The Holtonian

Crunch time

So the crunch time has begun, we're are in a mad crazy time right now trying to move. And of course at a time when I need work to be slow its slammed. Luckily I think I can duck away as most of my deliverables were this week and I told everyone a month ago I'd be out monday and tuesday.

But everything seems to be on track, driving up to chattanooga today to for our last time. Kind of sad, kind of exciting. We went out last night and picked up some new bed room furniture. We found a guy here in ATL that deals all online and on craig's list and basically buys directly from the manufacturer and cuts out the middle man. Basically his stuff looked pretty top notch, real wood, not glued, traditional style. We got teh works as far as our bedroom stuff was concerned, we figure we'll have it the rest of our life might as well.

That will be delivered next week.

Though its kind of funny that we got that, because we need a fridge more and have not bought one. Not sure when we'll get one. Maybe when we get the moving truck (we have it for a few days) we can go out and pick one up. We're not too worried about it, probably because there's plenty of other things to worry about.

We have our final walkthrough today... which everytime I say that i the tune of final countdown pops in my head. SO today I'll be doing the final walkthrough with that song in my head.

On top off all this we're sick, well i just have a frog in my throat, i got sick last week, just a minor soar throat that is all but gone now. Janelle has what I had last week and sounds a bit horse and AK has the stomach bug. We think she's just about over it but she hasn't had much of an appetite.

So life is Hectic to say the least.

The Family Heirlooms

While packing up the house I found my retirement fund under our bed. This is what I jokingly call my comic book and baseball card collection. Wifey once asked if we could get rid of them and I told her, "You'll be thanking me one day that we didn't."

The comic book collection is probably worth little as its mostly just comics I liked reading, superman, ninja turtles, a few xmen. But the trading cards I have are pretty cool.

The baseball cards by far are the real money makers.

Barry Bonds Rookie Card, even if he is a cheat, that still might be worth a few cents.

Pudge Rodriquez rookie card: arguably one of the best all around catchers the game has seen. He can hit and pick people off like no other.

Pedro rookie card one of the best pitchers of our day.

Ken Griffey Jr... I got a couple of his rookie cards, though his career has suffered greatly from the injuries.

A few other notable rookie cards in there too: Canseco, Andre Dawson, Reggie Sanders, Kenny Rogers, and a few others that slip my mind. I got a Willie Mays card that I bought for a $1.80... the guy at the counter goes, "hmmph... I think that's mismarked but I'll honor it."

I traded a friend of mine a hockey puck and 10 bucks cash for Shaq's rookie card.

Also have Michael Goulet (hockey player) rookie card. I have no idea who he is but last time I looked it was worth 20 bucks or so.

I also have lots of lame cards, an entire set of Superman trading cards. Jurrassic Park trading cards, not sure where they came from.

I also have an original Star Wars Frisbee... not sure if its worth anything but if people will spend 100s of dollars on jaba the hut toys maybe an authentic frisbee will fetch a few bucks.

One day I'll either cash em all in or hand em down to my offspring so that they in turn can hold on to them. Its like our family jewels or something.

Valentines in Atlanta

Valentines has come and gone, and for the first time in our marriage I think we got to spend it sans kids. Yes that's right, without children. I think just about every year we have baby sat other couples allowing them to go get wined and dined (and made a killing in babysitting $$). So we left the baby with the Crabbs and I took the wife out to a nice romantic restaurant... our new house.

I learned a valuable lesson in trying to prepare the meal at the house, don't ever be in a hurry in Atlanta. I left work at 4, stopped to get some flowers on the way to my car, called in an order to Carabas up near our new house. Drove there, took maybe 20 mins, got lost (add 5 to 10 minutes), picked up the food, took a few wrong turns (add another 5 to 10 minutes), finally settled with getting back on 285 because the alternative wasn't looking much better. Took 30 minutes to go from Cobb Parkway to Veterans/Howell/Bankhead (our exit off 285 like 3 street names). Then went to Publix near our house to pick up a bottle of Pinot Grigio (the wife's favorite wine), and some Strawberries (wife's favorite fruit).

Forgot my wallet in the car so I had to run back to the car.

Then in the check out lane, got behind an illegal alien (she didn't have any US ID) paying with food stamps at Publix. Which that was a whole mess of a long time. She pulls out $100 bills to pay for some food and what not, and then food stamps for baby formula. I could add my commentary on the situation but why bother.

Then drove to the house, ran inside, the bag with the food in it broke, the wife's calling wondering where the heck I am (its 6:15 by this point... i left work at 4), so hide the food in the kitchen (we're not supposed to be in the house, its not ours yet). Hope no workers are there and eat the food and drink the drink.

So I 'kidnapped' the wife, tried blind folding her but the fact is its a left,right,left,right,right and you're in our subdivison from the crabbs house and so it was obvious where I was going. And then her blind fold fell off and she said, "We're going to the house aren't we...?" I wanted to drive around a bit to throw her off but It being 6:30 and we needing to get back by 7:30 to put Anna-Kate to bed, I just had to bite the bullet and drive strait there.

But we had a nice picnic in the new house with some calamari, which was dang good and some Rigatoni Martino which was danger gooder. We ate it all up and downed the Pinot. Had our friend Jason Harrod playing on the laptop to set the mood. We talked about the house, and the exciting times we have in front of us and just how grateful we are to have each other.

Dave Ramsey 1... Chris 0

So after listening to Dave Ramsey's radio program for the first time, less than 30 minutes into it I realized I had been bamboozled. Now I've been a little anti-Ramsey for the most part mainly because I think in some ways he takes some good ideas and throws them into hyperdrive. The money envelop thing is a great idea if your really in dept I'll give him that, but for people who don't have debt other than car and house I think its a little over the top. And frankly I don't think car debt is all that bad like he does. I mean you gotta have a car. Now don't go and buy a lexus or bmw, but buying a nice economical FIT i think is a wise decision.

So anyway, for the most part I think Ramsey's usually right about things, but his financial strait jacket is a little too tight for my tastes, thus we have never dived strait into all his teachings.

But the other day I was driving home from Atlanta and he goes off on whole life insurance. Now I have whole and basically bought the line my Northwestern Mutual sales guy sold me that "whole is a good strong investment blah blah blah." Well when you do the numbers, its not, and basically that's what Ramsey was espousing. I checked with my partner in crime Crabbarino and asked him his opinion, "Oh yeah only suckers buy whole life insurance...."

I yelled BLAST!!! And a few other expletives. I was bamboozled. Sure enough it really doesn't make sense when you can buy term, same policy or more, and pay less get coverage till age 75 and pay way less then use that extra $$ on savings or investments.

Northwestern mutual and frankly any life insurance sales person, tries to lure you in on investment opportunity on whole, but truth be told if you ever did cash out your life insurance you'd be taxed out the waz and wouldn't have anything to show for it. SO I called my northwestern rep and told him to switch it over, he tried to talk me out of it, he makes a lot of money off the whole way more than term, but he's going to send me some quotes and what not.

I don't blame my northwestern guy, he was just trying to make more money and I being a gullible rube fell for his sales speak hook line and sinker. Its one of those things, don't blame the sales rep for you making a dumb purchase. I mean don't buy a chevy cobalt and be suprised when the thing breaks down at 70,000 miles. The way NW Mutual displays all their graphs and presentations makes the whole policy look like this amazing deal, and in some ways I think their materials are misleading but if you are an informed consumer then you'll know to go look around, and ask around before making a big purchase. I was not and just said "SIGN ME UP!" And basically blew a ton of money on something I couldn't afford.

I'm mad at myself for making a dumb purchase. Just like I'm mad at myself for buying a sony digital camera that turned out to be crap. I mean since we've had this policy for a few years we're going to take a financial hit as far as it goes, but its better to do it now and just get it over with.

We'll switch to term, get more coverage for less money thus have more cash flow to save and pay down the house and I'll sleep better at night knowing that if I keel over or if janelle gets tired of me and bumps me off (that's a joke) that they'll be well taken care of.

I bet Ramsey's doing serious damage to the whole life insurance bizness. It'd be pretty funny if the industry sued him for liable or something.

Stuff For Sale

Where does the weekend go. I blinked and it was monday. I think time is flying by till we close, I feel like i'm on the side of a hill and trying to cling to it to slow the pace of time down. I mean I'm glad its flying by b/c I'm soooo looking forward to the new house. I'm so pumped about living in Atlanta and having my family together and having this wicked cool new house.

This weekend the wife packed and I basically kept her company, she doesn't think too highly of my packing skills, and frankly I don't think too highly of them either. Most of the moving I've ever done has been throwing the stuff in the pack of my car. Which I keep saying to Janelle, "Well we'll just throw that in the back of the car.... which thankfully she ignores because it would probably take about 500 Fits to carry all the stuff for everytime I've said that.

I really didn't even leave the house much this weekend, not at all on saturday. We went to church and small group for the last time on Sunday, last time for small group, not last time for church.

I did get together stuff we're trying to sell. We're trying to sell as much stuff as we can so we don't have to move as much, as well as take the $$ and use it towards new furniture. We have some lamps, Garden statue of an angel, leaf blower, radar detector, golf clubs and some other random stuff. We already sold the couchs and some tables and a floor lamp.

The last big thing we have for sale is this amazing chair +ottoman.

Sellin it for $75. Its really nice and we love it just don't have room for it in the new house. I mean we'll have room but it always has been extra furniture for us. We used it a lot in the apartment and but it always took up too much space in our living room. Its super comfy and in good shape. If your interested let me know.

We also have two of these bathroom lights. They didn't really work in our bathrooms but they're really cool

LIke I said we have two so I can either sell them individually or as a set, put one in one bath and one in another. The going rate is $25 bucks for both or $15 for one.

We also have these pier 1 kind of lamps

THey're not really us, but 10 bucks for both of them.

And all this stuff is negotiable. Mostly I just want it out of the house and want some $$ in the pocket.

"its all for charity"

So I was at work and pretty slammed this week and in need of a good laugh... so I turned to my old friend David Brent.

I love the awkwardness as his co-workers realize he's serious and almost feel complete and utter pitty for a man completely clueless of his own situation... Its funny, yet so unbelievably sad.

Moving

I've tried writing this entry three times, but keep get interrupted. Basically all the final hurdles have been cleared with the Lookout Mtn house selling. The inspection was pretty painless, basically there are problems with this house but nothing to waive a stick at and nothing I can really do anything about. All we have left to do is pack.

The wife's handling most of that, as she doesn't trust my packing skills. She allowed me the honor of packing up my clothes, which I did... but then I had nothing to wear this weekend.

The crabbs came up and helped us knock out a lot of packing, actually Leigh Ann helped while Crabb and I tended to the kids.

Packing with a 9 month old who is walking all over the place is interesting as well. She tends to get into the newspaper, boxes, and anything else on the floor. The house is in a chaotic state, much to the dismay of the wife and there’s not much you can do about it since everything's in upheaval.

We're also trying to coordinate everything down in ATL and make sure all is well at the new house. I'm doing most of that since I'm down in the ATL. Part of coordinating all this is trying to find some new furniture. Our hand I down couches that we got from our generous friends the Trygars have reached their expiration date with us. They're still decent couches but they sort of match our house we're in now and basically the wife is going with a different color scheme in the new house. She tried explaining it all to me but I had a hard time paying attention. So if you're interested in a matching blue and white striped couch and love seat let me know.

We're also trying to get bedroom furniture. Our bedroom now consists of wifey's head board from when she was a child, her dresser from childhood, and my dresser I've had since I was 3 or so. All good furniture but doesn't match and frankly would look skimpy in the new master bed. Basically we plan on moving all that into the guest bedroom in the new home.

We've had a hard time finding bedroom stuff that’s reasonably priced. If you want a set it’s just so expensive. Roomstogo has decent stuff and the perk with them is no interest/no payments for a few years or so and basically get it now pay for it later kind of thing. But we've actually been trying to go the Craigs list route and find something used. We've found some decent stuff there, nothing as good as the Crabb's deal of 1400 or so for a dresser, chest, armoire, bed, mirror, and night stands.

We went to factory direct in chatty but their prices weren't that great. I mean they have what looks like quality stuff but the prices were similar to roomstogo and with RTG you get free deliver and the financing deals.

Last night I went to Lowes and bought the same chandelier we currently have. Basically we love our chandelier, just got it two Christmas’s ago from the in laws (it was a xmas gift, thus it has a sentimental value). BACKGROUND: When we bought the Lookout house it had a chandelier similar to the one we have now, but between final walkthrough and when we moved in they had switched with a $20 faux brass one that was just gaudy. The people we bought the house from were so ghetto... I mean they took the light bulbs, toilet paper holder, and a lot of other little stuff they said they'd leave for us. So basically when we sold the house I told the wife that we weren’t' going to be like the losers that sold it to us and that we'd at least replace the chandelier with something that looks like what they saw when they bought it. But Lowes had our exact same one for $90 or so. Also this saves me from having to uninstall, install, and install (new home). Basically when we move in I'll take the one down that they put in our dining room and put up the one I bought last night.

We close on the house three weeks from yesterday so it’s all a matter of time.

A few New House Pics

Here's the outside

From the front door, i love the wrought ironish spindels, wife doesn't, but I do.

Our Killer Kitchen, we're putting in Corian counter tops and the floors will be hard wood all throughout the downstairs.

View of ATL skyline is pretty cool...

The great room is huge, it has the double story window thing which we're not super happy with but the house has enough other little things compensate for one or two minor flaws. Plus if those windows weren't there it would be really dark in there.

Don't really have any outside shots, but trust me it has an outside.