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Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Home deals

I always thought it would be a good deal to buy a house that's foreclosed on, because usually they are a lot cheaper. But I've learned they are also a ton of work most of the time. When we were looking at houses in Idaho a few years ago we saw a few that people had obviously been angry about having to leave. One had holes punched in walls and the new carpet was trashed. And I remember seeing a news article about foreclosed houses that showed houses that had been completely stripped of appliances, cabinets wrecked, mirrors broken, etc. When my family moved their house down here 10 years ago they found out that a previous owner had filled in a pond that had been in the back yard. They hadn't bothered digging up the pond filters or removing any of it, just filled it in with boulders, making the backyard pretty much impossible to do anything with. So I've decided that maybe getting a foreclosed house isn't such a good deal if you have a ton of stuff to fix up to make it live-able.

Growing up too fast

I keep meaning to post some pics of the kittens. They will be 3 weeks old tomorrow and they are soooo cute! I also need to post about Jason's birthday party we had last weekend. His birthday isn't until Sunday, but we had his party last weekend because my little sister is getting married this weekend. I can't believe my little boy is turning 5! He is growing up way too fast. Before I know it I'm going to have to be looking up auto insurance quotes for him when he starts driving and dealing with girls and cars and homework. Sigh.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

It's all online

I always find it amazing that you can find practically anything online. Usually when I'm looking for gifts like DVDs or electronics I can almost always find them for cheaper online than I can in stores. And of course you can really find almost everything on eBay. If you want to find a lamb motor for your vacuum or some long-ago discontinued toy you can probably find it somewhere online.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Change needed

There has been a lot of controversy lately about healthcare reform. No matter if you agree with Obama's plan or not, I think most everyone agrees that some type of reform is necessary. Medical costs are so high in this country that if you don't have insurance (or sometimes even if you do) an illness or hospital stay can bankrupt you easily. And people are denied insurance frequently and can't afford the healthcare they need. A lot of this has to do with insurance companies out to make a profit and not actually caring about the health of the people. It also has a lot to do with how sue-happy this country is (which you can see by all the commercials for medical mistake lawyers and Tennessee injury lawyers and so on). Doctors have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on malpractice insurance and their insurance dictates what kind of care they can give their patients. Don't even get me started on the maternity industry and the way they dictate how and where women can give birth.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Labor Day Weekend.

Last weekend we went up to Idaho. I ran a 10k up in Pocatello and then we spent the rest of the weekend at the inlaws. Hubby decided to help MIL do a garage sale. I also listed a bunch of stuff on eBay for her. We ended up staying an extra day to help with it and didn't get home until Tuesday night. It was an exhausting weekend.

The 10k went pretty good. Considering I haven't done any exercise in 3 months, I though I did ok. My time was 1:21:55. My goal was to do it in under 1.5hrs and I did. Next time I'll make sure to train better beforehand because I was dying the next day. My legs were so sore I could barely walk. Another side effect was all the sweat made my forehead break out :P How annoying. I haven't had to worry about finding the best acne treatments since I was pg with Nathan, I usually don't get bad breakouts. Good thing I have some acne stuff I was sent to try out, so I get to see if it really works.

The kittens are doing great and sooo cute! I'll get some more pics of them up in a few days. Haha, I just realized today is Thursday, not Tuesday (the long weekend really messed up my sense of time) so the kittens are 1 week old today.

Thursday, September 03, 2009

Here Kitty Kitty

Our cat Stripes had her kittens today! She had some false labor last night that kept me up most of the night, but then this morning she actually went into real labor. It was 3 hours before kitten #1 showed up, which is a bit longer than expected, but she was ok and had the first 3 within about 40 minutes and the last one about an hour after that. 4 cute little kitties. 3 are black and one is grey and I think they all have some lighter markings too. The boys are very excited about them, but I keep them locked in our bathroom so they can't get to them without us. I'm hopeful that we can find some good families for them when they are ready to leave their mom in a few months.

Techno talk

It constantly amazes me how quickly technology advances. When I was a kid I remember when my family first got a computer, and we had to insert one of those large square floppy disc things and then enter in the command prompts to reach the file to play the simple games. And then when I was a teenager and we first got Internet and I was amazed at the ability to look up information on the super slow dial-up connection. Now there are so many superfast ways to connect to the Internet from cool flat-screen monitors, laptops, netbooks and even phones. Cell phones were only for people with money when I was a kid, and I didn't have one until I got married, and now these days most kids I know have them. I often wonder what technology will be like when my kids are my age. Will they even know what VHS and cassette tapes are?