About 20 minutes after I got there I get a call from Beth. She got in an accident. She got cut off on her way to work and slammed into the median at about 50 mph. Airbags deployed. It wasn’t so good.

Beth was fine. But the car is not so fine. We should hear back from the insurance guy tomorrow to see what we get out of it. I am pretty sure it willnget totaled. So that means car shopping could be in our near future.

In other news Christmas came early here! (see below)

Posted from my iPhone

Today I was up in St. Cloud to help with the State of the State address.  That meant leaving the house at 5:40 this morning.  Getting to work around 6:15, doing a few quick tasks before getting in the vans to go to St. Cloud at 6:30.  The event was fun.  I got to meet some great people.

The speech, over all, I thought was good.  I am not really sure what to compare it to.  The State of the Union had more fire in it, and that one was better.  I didn’t not agree with everything the Governor said today, but he did say some good stuff.  It was kind of fun to be in the room.  It was a some what strange feeling.  Because you usually only see those things on TV, but to see it in person.  It was fun.

We got back to the Capitol at 2:30 this afternoon, then it was hunkering down to write 3 news columns, attend a meeting, walk through the press corp to inform them of a press conference one of my members is having, and to get all the stories from the mornings papers.  It was quite busy.  I think I left work about 5:40, nearly 12 hours after I had gotten there.

So work is at a dead sprint.  They are pushing so many bills through so quickly this year, it’s interesting.  There is some kind of political strategy behind it, but I’m not sure what.  They may be trying to end the session early so they can brag about it during the campaign season.  They may also just be trying to pass the bills early, because they know the Governor will veto a lot of them.  We’ll see.

Anyway, I should be working on my final paper for this quarter.  It’s due on Sunday.  Another quarter has gone by, and it’s been quick (mostly).  Not as much fun as the last quarter, but good.  This next one could be interesting.  We’ll leave it at that for the moment.

This weekend I’m without a wife.  Beth flew out to PA with some of her family to see their Grandpa.  He’s not doing the greatest these days, and they wanted to see him before he took a turn for the worse.  So if you want to say a prayer for him that’d be appreciated.

Work is picking up again at the Capitol.  You can tell that Session is just around the corner.  It will soon pick up and evenings will be taken up.  But it’s fun.  Between that and school things are really busy.

So that’s been my life in a nut shell.  I’m looking forward to everything that’s coming up.

The loan didn’t go through.  Now it’s not quite as bad as it seems, but here’s the story.  Due to my crazy percentage job (Overall I’m 87.5%, 100% Jan – June, 75% July – Dec).  My recent paystubs have my overall pay as fairly low, because I’m at 75% time.  So, based on that, we were approved for a first-time home buyer loan at a good rate, good program.  They do the employment verification and see a discrepancy between what my pay stubs say I make and what HR said I make (due to the percentage).  Going with HR I make about 12.5% more on the year than the paystubs say, which is correct.  But that pushes us over the income limits for the program by $1,500.  They caught this at 2pm yesterday, 24 hours before we were supposed to close.

So they disqualify us for the loan.  We do make enough to get an 80%/20% loan.  So they’re working on getting that through for us.  It should all be good to go this afternoon.  We’ll be closing on the house tomorrow at 8 am.  18 hours late, and our monthly payments will be a little higher than they would have been, but we’ll still get the house.

So getting the loan through in 40  hours time isn’t bad, it just caused a fair amount of stress and headache on all this.  But tomorrow we should be homeowners!!

As for house stuff.  Well I don’t really want to get into that right now.  If all goes as planned, we close tomorrow at 2pm.  Check back after that for more info.

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!

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 weekend will be busy.  Tomorrow we have a wedding in Bloomington (I think), which should be good times.  It’s some Bethel people, so there will be some other college friends there.

Then we’re going down to my brothers house, because Lacey is coming to visit.  And since I haven’t seen her since our wedding I figured I should probably prove to my sister I still lover her (although I don’t think she really doubted it).  But that will be fun to hang out all of us together again.

Work this week was pretty good.  Nothing overly spectacular.  I set my summer hours, which was good I guess.  It needed to be done.  Although it is a bummer that it’s fewer hours.

But I am thinking about applying to the Apple Store to be a Mac Specialist as a part time gig.  That could be fun I think, but I don’t know if I want to deal with all the hassle of part time jobs: working weekends mainly would be the big thing.  I think working at the Apple Store would be fun, although I may come to want a bunch of things I couldn’t afford.

So I’m split on that.  Any advice on what I should do?

That’s really all I can say at the moment.  Perhaps I’ll explain more at a later date, and maybe even give you a weekend review later on.