Title courtesy of the band Muse. I'm starting to really dig these guys for some reason. I always liked a handful of their songs, but never gave the rest of their stuff a listen, its pretty damn good, I have to admit.

Anyway, yeah, so sorry if it seems like I have fallen off the face of the Earth and into a black hole or something. It was completely not intentional, we've just had a ton of stuff going on, all around. Work has been really busy, there's house stuff going on all the time it seems, then there was the holidays, and then my birthday. But now that I have a second to breathe and relax on this wonderful four day weekend, here I am writing!

I'm not going to really talk about work, mostly because I'm trying to avoid thinking about it while I'm not there, much in the same way I forced myself to ignore all things office related before the wedding. Its just better for my sanity, you know?

OK, so the house. For about the past two weeks Missy and I were under the impression that everything was all done with and we were just waiting for the lawyers to fight it out and set a closing date. I got a little impatient after not hearing from my lawyer for a week, but it turns out the guy was on vacation, so I called him Monday and he said that the last time he checked with the banks attorney we were not clear to close. So then I hopped on the phone with the guy I've been dealing with at the bank (who has been awesome by the way, actually, its been a pretty pleasant experience with everyone I've had to deal with) and he said it was because there was no proof of homeowners insurance. I had lined up homeowners insurance, and car insurance through a company earlier in the month, but everyone I spoke to, including the guy I was talking to at the moment said that it didn't need to be in place fully until we had a closing date. Now, we couldn't get a closing date because it wasn't in place. Catch-22 at all? So I called the insurance guy and explained the situation, he said he'd take care of it and fax over to the bank whatever they need to show that we have insurance in place, so we can proceed. Low and behold, Tuesday afternoon I get a call from the attorney's office asking what dates for a closing would be good for us. So hopefully we'll have a date this week!

In other house related news, although we don't even have a closing date and obviously are not even in the house yet, I've already made a major purchase for the house. And that was? A nice big LCD HDTV. The thing is going to be beautiful. I went to Best Buy yesterday with my dad (I could tell he was formulating some plans of his own for a new TV for somewhere in the house) and picked out the model I wanted. The sales guy showed me the same model line TV that I got, but in a smaller size, hooked up to a Blu-Ray player and the picture just looked insane. I've never seen something that clear before, ever. I got a little carried away, and got the Blu-Ray player! But, its going to be a Hanukkah gift from my parents. So I can't wait. I bought the wall mount for it and Best Buy is going to come and install it, calibrate it and wire it up all nice and neat. I have no den furniture, but I'm on my way to having a kick ass entertainment center. Priorities, right? I know mine are in the right place. Right?

Onto the holidays. They were good this year. Since Missy and I spent Thanksgiving at my parents last year, we were at her parents this year, leaving the crowd at my parents a little thin, but we'll be back next year. It was a nice relaxing day of watching a lot of shitty football games. Not a one was entertaining. All blow outs, no fun. Of course I ate to many appetizers, drank a few too many beers in the afternoon, slept for way too long while the game was on and woke up with my stomach all out of sorts. So much so that I didn't really eat anything at dinner. I felt really bad about that, but what can you do? Force yourself to eat and make it worse? Thankfully i was feeling better by the morning... because the day after Thanksgiving... was my birthday.

The big 3-0. It was a little rough to take in, being 30 and all. Missy kept saying that I have no right to complain as she's already 31 and will be 32 in April. That put it into perspective. We went out to breakfast at the local diner that morning, and since I didn't eat that much the night before, I was starving. Missy wasn't at all, and only had a banana. We then went out to my parents, as my aunt, uncle and cousin was in, the latter in all the way from Ankara, Turkey where she's working for the US State Department. So that was pretty cool. My cousin needed a ton of help cleaning up some stuff on her Mac, so I gave her my expert services. Then we took her to Best Buy so that my mom could get her a Hanukkah present, a new iPod Nano. I couldn't believe how tiny the thing was. Its pretty crazy. Especially since it holds more stuff on it than my iPhone, but whatever. It was cool.

After that we went home to the apartment to relax for a little while before the party. We rented a small party room at a restaurant/bar/pub place about 20 minutes from the apartment, we had about 33 people coming, including ourselves. All in all, it was a pretty awesome party. It was really cool to have all of my family and friends there to celebrate. Missy made up, with my help of course, a word jumble featuring 20 of my favorite things, and a multiple choice quiz, 30 questions about me, one for every year. Her intention was to give out prizes for whoever got the most right, but there was no way to do that with 30+ people, so we just kept the prizes for ourselves (two boxes of candy!). Missy put together the party with a Superman theme, complete with Superman goodie bags filled with candy, balloons and red and blue paper for the quizzes. She also put together some fun facts about 1978, the year of my birth, and some famous people that share my birthday, November 28. All in all, an awesome party. And, I got some awesome gifts. My in-laws gave me a Jets jersey with Brett Favre's name and number on it. I will definitely be wearing that this afternoon while I watch the game. I got a ton of gift cards to Best Buy which went towards the TV, the usual cash, which also went towards the TV, some beer mugs for the house, some clothes, some DVD's and two games for my Nintendo Wii. Like I said, no complaints, a kick ass birthday party.

So that's about it. The four day weekend is almost over, which is a little depressing, but what can you do? Today we have to go into the city for a baby naming for one of Missy's friends. That's cool with me, as long as we make it back for the 4:15 Jet's game!

Alright, that's all for now. I'll try to be better in the future.

No song title this time.

It's that time of year. Another year older. That's right, its my birthday today. I just crossed a major threshold. The big 3-0. Oh well. It had to come sooner or later. Gonna have a big party today at a local restaurant with about 30 or so people attending. Can't wait.

That's enough for now. More later!

Happy Thanksgiving too!

Title courtesy of Our Lady Peace. Great Canadian rock band. I've seen them live at least twice, and they put on a great show both times out. Don't know what happened to them since their last album though. They've sort of fallen off the face of the Earth. Hopefully they'll be back soon. And with a better disc than their last effort.

Moving on. Life progresses at the moment. Its kind of a status quo type thing. Nothing crazy to report really. I'm just plodding along at a decent pace. Stuff with the house purchase are sort of in a holding pattern at the moment. Everyone has everything that they need, for the most part, we're just waiting on a closing date, which might prove to be the trickiest part of this whole deal. The seller works for a school somewhere, so she'd prefer to close and move over the holiday break at the end of December. That's when we'd prefer to move too, but we'd rather close and have the house before then, so that we can do some work on it while its empty, before we move in. It needs some electrical work done, that Missy's dad is going to help us with, and once that's done, its time to take down way too much wall paper, repaint, re-carpet, or just pull up some carpet and redo the floors that are supposed to be underneath. All things we'd like to do before we move in and our stuff gets in the way. Its not a lot of stuff, but still, its all much easier to do in an empty house then one that we're in the process of moving into. I spoke to our lawyer today and explained the situation. The seller was even thinking of closing in the beginning of January, which is a no-go for us. Our mortgage rate lock expires pretty much at the end of December, so we have to close by then. Plus, our contract states on or around December 1, so its got to be before the end of December. Its all very annoying, but I'm going to leave it in the lawyers hands.

Other than that, there really isn't anything exciting to report. I started hitting the gym again and working with a personal trainer. Its been about three months since I stopped going regularly and working with someone, and after my first appointment this past Monday I am beyond sore. Moving my arms, and in general my entire upper body is tough. I'm so stiff, words can't describe it. I'm going back tonight to work the lower body, so I have a feeling walking is going to be a bit tough this weekend. Yippee! Especially since Missy and I are taking part in a walk/run for charity on Sunday morning through Central Park. We joined up with one of the spin instructors from our last gym who we've become friendly with and it should be fun. We're definitely not running it, so we'll just walk. I think its like 4 miles or so, nothing crazy. I think the March of Dimes walk we do in the spring is longer, so I'm not too worried.

So that's about it. Life is full of a lot of sitting around and waiting. Its funny, when we first started this house buying process it was all about getting things done quickly, now, not so much. It was like, hurry up and wait. I love it.

Oh well. Enough for now. Peace out!

Title courtesy of Michael Jackson, ewww, I know. Well, he did the original, but I've been fascinated for quite some time by Fall Out Boy's version of the song, for a few reasons. One, its a song they've produced that doesn't suck entirely, a rare feat for them I sincerely believe. Don't get me wrong, they have a few decent tunes, like Sugar, We're Going Down and This Ain't A Scene, but the bad far outweighs the good. Second, John Mayer provides the killer guitar solo in the bridge that Eddie Van Halen pulled off in the original version of the tune. So right off the bat I'm intrigued. Regardless, its a good tune, even if it is a cover song.

Anyway... in other news, today is election day, so no matter who wins this election, it is definitely time for good ole Dubya to beat it out of the White House, which satisfies me to no end. But I don't really want to talk politics. I'l just say our last president did a pretty shitty job in my eyes, and I'm glad he'll be gone soon enough.

The house acquisition continues. All of our documents are into the mortgage company and we locked in a decent rate. It was kind of on the high side, but with the outcome of the election possibly causing a fluctuation in rates, I wanted to lock into something OK before they go up. If they happen to go down again, we can float down once at the cost of half an interest point, which isn't all bad. The appraisal is being done on Wednesday, and once we have that back we can send it into the insurance company so we can get our home owner's insurance and we should be all set to close, whenever that happens! Interesting and scary times, that's for sure.

In other news my stomach has been killing me all day and all I want to do is go home, lay on the tiny ass love seat that constitutes the only sofa in out tiny ass apartment and watch the Rangers beat the piss out of the Islanders tonight at the Garden, interspersed with election coverage. Sounds like a plan to me.

Peace out... and beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it...