Recently in Life Category

Two days of essentially sitting on my rear between dog walks is both relaxing and conflicting. I certainly enjoy the time to "do nothing," but the lost time always leaves a small wake of regret. The opportunity costs not only include work-related to-do items and household chores, but leisure activities as well. Case in point: reading. I don't do well reading for leisure in my normal home routine. I'd announce that will change in 2008, but the mostly unread reading list I posted in January suggests that's not likely, at least in that large a shift. More on productivity goals for 2008 later this week. If I can pull myself away from the recliner, that is.

So here's the deal. Every year my wife and I agree to a loose spending limit on gifts for each other, and every year she exceeds that limit (or at least spends more than I spend on her). I was determined to not let that happen this year so I bought her a GPS Navigation system--something far more expensive than our usual gifts. The wrapped present under the fake tree with my name was heavy but too big to be what I really wanted...an iPhone. I watched her open the GPS system with unabashed cockiness that I'd finally outdone her on our presents to each other. Opening my gift was practically an afterthought. It turns out the big heavy box had another wrapped box inside along with some stuff to make it heavier. Inside that box rested yet another. I was resigned to opening box after box until a small envelope or something when I sat staring at the impossible. She got me the iPhone. Talk about inner conflict. I was elated to finally have the iPhone and yet crushed that she'd pulled an end-run and beat me yet again. 

It's 11:30pm on Christmas eve and I just finished wrapping presents and placing them under the tree. Miss Daisy desperately wants to go to bed (and was quite resistant about going out to pee one last time) so I'll keep this one short. Today was a mixture of relaxation and brief shopping sprints here and there. Christmas should be nice and low-key this year, which is always quite nice.

Daisy is doing quite well in her first full day with us. She's very quiet and sweet, but she seems to yearn for the outdoors quite a lot. I took her on three walks today, including a pretty long one in the afternoon. We discovered she loves to play and race around in our basement where there's carpet (we have hardwood floors throughout our main level). She's all nose on our walks, as expected with a scent hound.

We picked Miss Daisy up from the Friends of Homeless Animals (FOHA) shelter this afternoon. Sorry to all of you hoping to be the first to make the trite comment about "driving Miss Daisy," but my friend Steve holds that dubious honor. I'm sure he won't be the last. 

It's been too long since I last posted, and much has happened since then. It seems that the beginning of a new semester totally disrupts my leisure activities like reading and blogging. My last post was August 25. Classes started August 27.

The semester is going very well so far. After teaching two classes in the spring that I hadn't taught before, it's wonderful to once again be teaching classes I've already prepared. The workload is a fraction of a "new prep," as we call it in academics.

Ok, the big news. In short, the start of construction on the new house in Woodbridge is still far off due to yet another delay, so we decided to bail on it. That left us with the decision of what to do for a new home. For reasons I won't explain, we have an urgent need to move into a home this fall (hence our decision to abandon the new house). After considering our options in various areas, we decided to move back up to the north-west part of Northern Virginia. 

The past couple weeks has been a whirlwind tour of available single-family homes and townhouses in the Ashburn and south Leesburg areas. Fortunately for us, the buyer's market allowed us to pursue a townhouse in Lansdowne that we wouldn't have been able to touch a year ago. We close on Oct. 15. 

Quick update:

I'm still off fast food, as long as Pizza Hut doesn't count.

I've been busy at work overseeing the installation of my new driving simulator.

I'm way, way, way behind in my reading for the year.

My wife and I have been busy getting our house ready to sell. Our first open house was this past Sunday.

My friend William started a blog.

I had it in the back of my mind to go along with Lent this year just for the exercise in self-discipline. Ironically, I was not disciplined enough to pay attention to when Lent begins--today. So, if I'm to go 40 days without something, it has to be something I haven't done today. I just polished off a sizeable bowl of ice cream, so that's out. There's no chance I'm giving up coffee, either. I didn't eat beef today, so that's a possibility, though not an inviting one. I know what you're thinking, and no, that's not on the table. Perhaps there's a good reason I wasn't diligent in planning for Lent. I don't have anything I'm willing to give up that would be a true sacrifice. I still want to try some kind of self-denial, be it fasting or something else. And, because I'm not Catholic there's no requirement to tie it to Easter. It's just a convenient reminder. I'll let you know if I come up with something.

By the way, there are actually 46 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. Sundays don't count, evidently.

What would you be willing to give up? What wouldn't you be willing to go without?

We're moving. Yes, you read correctly, we're leaving our home of nearly 9 years, though we're not leaving the Washington DC metropolitan area. And, I'm certainly not leaving my job at GMU.

One clear outcome of Cynthia's health struggles last year was that we really need to have a house with the master bedroom on the first floor. Cynthia couldn't get up the stairs to take a shower when she was convalescing after her surgery, which was terribly frustrating for her. Sponge baths just don't cut it after a while. In most of Northern Virginia, it turns out, that criterion is met only by older, single-story homes or new homes. Frankly, neither of us was terribly interested in the first option so we began looking for new home developments. We first considered a popular area of growth in Loudoun County called (C)Ashburn that isn't terribly far from where we now live. However, my commute would have become about 10-15 minutes longer than it is now (30-45 minutes), which is already at my comfort level. Cynthia searched and searched until she found a development way down in Woodbridge, VA, which is off I-95 south of the Beltway. It's another bedroom community like Herndon, with commuters traveling to and from Washington and other Northern Virginia locations.

The development is called Port Potomac, and it meets many of our needs and desires, including relative affordability, same or shorter commute for me, near the Potomac River/Bay, close to medical services, and close to various amenities. It's in Prince William County rather than Fairfax County, so that's a drawback (mostly for schools). I-95 commuting is also generally a nightmare, but I don't have to travel on it much, if at all. We have some friends that live down there, so that helps. And, we have friends down in the Richmond area so we're that much closer (about an hour), so visiting should be more frequent. (On the map to the left, Herndon isn't far from Reston Town Center.)

We found a builder in the development (Engle Homes) that had a model that we loved, and that we could afford (note: only due to equity in our current home). Incentives are very high right now because the market is so slow. We signed a contract last weekend and we really feel like we got a great deal (essentially finishing the basement for free). Our new house won't be finished until the fall, but that gives us plenty of time to sell our current home.

Speaking of which, we have been working hard over the past few weeks getting the house ready to go on the market in mid-February. Cynthia really deserves more credit than I do because she's been working hard during the week while I'm at work. We feel much better about things after yesterday, but we still have plenty of work to do. I'll keep you posted.

I am 36 years old today. I remember making friends with a 36 year old guy when I was 28 and thinking it was weird that he was so old and hanging out with twenty-somethings. In reality, we were both in a "young" couples Sunday School class at church. I realize now I'm that guy the twenty-somethings I know are having the same thoughts about. Sigh.