Geek Alert

Since we'll have to put money down on the house, pay for closing costs, and furnish the place, Eric and I are going to be doing our best to save as much money as possible in the coming months.  Our last biggish purchase before the Great Cash Ration came in the mail a few days ago.  You'll never guess what it is.

It's not for the house.  

No, it's nothing electronic.

Nope, not a pet.  Like you ever thought we'd get a pet.  

BINGO!  A tandem bicycle!  We took it for a spin yesterday.  Way fun!

The Separated at Birth You Never Saw Coming

Grammy award-winning rapper Nelly...and me?! 

With our trendy face bandages, we look like twins almost.  Following a visit to the dermatologist a few weeks ago, I received a phone call from the doctor's office saying that the biopsy of a mole on my face came back "a little abnormal."  In my opinion, there's really no in between--it's pretty much either normal or abnormal.  At my visit yesterday, they confirmed that it was the latter--a basal cell carcinoma, a common type of skin cancer.  Luckily, we caught it early enough that the removal procedure they performed yesterday has a 98.5% chance of having wiped out the malignant cells with a 0% chance of it spreading from the skin to inside the body.

In short, hooray!  I found out I had teeny-tiny cancer--and then don't* have it anymore--on the same day!  On the downside, under my stylish bandage, there is what looks like a pretty nasty cigar burn.  It should heal within a few weeks, but in the meantime I'll be following an eight-year-old hip-hop trend.  So gangsta.

*Well, probably don't.  There's a 1.5% I do, but we won't think about that.  I didn't get the faucet with a 1% chance of winning so with these odds I believe we're safe.

Exciting News!

First of all, we are one step closer to the Pot o' Gold being officially ours!  The bank has now accepted our offer and we are on to the next step in the process, getting the loan.  We have been pre-approved by several different institutions, and Eric has taken charge of finding a balance between the best lender, interest rate, monthly payment, etc., which is not an easy job.  We contacted Lending Tree so we're getting bombarded with calls, and he's juggling all of the numbers quite well.  Annie is here visitng and I'm sure she thinks we're this boring all the time!

In the meantime, we were present for the home inspection today.  Apart from the usual short sale/foreclosure home issues (missing showerheads, etc.) and a few minor quick fixes (dent in the garage door, etc.), everything seems to be in pretty excellent shape!  I was able to take a few photos while we were there.  (Don't be jarred by the paint job--we don't call it the Pot o' Gold for nothing.  We've already started stockpiling buckets of the new color, Citrus Spice.  I couldn't locate a swatch online, but in paint color terms, I'd say Citrus Spice is a blend between Mountain Honey and Prairie Wheat.)

Our second bit of news isn't really ours to share, but we're still excited about it!  Eric's sister Laura is expecting--by November, we're gonna have a niece or nephew!!

P.S. I know it seems hypocritical after I warned you against it, but I am totally distracted by the walls in these photos.  Thankfully we've (barely) seen this house's true potential past the swirly madness!

Is No News Good News?

We're still waiting to hear if the next step, a BPO, has been completed in the madness surrounding this house.  In the meantime, I've been keeping myself busy with one of my favorite pastimes: entering sweepstakes and contests online.  It's become a hobby of mine and sometimes I end up with some really cool prizes from websites and other bloggers.  (Breaking news: I just checked my email to find I'd won a custom ChocBite candy bar from The Mom Reviews.  Delish!) 

I only hope I'm not jinxing it by entering contests related to potentially getting this house.  Call me silly for bring up the dreaded jinx, but first consider this case.  The first house we had under contract had this atrocious brass chandelier hanging directly in the entryway, but then I won this amazing Carolina Rustica chandelier from My Design Secrets on April 20.  Problem solved, right?  Well, it would've been if the house hadn't gone into foreclosure two weeks later.  Jinx!

Or maybe it was just a coincidence.  Since I'm a rational twenty-something and not a third-grader in dire need of a Coke (or maybe that's a different Jinx), I'm banking on the serendipity of the timing.  So that brings us to now because the Pot o' Gold house is missing a few key appliances--namely the washer and dryer and the entire kitchen suite--and one other major fixture: the kitchen faucet.  Imagine my delight when I found that Delta was starting to host giveaways on some of the blogs that I follow!  I could win my choice of Delta faucet--up to a $300 value--for the kitchen which could potentially be ours. 

So I picked my favorite, the Pilar Single handle Pull-Down Kitchen Faucet with Touch2O (but my pick could change since I haven't measured the little opening thingie where the faucet would stick out) and put in my entry at Mommy Blessings in Small Bundles, Thrifty Wifey, and Sugar Pop Ribbons.  But my measly entry was just one in hundreds of entries from contest junkies from all over the country!  The winner will be chosen at random, so even having entered at three different sites, I calculated my chances of winning at a meager 0.2%.  I had to help my chances somehow.  Thankfully, all three contests were offering extra entries for bloggers who wrote a post about the giveaway including links back to the sponsor and the blog hosting the contest.  Hey, I'm a blogger!  And this is a post about the giveaway! 

Now, ordinarily, I don't take advantage of those extra entries.  I'm a highly addicted contest hound and a very busy lady.  As much as I truly appreciate and want to promote my fellow bloggers, I just don't have time to blog about every giveaway I enter.  However, this was an opportunity I couldn't afford to pass up.  There is a hole where a faucet should be at our (potential) house.  Someone--even three someones!--decided to give a faucet away and (potentially) save me up to $300.  It's a holiday weekend.  It's my day off.  So I figured I had a few extra moments to wh*re out my blog if it increased my chances (even to 1%!) of winning something that I don't just want but (potentially) need.  So here goes nothing! 

• Two of a Kind, Working on a Full House: Dee's adorable kiddos, Evan and Isabella, are "exactly 2 years apart."  (I wonder if they have the same birthday?)  Isabella will be so lucky to have a big brother to chase all the boys away when she's in high school.  Well, Dee will be lucky.  Isabella would probably rather not have the star quarterback shooed away from her locker.  
• Thrifty Wifey: Laura, aka Thrifty Wifey, and I are both young Christian bargain-hunting wives just orbiting the blogosphere.  She's got the One Lovely Blog Award resting on the web equivalent of her mantel, which is nice because if it were on her real mantel, one of her animals would inevitably find away to knock it over in playful, mischievous fashion because she and her husband are outnumbered by house pets!
• Mommy Blessings in Small Bundles: This site is maintained by Jeanie Huston, a photographer like me.  Jeanie's fellow Hustons are Joe, Joshua, and Jatherine, I mean Catherine, and she and her husband are both college students.  I'll have to remember to stop back by the site on November 17 to wish the college kids a happy blogoversary!  (Who came up with that spelling?  Where did the "o" come from?)
• Sugar Pop Ribbons: I don't know much about Sugar Pop Ribbons since there's no About Me widget on the home page.  Because SPR is sporting the same blog layout I used before I discovered The Cutest Blog on the Block, and since that layout is pink, I'm assuming she's a throwback sister keepin' it real.  If you don't appreciate the classic look, each of her 887 Facebook friends will box your ears. 
• Mommy's Memorandum: Mrs. Morrison of Mommy's Memo has a regular brood of six little ones.  (How cute would it be if their names all began with M?)  Not quite enough for a baseball team, but they could definitely dominate a volleyball tournament.  Or they could play two simultaneous games of Chinese doubles in tennis.  Or golf, but two would have to caddy.
• And, last but not least, Delta Faucets.  Thanks very much to Delta for collaborating with these lovely bloggers to host these giveaways.  I know I might not be able to choose the Pilar Single handle Pull-Down Kitchen Faucet with Touch2O if I win, partly because it's $547, but also because I don't know the measurements of the faucet opening place where it would (potentially) go.  But there's a tool on the website that lets me narrow down my choices by width and number of holes.  Among the 102 kitchen faucets they make, I'm sure I'll manage to find another model that tickles my fancy.  If I win.  And now there's a 1% chance that I will!

Photo Limbo

For the past three years, I've been paying $25 per year for three years for photo storage and hosting from Flickr.com.  Now I've decided that instead of $25 once a year forever, I'd rather spend $100 of my money on an external hard drive once.  And free online back-up storage once.  Well, twice, just in case.  And free image hosting, though that's proven a little harder to find.  At any rate, as a result, some of my old photo links may be broken until I find a new image host.  When I do, my plan is to update the links.  In the meantime, thanks for your understanding!

More Househunting Hysteria

So after the Model Home was foreclosed upon, it was back to the drawing board located at square one in the salt mines.  We jumped right back into househunting and it didn't take us long to find another specimen.  The Pot 'o Gold (so named by Eric because the current owner chose to paint every wall in the house a bold shade of goldenrod) is a 1900-square-foot, 10-year-old 4-bedroom, 3-bathroom house a few miles away from our current neighborhood.  The place is in incredible condition with lots of upgrades, and it's just over the county line where property taxes are a bit lower.  The sellers accepted our offer--$1000 more than we would have paid for the smaller, older model home--so now we're just waiting to see if the bank will take $165,000 less than the home's most recent purchase price.  Fingers crossed!

My Hero

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, professional wrestler and actor, recreational photobomber

My second favorite part of this photo is the one lady's epic Christmas sweater.  My third favorite part is that the other lady is holding a pair of maracas.  Feliz Navidad.

Back to Square One

Well, the sellers foreclosed on the house we wanted.  Not sure why they would want to do that when they had an interested buyer already in the process.  We're bummed, but we're moving on quickly to find a suitable replacement.  To lighten the mood, here's a reminder of where we are in the form of a blast from my past as a PBS-devoted child.

Everyday Adventures

Even if we don't have anything big and exciting coming up, we still have little adventures around here every day.  Take last Friday, for instance, when I ran out of gas on the highway coming home from rehearsal.  Of course I had forgotten my phone that day, so I scaled Overpass Mountain, trekked hundreds of feet, and stirred the natives of Longhorn Steakhouse to procure a phone.  Eric is wrestling the demonic curse of the root canal, writhing in pain at every possible chance.  His ailment left me to explore and observe the culture of Xanadu at the Bob Carr flying solo.

Coming up in a few weeks, just after Joseph closes, we'll be blazing a trail to Miami for a mini-vacation to celebrate our anniversary.  Also, the newest development in our acquisition of the Indian Oaks Trail Territory has unfolded.  Over two months after putting in our offer in mid-February, the villainous bank to whom the owners' balance is owed decided the purchase was worth $9,000 more than the original asking price.  After some prospecting, we've agreed to accept their counteroffer with the stipulation that we will close in time to qualify for the first-time home buyers' tax bounty before it expires at the end of June.  If all works according to plan, we'll be starting a new adventure at a new address before summer's end!

Keepin' It Real

Not much new has happened lately around here, but we're both keeping very busy with our new responsibilities. Joseph opens at the Garden Theatre in less than two weeks and it's been incredible to watch it all come together!  I'm very excited to share that the role of Potiphar, my on-stage spouse, will be played by a local celebrity each night.  The list of names is shaping up to be very impressive from what I hear, so I'll post as soon as everything is nailed down, and I'll have ticket information too.  I'm also playing a gig at the downtown branch of the Orange County Library again this year to celebrate National Music Week.  If you're free around 11:30 on Monday, May 3, come on by to hear a song or two!

I had an amazing opportunity during the Easter season.  A friend of mine, to whom I am very grateful, recommended me to fill in with the eight-piece professional choir at the Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary, Queen of the Universe for their Holy Week services.  Performing with such an illustrious and talented group was a very fulfilling experience for me, and I hope I get the chance to go back and sing with them every once in a while. 

Eric is adjusting very well to his new surroundings.  He's closing tonight for the first time in this role, so I'm holding down the fort here at home, just bloggin' and having a relaxing night in to prepare for the intense rehearsal process resuming Monday evening.  It's gonna be a great show!