One down, one to go.

Finished up another class, I smoked this one and ended up with a 101% for a final grade which is pretty much the same as a 90%. It all looks like an A in the transcript. Two weeks off and then eight more weeks of History of Rock and then I finally graduate summa cum laude and after a solid decade of working on it off and on. I would like to say that I am done with school forever but in a couple years I will probably get a wild hair and attempt to get my masters degree. If I do it will take just as long as this one took and I’ll get it sometime in my mid 40’s.

We’ve been looking around for a house again. Ideally we would like to find a fixer upper for cheap that has good bones that’s in a good location that has all the things that we want in a house fundamentally and then fix it up to make it our own over time. We went and looked at a foreclosure the other day which had most of our must haves but the place would have been too much work. One requirement is that we have to be able to safely move in and be able to do absolutely nothing and be safe and be able to live… you know, heat, cooling, running water, hot water, no rain coming in through the ceiling and all that. The place we looked at was a mess, which would explain why it was selling for half what it sold for five years ago. I drove by a couple more yesterday morning which had a lot of pluses as well, one had an amazing amount of space for the price and was in good shape but I didn’t really like the location, too close to a divided two lane highway (which will eventually become interstate at some point), and the view wasn’t great. The second place was a bit small but had a huge yard and lot, but the view was of storage units and felt very sterile. Location, location, location, that’s the key to real estate and we want someplace in a cozy neighborhood in a smaller suburb town and give X a stable place to grow up. I’m in no hurry, there’s always another place out there and we want to make the right choice whenever we do finally get a place because we don’t want to move again for a long long time, if ever so we really want someplace we can call our own and not have regrets about so there are no “what if’s”. I need to get together more of a down payment anyway so if we do get that steal of a house then it will just be closer to being paid off is all.

I’ve got a half marathon in 3 weeks! S**t! I don’t feel like I’m ready for it and the cold weather is making me consistently miss my training runs so it’s going to hurt pretty bad. Oh well, I need to not make excuses and just do it right? Jessica and I are entered in the Duncan 50k this year which means you get a shirt for completing 25, 50, or 100k worth of races between the first of March and the end of October. Should be no problem for me, the races I’m already signed up for total 69k already and I should break the 100k mark pretty easily with other stuff, it depends on how crazy I go with races this year and if I can find a sitter for the boy for a couple hours here and there. Jessica should be able to break the 25k mark with the races she’s signed up for already but she is hampered by the fact that whenever there are races, she has to be at work, when she is laid off and not working… no races because it’s cold. If she goes in and does the free races that Duncan offers which line up with her days off once a month she should be able to get plenty of mileage.

We are going to Pittsburgh at the end of next month to visit Jessica’s sister/brotherinlaw/nephew/niece. I am taking almost two weeks off from work for it, not all of it for the trip, just half or so, the other half for a mini staycation before Jessica is immediately back on full time at the park and all time will be spent watching the baby for the next six months for whatever parent doesn’t happen to be at work at the time. Should be quite tiring indeed, but at least we found a good daycare to put the boy in for a couple days a week so I don’t have to stay up for fourty-eight hours straight once a week. I’m excited about the trip, never been in that area of the country before so it will be fun to visit. Hopefully the boy will be good on the plane ride. Probably not, but a few hours of grief flying is better than eighteen to twenty hours in a car each way with a small infant. Jessica doesn’t think so but seeing how grouchy he gets by the end of the drive to the Grandparents Fleming, which is only about three hours away tells me I want nothing to do with a car trip that long with him right now.