Monday, June 30, 2008

Kim The Fraggle

"Fraggles live a very carefree life, spending most of their time playing, exploring, and generally enjoying themselves. They live primarily on a diet of radishes and "doozer sticks" and are known to occasionally eat other vegetables."

I planted THREE (3) types of radishes in my garden over the weekend. Easter Egg Radishes, Black Radishes, and Watermelon Radishes.











Luckily, Alvin LOVES radishes. Whew!

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Rotary Scrapbook

Lou and Darryl (the President Elect) before the Labor Day Parade.

Dad "volunteered" me to do a scrapbook for Rotary for the out-going President, Mike Tobey. After much stress and chasing people to get pictures I worked until 11 pm last night and then from 7-11 this morning.

Thankfully, the book got done in time for the 12:00 Rotary meeting and it was BEAUTIFUL!!! Of course, I didn't have time to snap pics of pages or scan them in but these are a few of the pictures that I used:

Mike: The President and Fearless Leader

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Mortgage Meetings & A Date

What a day! I tried to gather all the information I needed this morning to meet with loan officers from two different lending places this morning and then I had to run to town to go to the bank and deliver the Moceri checks.

Back for a QUICK lunch (while reading the homeowners association docs) and then down to the office to make a few Pre-Paid Legal phone calls. Did I mention that I did TWO double counters and a new Associate out of Idaho today?

My meetings went really well this afternoon. I'm learning a LOT about the lending process. My credit's been pulled at at least one place and it is looking really really good for me to be able to qualify for the loan. The only thing I'm not 100% jazzed on is that my payments are higher than I expected due to PMI. Great.

After, I got to go out with ALVIN!!! for our standard Tuesday night date. Yeah! We went to his house and he made me a steak (he had to buy it after I forgot my wallet at the office) and then we just hung out. It was lovely! Just what the doctor ordered after several crazy days and more craziness in the house-buying game yet to come.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Bought a House!

Whoop! I just put a down payment (a reservation really) on a new house in Bright Star. It'll (hopefully) be done on October 21, 2008!

And, yes, technically this IS a mushroom house but since it's MY mushroom house, I'm surprisingly okay with that. I think I'm also okay with a mushroom house since it wasn't ever a farmland or field; just vacant blowing Chino dirt.

I'm getting the Sangallo in the A style, but I'm flipping the floor plan from this picture.

The reason is the house will face north and if I put the garage on the other side, my living room window will be in the shade all summer afternoons.

The front of the house will look like this:

Of course, it won't be a two-tone house to start off with since they want to charge me $500 for the second paint color! I'll do that myself later.

Paperwork was boring and exciting at the same time. I'm looking forward to going home and READING it all tonight. (Tomorrow, I go to pick out cabinets.)


It was VERY exciting, however, getting to take off the orange "reserved" pin from the map and putting down my red one. I just HAD to have pictures.

I think that it's really exciting to know I've got lot 246 since that's Dad's address. Of course, there's not a prime number in site since my address is 2139 Touchstone Dr. And, I haven't quite figured out what a "touchstone" is in astronomical terms; all the other streets are like "Saturn" and "Constellation" and "Newton."

Even the lack of prime numbers or a street name that makes sense can't dampen my excitement. After all the paperwork was signed (still waiting to hear back from my attorney for any deal-busters) I told Judy I was off to take pictures of "my dirt!"

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Latin Lesson 1: Done!

Who-hoo! I FINALLY got my first lesson for my Latin correspondence course completed. I'm very relieved but at the same time I'm an POed at myself for waiting so long. How ever am I going to get this done before school starts!?

I know the administration isn't worried if I'm studying just a day or two ahead of my students, but I am! I want to KNOW this like I know my Spanish. I actually told the teacher why I was taking this class; I don't know if that was a good idea or not, but there it is. I figured if I clued the prof in, then maybe C. Winsor Wheeler might actually help me more than just grading the assignments.

I've been listening to the Latin tape but I really need to dedicate some time to get it from audio cassette into a MP3 format. Alvin gave me all the tools to do it, now I just need to make it happen! Wish me luck, I might give it a whirl tonight.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Intention Posts

Intention posts:

This is where you take pictures of your life, compose blog posts in your head, all with the INTENTION of posting. But, life gets in the way and the posts never actually make it to the blog.

Examples:
Kim's Garden
The back-yard fence
Kayaks
Painting
Yard sales

So, when you actually get time, here's the burning question: do you post them as "current" or do you set the date/time stamp for when they SHOULD have been posted? I usually retro-post (put the date/time of the event) but the issue is, then, do people actually look backwards and read them? My guess is no.

So, be on the look out for things to be moving off of intention posts and into real posts. I've got some great pictures!

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Grandma Alice

We're going through some of Grandma Alice's things for a yard sale; it's like a full room full of memories. It's sad and good at the same time -- stuff has memories attached to it, but at the end of the day, it's just STUFF.

But, I was thinking about Grandma A and Alvin. Alvin caught a 15 pound catfish last week. Until his, the biggest catfish I'd ever seen in my LIFE was this one that Grandma Alice caught at Dead Horse Ranch State Park in the Verde in February.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Flower Flag


THE ONLY FLAG THAT DOESN'T FLY

Between the fields where the flag is planted, there are 9+ miles of flower fields that go all the way to the ocean. The flowers are grown by seed companies. It's a beautiful place, close to Vandenberg AFB.

Check out the dimensions of the flag. The Floral Flag is 740 feet long and 390 feet wide and maintains the proper Flag dimensions, as described in Executive Order #1083 4. This Flag is 6.65 acres and is the first Floral Flag to be planted with 5 pointed Stars, comprised of White Larkspur. Each Star is 24 feet in diameter; each Stripe is 30 feet wide. This Flag is estimated to contain more than 400,000 Larkspur plants, with 4-5 flower stems each, for a total of more than 2 million flowers.

Vandenburg AFB is in California.

Monday, June 09, 2008

Identity Theft

A friend of mine, Tina, sent these to me in an email and I just HAD to share!














Friday, June 06, 2008

Geocaching

Well, we've started a NEW family hobby. Geocaching! (pronounced geo-cashing) It's where you use a GPS to find the location of treasures. We did two finds on Sunday, one near Williams and one near Flagstaff. When you find a location, you log yourself in the book, take a treasure and leave a treasure.

And, if you're me, you also DOCUMENT the treasures with photos. I'll get those posted soon.


Right NOW, Dad & I are on our way to the very first Prescott Luncheon briefing. I've got a guest invited so hopefully, I'll get a sign up. I'm really excited to get my Thursday evenings back. And Fridays work well for me because even during the school year I'll be able to make it.

Speaking of, I had a nightmare last night about teaching Latin. I was totally unprepared, the class had no discipline or respect. It was nasty. I guess I'd better get more focused on learning Latin so that doesn't happen in real life.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

The First Cache


We've taken up geocaching as a family hobby. Not a lot of time to post right now, but I wanted to put up a photo of all of us finding our very first cache near Flagstaff.

Dad wanted to buy a book about geocaching so we stopped at Bookmans. They didn't have a single book!

Then, as we were leaving the store, the sales clerk ran us down: a book had just come in on trade called The Essential Guide to Geocaching: Tracking Treasure with Your GPS