In Long Prairie.  It’s a good weekend, really low key which is nice.  We haven’t had a low key weekend around here for a while.  Tomorrow Beth has a wedding shower up here, hence the trip.  But for me I just get to hang out.  It’s kind of nice.

We still haven’t heard back from our realtor yet on the house.   We were thinking we’d hear something on Thursday, and then we heard we’d hear on Friday.  Now, Saturday, we’re still waiting to hear.  It would be nice to know.  But it’s not quite as nerve racking as it was last time.  I’m not really sure why.  Perhaps it’s the lack of competition.  As far as we know anyway there are no other offers on it.  Or maybe it’s the fact we already lost it once, and therefor our hopes are a little more tempered.

Anyway, hope everyone is enjoying the weekend.  It’s sort of nice outside, kind of windy, but it’s fairly warm.   It looks like it might rain soon, so we’re going to take a walk before the rain starts to fall.

Last time I had things to ponder.  Now it seems those things have been taken care of.  Thus the title: things pondered.  (I’m not sure if that’s a word or not, but it sounds alright to me.)

The House: The bank rejected every offer that was on it.  The house is still for sale.  We spoke with our lender and found we could offer a little higher, and still be comfortable in our monthly payment.  We made an offer on the house.  We’ll see what happens.  We should know by next week Friday.

The Job: I’m not going to do it.  Right now with grad school, work, and Beth things are busy.  I don’t know where I would put another job.  I don’t want to get behind in school work.  I can’t neglect Beth either.  Therefore I’m not going to interview at the Apple Store.  Besides, I’m not a big fan of retail and during the holidays things get crazy.  And I like weekends off.  It just makes things easier.

As for today: I did some laundry (3 loads), and did some good cleaning up of this place.  I vacuumed and everything.   I even got outside for a bit, and if the weather holds up I think we’ll be going for a walk this evening.

Tomorrow I get to hang out with my little niece!  Be jealous.  I’ll be babysitting tomorrow evening, which will be fun.  Beth’s got plans so she won’t be around a lot.  But we’ll have a good time I am sure.

I was going to post something on the discussion board for class, but that appears to be down at the moment.  Or at least it was when I started writing this.  I should go check again.  Enjoy the weekend!

As I said last time the house we made an offer on, we didn’t get.  The house was super nice, and for the money a great deal.  I’m wondering if we’ll find a house that great in our price range.  We’ll see.  I don’t know what to think.  We found one on Sunday that we thought was okay, but of course we compare it to the one we made an offer on.  The one from Sunday has great potential, without the need for a lot of work right up front.  So we’re not sure what to think.  Granted we have a few months before we have to make a move.  So it’s just some stuff going on to consider.

I got an email today from Apple.  They invited me to come to their job fair thing, for seasonal mac specialists.  I’d sell all things Mac.  Now that’s an awesome thing, and I’d be around some great products.  But I’m not sure if I really want to do that.   With the pay raise I got I don’t really have to do it, but the extra money would always be nice.  And I think they’re are some good benefits (ie. discounts) at Apple.  (Can any of my friends who have worked there confirm that?)

School’s going alright.  It’s school.  Nothing overly tough, but enough to keep me busy.  I should do some of that homework.   I think I’ll do that.  Thanks for reading about my things to ponder.

This is my third one in a row.  They’re kind of nice.  Originally I wasn’t going to have today off, but that changed with Special Session.  Because I was there 16 hours I took today off.  The special session went alright I thought.  There was a lot of mismanagement.  The bill was already agreed to, and we had copies of it in our email inbox at about 2 am Tuesday morning (15 hours before the session started), but for some reason they hadn’t been able to print of 133 copies of it in that amount of time.  So we sat around in recess from 5:30 pm until about 11:15 pm.  The bill was passed in less than an hour.  I can only imagine that if the people in control would have not tried to change the bill and add in other things the Special Session could have been completed by 6:30 pm, and we could have been home by 9.  But I guess not.

An update on the house search:  As I mentioned before we put an offer in on a house. Our offer was rejected.  There were other offers on the house, and as far as we know the other offers have not been accepted yet.  The listing of the house online still says it is active.  But we are starting our search again.  We’ll find something I’m sure.

Today is going to be a good chance for me to clean up the apartment.  I’ve got some laundry drying right now, and if we had more quarters I’d put another load in.  (Yet one more reason I’m looking forward to a house: you don’t have to put quarters in the machine every time you want to do laundry!)  And I should do some homework today.  I’ve got some reading to do for class.  But I’m just about done with Ronald Reagan’s autobiography.  I’ve got about 5o pages left and I’m sure I’ll finish that this afternoon as well.

It’s time for me to get moving on the lots of things that need to get done.  Happy Thursday!

It’s that time of year again. It’s football season. I’m happy that the vikings aren’t blakced out today. Otherwise I’d be stuck watching some other football game, or not watching at all. And football in HD is pretty nice.

Last night we got to hang out with Brad and Bethany for a while. They’re some fun kids. Bethany makes good pie too. We played some Scene It – FRIENDS Edition. That’s a fun game, especially if you like Friends. We all qualified for that.

And the weather today is cool. I have the window open to get some crisp air in here. But it’s kind of cool so I have a sweatshirt on. I could just close the window, but I like wearing the sweatshirt.

That’s all I’ve got for the moment.

A number of things.  First off an apology to the people who were looking for some of my musings.  I don’t really remember them any more.  I know the general topic, but not sure what they were.  That’s what I get for not blogging them when I think of it.

Second off, the big news, we put an offer in on a house.  It’s a great place, up in Blaine.  We both really like the house.  We’ll see how it plays out.  We know there was another bid in on the house.  So we tried to play the balancing game of making our bid just a tid sweeter than the other one, without giving away the farm.  We first saw the house on Tuesday.  After looking at it we pretty much knew we wanted to buy it.  We had our parents come down on Thursday and look at it with us.  They know more of what to look for than we do, and it was good that they came.  They have the wisdom of a few more years, and of buying and fixing up a few more houses than we do.  They pointed out some good things.

We talked about it over dinner on Thursday night and decided that we would make an offer and Friday morning we went to the realtor’s office and put in the offer.  The house is owned by the bank, and it could take a while to hear from them.  We put in there they had to get back to us by 4:30 pm on Thursday.  So we’ll know by then.

Today I did something I haven’t done for over a year.  I was in a parade for my friend Rep. Kurt Zellers.  It was fun to do a parade again.  It was a little different to be on the sticker side of it rather than being the one to be out shaking hands, etc.  But I really enjoyed it.  It was a great day out there, the weather was nice.  Not too hot.  A good time.

I just got done making an apple crisp, and it’s in the oven.  It’s starting to smell pretty good I must say.  We bought a bag of fresh apples at the store the other day.  It was a good choice.  Fall is starting to come, and the fall foods/beverages are right around the corner.  I’m liking that!

Yesterday we had a chance to go to Bethel and visit with some of our friends in the ITS world there.  That was good times.  It was nice to be able to get back and talk to them.  We haven’t had the chance to do that lately.  Things are different there.  I still know some of the TA’s, but the full time staff seems to be turning over rather quickly.  But it was good times, and we went out to lunch.  We enjoyed seeing everyone!

That’s all I’ve got for the moment.  I should do some homework.  That’s right, I started my Masters program on Tuesday.  It’s going well, but I find it a little weird to be doing homework again.

More tomorrow…

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about D.C.  I suppose it’s because 2 years ago today I started my internship.  The Labor Day weekend will probably always remind me of that awesome experience out there.  There are so many good times that I think about.  Some might call me crazy.

As ya’ll know I got to help Mrs. B last time she was in town.  It gave me the opportunity to get my picture taken with her again.  She’s such a nice lady, it’s great.  I come home from work today and in our mailbox is an envelope from the White House, and it’s a signed photo that was taken of us that day.  It was cool to open.  And a little ironic that it came today.

There are more musings that I have, but those shall wait until later.  I have to go meet my wife, and we’re looking at more houses tonight.  We might even find one we really like!