We gave it the old college try

Posted on 04/30/2010 by RLW3

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.

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Victimized by an invisible, sneak attack

Posted on 04/29/2010 by RLW3

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!

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My new night job

Posted on 04/27/2010 by RLW3

What did you do tonight?

I looked at houses.

What did you do last night?

Me? Oh, I looked at houses until 9:00.

The more houses I look at, the more sure I am…We want the yellow house!

The last that I heard, the investor having inspections done on the house. I called my realtor for an update.

It is under contract and is supposed to close on the 27th! What am I going to do?

I talked with my wife and learned that we are thinking along the same line.

I asked my realtor to see if we could buy it from the investor. If they close on the 27th, we’ll buy it from them on the 28th

How much profit do they need?

Stay tuned…

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Superman finally gets introduced to cryptonite

Posted on 04/22/2010 by RLW3

I called Big A this morning to see how he was doing.

His weight was down to 167.4 but he was not doing well. He was so weak that he couldn’t wrestle this morning! After all, he has lost 16 pounds in less than a week.

So, we decided that he should not go to the tournament…I guess that makes my vacation day decision pretty easy.

This is a pretty tough pill to swallow. Like he said, “I’ve always been able to get down.”

But, I think the fact that he has been able to cut weight on the last day and still perform relatively well on the next day has finally hurt him. His finally gained more weight than he could lose.

So, he will have to forego the national tournament and set his sights on a much smaller, local tournament the following weekend.

The pain of having to watch your child learn the hard way…

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I’ve got to make a decision

Posted on 04/21/2010 by RLW3

Big A keeps making progress. He is finally under 170. He has 6 more pounds to lose in the three days.

In the meantime, I have to decide if I am going to go. The tournament is in Cleveland, Ohio. That is less than eight hours from Philadelphia. However, it is 13 hours from Kansas City!

He doesn’t start wrestling until 9:00 A.M. on Sunday, Even if he loses his first two matches and gets knocked out of the tournament, I still won’t be starting the long drive home until the early afternoon.

That means that I will have to take Monday off.

Is it worth it?Vacation days are like gold to me…

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This is so much better

Posted on 04/20/2010 by RLW3

The more I think about it, the better I feel about the FILA tournament.

First and most obvious, he will be wrestling against guys his own age.

Second, he doesn’t have to weigh in until Saturday afternoon. He would have had to weigh in on Thursday morning for the USA Open tournament.

Third, since the weigh in begins at 4:00, he won’t have to leave Philadelphia until Saturday morning so he should get a good night’s sleep. In the other tournament, he would have had to miss two days of school, including a test in Physics on Friday!

I can’t wait to see how this will turn out!

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Back from the dead

Posted on 04/19/2010 by RLW3

Last Thursday afternoon, back when we were planning to have Big A wrestle in a national tournament, I left messages with two men on the USA Wrestling board. Since Big A red-shirted this year and didn’t win any big tournaments, I wanted to ask them how they would seed the wrestlers for the USA Open.

Last night, at about 9:00 Central time, just before I went to bed, one of them called me back…

“Sorry for taking so long to get back to you but I just got back into town today and I fly out tomorrow morning. What can I do for you?”

“Unfortunately, nothing.”

I then gave him the short explanation about our foray with the USA Open tournament.

“Now, you do know that there is another national tournament that same weekend in Cleveland?”

“No, what is that one?”

“The FILA Junior Nationals. That is a qualifying tournament for the U.S. Junior World team.”

“Would he qualify for the Junior division?”

“It is for those born between 1990-1992.”

“What about being enrolled in 9th-12th grade?”

“It includes college freshman.”

He sent me the links while we were still on the phone. It looks like Plan B is back on again!

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At the same exact place eight hours later

Posted on 04/18/2010 by RLW3

Yesterday, I spent about 8 hours looking at houses. Do you know what I concluded in the end…

I really like the house that we placed a bid on!

I have to figure out a way to make this happen.

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That’s not what I planned

Posted on 04/17/2010 by RLW3

Big A called me today. We both went online and he registered to get his USA Wrestling card. During the process, we got some bad news…

He cannot compete in the Junior division. It seems that there is an additional restriction beyond the year you were born…

You have to be enrolled in the 9th-12th grade!

That means that he will have to compete in the Open division which contains everyone who was born from 1986-1992!

The longer I thought about it, the worse I felt about him going. He would be wrestling against the best wrestlers in the country up to 24 year olds! That is quite a bit different than wrestling the best high school seniors and college freshman.

…and this is freestyle wrestling which allows much more throwing and slamming!

I called him back, “Son, I don’t feel good about this. What do you think?”

“Well, I could easily get hurt.”

“Yeah, forget it.”

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Same situation, different year

Posted on 04/16/2010 by RLW3

The longer I thought about it, the less satisfied I was with my discussion with the Drexel wrestling coach.

Last year, he said that had had no more money left in his recruiting budget for incoming high school seniors. Since we were having the discussion in April, I believed him.

However, when he told me this year that he doesn’t have any money for underclassmen, I knew I was being played for a fool. I guess that means that he is not signing any high school seniors this year!

Bull!

Last year at this time, my son was being lied about. This year, he is being lied to.

Last year, we responded by sending him to a national tournament and the present opportunity with Drexel opened up. Maybe we should try that strategy again…

Let’s see, what is available…

Ah, here it is, next weekend…the USA Open Championships in Cleveland, Ohio…That’s less than 8 hours from Philadelphia…

It looks like he will be wrestling against high school seniors and college freshman in the Junior division (born 1990-92)…I would imagine that there will be more than a few college coaches there…

That sounds pretty good to me. We’ll see what happens…

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