I recently bought a house (I just moved in two weeks ago. Perhaps I’ll post some pictures later), and the mortgage is few hundred more than my rent. The exact same few hundred that is car payment. I began searching for a way to pay off the car loan so I wouldn’t have to live on ramen and peanut butter after the first mortgage payment. Or sell the car. I love my car.

Luckily, I own some rental property in North Carolina which has appreciated in value quite a bit for a variety (some of them nearly lunatic) reasons. I put it on the market three weeks ago.

I got an offer today that was just 1.8% off my asking price; my car will soon be mine, free and clear. So tonight I take my lovely wife out for dinner and a movie.

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Isn’t this they way it always works? I got some money for Christmas, so I bought a snazzy Canon EOS Digital Rebel. Before I can even get my sweet rebate money Canon announces the Rebel XT at the same price point. Gah.

Same thing happened with my iPod. I get one for my birthday, just a few days after Apple announced the iPod Photo, complete with a color screen and twenty extra gigs. I’ve gotta stop reading Gizmodo.

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Claims that dogs are smarter than cats because they can be trained really get my goat.

Zelda’s food has to be hidden in the pantry; otherwise, Daisy eats it. Daisy has seen Zelda open the door many times, but when it closes she just sits and pants. Stupid dog.

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You would have seen better (or at least more obvious) results if you’d have just asked nicely.

Try again, without the insults, and we’ll see.

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First and foremost, there is a distinct lack of good routes from Aurora (where I live) to Englewood (where I work). This despite the fact that a huge group of people live in southeast Denver and work in the DTC. I can either take Parker south to Arapahoe, I-225 south to I-25 to Belleview, I can go way west and just take I-25, there’s a road that winds through Cherry Creek Park from Parker to Yosemite, or I can take the Cherry Creek Reservoir Dam Road. The first sucks because Parker is packed. The second should rule, it’s a straight shot and all highway, but the tunnel exit from I-225 to I-25 is currently only one lane, and it blows when half the cars on a three lane highway try to squeeze through that needle. Going straight to I-25 is several miles out of the way, I haven’t even tried it.

So I usually end up on the Dam road. It’s pretty good most of the time, I truck along at 40 miles an hour while laughing at the people parked on the highway down below. But it sometimes backs up, especially when it snows, so I’ve taken the road through the park a couple of times. That’s my favorite route, they don’t plow it, so I can slide around a bit, and 25 MPH is much better than zero. The only downside is that you’re supposed to pay to drive through. No one seems to check in the winter, but I don’t want to get caught. Next year maybe I’ll buy a year pass.

Driving through Aurora sucks in general because of the way they name roads. Roads dead end, then reappear a few miles later. Road names change for both good and bad reasons. Hampden turns into Havana as it changes from east-west to north-south, but Airport turns into Buckley and continues to run north and south. And, most annoyingly, there are nearly always several roads with the same name. The section of Hampden that I drive has Hampden Circle, Hampden Drive, Hampden Way, and possibly others. It’s confusing, and possibly dangerous. Durham, NC renamed dozens of roads several years ago after emergency vehicles repeatedly went to the wrong address.

My final complaint is 40 MPH speed limits. Who does this? I’m used to sticking the speedo needle on a three… you know, 33, 43, 53, 63, and 73. All of the sudden I have to relearn all that and keep my speed at 48. What’s wrong with 35, that old in-town standby? Why don’t the busy roads (Alameda, Airport, Buckley) just up it to 45? It just doesn’t make sense for Aurora to be five more or less than every other place I’ve ever driven.

I’m sure I’ll come up with more later, and please leave some driving pet peeves of your own in the comments.

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It’s very wintery here… the snow is coming down, and since it was unexpected (what, can the highway people not look at the clouds?) the roads look pretty bad. I knocked the snow off the wood, and now there is a nice fire going, Beth and I are gonna enjoy that while watching Sex and the City.

Hope you have a nice evening, too!

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Briefly: The move went well, it was 600 bucks since we packed ourselves. Seems pricey, but I had a ton of shit, including a 47-inch teevee. The new job is going well, too; I’ve got the usual crappy FNG (fucking new guy) computer, but it handles what I have to do right now. I solved one problem already, and I’ve learned how cable networking works in incredible detail. The people I work with are really cool. Somehow the office manages to be both laid back and extremely busy at the same time.

Beth and I have managed to move in almost completely. The boy’s room has been set up for a while, and we just got our bedroom neatened up tonight. The crappy 80’s washer and dryer that came with the place are on the porch, so my fairly nice units no longer taking up space in the dining area.

Zelda (cat) and Tasha (dog) are beginning to get along. It was all hissing and barking for the first few days, with Zelda spending most days under the bed. We even found a broken Zelda claw in Tasha’s hair a couple days ago. Now they go nuts at each other every once in a while, but they can be in the same room together without freaking out.

Normal blogging will resume sometime this week. The physical moving will be done sometime tomorrow, and mentally I’ll be in a normal state by Tuesday or so.

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There are now at least four restaurants in my area with Atkins’ friendly offerings: TGI Fridays (five or six entrees and appetizers), C.B. & Potts (a couple entrees), Subway (two wrap-type things that look pretty yummy), and Carl’s Jr. (a lettuce wrapped burger). I think a majority of restaurants will have at least a couple low carb meals available by 2005.

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I went into my contracting firm this afternoon and signed the various tax forms and my contract for the new job. I start Monday at 9 AM, which would make for a long, long commute, except that we’re moving on Saturday. That’ll take the commute from at least 90 minutes down to under 30.

In the steps to employment, today was the third to last. Next is the first day on the job, and the last step, the first time you truly know you have a real job, is that first paycheck. Luckily my company pays weekly, so that’ll be on the 29th.

Oh, and I get time and a half for overtime, too! Wheee!

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This will probably be my last post to the awful unemployment category, so I figure I’ll share some of my hard learned lessons with ya’ll.

1. Fill out the unemployment stuff in person. Doing it on the Internet makes it too easy to miss steps, and then you don’t get your checks.

2. Apply for crap jobs early. Early means the day after you get canned. Don’t wait for your unemployment to run out and your credit cards to redline, those bad jobs are harder to get than I realized.

3. Keep applying for jobs. Apply, apply, apply. Even if you already have a job, apply for others constantly. I’ll never go a week without submitting my resume somewhere again.

4. Buy a nice suit while you have a job. It hurts to have to drop five hundred bucks right when you can afford it least.

5. Stop drinking and smoking today. You’ll want liquor and nicotine more than you can imagine when you’re sitting at home all day, and it’s really not economically a good idea. Especially with the amount of smoking you can do when you’re on your couch all day. Who am I kidding? I’m not gonna do that one.

There ya go, don’t say Matt Moore never did anything for you. I’m off to remove TBOTCOTW from the webring of destitution.

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