Observations on a 5 Month Absence
or The Blog's Not Dead! Really!

Most of you are probably already aware that we're now comfortably ensconced in our new home on the north side of South Bend. However, you probably weren't aware of all of the little things that came with the place. Let me elaborate.

- We have a quarter of a million pounds of leaves blanketing our backyard. I've seen squirrels fall out of trees onto the ground only to drown with a loud rustle and a *poof* of brown oak leaves. Solution: Burn the backyard. Pros include the simplicity of the act and very little cleanup. Cons include simultaneously burning down the entire neighborhood along with the yard. Sarah and I are still discussing the matter.

- Even a relatively new house can have little features that could use a replacement. Take for example our kitchen faucet. We have rather hard water, which had been leaving trails of lime and other minerals around the base of the handle. Yesterday I finally decided to spend some time replacing it.

I don't know how many hours the average handyman spends replacing a faucet (we'll call this variable X), but I'm pretty sure X < 6. Including the two trips to Menard's, my total was exactly X = 6. It would help if pipes didn't explode water into the cramped area under the sink where I'm all curled up working. I'm pretty sure I could have approached X = 5 if it weren't for THAT mess.

- Key Bank sucks giant exploding monkey balls. "But come on," you argue. "Aren't all banks a little uptight about money right now?" Let me make our painfully long mortgage story as short as possible. Getting approved for a mortgage isn't terribly difficult. Nor is it very hard to provide the copious amount of documentation that is required to prove that you are not, in fact, a hobo. What DOES make the process a clusterfuck on closing day is when the bank both repeatedly loses all of this documentation and changes the required forms and paperwork more than once only days before the closing ceremonies. People looking to take out a mortgage in the northern or central parts of Indiana should NOT use Key Bank.

- For the love of all that's right and holy, please vote for Barack Obama. For those of you who aren't afraid of Sarah Palin because she'd "only be the VP," I'd like to point out that Dick Cheney has hardly sat quietly on the sidelines for the last 8 years. John McCain is a good man, but his policies (economic ones in particular) will only make our current situation much worse.

Next time I'm going to include some pictures with more updates, including the trip to Cedar Point for our second anniversary, a hardcore Oasis fan's greatest wet dream - the new "Dig Out Your Soul" boxset, and some photos from around the new digs. Stay young, but stay out of my yard! Damn kids...