Liquid Nonsense

I've been living in my house for about a month now. Needless to say, this living-on-my-own thing rocks the cock.

Twice a week for the last month I have taken my trash out to the curb, once for regular stuff and once for recycling. I have noted the following things:

1) The contents of my recycle bin are usually substantially larger than my regular bin.
2) I hardly throw away anything that is not recyclable.
3) With the exception of all the boxes I threw away in week one, to this day I probably would not have filled my recycle bin completely.
4) My regular trash bin has never had more than 1 ft. tall worth of volume.

I am not sure what the normal or average amount of stuff a mid-20s male living on his own should be in terms of throwing away, but I feel like I have something worth being proud of here.

Hooray for minimizing my ecological footprint.

Labels: house

All I've been blogging about lately has been my house, mostly because it has been this all-consuming aspect of my life. I spent the vast majority of today painting the upstairs of my office/theater room. Thus far, it looks amazing. I have chosen to paint all the walls a color of orange that has previously been used exclusively for gay pride parades, I'm sure. The curious can go here. It's "clay 2," but it's really a weak approximation of the color; the real one is substantially brighter, and richer. Three walls down and one to go.

Other highlights of the last few days include purchasing a new mattress that's supposed to be delivered sometime between Wednesday and Thursday of this coming week, purchasing a new gas range to replace the one I currently have that was manufactured in dickity-2, and additional do-it-yourself-because-it-is-essentially-disposable furniture by Ikea.

Thus far everything is going swimmingly. I will get my camera out of here in the next few days and update the pictures in my gallery to reflect where we're at now. Special thanks go out to Phil for helping me with stuff around the house, and for telling me about the joy that is Secret Agent on SomaFM. Soma has been providing not only the soundtrack for my life as a secret agent, but the soundtrack for painting this damned room.

Labels: house

Last week I was doing my finest impression of a human petri dish. Sometime over the previous weekend I managed to pick up a sinus infection that thought I had nothing better to do with my time than produce mucus. Needless to say, last week was fairly miserable for me in between the times I was blowing my nose. Sometime on Sunday it started to substantially subside, so last night I went to Bikram yoga to finish burning out the remainder. Today I haven't felt any symptoms at all. Hooray!

Speaking of hooray, my home closed today and I now officially own a little piece of property on the Tempe/Guadalupe/Chandler/Ahwatukee border. Today after work I am going to swing by the Best Buy down the street and pick up a cable modem so I can haul my laptop down there and see if Internet is turned on. Yes, I'm aware of my addictions, thank you.

Does anyone know of a good carpet installer here in the valley? The previous owner of my home had one or two rather large dogs and did a crap-tastic job of changing out his air filters, ergo the carpet in the house is somewhat filthy. I could clean it, which only does a minor job of removing "dog," or I could simply replace it. I'm leaning towards replacing it, but I need a guy to do the square footage estimate so I can order carpet from the mill. Suggestions for the Phoenix area are being gladly accepted right now.

I have finally decided that I am going to get a subwoofer for my stereo. I have actually known which one I've wanted for a while, but now I have the financial resources to do it. There's a British brand named Rel that produces absolutely stunning acoustic subwoofers for musical reproduction. A chunk of this week's paycheck and some of my spare assets shall contribute and hopefully I can get one in the next week or so. They are stellar to say the least and it's the last major component I need. Bye bye my small, tiny, little Polk woofer; hello big, mean, bowel moving Rel.

Additional usage of a subwoofer? Phil has suggested movie night at the Chandler Citadel (I can't call it the "compound," as my current tiny little backyard hut is the "compound"). Copenhagen has a decent sized couch that I really liked that could feasibly sit about 5 people. Take that and add my desk chair and I could probably comfortably sit six people. I could even get some super comfy pillows and other people could hang out on the floor. I think Phil might be on to something here. Plus it gives me a tiny bit more excuse to get the previously mentioned Rel... can't have people over to watch a movie and then have "polite" bass.

Aside from house, the only other thing on my mind lately has been sex. My hormones for the last week have kept me sufficiently sex, err, distracted from some of the other stuff I probably should be accomplishing. Thank you Internet and your wonderful pornographic bounty too.

A slight tangent away, I want to order some more cute underwear. Several years ago I think I was as mystified as the rest of the population as to why women love Victoria's Secret so much. Cute underwear are awesome. To the men reading this: go get yourself a pair of Aussiebums or Ginch Gonch. Ultra-comfy and sexy at the same time. Your significant other will thank me.

Peace out yo!

Labels: health, house, stereo

I just received notification that my house closed. I'm now a legal and official homo-ner. w00t!

I'll post something more meaningful later in the day with updates with all the hoo-haa going on lately.

Labels: house

The whole buying-a-house thing has really served to illustrate the tedium that is paper work. I think I have signed somewhere around a hojillion different papers taking care of everything from home inspections, to seller disclosure acknowledgments, and various loan papers. This would not be such a phenomenal pain if so many technology changes did not have to occur. I receive papers in email, then I print, sign, and fax them back. Email, to print, to fax machine for one damned transaction.

I decided to investigate what options exist for digital signatures, and that in and of itself, took me the better part of three days to sort out. The standards regulating digital signatures are numerous and nebulous. Generally, I feel pretty confident with tech matters, but these were downright confusing. Long-story short: nobody would know how to handle a digital signature even if I used one because PDF files are scary and dangerous and essentially no one outside of a certificate authority seems to know anything about them.

In other technologically-inclined news, I have finally purchased a scanner. It's pretty nifty-spiffy and has enabled me to digitize various older "things" that I have meant to do for some time. Of interest:

Vintage. Pictures of people and events that pre-date college.

Japan. Pictures from trip to Japan back in 2003.

Note: I am going to apologize now. These pictures were taken on either A) a very shitty Kodak advantix camera, or B) a disposable camera. The quality is not the greatest.

Labels: house, pictures, technology

I guess it worked out rather well that my 101th post (and the posts surrounding it) to this blog would be about me purchasing a house. Fortuitous indeed.

This afternoon I took a few hours off of work so I could head down to Tempe to take care of the usual terminate and housing inspections necessary to complete the whole buying process. I met up with Phil at SCNM and we proceeded to meet up with Maria (my realtor) and the house inspector at the place. The whole process was actually fairly painless as he walked us step-by-step through all the potential problem areas. Thankfully, there weren't any show-stoppers and even the problems he did find were relatively minor. All in all, a crack on the back wall is the only spot of potential concern, so we're bringing in a structural engineer to fully evaluate it and make sure that it isn't going to compromise the wall's integrity. Two checks and a few signatures later we were done and I got to resume my waiting game for closing (Feb. 6th).

I have to admit that it ended up being a really nice afternoon. Phil and I grabbed lunch over at Whole Foods and ran into Cynthia and Amanda by surprise, which was a nice coincidence. After all, lunch is a wonderful social time and random friend encounters are always appreciated. We also hit up the Bova Furniture store, which I am totally infatuated with, and proceeded to look at various pieces that I might get for the house. I have absolutely no doubt that we were coming off as anything less than flaming. Something about two gay men wandering through a contemporary furniture store comparing wood grains, leather types, and color selections...

My Flickr account has also been updated with more pictures of the place, for the curious. I didn't grab any decent shots of the second floor yet, but I'll get them up there eventually. As I start painting walls and buying furniture I'll update the account so everyone who doesn't live in Arizona can watch it grow too. I am ridiculously excited to get started on the whole process.

Labels: house

Nearly a month ago, during my quest for a house, I made an offer on a place I really liked in southern Tempe. My realtor suggested that we really low-ball the guy to see if he was willing to negotiate down from his asking price. Well, it just so happened that the man's agent was a complete and utter dingbat, and actually ended up countering for a price higher than the original asking value. Nobody was really sure how exactly the math worked... Needless to say, we dropped the idea of getting that house.

Fast forward to yesterday. The house I made the original offer on was still listed. At the time of my first offer the house had already been on the market for nearly 150 days. One month and a house payment later, the house was still listed. My realtor and I made another stop by the place to check it out one more time and decided to make the same low-ball offer back. This time, however, the guy accepted the offer verbally. Last night we scrambled to get the paperwork together and everything else we needed to in order to get this process moving. This morning I was emailed all the documents in PDF format, printed them, signed them, and faxed them back to the various parties that needed them. Right now I'm waiting on the guy, 'cause he lives in North Carolina now, to acknowledge them and send them back with his signature.

If everything goes according to plan then I receive the keys to my shiny new house on February 6th.

I find that the funny part of this process is that I was not terribly excited before yesterday. Sure, I wanted a house and I wanted a place to call my own, but it was not this real or visceral. Now that paperwork is changing hands with verbal confirmations in the air I have become actively engaged. Suddenly February 6th feels like it is a long time away. In all reality I realize that it is essentially a mere 30 calendar days away... it just feels like more.

One interesting problem of this move is going to be a severe lack of furniture. I believe the sum of my furniture-like belongings at this point include: a desk, a bed, 4 bookshelves, 2 theater seats, a very uncomfortable black love seat, and a very comfortable little bendy chair from Ikea. The part of my genetics that tell me that I heart men also tell me that I would like to tastefully decorate my house in a contemporary style. The problem happens to be none of my current furniture fits that theme, so I am essentially starting with absolutely no furniture. Luckily, I have some money set aside that I might be able to buy a few pieces just so I have something to sit on.

The picture on this post is the actual place I am buying. The next time I swing by the house I shall take my camera with me and start putting more pictures on my Flickr account.

Wish me luck!

Labels: house

I know I have mentioned this to several people in the real world, but I have started house hunting. A few weeks ago I got in contact with a recommended agent, Maria, who has been helping me through the whole ordeal. To date I believe I have examined somewhere in the neighborhood of ten houses, most of which have been total crap.

Interesting story: The first day we went house hunting I actually found a place I really liked. The essential selling point on the place was that it happened to be a single-family detached house with a massive upstairs loft-like master bedroom. That particular room occupied the entire second story and had dimensions of something like 23x14 or something equally absurd. Anyhoo, I totally planned on using the upstairs as a combination open-air office, music listening, and movie watching room and using the downstairs bedroom (which was also a master, hooray for split masters) for my personal living space. So we make an offer and discover that the seller's representing agent is an absolute buffoon. She acts like we have made some kind of personal assault by offering her client less than the asking price and then proceeds to counter-offer us an amount *higher* than the original asking price. Clearly she is well known and sought-after for her prize-winning negotiation skills. The house had been on the market for 80-something days at the time of our original offer, which was something like three weeks ago now, and continues to sit on the market. We plan on giving it another week and then we are going to make the same low-ball offer again and see what happens.

Tomorrow morning I am meeting up with Maria again to check out several places in Tempe. Hopefully one of them will turn out to be promising. I am definitely antsy about getting my own space again, especially since this space will quite literally be Mine. Capital M.

Labels: house