New House Pictures

For those of you who are interested and haven't seen any pictures yet, my apologies! Here's to make up, I hope. We've got the house, and it's now getting filled with all our "stuff". Definitely not as open-feeling any more. It's still quite nice though.

First we have the front of the house. (bet you couldn't have guessed that, could ya?)

Then comes the view directly upon enter the house. I won't necessarily be standing there when you come in. Though it can't be seen from this view, these are lovely open stairs.

Let's turn to the right. The previous owner has installed surround sound. Hmmm, well that's next to useless for us.

A very nice kitchen that has roughly equivalent drawers/cabinets, but in different configurations. Anyone up for Kitchen Tetris?

VERY nice is the large storage shed in the back yard - already with two layers of shelves installed in there. The backyard is all slate stone-covered, so no mowing! No grass either, but it starts to make up for that with three plant beds. (You can see 1 1/2 here. The third and largest is off to the left.)

Then comes the area that needed the most work beforehand. Here's the master bedroom with its little mold problem. It was quite a bit worse than what you see there. Just as challenging is the roof leak that caused the mold in the first place. Fortunately, the owning bank fixed them both up before we bought it. We will eventually get new pictures . . . maybe.

And then we have the main bathroom on the second floor - very pink. Yeah. It's coming out. You can probably see the bits of mold showing there in the cracks - that's my excuse for taking it out. Really, I am manly enough to use a pink bathroom without feeling odd. Really I am. It's just because of the spots of mold. Really.

(The blue tape is a reminder that the house has been winterized.)

And so, there you have it. A nice, empty home with lots of promise. And all ours. Well, ours and the bank's. Close enough for now. We'll work on getting the bank out of the picture.

I Swear This Isn't Rated X or Even R

I seem to have hit a stretch of coincidences in what I've read this week.

First came a post by George P Wood - the son of the AG president: Losing My Religion by William Lobdell. Read the post. I'm considering tracking down the book.

Then, I read an article about a megachurch pastor down in Texas by the name of Ed Young Jr. (decisions, decisions - how much to post considering that I know I have readers of a younger sort) He has a promotional gimmick going at his church based on sex and is widely spreading the news in national news outlets about his own personal married life.

Then, I read a post by a favorite Internet Monk of mine about Ed's stunt. Then came the comments to that post. Wow. Then came a lawsuit threatening him with legal action unless he took the post down. Even more wow! He did, but re-posted it without a news picture of Ed and added a comment making it clear that this is his own opinion of what's going on. Hopefully he won't get smacked with a lawsuit now!

I realize the world has people who I really don't even come close to understanding or comprehending on even general levels, and yet they love the Lord. I try to accept that even if I don't understand them. This isn't in that category.

This has two levels of lunacy - first the obvious one which has Ed sitting on a bed, with his wife, in front of his church and telling them they need to do 7 or 30 days straight, just like they do! Then they go on CNN, CBS, and various newspapers giving interviews and details!!?! Might a reason that some brush off Christianity be precisely because of silly circus stunts like this?

Ok, then the second level of lunacy - people defend this stuff! Not just defend it, but threaten to sue unless you stop criticizing!!!

.........

Oh bother. My audience, what there is of it, is probably the choir to my "preaching" about this. Lobdell's book, Losing My Religion apparently touches on the fluffy circus aspect of his church at the time being what drove him out. (Later, Catholic sexual abuse scandals and the response to them finished the job.) I've read enough other articles that touch on this same thing from Christians and non-Christians, to know that it's a serious issue.

My church is doing some classes on how to be a better church, and it's mostly focused on how to organize the church's thoughts in a cohesive direction, such as helping people in the community, providing better teaching for those in the church already, and helping the members to do more general outreach to the community. All good stuff there. But, there is an undertone that pops up every now and then about how we can attract more people with a better worship style or better attractions.

Those things aren't fundamentally wrong, but the attitude of doing some "thing" to market the church better is disturbing. Sure, it's not nearly as bad as advertising "7 Days of Sex" and talking about you and your wife's sex life (with her and a bed on stage) to the church and reporters, but the general attitude might be the same.

Anyway, I've got to get back to work. My second lunch break has been taken up by this post now. Too depressing.

It's time to spend time with family for Thanksgiving!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Officially Homeowners!

Yay! C&I are officially homeowners. How wonderful it is to have almost $100,000 dollars of debt! Wheee!

Actually, it is. Well, not the debt part, but owning a home. I've already started my first fix-em-up project on my own home! That is a very nice feeling.

It's a two-story townhouse just around the corner from our current house. While both are two-story townhouses, the one we bought is at least 6-8' wider than our current place. It makes quite a difference in what it feels like, and it opens up enough extra room that there are four bedrooms instead of two. Room to grow.

The process had a couple of points where we were about to back out. The biggest issues on the house were the roof leak which caused a massive mold problem in one of the closets, and the HVAC not working. The selling bank (it was a foreclosed property) fixed everything with a bit of prodding, but that was certainly a cause of much concern.

Now, the remaining issues are the bathrooms and a bit o sagging going on. The place has a nice, large bay window in the front of the house, but I suspect that pulling out a chunch of the wall weakened the support and has allowed the house to sag towards the middle. Nobody thought it was dangerous, including the home inspector and a couple other contractors, but it is noticeable if you look carefully. Eventually we want to crank the sagging back up and put in some supports.

That's a much longer-ranged issue though. More immediately concerning us are the bathrooms. The guy who owned it previously was remodeling the house, and got caught by the dropping home prices. Parts of the house are nicely done, and others are still original. One part that was redone was the master bathroom. It's a 3/4 bathroom (a shower instead of a bath), and looks great except for the base of the shower door. He needed to raise the shower door, and so he put in a riser. The riser was slap-dash and has come apart. So I'm re-making that. That's all that needs to be done in there though.

The main bathroom needs more - it's still original, and the caulking around the tub is moldy and dissentigrating. The bathroom tiling is very PINK too - both the tiling around the tub and the tiling on the floor. So, instead of just redoing the cauling around the tub, we're gonig to replace that whole tub area.

So guess what J and I will be doing this Thanksgiving? DEMOLITION!!! W00T!

I'm going to give J a hammer and let him whack away at the tiling while I do the actual work of cutting through the cement board to which the tiling is affixed and yanking it down en toto. Then it'll be time to get some waterproof cement board and a bathtub shell. I'm more concerned about the bathtub shell than the demolition - I can ALWAYS break things, but building things is tougher. Actually, before I let J take a hammer to it, I'm going to have some fun punching holes through myself. I try punching the walls at clogging (lovely rough timber logs) but everyone yells at me. :-( Now I don't have to worry about breaking anything!

C put up a post about our current housing abundance, and it seems to be coming together well enough that it won't be a major wallet-breaking time from now to June.

A definite thing to thank God for!

Rant - Part Something

First off is, of course, economics. Apparently everyone is getting in on the bailout, so I am doing my best to help Americans everywhere to get their little chunk. Yes, you too can apply for the Bailout, known as the Troubled Asset Recovery Program. (http://www.ustreas.gov/press/releases/reports/applicationguidelines.pdf)

But no economic rant would be complete right now without screaming a bit about the auto bailout. This seems to be a popular topic at work right now, so I've gone over and over it a few times - I have yet to meet anyone who is in favor of the auto bailout. And, just to put a respectable name along with our opinions, I offer The Economist: Don't Bail Out the Carmakers and the Wall Street Journal: Why Bankruptcy Is the Best Option for GM.

I also heard a somewhat disturbing quote from Obama over the weekend in regards to economic issues. He said that we really can't afford to pay attention to the deficit for the next year or two because the government needs to be spending money to get the country out of its recession.

Sigh. I wasn't ever hopeful about Obama's economic policies, but it's still depressing to see the first actual signs of what will be implemented. President Bush was REALLY bad on economic issues regarding debt, really bad regarding the government's role in economics, but OK on tax issues. Now we get to look at the opening salvo on a bad,bad,bad set of coming actions.

On a slightly lighter note, there are some fun cartoons on economics that I've run across. Sinfest isn't something for the kids, but still very funny. Here is a very succinct summary of what's going on with bailouts:

And on a yet lighter note, our church recently had a visitor who normally attends a truly "satellite" church of a megachurch in the area. The services of the main church are broadcast to satellite churches around the area. Oddly enough, (not really, if you know me) my first reaction was to think how funny it would be to do THIS!

While being in my typical rant mode, I can't forgo poking a bit of fun at global warming advocates. If anyone follows the news with any regularity, there's a pretty good chance you've run across headlines like "Cows Cause Global Warming" or something like that. If you're familiar with global warming beyond reading headlines, you probably know that methane is a MUCH more potent global warming gas than CO2. All us nasty humans with our massive cattle farming and manufacturing plants spew out methane and CO2 which cause global warming!

HA! If you believe that, I've got a tree-planting scheme available where I will plant a tree for every $50 you send me. Here's something on that methane issue: MIT scientists baffled by global warming theory, contradicts scientific data No duh!

For your added viewing pleasure, allow me to give you a graph of the global average temperature of the last 30 years. Lots of global warming there! NOT.

Finally, just to show I'm not a completely Godless ranter, I need to stick in something dealing with theology. Ergo: Sola Fide - Yeah Whatever

Actually, the comments are pretty interesting on this one. Lots of Catholic vs. Protestant about being saved by faith compared to being saved by faith and works.

Apparently my theology interest is waning since that's all I'm saying on that.

All Saints Day party song

As has been mentioned elsewhere by a certain bookbeast, I did indeed write up a little ditty about St. Stephen. And, as she so rightly deduced, I very specifically did not mention it to anyone for fear of being asked to perform it. I even stuck it under the rather large, yellow bowl of rolls I brought. By the end of the evening, nobody had noticed, so I did feel safe to mention it to DJ in passing.

When I started writing what was intended to be a quick paragraph on St. Stephen, I somehow started out with the first two lines and thought of the song. So, a 5-minute quick paragraph turned into a frantic 35 minute job of trying to fit something about Stephen into the mostly unorganized metre of the song. (Go listen to the song too. Do a search in Windows Media Player for a free stream of it.)

This is the result.

Done to the tune of The Houseplant Song by Audio Adrenaline

Once there was a guy,
And this is what he said,
"You guys have killed the Lord"
And then he wound up dead.

It doesn't really matter
If it's 26th or 27th
If you celebrate this guy
December is your month.

The people all said, "Ha! you're gonna die!"
But when he looked up, he saw God with his own eye.

---

Chorus
Take our Brother Stephen
And put him to the test
Set him up to have him speak
And let God's power do the rest

At first he'll give some history
Or something lovely like that
But then he talked of sin and their hatred of their God
Then it didn't really matter what kind of rock it was.

---

So the crowd, picked up some rocks
And they threw their very best
Saint Steve looked on up to heaven
And let God's power do the rest

Then God, he rent the heavens wide
And let his glory roar
Then just a second later
Stephen's looking through God's door

God opened up the door
And there St Stephen bowed
Steve said, "God's there with Christ my Lord"
And Oh! the people howled!

They said, "Man can't you see here
That's blasphemy you're saying and the price for that is dear."
They said, "DEATH's the way to deal
With someone who preaches like you do
And makes us all so angry
That we just want to fight!"

They ignored what all was said in their own book
That gave a picture of J.C. the Lord
Hearts were hard, words never took
And that's why ...


Chorus


First of all God said
With sin, I'm not just playing.
But nothing is too hard
That's why my Son was dead

And secondly, emphatically
He asks us what's the sense
Of hanging out with sinfulness
When, hey,
I've made a way across the fence.
And I thought to myself,
You know, that's a good point.

So I took up all my pride
And I gave it up to Christ
And me and my new Lord
Well, we're talkin of the light.

We talked about all the things
That really matter most
Like life and love and holiness
And then the Holy Ghost.

And now my new, cleaner heart
It worships to the Son
As for Steve he's all better now
And I'm thankful that he won

The trial set in front of him,
And gave me motivation
But as for now,
We like to sit around and listen to Darren and Sara,
Cranked to eleven!