Wednesday, May 14, 2008

The following is the funniest thing my boss has forwarded to me E-VAH!

For some time many of us have wondered just who is Jack Schitt? We find ourselves at a loss when someone says, ‘You don’t know Jack Schitt!’

Well, thanks to my genealogy efforts, you can now respond in an intellectual way.

Jack Schitt is the only son of Awe Schitt. Awe Schitt, the fertilizer magnate, married O. Schitt, the owner of Needeep N. Schitt, Inc. They had one son, Jack.

In turn, Jack Schitt married Noe Schitt. The deeply religious couple produced six children: Holie Schitt, Giva Schitt, Fulla Schitt, Bull Schitt, and the twins Deep Schitt and Dip Schitt.

Against her parents’ objections, Deep Schitt married Dumb Schitt, a high school dropout. After being married 15 years, Jack and Noe Schitt divorced. Noe Schitt later married Ted Sherlock, and because her kids were living with them, she wanted to keep her previous name. She was then known as Noe Schitt Sherlock.

Meanwhile, Dip Schitt married Loda Schitt, and they produced a son with a rather nervous disposition nam ed Chicken Schitt. Two of the other six children, Fulla Schitt and Giva Schitt, were inseparable throughout childhood and subsequently married the Happens brothers in a dual ceremony. The wedding announcement in the newspaper announced the Schitt-Happens nuptials. The Schitt-Happens children were Dawg, Byrd, and Horse.

Bull Schitt, the prodigal son, left home to tour the world. He recently returned from Italy with his new Italian bride, Pisa Schitt.

NOW when someone says, ‘You don’t know Jack Schitt,’ you can correct them.

Sincerely,
Crock O. Schitt

I’ve still got tears of mirth in my eyes.

We’re so close to vacation time. I really cannot wait. It’s very exciting.

I’m already in great shape work-wise. I do need to take my laptop with me to do the monthly close out tasks, but I can get them done in the evening easily. In fact, I’m so caught up on work that I think I might be able to take next Thursday off as well, which I think I’ll need in order to get us all packed and ready to hit the road on Friday morning. I’m already starting to gather the things we need to take for Jesse - for such a small person he’ll have the most crap to take.

The dog’s stay at her kennel is booked and they are eagerly awaiting her arrival. A friend from small group has agreed to stop by the house a couple of times to check on the cat. I still need to put a hold on our mail for that week.

In other news, there’s nothing to report really. Things are pretty much the same at home - we’re still looking at house listings, but not actively looking at houses again until we get back from vacation. Also we’re thinking we’ll hear about the Dallas job by mid-June, one way or another. On the other government job that Beau put in for, he did see that he was not selected for the next steps on that one, so that is another disappointment. There is a possible job prospect for him locally that would allow for him to take Jesse with him - but I’ll post more about that if he decides to pursue it. At this point, he’s unsure he wants to and he’s trying to finish up the paper grading for the PHC students before moving on to other things. He’s also considering being a stay at home Dad full time and not bothering with a job at all for the forseeable future. He’s really good at that job, so I’m fine with that, too.

[via thinkling bill]

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Before I get to what this post is really about, let me share this TV tidbit first. My new favorite TV show is Fugitive Strike Force on ID. This is where it is like The Fugitive, only better, imho.

OK, so from The Bureaucracy Files, we’re working on our response to the audit we endured before Christmas last year. Yes, it’s May. The deadline is next week so we’re not late! I had no quibble with most of the findings in the finance area. However, I have a large quibble with one particular item and I have been tasked to write the response.

In a nutshell, the auditors said we were not compliant in one certain area when it comes to obligating funds. We were told that we needed to obligate the funds at the time the service (emergency medical) was authorized by us. We were not doing this. Instead we were waiting to obligate the funds when we got an actual invoice. While this isn’t how it is supposed to be done technically, we didn’t see any other way to be compliant with other policies that contradict the obligation policy. So now we’re obligating at the time the service is authorized and I think we’re now non-compliant with about 3 or 4 other policies.

Apparently, the powers that be in procurement and finance have, for years, debated how to handle emergency medical and have never come to any conclusion when reading the FAR.

The other wrinkle is that we don’t pay full rates for most medical services. The amounts we obligate are no where near the amounts we pay. And we pay out of three computer systems right now (check, ACH, and credit card), all of which have different use requirements. It’s a complete mess and only getting more messy with the switch to ACH from checks - these two systems are vastly different.

There is no good solution because of the FAR. The FAR dictates all and it doesn’t cover emergencies of this nature or of this scale.

*sigh*

Monday, May 12, 2008

So knowing there’s always a chance that Beau will get the job that would involve a move to the Dallas area, I checked home listings in that area on Realtor.com.

They have several lovely single family homes in our price range.

I could definitely live in this house.

Or this one.

Or many of these, really.

Woke up at 4:30am as usual and went into the bathroom to take care of business and to brush my teeth. Lifted the toilet cover to find that the seat was wet. I felt the toilet cover on the cover and it was soaked on the part that wraps around the bottom of the lid. So I put the lid down and felt the top. It was generally damp, but I noticed two wetter spots in a particular place. I looked up to see the ceiling slightly bubbled around the vent. Not too bad, but clearly there’s a leak up there somewhere.

Since it was 4:30am, I opted to wait until Beau woke up to tell him about it. Then we had to wait for Jesse to wake up before we made the trip up to the attic. Sure enough, there are actually three places in the roof that are wet, but only one that is obviously dripping. Fortunately, it’s in a part of the attic where we’re not storing anything so it’s just insulation getting wet. We put a bucket under the drip and called our landlord to report the bad news.

We have had a lot of rain and it rained hard last night. But I noticed the toilet seat felt damp a couple of days ago, so I think we’ve had the leak for a while. I didn’t see an obvious place where the damp could have come from then and figured I imagined it.

Anyway, I feel for the landlord having to deal with this. And maybe us, if it turns out to be a bigger deal than we think.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

House hunting is exhausting and way too stressful. After a week of pouring over listings, we narrowed down the hunt to about a dozen houses before we met with our realtor yesterday. She then eliminated about half of those listings because they’re short sales. She said short sales are a waste of a buyer’s time since they can take several months to sort out. So a buyer could put in an offer on a house in short sale, but the seller/bank won’t even touch your paperwork until the short sale is completed. The buyers wait and may lose out on a better house they could have found in the meantime.

That left us with about 6 or 7 houses to look at yesterday. But we only actually looked at 3 because the listing realtors weren’t answering their phones and we couldn’t get the codes to get in to look. That’s a shame, because a couple of them we were really interested in.

Of the three we walked through, there was one that was in excellent condition and ready for immediate move in. However, this is one that is nearing the end of the short sale process, so it could still take some time to complete. And it doesn’t meet all of our requirements in space needs. But it is lovely and definitely moved into the top slot for the day.

The second one is vacant and in pretty good shape, but the kitchen is in need of remodeling and there was an inspection notice by the front door that showed two inspection ratings in the past several months of “poor.” We’re curious what that means. And it’s in a location that would add at least 30 minutes to my already long commute.

The third one I didn’t like at all.

The really disappointing thing is that all of the houses with realty signs in our neighborhood that are in our price range already have contracts on them, including the house next door. Oh, we did look at that one and it’s a disaster. It’s actually in worse shape than the super cheap house we looked at the other night (which has a contact pending already). Beau is very bummed that we lost out on the super cheap house.

On the cute single family house I wanted to look at - we got some intel from a long time resident of our town that that neighborhood isn’t the best. So we didn’t even go look at it or any other houses in that area.

Our realtor has sent a bunch of new listings to look at and I have taken a deeper look at the ones that I ruled out because of their location (mostly because of they would lengthen my commute, not because I didn’t like the house/neighborhood). We’ll see about taking a look at them later this week.

Friday, May 09, 2008

We were supposed to go look at that single family home last night. But our realtor called to beg off because she had a migraine, so we’ll go look at it first thing tomorrow instead. We’re scheduled to look at houses with her between 9am and 2pm. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

She emailed a lengthy packet of listings, most of which were in the neighborhoods that we ruled out in our drive about town the other day. We whittled it down to about 8 of her listings, plus 3 of our own findings. I found 3 new ones on Realtor.com this morning that hadn’t shown up before, too. Of the 14 total listings, only 2 are single family homes and they were listings I found online. She didn’t send a single SFH listing and I asked her about that in my email to her this morning. She also didn’t have any of the houses in our neighborhood in the mix and I asked about that as well. I can’t imagine why she wouldn’t have included them unless they all have contracts on them already, which I doubt.

Beau and I need to prioritize the listings so that we look at our top choices first. I’m positive we won’t be able to look at all 11-14 houses in that block of time.

Then the next question is whether or not to attempt church tomorrow night followed by dinner out with my parents for a small Mother’s Day observation (since we’re still trying to plan a big Mother’s Day thing with the three moms while we’re at Disney). The real question is will Jesse make it without a nap until after 2pm? How will we ensure he gets lunch while we’re out?

Tranquilize the running sheep.

I’m a Bobbing Bobcat, but I’m working in improving my score.

[via kamp krusty]

Thursday, May 08, 2008

I have 4 3 coupons for a 1 free month trial of Netflix. The first 4 who indicate in the comments will get a coupon.

The Netflix offer ends June 15th, so comment quickly in order to get your coupon in the mail soon.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

We managed to rule out about a dozen houses today just by driving all over town. Do you know how exhausting that is?

We are going to look at the cute 5 bedroom house tomorrow night. We did drive by it and peeked in the windows. It is vacant and needs some painting and minor cosmetic work from what we could see of the main floor. The outside is as cute as in the picture. The back yard is quite large and there’s a great storage shed in the back that looks like a rustic barn. And I don’t mean rustic in the run down sense - it looks rather new. There is definitely a bedroom and full bath on the main floor, so that means 4 bedrooms and 3 baths upstairs. The kitchen is on the small side, but open and renovated.

There is only one other house, a townhouse, that is still in consideration. The neighborhood is on the other side of town, which means a slightly longer commute for me. But it’s a newer community and it has a pool and a playground area just behind the row of houses.

Then who knows what listings our realtor will come up with that aren’t available online. Those are for Saturday though. For now, I’m mentally done.

Funny parody of Faith Hill’s Breathe.

Thanks to my Dad for finding it.

Have a tissue handy.

[via thinkling bill]