Monday, March 19, 2007

Baby baby...

So, in reviewing my post from the other day, I realized that I kind of left something MASSIVE off the update. It's stupid, and I feel stupid for having done so.

Bibi is now 27 weeks. (For those of you guys out there, that's roughly 6 months along.) The baby is kicking up a storm now, and wakes Bibi a couple nights a week in her sleep. And, the weirdest part? You can actually SEE the damn thing from the outside. Yeah, that's right...it's wiggling around in there so much that you can see, with your eyes, little mounds moving around. It actually keeps reminding me of two VERY different movies.
1.) Alien, when the guy's really sick and then all of a sudden out pops the little angry alien creature spitting mad? Yeah, I keep thinkin' that's gonna happen, and it makes me very nervous.
2.) Spaceballs, the scene where the guy in the diner gets really sick and out pops the creepy little alien creature who starts singing and dancing, "hello my baby, hello my darlin', hello my ragtime girrrrrrrl...", and it makes me very, VERY happy. ( I loved Spaceballs, what can I say!)

So, yeah, the baby is coming along fine, and we're both VERY excited.

This weekend two very good friends came into town unexpectedly, and it was a wonderful surprise. John, Becki, we had a great time Saturday night and lunch was fun, too. Bibi loved getting to meet you, and we'd love to hang out again. (You know, the next time you guys are in Missouri, or we're in Indiana. (c:)

Tonight, Bibi and I had just a wonderful time after our respective jobs were done. We both came home, realized that we were hungry, didn't really want to cook, and also really, really wanted to spend some time outside because it was so nice. So, we packed a pic-a-nic and walked to a grassy knoll near our house. We took some veggie burgers, chips and dip and some grapes and a blanket, and our awesome dog, Leo. We spread out the blanket, got Leo's bone, and sat down. I was a bit nervous about having Leo on our blanket with us, but, it was so cool...Leo sat there, and didn't even TRY to get our food while we enjoyed a lovely picnic in the sun. It was simply wonderful.

And, that reminds me, what are you all looking forward to with the dawing of Spring? (And, for those of you keeping track of my music project at school, Vivaldi's "Spring" is our song-of-the-week this week. I found it fitting.)

Thanks for stopping by...

Tommy

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Once again, i'm easy like Sunday morning....

Hello everyone!

So, yeah, I pretty much suck as a blogger, don't I? Haven't updated in...well, WAY too long. So, thought I'd let you all know what's been going down. So, last we talked, was back in February. (Again, sorry!!)

We had spring break, and Bibi and I went down to KC for the week. We got there Sunday, the 4th, after a wonderfully relaxing weekend, and hung out with Bibi's family for awhile. We had just a couple of goals for our week. We wanted to find a house to buy and we wanted to relax. We spent Monday driving around different areas looking at houses for sale by owners, and writing down numbers to call. We then made what seemed like an obscene number of telephone calls trying to set up walk-throughs. We looked online and tried to get contact numbers on what really WAS an obscene number of houses. We finally got a call from a REALLY excited realitor who wanted to show up two houses that we had looked into. We then drove out to where the houses were, and we were immediatly disheartened. To say that they were nothing but a crap heap with an expensive price tag would be a grave insult to all crap heaps with expensive pricetags in the world. They were disgusting; and, to be honest, the neighborhoods did not leave me with a "hey, I feel really safe here!" feeling.

So, I was feeling down, to say the least.

Tuesday we got up and decided we were going to re-energize ourselves and try again. Bibi went out to lunch with a friend, I sat outside Starbucks and read (more on that later) and at 3 we met with a much more reasonable realitor in Independence. We told her what we were looking for, what we were NOT looking for, and she came up with a folder's worth of houses that she wanted us to look at and let her know if we wanted to look through 'em. They were all MUCH nicer than the previous houses we had looked at, and they made us feel much better about our chances. In fact, two of them we almost fell in love with at first sight.

Wednesday we met with the realitor again to walk through some of the houses. The first houses we really wanted to go through was right in the low to middle of our hoped-for price range. However, the realitor called us and told us that, alas, it had been put under contract the night before. So, we couldn't look at that one. The second house was a little on the high side of our price range and was really small--it was very nice, to be sure, but WAY too small. The third house, and yes, I know I'm getting a little "Goldilocks" on you was...well, it was a little on the high side, but definitely not TOO high, and it was perfect. In fact, it was huge. It was wonderful. We wanted to play it cool, and all of our pre-approval papers were in Kville, so we told our realitor friend that we wanted to give it some careful consideration, but that we did indeed like it. The rest of the week was spent relaxing and enjoying our time in KC.

I read two books over break. "Somebodies and Nobodies" by Robert Fuller, and I'm reading "Only Revolutions" by Mark Z. Danielewski now. Somebodies and Nobodies is a www.bookcrossing.com book, and it's up for grabs if anyone wants it. It's a look at, what Fuller calls, the most pervasive source of "dignity abuse" in our world, the "cancer" that faces our world really; and that abuse is the abuse of rank in all it's myriad forms. Basically, according to the author, if you were to take all of the defining characteristics of all of the "isms" in our world, (e.g. sexism, ageism, racism, etc.) they could all be summed up as an abuse of rank, real or perceived. And the real crux of this abuse is that it by necessity deprives all humans of their one truly important need: dignity. It was interesting. So, like I said, if you're interested in it, let me know, and I'll send it your way.

"Only Revolutions" is by a very intriguing author. Danielewski is a master at writing complicated and unique novels. The construction of the texts, and the structure of the story is very unorthadox, and makes for a very unusual reading experience. The story is in two parts: One part is Sam's story. Sam is a forever sixteen year old who travels all around America with his girlfriend Hailey from the 1860's to the 1960's. The other part of the story is about a girl named Hailey who travels all around America with her boyfriend Sam from the 1960's on. But, in order to see the complexity of the structure, you need to get yourself a copy of this book. (c;

Ok, so that diversionary section was put there on purpose. I did that because after Bibi and I got back from break, as we were filling out our paperwork, we realized that with the baby coming, with the move to Kansas City, and with me not having a job lined up officially yet, buying a house right now would definitely NOT be the best choice for us. So, we're going to go back and look at some rental properties and see what our options are there.

And jobs? Well, I had a screening interview in Lee's Summit back in February and I thought it went really well. When Bibi and I came back from break there was a letter from Lee's Summit basically saying that they thought I did really well, too, and that they would be passing my information on to any schools in the district that had openings, and if they were interested in setting up an interview, the district would get in touch. (Basically, 'we'll call you'.) So, that sounds promising, but it's a wait and see kind of a situation. So, we'll wait and see. (It's Napolean's Battle Plan. I'm going to show up in KC and see what arises. Hopefully it works better for me than it did for him--I don't really want to die in exile on the island of Elba, you know?)

Ok. Well, it's getting to be time for a refill of coffee. So, you all have a great Sunday, and I promise an update before next weekend.....hopefully. (c;

Thanks for stopping by...

Tommy