Llama and Lamb

The election polls opened at 6 am in Indiana. I am within walking distance to my polling stations, so I decided to walk over in case there was a line of cars. There wasn’t. I had heard stories of 2-3 hour lines in Downtown Indianapolis on Monday. Some friends said it looked like a party.

Behind me in line was a active duty soldier in the army and in front of me was a man about to join the Air Force. Talk about picking your boss! One man said that the station had twice as many booths as they did four years ago. The general consensus of those around me was that either McCain or Obama were better than Bush–although nobody discussed any details. No matter whether you can photograph the polling stations or not, I’m sure there will be plenty of personal documentation. I wouldn’t be surprised if Twitter went down at least a few times today. Read more »

This will have to be quick. It’s past midnight here in Frankfurt. We’ve seen over eight castles close up and many more from afar. We had some Fiederweissen (fresh grapes, as in this year’s harvest, plus yeast) at a wine museum in Burnkastel-Kues the other day. It was great! We’ve had pork about every night. The schnitzel and chapparelles were great. Tomorrow, we are headed for a short visit to Strasbourg, France and then to the Black Forest. It’s been fun legally driving greater than 125 mph although navigating has been a chore even with two GPS devices (brought one and there’s one in the Mercedes Benz C-Class) and the maps in our Lonely Planet: Germany book. Auf wiedersehen!

My car was broken into on the first night in my new neighborhood. No, I’m NOT suggesting that any of my neighbors broke my car window, although (as Emily Craighead said) that teenager that asked to cut my lawn for $10 looked kind of shady. The only items that were stolen were my $100 aftermarket car stereo and $5 in quarters. Aftermarket stereos are incredibly easy to steal. You can practically rip them out with a screwdriver. The irony is that I’m moving from a low income apartment complex that has had two murders in the last two years to a neighborhood right next to the nicest area in Indianapolis. At my old apartment, I’ve left my iPod out in clear view in my car and no one had stolen it. Thankfully, Rachel removed my iPod from my car before it was broken into. Maybe the lesson is that you don’t steal from your own. Read more »

With the 2008 Olympics winding down and our plane tickets to Germany purchased, I thought that I would upload and post my photographs from my month’s stay in Greece for the 2004 Athens Olympics. I worked within the International Broadcasting Centre (IBC) for the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC). You can still read my blog from Athens, called It’s all Greek To Me, Stephen at the Olympics over on Blogger. I was able to write between day and evening shifts while I was employed. I did not however blog about my stay in Greece after the Olympics were over which included my trip to Ancient Olympia. My trip to Greece was my first plane and international travel. It created my interest in seeing more of the world, and made the world smaller, yet more foreign and amazing. Read more »

My supervisor, Jeff Brown called me to tell me that people were hanging from my building at two o’clock. My co-worker Joe Black and I went outside to meet up with the rest of the office who were out on the sidewalk looking up at the three men dangling about 15 stories in the air.

I originally thought the men were window washers, but I later found out from building management that the men were hanging signage. The First Indiana Bank has recently been bought by M/I Bank, thus First Indiana Plaza has changed to M/I Plaza. These three men were about to haul up letters for the sign when the metal wires holding the scaffolding broke. Read more »

We took possession at closing (the REO seller didn’t even show up for the signing) and went to work two days later. The first action I took was to buy a dehumidifier.The humidity was 75% when we took possession. We have had the rainiest summer in close to 50 years in Indiana, so we were not surprised. We were surprised that that basement did flood while we were purchasing the house. A week later, the humidity has lessened to below 50 percent. Since the house has a sump pump, I was able to keep the dehumidifier running constantly by bypassing the dehumidifier’s water tank and connecting a plastic tubing emptying into the sump pump. Although there were parts and there were no directions on how to attach tubing, so I ending up dissembling part of the machine. Read more »

At some point in every home owner’s life, one must think that at least one of the former occupants was either lazy, cheap, dumb or all three. The other factor to consider is that Realtor/Seller often cover problems in a house in order to sell it. The cheapest option is to carpet over any existing floors. I know this because I am asking for estimates on my hardwood floors right now. We bought the house with carpet in the master bathroom (see photo). I don’t know why someone would place carpet in a bathroom (refer to this paragraph’s opening statement), but someone did. Yuck! Read more »

Yes, mortgage papers were signed last week. Rachel and I now own a home. It’s a split level in a much more upscale neighbor than our current apartment at the Orchard. We are next to one of the nicest neighborhoods in Indy. We are still in Indianapolis. I’m not sure if I wanted to make my life saccarine yet, and “Carmel-ize” it–just not yet anyway.

A new home calls for a new website address. You might nor have noticed (I tried to make it as transparent as I could), but the address of this personal blog (Rachel and Stephen is now LlamaAndLamb.com. If you already did not know, one of my nicknames is Llama (old story from high school) and Rachel is Hebrew for ewe/female lamb (Jacob’s wife in Genesis). I bought a Virtual Private Server from SliceHost and hope to wilder and crazier things on the web now that I have full control! After all, we all know power corrupts. I hope to do some remodeling of this site, soon, but I’ve been saying that since we were married a year and a half ago. Read more »

Last week, my wife said, “Stephen, I wish you cared as little about decorating as you do care about appliance purchasing.” This was to say, it would be nice if I didn’t have to check with you on the style and color of each room our new house. I had just spent 10 or more hours over the past few weeks visiting appliance stores and reading reviews on the web. My final total was around $2800 including tax. If you add cash back and rebates that’s $574 less than retail ($169 + $125 + $280 discount) at Home Depot and less than $678 MSRP ($3478, as if any one pays this amount).

The goals and specifications

I’ve listed below the requirements or suggestions that others (friends and store associates) gave to us that we thought would result in a good value buy. Dependability and long-duration were valued more than price, so we opted for the lower priced mid-range models. For my wife and I, the sweet spot is the form and quality of the higher end models with the basic features of the lower end models.
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I have been looking into appliances for our new (to us) house. That’s close to $2500. The first thing to do is to watch for Sears, Home-Depot, and Lowes deal alerts such as DealNews or FatWallet or subscribe to their respective email newsletter. Look for 10-15% off. These deals happen almost every month.

The second aspect to look into is a credit card that provides at least 3% back. Read more »