any flooring in.”

“That’s fine. Let’s lower the price accordingly.”

About an hour later, “They won’t lower the price. However, they will give you a $2,000 flooring allowance after closing.”

“What??? The house is close to 2,000 square feet. Are they saying that they can buy carpet for $1/sq ft?”

A half hour later, “No, we realize that the flooring will cost more than that but we think that is a sufficient allowance for you.”

???????????

Anyway, you get the picture. Needless to say, I was not all that eager to wake up this morning.

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She wore me out!

Posted on 05/15/2010 by RLW3

I guess I should just jump right into to the story before you get any strange ideas regarding the title of this post…

I had a tiring day today…

and I didn’t really do anything strenuous!

It all started last night. I watched a movie with my wife and didn’t get to bed until 11:00. That’s not a big deal. Buth then I woke up at 4:00! Why? How should I know? I just did.

At 8:00, I was ready for a nap. That is when my wife woke up and started making breakfast for the two of us.

We sat down to eat and talk. The conversation was moving along just fine and then I made a big mistake…

I don’t even remember what the question was or why I said it, but for some reason the words “Our marriage is O.K.” slipped out of my mouth.

I didn’t say it with a negative tone but she sure took it that way! What I meant and what she heard were two entirely different things!

“What do you mean “O.K.”? (with her face all scrunched up). Our marriage is great!” (Isn’t it usually the guy who says that???)

I reminded her that we got into a pretty bad fight last Sunday morning. It kind of came out of nowhere, like a tornado. Suddenly, everything I did irritated her.

Well, at the time I didn’t feel quite up to being the obedient soldier and saying “Thank you, Bunch! May I have another?” So…

we…

ummm…

had a strong disagreement!

It turned out to the only thing that I did wrong was to be around while she was undergoing a monthly hormonal storm kind of thing…if you know what I mean. I was guilty just because I am a male and happen to be married to her and decided to help her in the kitchen!

We ended up working it out after church and then went and celebrated Mother’s Day with our friends. But, back to today…

“Oh, your going to look at that one day and say that characterizes our whole marriage?”

Huhh???

“I didn’t say that. It just made me realize how vulnerable we are. Both of us have some pretty significant weaknesses. We are REALLY dependent upon God to help us.”

I mean, every time I opened my mouth, the hole just seemed to get deeper.

THREE HOURS LATER (I wish I could figure out a way to write that so you can begin to grasp how long that is!), we actually finished “talking it out” (her words)!

She loved it. And, now she loves me! What a difference a week makes!

The truth is that it really was a very good conversation. If I were a marriage counselor, I would say that we both “communicated in a healthy, meaningful way that enabled us to more completely understand each other. We both grew!”

That’s all great but it’s enough to wear a guy out! And I thought that I was tired at 8:00!

Now, if I can just remember to pull my minesweeper out of the closet so I don’t accidentally step in the wrong place and blow something up again in about two more weeks!

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The mystery woman comes out of hiding

Posted on 05/13/2010 by RLW3

About a month ago, we learned that we finished second in the bidding on a house in foreclosure that we really wanted.

Two weeks ago, we asked our realtor to ask the listing agent to ask the investor if they wanted to sell the house to us the day after escrow closed. To our surprise, they weren’t!

It turns out that they have a very good contractor who works on all of their houses and they needed to keep him busy so that he doesn’t begin working for someone else.

Well, today my realtor finally got the mysterious investor’s contact information and e-mailed it to me.

I called her as soon as I got off work at 5:00.

“Hello?”

“Hello. My name is Lord and I wanted to actually talk to the person who bought my house out from under me!”

She laughed.

I told her that I wasn’t kidding and that we were interested in buying the house from her.

She agreed to meet with us at the house at 6:15!

She came with her husband. He already has an MBA and is now attending law school! No sense trying to be shrewd with him!

I asked them how much they paid for the house. To our great surprise, their final bid was $2,000 lower than ours! The bank preferred their offer because it was all in cash.

Although they have owned the house for less than a week, they have already made great progress. It turns out that they are doing everything that we planned and more!

I told them that I liked what they were doing with the place. There was just one thing that they had done wrong…

If we had won the bid, we would have converted half of the basement into a library/family room. They were turning it into a bedroom AND a family room. In fact, they had already almost finished the rough framing. I asked them to stop.

Why?

Because we wanted to buy the house! We told them what we are willing to pay. They are going to contact us on Saturday to let us know if they can make our offer work.

Stay tuned!!!

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The countdown begins

Posted on 05/12/2010 by RLW3

This is our final go round…

Cakes, our youngest daughter is graduating from high school in a week and a half!

There is a little part of me that panics inside and wonders, “What’s next?”

How should I know? I’ve never been here before. So, I’ll do what I always do…figure it out as I go.

Tonight, we went to the Senior Awards presentation. That is where the seniors receive official presentation of the various awards and scholarships that they have earned.

This might sound a little familiar because we went to the same event last year for my son. However, this one went much smoother.

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Hard to believe times two!

Posted on 05/09/2010 by RLW3

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…

Posted on 05/08/2010 by RLW3

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

Posted on 05/07/2010 by RLW3

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

Posted on 05/06/2010 by RLW3

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

Posted on 05/04/2010 by RLW3

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!

Posted on 05/03/2010 by RLW3

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”.

Posted in Goals | Comments Off on Now, that’s progress!