The beginning of the end of the house hunt

You may recall 3 weeks ago I mentioned we made an offer to a builder. After a lot of back-and-forth, we settled on a final contract today. There's still a whole lot ahead of us, but we've finally settled on a neighborhood and a builder. One of these days I'll detail my exhaustive and exhausting search, but not today.

Our guiding principle was the "twenty year house," a house that we could stay in until the kids were done high school. That's not to say we have to stay, just that we wanted to be able to stay; we didn't want a house where we'd knew we'd have to move out in 10 years. The house had to be nice enough and big enough to last us 20 years, and with good schools all the way through to the end. We think we found that. We could have gone a lot cheaper, but for a 20 year house, we decided it was worth spending our budget. Go best or go cheap is a good rule. That's the gist of it; there will be more.

Opposing Obama's Socialist Agenda

The whole thing about Obama's so-called socialist agenda is stupid. That's inarguable. He's about as centrist as one could expect a Democratic president to be. I've figured out what's really going on.

There are a lot of people who are going to dislike Barack Obama because of the color of his (father's) skin. They're never going to admit it, though, often not even to themselves. Nonetheless, they're going to be biased against him. The ridiculous "socialist agenda" attacks give them a channel for these feelings. It's stupid, it's factually incorrect, and makes them look like a bunch of idiots. But it's not racist, at least on its surface, which is all they're looking for.

Test Your Knowledge: In the UK, they're "mobiles"

Why do we call mobile phones "cell phones?"

Here's a subtle hint: the improved battery life and reduced size of modern phones isn't solely due to improved battery technology.

Doesn't that mean "senior citizen?"

 

Elderly became senior citizen is now becoming active adult (going by the billboards I see). So kids need to be watched by someone 65 years or older. Or maybe it means that 65-year olds on the play equipment need to be supervised. That makes more sense.

Big ol' turtle

 

 

 

Saw this one at Northwest District Park. There's not much in the pictures for scale. I think it was a very solid 18 to 24 inches in length. I'm guessing it's old. Are turtles one of the animals that never stop growing?

Noms d'etat

Name 4 of the (I think) 9 United States that are named after a person. Bonus points for exactly naming the person. Even more bonus points for naming the Canadian provinces with the same property.

New house?

We have made an offer to a builder for a new house in Cedar Park, a suburb just north of Austin. Here's the most likely site:


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The jokes write themselves