Even a broken clock is right twice a day...

I find myself in the unenviable position of being okay with something President Obama said today, when he said that the Federal Government has bigger fish to fry than going after legal pot users in Washington and Colorado. 

Now, he most carefully doesn't say what the Feds might or might not do about growers and sellers...but at least those folks who DO want to indulge in the privact can do so with little fear that they will end up in jail with violent criminals violating their body cavities.

It's all Greek to me...

These last few months, my wife and kids have been participating in a Greek History Co-Op.  The lesson plans wrapped up this week, and the moms decided to put the finishing touches on my having a Greek themed costume dinner last night.

So, lets see.  The short one is supposed to be Aphrodite, the one on the right is supposed to be Athena, and I'm pretty sure the one in the middle decided she is an Oracle. 

What was dad?  There was a reason I took the picture instead of posing in it, and it's not just because I'm not pretty.  There were 4 of us dads that went, and none of us got into the costume spirit.  I told me wife the only costume I was willing to wear is that of a Spartan Warrior, and she decided jeans and a blue shirt was Greek enough.

The food was good...Gyro meatloaf, and Greek spaghetti, and lots of things with olives and feta, plus feta for desert.

Overall though, the best part was realizing how much the kids had learned as they argued over which God/Goddess was the most powerful. 

'Yeah, but I'm Athena...I sprung from Zeus's head fully grown...that makes me more powerful than you, because you just married Hades and have power of the underworld!'

Hope she likes the Christmas Present.

Well, after a few weeks of being wishy-washy as far as looking for a new house, my wife and I found a house that met all of our requirements, as well as being low in the price band we had set for ourselves. 

Because history has proven that the chances increase that you will make a bad decision the longer you think about it, we got the ball rolling Monday to put in an offer.  Much pain ensued, but after some running around, we got the mortgage guy enough paperwork that he was willing to give us a pre-approval letter, and we sat down with our agent to put in an offer.

At noon I got a phone call with a counter offer, which we accepted.

Yay...we get to start the adventures of being homeowners again!

 

 

It's a nice house...at 1940SF it's big enough for us, but not too big(although my wife is already looking at a couch for the living room).  The back yard has several grape vines growing in it, which has the potential to be nice next fall.  To my wife's delight, it even has a room already set up for homeschooling.

 



 



 

Closing probably won't happen until the end of January, which is almost perfect timing as our lease is up at our current place at the end of February.  We will get to enjoy Christmas, and then start boxing things up.  Luckily, we have a lot of experience with that now...this will be the 4th move since December of 2010.

Even more luckily for me, it means me wife will be doing most of the packing!

And that's why I eat red meat.

I was flipping through yahoo this morning, and came across this somewhat horrifying story about mislabeled seafood in New York City. 

Now, with the disclaimer that I don't believe that this 'Oceana' is a 100% unbiased research group in cases like this, I am not the least bit surprised that something like this is going on....but it is more widespread than I thought it might be. 

I'm not picking on New York either, because the article says things are even worse in Boston and Los Angeles. 

The somewhat surprising stat is that the smaller stores were WAY worse offenders than major chains.  When I think 'smaller', I tend to think 'fancier', because that has been my experience here in the Northwest.  I forgot that the one thing a larger chain has going for it is better management, and the need to protect a regional or even nationwide reputation.

I'd be kind of curious to see how a investigation like this would do in Seattle.  Folks here in the Northwest tend to be a fairly 'sophisticated' when it comes to food.  Speaking for myself, I've caught halibut, cod, ling cod and salmon.  I know what those fish look like, and would recognize it under most circumstances.  Cod would be the easiest to fool me on. 

Now, where you could fool me is with bottom fish, and shell fish.  I couldn't tell you the difference between flounder and sole when they are swimming, let alone when it's a fillet in a cold case.  Also, while I can pick out a scallop from a clam from an oyster, I couldn't tell the difference between a Manilla and a Littleneck.

The only really good news is that so far there hasn't been a story about people selling goat and calling it Angus. 

Now where did I put that again?

After going back and forth on the whole 'should we buy a house or wait' thing, my wife and I hit an open house this weekend that we really, really liked.  After much deep and serious talking, we decided to get ahold of an agent and make an offer.

Then the pain started.

On one of our discussed timelines, we were going to spend November getting pre-approved for a loan before putting an offer in. 

That didn't happen, and so now that we want to put an offer in, today was full of much 'hair on fire' as we tried to start rounding up the paperwork to apply for the loan: W-2's, 1040's, bank statements, and pay stubs.

Most of it's easy, and can be printed off the computer.  The only one giving me difficulty is my most recent W-2 form, which is frustrating, because I KNOW we did our taxes back in April, and I KNOW I collected copies of everything I printed off from Turbo Tax, and put it away with my the W-2 forms also.

And now I just can't remember where I put it. 

Grrrrrrr. 

It's another one of those 'no one to blame but myself' things.

Bonus!

One of my tasks for Saturday involved swinging through Safeway and cashing in our coins that had been rounded up around the house.  I won't even begin to try to guess the weight of our collected coins, but I DO know it was over 2 quarts worth of coins. 

Now, the hardcore money savers out there are going to flinch over this, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I pay the 9.8% fee to use the Coin Star machine at the store.  I just don't consider it worth my effort to cash coins in on my own.

One of the entertaining things about using the Coinstar machine is trying to convince the machine to take every coin, which can sometimes mean feeding the rejected coin through 3 or 4 times before giving up. 

Saturday, I had one dime sized coin that out stubborned me, forcing me to take a closer look at it, and boy, am I glad I did. 

Obviously upon closer examination, it was easy to tell that the coin was Canadian...a common enough find up here in this border state.  What was tougher to figure out is who the joker was on the other side of the coin...it certainly wasn't Queen Elisabeth.  Instead, it was King George VI, because the coin was 1952.  That means it wasn't just any dime, but rather an 80% SILVER dime, having a value of roughly $2...

I am SOOOOOO ready for the zombies....

Trifecta Perfecta!

Made two trips out yesterday, with the goal being the completion of my Christmas shopping.  I would say I was mostly successful, completing 60-70% of it.  The morning trip was better than the afternoon session, since the afternoon session included bringing my 7 year old out to get her shopping done, which really just involved walking down each and every aisle in the toy section at Wal-Mart and Target while she showed me things SHE was interested in. 

The big purchase for the day was made at the store formerly known as Sportsman's Warehouse...a Rossi Trifecta, intended for my oldest daughter.  With a .22lr, .243 and 20ga barrel, I paid $350 for it, which was actually a bit less than another store in town wanted for a Rossi Matched Pair, which just had the .22 and 20ga. 

It seems like a slick little gun, and a great training tool.  The .22 barrel has a cute little set of fiber optic sights on it, the 20ga has a bead on the front, and .243 has normal open sights, and is threaded for a scope, which I didn't buy yet. 

The range report will have to wait a bit...my guess is a month or two, but hopes are high.  All I know is it sure feels tiny, and it should fit my daughter okay...even my full size 10-22 is too big for her to hold comfortably.  Heck, now my only problem might be stealing it from my wife.  When I showed it to her yesterday, and let her hold it, it kind of confirmed for me that I should be looking more at youth/bantam sized stocks for her.