You Can Call Us Crazy, That’s Fine

Lady Aravan and I put our house up for sale about three weeks ago.  It generated a lot of interest – and continues to do so – and we did receive an early offer (that was low to the point of absurdity), so it was suggested that we begin to take a closer look at some properties in the areas we were interested in.  My Lady and I did have some specific criteria that we were looking for: land (enough land that our neighbors wouldn’t be on top of us, and if we couldn’t see them at all, so much the better), a good house, and not terribly far away from our respective jobs (which in many cases were in opposite directions of where we were looking).

So, we set up two appointments, one for a house we’d been looking at for close to a year that helped inspire us to want to move in the first place, and then another one, a bit closer to civilization.  The first house had a beautiful 6-acre lot, with nice pasture area and a great outbuilding.  Problem was, the house was so bad and unusable that I’d have preferred living in the outbuilding and letting the animals live in the house.

The second one, though.  Oh my.

 

Five Things for a Weird Tuesday, Oct 26th

I haven’t done a “5 Things” post in a while (small bits of stuff that don’t warrant a full blog post, but allow me to write something), but since I’ve been sporadic and feeling guilty about it, I decided to do one today.

1.  A very strange day.  Out of the blue, I got a Facebook message from an aunt on my father’s side.  I don’t recall ever speaking to her or meeting her, although it’s possible I did when I was very very young.  When my Dad died when I was 7, we pretty much lost all contact with his side of the family (and the majority of my mother’s side as well, long story).  One of his brothers, Phil, kept in occasional touch, mostly because he was executor of my grandparent’s estate, and when they died I received a small sum of money, along with all his other grandchildren.  In the space of a few hours, my aunt and I exchanged a few emails.  She’s a hospice nurse with lots of children and grandchildren.  It was nice to finally “meet” my father’s sister.

Current Events

Since it’s been a little while since I’ve done a blog, I figured I’d go ahead and fill you in on the EXCITING and TUMULTUOUS EVENTS (or lack thereof) that have taken place.

Football: The Redskins won yet another ridiculously close game.  Out of 5 games, 4 of them have come down to the final play.  Only when they got hammered by the Rams, who lost 44-6 or something this week to the previously 0-4 Lions, was the outcome of the game not in doubt on the final snap.  Heart attack central, this team.  But since they are 3-1 in those nail-biters, I’ll take it for now.

Siblings

Sibling relationships can be truly bizarre things.  People talk all the time about how a certain friend is like a brother or sister to them, meaning that their affection and closeness rivals the ties of blood.  In many cases, these same people have actual brothers or sisters that they aren’t particularly close to, or don’t care for, or actively dislike.  I know many people who talk shit about their siblings constantly, only to vociferously defend the siblings to others who do the same.  It’s weird.

Five Mass Effect Things for Monday, March 8th

1.  I, along with Lady Aravan, spent the weekend playing Mass Effect.  When some people say that, they mean they spent several hours doing something.  What I mean is, we got home from work on Friday night and started playing, played until 2 am, got up Saturday and played from noon until 6:30 am, got up Sunday and played from noon til 11:30.  I finished my second full run-through, including at one point going back 6 hours to an old saved game since I screwed something trivial up.  Lady Aravan finished the game for the first time, threw in Mass Effect 2, and started playing until she realized that there was a bonus for getting level 50 in ME1 in the second game.  So she reloaded a saved game and spent a good number of hours finishing nearly every quest in the game (she missed 1 that I am aware of, and couldn’t get it without going even further back) as well as finding pretty much every debris field and resource on every landable planet.  When she finished the game, she was 50 and I was in awe, since even though I went back 6 hours and did the same shit another time through, I don’t have the fortitude to do what she did.  Although I have to admit it bothers me that I’m 48.  Moral: we like games.

Five Things for Friday, Feb 26th

1.  Lady Aravan and I bought Bioshock 2, Mass Effect 2, and Dragon Age yesterday.  We were going to buy our own copy of Mass Effect as well, but they were sold out.  With the prospect of a coming snowstorm, fond hopes of a day off filling with gooey Xbox action floated around, right up until 9am when it was determined that I had to come into work.  Where less than half the staff actually came in.  Curses.

Five Things for Tuesday, February 16th

1.  It took over an hour to get to work today.  It was snowing. but there wasn’t any snow on the road.  People were just driving incredibly badly, either WAY too slow or ridiculously recklessly, like the tool douchebag driving the wrong way down a one-way street and looking pissed that he couldn’t get by.  I should have just driven into him.

Five Things for Monday, Feb 15

1.  Valentine’s Day weekend was a lot of fun.  Friday night Lady Aravan and I relaxed with a Dominick’s stromboli and calzone, Saturday we went to a Chinese New Year’s party, and Sunday we had company for dinner.  As much as I looked forward to relaxing all weekend, every activity was a lot of fun and I enjoyed myself immensely.

Five Things for Tuesday, December 22nd

1.  I thought the Redskins would lose 30-3 against the Giants, so I wasn’t shocked by the 45-12 ass-kicking they took.  The team is a pathetic mixture of overpriced free agents (DeAngelo Hall, Clinton Portis) and complete cast-off scrubs (Levi Jones, Stephon Heyer, Mike Williams, DeAngelo Hall) with a few actual skilled players left to go through the motions (London Fletcher, Jason Campbell, Andre Carter).  It’s a bad season, the worst I can ever remember.  One can only hope that this is rock bottom, and that next year we can at least earn our self-respect back.

Five Things for Monday, December 21st

1.  We had a huge snowstorm over the weekend.  We got probably a foot and a half of snow on Saturday, which was beautiful to watch inside a nice warm house.  My wife and I had fun taking pictures of the girls playing in it, we shoveled the driveway and deck a couple of times with a broken snowshovel and a spade not designed for the job (but it did remarkably well at scraping ice and dealing with the plow-packed stuff at the end of the driveway).  I even ran and jumped a few times into our assembled Wall of Snow after we finished the driveway, laughing like a loon and making my wife laugh too.  I threw snowballs at trees and dogs, practiced my punting form on big snow chunks, and generally had a blast.  I really like this winter thing.