Well, we did it. We signed the deal today, and the house is off the market, and pending inspection and escrow stuff, will be ours. We're truly stoked, and can't wait to have it for our very own.

I worked a half-day today, and came home and had a great sandwich of turkey, stuffing, potatoes and cranberry sauce. Hung around for a bit until we went to sign the offer papers, and then went over to the house that Iwan is house-sitting at and hung out with him and Sara and Eryn and Heather. It was fun to just sit around and chat. I feel like we don't all hang out together as much as we used to, so I really like it when we do. The dog that Iwas was taking care of was very cute and lots of fun to play with. :)

It feels so late into the weekend and it's only Friday night! :)

Thanksgiving! Happy day, everyone who may be reading this.

We just got back from the Schatz's, who are old family friends of Diana's family. It was me and Diana, Alica and the Rawl's, and my parents, and all four Schatz's. Dinner was great, and we hung around for long time afterwards hanging out and playing games and digesting. Everyone seemed to genuinely get along very well, and I think everyone had a great time. It's 8pm and I'm exhausted. :)

Tomorrow is a half-day at work, and we're going to resolve the house issue. We're going to see if the seller has accepted our latest counter offer, and if she hasn't, we're going to accept her latest offer. It's to our advantage to keep that a secret, so I hope she doesn't read this! :)

Again, I ask, does life get any better than this?

Merchnt No, no, no. Come on. Do it properly.
Brian What?
Merchnt Haggle properly. This isn't worth nineteen.
Brian But you just said it was worth twenty.
Merchnt Oh dear, oh dear. Come on. Haggle.
Brian All right, I'll give you ten.
Merchnt That's more like it.
Ten!? Are you trying to insult me? Me? With a poor dying
grandmother...Ten!?!
Brian All right, I'll give you Eleven.
Merchnt Now you're getting it. Eleven!?! Did I hear you right? Eleven?
This cost me twelve. You want to ruin me?
Brian Seventeen.
Merchnt No, no, no, no. Seventeen!
Brian Eighteen?
Merchnt No, no,. You go to fourteen now.
Brian All right, I'll give you fourteen.
Merchnt Fourteen, are you joking?
Brian That's what you told me to say.
Merchnt Oh dear.

So, Diana and I went to see David Copperfield last night at the Civic Theater. We headed down, and hung around in front for a while. Diana went to powder her nose, and I waited in the lobby, hanging out and enjoying my drink, when I noticed a woman wearing all black and with an earpiece come over and talk to a pair of couples standing near me. She said that she was doing a survey, and could she ask them a couple questions. She asked some stuff like "how did you hear about the show", "do you have any friends/family in the press or media", etc. She then looked over and noticed me listening in, and lowered her voice and asked something else. I wandered away, feeling guilty for eavesdropping.

Diana returned and we found our seats, in the second to last row of the floor section. Not bad, but not that great either. Soon, however, the very same woman in black came up, and introduced herself as someone in Copperfield's production crew, and asked us the same survery questions as above. She also asked if either of us were magicians, and I said that I was sort of an amateur magician. She asked if Diana would be interested in being a volunteer for the show, and Diana agreed, as as a result, we got moved up to like the 5th row, which was pretty cool. Diana was pulled up on stage with another girl, and he did a trick that involved their underwear changing places. Pretty silly, but Diana did a good job. The whole show was a lot of fun, and he did some seriously amazing things. I (as a jaded magician) was seriously dumbstruck at some of the stuff he did.

As a thank-you for being a helper, we got to stay around afterward and "meet" Copperfield, who came out and shook about 15 people's hands in under a minute and dissappeared after illegibly signing a headshot for us. Oh well. I was hoping for at least a friendly "hey, thanks for coming to the show... what did you think?" or something.

We made an offer on the house last night, and are supposed to hear back today by 5pm. Fingers crossed!

Diana met with the mortgage guy this afternoon, and we are pre-approved for a loan! How exciting. Then she's meeting with the real-estate guy (whose house she goes to regularly to tutor their child). I'm really thankful that she's able to take care of a lot of this by herself. Hopefully I can make it out of work and be a part of some of these appointments. Patrick (real-estate) was able to go check out the house yesterday, and had some good insight into making it ours, and what we might want to watch out for if indeed we do make it ours. Things are moving along pretty quickly, which is a little frightening. Diana and I had the conversation of "How do we know we're doing the right thing?" If we buy now, how do we know we wouldn't find something better later? And if we didn't buy now, and the house was sold to someone else, and we didn't find something, we'd be upset that we didn't jump at the opportunity.

Anyways, we can't really think of a reason NOT to get it so that's going to have to be good enough for now. Which isn't to say that I'm not excited about it... I totally am. It's just... a big decision made with more money than I've ever dealt with, and a decision made relatively quickly. And it's a little scary. But mostly exciting. :)

Otherwise, things are all going well. Diana comes home soon, and we have some dinner and get prettified and go see David Copperfield! D had some Ticketmaster gift certificates, and since we really don't ever go see "shows" as such, this seemed like the best thing to use 'em on. I'm looking forward to it.

I made another comic. It's sort of an inside joke, so don't worry if you don't get it. The HTML got stripped, so the spacing is all funky in the last cell. I'm new to this. :P

So, we might have found a house! It's a funky thing up off La Costa Ave, almost as far east as you can go before Rancho Santa Fe Road. It's different than anything else we've seen, which might explain why it's been on the market for so long without a buyer. It's U-shaped, centered around a little courtyard with a tree. We really like this, because there are windows facing both towards the courtyard and the outside of the house, making the house really naturally light. It's pretty big, actually, but the space is used well, and I think we'll be able to grow into it. And it had a spa, which the previous owner confided in us is so private that you can actually go in without a bathing suit! *gasp* The only downside is that it's almost directly under some major powerlines. There have been fear-inducing local news stories about radiation and cancer and whatnot, but there isn't any substantial evidence to support it, so we'll roll the dice. Diana's going make some calls tomorrow to see what the next step is. We're both really excited. And Diana (through years of hard work on my part :) has gone from hating pugs to openly wanting me to get one. Hee!

The Chargers game was painful to watch. Hopefully they can regain their composure and get things on the right track again.

Man... I was doing laundry this evening, and my wedding ring slipped off. Apparently my fingers change sizes sometimes, and it just flew right off and went behind a washer. I was able to retrieve it (with a little help from a 5-iron), and I'm now wearing it on my other hand. The point of all this is that it feels completely foreign to type with the weights of my fingers all scewed up. Crap, now I can't get if off the other hand. :P

Short week of work this week! Woo hoo!

I was just browsing through blogs (beer and blogs on a Friday night... I know, I'm wild and crazy!) and read this. I'm pretty sure it's from a young'ish (like, 13) year old girl:

"hey i dint do much this weekend borig boring boring as usual. oh well school is getting so hard i am trying so hard. Trying not to disappoint anyone. Just doing the best i can. Trying to do everything for everyone. Thought about my mom and how much she doesnt care about me any more. I am getting sick of it. Sick of crying at night sick of trying to pretend to be happy when my friends tell me they did this and that with their mom this weekend. When truthfully i am jealous and i want to cry about how unfair it is. The fact that i know no one wants to hear me cry about it. but i am trying i am hangin on....so when i grow up.if my mom hasnt killed herself yet........i can rub it in her face how well i am doing............."

You can't fake that kind of stuff, you know? I'm probably the only one who didn't have an angst filled teenage-hood, I guess.

Ok... so if you're going to be hip to pop culture, you need to know about Ellen Feiss. She's the girl on the Mac "switch"

She's the girl in the Apple "switch" commercials, where real people talk about why they switched from a PC to a Mac. She somehow rose to goddess status, either because people think she a) is cute and/or b) was stoned while filming the commercial. She's been contacted by both Leno and Letterman to be on their shows, and she turned them both down. They had a look-alike contest in Holland. There are mugs and T-shirts with her picture on them. It's really weird.

The Interview
The Ad
The Pumpkin

If anyone can tell me why she's so popular, I'm all ears. Also, if someone can tell me how to predict this kind of media explosion, let me know. It's so weird how things that are marketed to be popular sometimes are, but crazy little fad things can acheive crazy-popular status overnight.

I've just found this site, called StripCreator. Lots of fun...

http://www.stripcreator.com/view.php?author=aspragg&ID=103920

PS: I hate it when this happens... CLICK.

In the news:

Advertising is going to take over the world unless some drastic measures are taken. The fight for our eyeballs and our attention is getting out of control. I've seen stories about people selling ad space on their foreheads for tattoo'd ads. Web ads and spam are out of control. Commercials before movies is totally common. Product placement is going to be the next new wave (seeing your favorite soft drink or food placed randomly in a movie), and is already common on Survivor. I've seen motorcycles and cars with billboards on the back driving through rush hour traffic. It's Getting Worse. (PS: Check this out.)

There is a story where scientists have taken pictures, and detected X-rays from a galaxy over 400 million light years away. This absolutely blows my mind. Take a second as you read this to stop and thing how far 400 million light years away is. Just to make it easier: I think it takes something like 8 seconds for the sun's light to reach earth. Imagine it travelling for a year, how far that must be. Then imagine it travelling 400 years. Then 400 million years. Unbelievable, and simply astounding that we are able to detect something so far away. I guess it could be all BS (what am I going to do.... verify their results?!) but color me impressed.

Diana and I watched "Alien" the other night. What a great movie that is. Of course, that means "Aliens" is up next. I haven't seen the extended directors cut version, so that will be fun.

Happy Birthday to Mick and Norm! :)

Diana and I went to check out houses yesterday, just driving by and taking pictures and seeing what we liked and didn't like. I feel a little sketchy taking pictures of random houses out of a car, but oh well. Today, we're meeting with our realtor's assistant to actually go inside some of the ones we liked. I'm still a little confused by the whole home-buying process, and hope that other people will hold our hands through it, and not screw us over. Diana and I are pretty excited. :) Yesterday, we actually did go into one house that was having an open house. It was a house in Encinitas that was relatively expensive. The real estate lady on hand was very pleasant to us, and asked us if we were really serious about buying a house in Encinitas (which we certainly are). She said that she knew of a great starter home in Vista for a good deal. I was wearing some long shorts and my Convoy T-shirt, and Diana looks about 18, so I don't think she really took us that seriously. Hee!

Last night we went to dinner and saw Harry Potter II with my parents. It was a good time, and the movie was entertaining. I got up at some point to stretch my legs a little bit, and ended up in the back of the theater sitting against the back wall, which I'm finding is preferable to actually sitting in a seat. There aren't any people around whispering or making noise, and I can stretch my legs out and have a perfect view of the entire screen.

I started playing Civ III, which looks like it's a lot of fun, but I haven't had much time to play it, and when I do, I keep starting over, so I haven't actually gotten very far through history. But it's pretty fun. :)

Diana and I went for a walk to celebrate the nice Santa Ana evening, and we saw 4 millipedes! I've only seen millipedes on the east coast at my grandparents cabin, and then we see 4 on the same night?! Craziness. They were just crawling along the sidewalk.

Friday! :)

Work is going well. We're testing a new process that we put into place, and almost miraculously, things are going faster/more accurately than expected, and on the first try. This is really a rarity in programming. Well, my programming, at least. :)

More praise came down from On High about the success of the Investment Challenge. Yay.

Yesterday evening was football practice. It was fun to get out and run around a bit, and it's always fun to design football plays.

Tonight Diana and I are going to talk budgets and houses. Should be fun. We're (apparently) a good candidate for a reasonable loan according to our mortgage guy. I don't really know what that means, but it doesn't sound bad. Tomorrow we're going to look at houses and see what we like and don't like. Should be fun!

I hate fortune coookies. I got one that said that I have "executive qualities in my makeup". First of all, I don't wear makeup. *rimshot* Second of all, I don't think I have "executive qualities", whatever those are. Oh well. My favorite all-time fortune was that "A secret admirer is hiding his affection for you." Hee! I was eyeing my male co-workers with suspicion after that, I-tell-you-what. I remember an ex-gf in college got one that said that she was "articulate". I had to laugh when she asked me what articulate meant. Doh.

Man... in a world where the media loves to blame the entertainment industry for crimes, this is just what we need. For the link imparied (not naming any names... :) it's a story where a couple kids were arrested for a rash of car thefts after playing Grand Theft Auto (3, presumeably). Apparently they enjoyed the thrill and skill of being a thief (which I can certainly respect), but apparently weren't grounded enough in reality to realize that there are laws and so forth against this kind of thing. I remember a quote of a video game maker saying the number 1 thing kids can do for the fight against the media is to not kill anyone. Makes sense to me.

I've always liked the idea of pickpockets. I think it would be fun. That doesn't mean that I'd necessarily actually go out and DO it, but it would be a fun skill to learn.

Pictures from the Investment Challenge!




Bruce and me, looking proud. :)

Oh man... I feel so bad for this poor guy. Oh well... the risks of being on TV and having your mind elsewhere...

Well, I'm back from the conference at the Aviara Four Seasons in La Costa. The whole thing was a lot of fun, and went really well.

I got there Sunday evening, and Diana showed up a little bit after me. We got ready, and headed down to the grand ballroom for cocktails and dinner. We hung out with Bruce and his wife Julie who were both a lot of fun to talk to. Dinner was steak and sea bass, and soup and salad, and was really good. After dinner, we had some guest speakers of Cokie Roberts (ABC news political correspondant) and her husband who's also a radio/tv news guy. They talked about the political climate of Washington, and told stories about senators and whatnot. During the beginning of the talk, there was some pretty bad feedback. After a little bit, Diana tapped me on the shoulder and pointed back to the sound booth, where my boy Bruce was fiddling with things. I went back there and asked what he was doing back there, and he said, half-shocked and half-proudly "I think I fixed it!" Apparently he has background in sound stuff, and the guy working there was a video guy and was clueless. It was pretty cool.

The next morning, I met the other work boys downstairs in a smaller ballroom that was all set up with computers and three big projection screens. The game was up and running on all the machines and on the big screens, but on further testing, some of the machines were no longer talking to the Internet, and therefore, to my work and the game. So we did some frantic, last-minute network switching stuff (which was really the job of the internet providers who were there), and got things up and running, and none too soon. I was pretty nervous when hundreds of people started filing in, but everything went off completely without a hitch. It was a lot of fun, and we got some compliments from the managing partners, which is never a bad thing. That afternoon, me and Bruce and Diana and a couple other people hung out at the jacuzzi and by the pool, feeling proud of a job well done and semi-guilty for not going back to work.

Dinner that night was room service (charged to the room, a'course). We did some quick calculations on how much the company must have spent for room, board, and entertainment for all the guests and employees who were there, and came up with a big number. I'm definitely not used to thinking about business budgets in the millions of dollars vs. personal budgets of a couple thousand dollars. Crazy.

Tuesday morning, back to work!

Yay weekends!

Friday night, I went out to see Convoy with Iwan, Buhrs, et al. Lots of fun. Home at 2:30am?! I'm too old for this stuff. :)

Saturday morning, Diana was up early, and got me up a little later to help make food and prepare for her moms surprise party. It was a lot of work (mostly for Diana), but it seemed worth it, as her mom seemed very happy and very surprised with the party. Lots of fun. That night we went to a nice little dinner party, and went to see "8 Mile", which I really enjoyed. It was a little cheesy, and a little slow at parts, I think, but I'm happy I saw it and wouldn't mind seeing it again. I would have liked a little more of the rise to fame as a rapper, and a little less of the family drama, but whatever. It was really fun to see it.

This morning, the Chargers lost in a close one after leading all the way through the game (mostly). I hate it when that happens.

Diana's due home soon from teaching and shopping. This weekend we're staying at the Aviara in La Costa for a work conference. I'm not sure about the specifics, but a bunch of fat cats are getting together with work folks for some talks and networking and palm-pressing (and golfing and tennis :). My friend Bruce and I wrote a computer game that's going to be featured at the conference. It's a basic stock market simulator, where the players are given some fake money and buy and sell as they see fit, richest guy at the end wins. We were very confident when we finished writing it, and have had basically 0 problems, but it's still nerve-wracking to see something in wide-spread use for the first time. You can bet I'm going to be up early that morning testing and re-testing and whatnot. I'll let you know how it goes. Wish me luck. :)

Not a whole lot new for now, but what the hell.

Work... We're at the end of our project (I've been saying that for almost a year, but I really mean it this time!), and we're doing some final testing before we go live. We went live before, and there were some catastrophic results, so we're hoping those are all fixed up now.

Diana has been in contact with a mortgage broker, which is exciting. He's going to do some verification of credit and income and whatnot, and give us a pre-approval letter, and then we can start looking for houses. That will be exciting! I see that I typed that up yesterday, so I guess it's a repeat. Oh well. :P I got some advice from a work-boy today about mortgage brokers. He said to "treat him like dirt." He said that mortgage brokers are a dime a dozen, and they all do the same thing, so if you find one that doesn't call you back or answer your questions or explain things to you, just find another. I'm not sure I'll actually treat someone like dirt, but the advice seems reasonable, from what I've heard.

Diana and I have a free trip to Vegas, and I want to talk to her about that tonight and see if we can come up with some dates. I think we have to make the plans 60 days in advance, which puts us into 2003 at this point, but it would be fun to have that to look forward to. I'm not sure if we want it to be just the two of us, or invite other people along with us. Each side definitely has it's pros and cons. In either case, we definitely are getting our own room. Having a quiet, safe, dry (hee!) place to sleep is worth the money, since I don't tend to stay out as late as some others.

Time to go home.

In the news... Winona is found guilty! I wonder what kind of sentence she'll have to serve. She is now a convicted felon, though, which is sort of funny. I think being a convicted felon limits your opportunities, but I'm not specifically sure how. They were talking on the news about insurance issues, the right to vote might be revoked, etc. She seems like she's got problems.

Voting day was yesterday. I proudly excercised my right to vote, even though I knew next to nothing about who I was voting for. People like me shouldn't be allowed to vote. I hope I didn't vote for some religious, right-wing schoolboard member. I don't think I did.

Work continues to go well, and keeps me busy. Diana called a mortgage guy about home loan stuff today. The Fed dropped rates another half a point, which brings them to the lowest point since like 1959 or something. We're going to get away with a deal, I think. I'll be really interested to see how much we can scrape together for a down payment, and how much we can afford for a monthly payment, and how much we can get a loan for, and given that amount of money, what kind of place we can get.

Movies on my list to see: Spirited Away, Harry Potter, The Two Towers, 8 Mile, new Bond movie, Jackass

So an aquiantance of mine at work just asked how married life was going. I said it was awesome, and that if he could find the right person, he should give it a shot. Then I realized that I didn't know if he was married or divorced or what, so I asked him if he was, or if he'd ever been married. He laughed, and said that no, he was gay, so getting married was impossible.

*blink... blink*

Um, oh. How do you respond to that? Obviously I could care less if he's gay or not, but I've never been in a situation where someone told me they were gay. There was another co-worker there, and we talked about it still being possible to have a ceremony, and I said that the reason I liked being married had nothing to do with the legality of it, and we bantered about that for a little, and then it was back to business as usual.

He was surprised I didn't know. How the hell am I supposed to know? It's not like he's at all flamboyant or a queen or anything. Just a normal guy. There's a lesson to be learned there, somewhere... something about books and covers.

Anyways, it made me sad to hear him talk about what rights he wouldn't get if he had a partner but wasn't married. Like, if they were in the hospital, his visitation rights are limited because he's not family. That would truly suck. Stuff like that.

I've recently said that I wish I had a gay friend. It would be fun to learn more about the gay subculture from the inside (go ahead, make the jokes :) I'm not really friends with this guy, though, so I guess I'll continue to wait.

We got up early yesterday, and met my parents and Diana's parents, and headed down to Balboa Park / Downtown area for the Race for the Cure. Like last year, there were a huge amount of people there. Lots of people wearing pink shirts (like both our mothers) indicating breast cancer survivors, as well as lots of people wearing "In celebration of..." and "In memory of..." signs. Breast cancer has hit my family pretty hard just in the last couple years, and I hope that the worst is behind us for everyone. It was great to see the amount of support at the Walk... there were absolute throngs of people walking.

After the walk, I went to Iwan and Little Buhr's house to watch the Charger game, which was dreadful. I was hoping for a big win for the Chargers, and the (reportedly) terrible Jets defense, but no such luck. As almost a direct result, I also lost my fantasy football game to Little Buhr. *le sigh*

Hung out with Diana last night. She was playing No One Lives Forever II when I got home, which made me enormously proud for some geeky reason :). Had some dinner, played some Counterstrike (poorly), and went to bed.

PS: Diana indicated this blog was "boring" (and she's certainly right). I wonder what she expected? I wonder what I can do to spice it up? Does this mean my life is boring? Reader suggestions are welcomed... :)

Fun day today!

Did some errands and cleaning this morning with Diana. Then met up with Norm and Teri for a nice afternoon of golf, an early dinner at the Soup Plantation (yum!), and watched the movie Labyrinth (which seems like a movie I should have seen as a kid but never did). Golf was a lot of fun. Apparently Teri had been scared to play with me, 'cause I can be a little competitive, but I assured her that when it comes to golf, it's all about being outside and having fun (unless, of course, it's playing for money :). We all had a great time, and the beginners did pretty well. They didn't throw clubs and get pissed off, and were smiling at the end, so I consider that a success. :) Dinner was fun, and the movie was silly, but what can you expect. Good times were had by all.

Up early tomorrow for the Race for the Cure, then over to Iwans for the Chargers game. Yay.

I don't know if it's the time change or what, but we had dinner at like 5, and the movie ended at a little after 9pm, and I feel like it's midnight. I'm exhausted, and most people are probably just starting to go out for the night. Oh well...

So, it's 11pm and I'm at work on a Friday night. Bummer. But, hopefully this will be it for the weekend, so I won't have to come back.

Diana and I saw "Comedian" tonight. In spite of having a hilariously funny trailer (which had nothing to do with the movie itself), the movie, I found, was really flat and bland. It's supposed to tell the behind-the-scenes story of what it's like to be a standup comedian, and it does. The problem is that it's not very exciting behind the scenes. Here's the nutshell: It takes a long time to come up with good material. It's nerve-wracking trying out new stuff. It's (apparently) torturous to be a stand-up comedian, because there is a lot of pressure to do well and not screw up. Sounds exciting, maybe, but the whole movie is them telling us about how nerve-wracking it is, mostly riding around in cabs or limos or while eating at a restaraunt or bar with other comedians. Not so exciting. The best parts, of course, were when they actually showed some stand-up comedy, which is actually entertaining, but those moments were few and far between. So, not so exciting, and no real insight gained. I wouldn't reccomend the movie.

I played a GREAT arcade game today. It's basically like Dance-Dance-Revolution, but it's a drum machine. So, hit the right drum at the right time. The easiest levels were pretty damn hard, but after two games of playing, it was conceivably possible that I'd be able to do better. So I can't wait to head back and try it out again. :)

Tomorrow I think me and D and Norm and Teri are going to try to golf some... that should be fun. :)