Let me first just say that this entry breaks the length rule. But it’s necessary to tell the story properly. The last few months have introduced me to the extreme codependence of my employer. Extended days, working from home and a heightened amount of stress have outlined the last 60 to 90 days. I needed a vacation but it almost didn’t happen.

To bring the reader up to speed, I’m writing this while on vacaton. So everything has worked out. But it wasn’t without a little bit of a challenge. At one point, it really seemed like the universe had given us enough signs to give caution to going on this vacation. Let's talk about the signs and the drama just get to where I'm at right now. Lounging on a couch staring at Blackcomb.

SIGN #1:
Every weekend in July, I tried to take either a Monday or a Friday off to extend my weekend. After all we’re redoing the landscaping in our backyard and I needed to get some shit done before it started raining again. Needless to say, the first sign was that I never got a day off. And more importantly, I actually worked most of those weekends. This trend didn't bode well for getting a complete week off in August.

While my peeps at work were telling me to get away and my friends and family were warning me about my degrading attitude, I still felt the need from my management to nearly call off the vacation. Fortunately, I didn't. But things then got more interesting. Working nonstop limits how much you can prepare for your trip and how much you can session your DH bike given the fact that you’ll be heading to Whistler for some summer shredding. So I didn’t plan for anything except for making sure that our reservations were made at our condo. After all we’re buying the place.

SIGN #2:
Late one night at the end of July, I was sitting and playing a little bit of Lego Harry Potter when my wife came home from her family reunion dance. She had picked up the mail from the mail box and there was a little surprise in it for me. Jury summons for the week we were supposed to be on vacation. Are you kidding me? Not only can I not get a day off but now my government thinks I have civic duty to preempt my escape from the real world.

SIGN #3:
The Saturday before we needed to leave, we needed to gather up all of our international travel documents and pack our shit. That morning I pulled out the boys’ birth certificates and our passports. For some unknown reason, I opened them and took a peak. What the hell? They are both expired. Mine in April and my wife's in August. For a quick moment, I thought about just going and saying fuck it. But realistically I better try and fix this. Getting to fix an expired passport on a Saturday is a pain in the ass.

SIGN #4:
I found three companies that can expedite the process. I called all three. Two were closed and the third said if I could get my paperwork in by 1pm (it was currently 8am) they could have the new passports to us by Tuesday. Good plan in theory, but let's talk about the price of such a service. One day turnaround around was $299 per passport + $110 for the passport + $60 for the State Department to expedite the process. $470 per passport just to get them by Tuesday. It really started to look like we weren't going to go.

SIGN #5:
So we started thinking about alternative plans. We could get an enhanced drivers license. The DOL opened at 8:30am so we rushed to get out of the house and down to the local office. We got there and were greeted with approximately an hour wait. Finally our numbers were called and we stepped up to the desk. The whole process of getting an EDL is two phases. After an hour wait, we filled out paperwork, then waited another hour to finalize the paperwork and get our picture taken. The moment of truth was upon us, after we had our picture taken, we were handed our temporary paper EDLs and a punched WA DL. Then we were told that the temporary EDL couldn’t be used to cross the border.

SIGN #6:
We just wasted over two hours in our schedule and didn’t fix our travel dilemma. We knew that we still needed to renew our passports so it made sense to at least get our new passport pictures whether we expedited things or not. Secretly, I was really leaning toward doing it. I wanted this vacation. But after the DOL, we were pinched for time. The UPS store could help us with the pictures. We headed there and get our pictures taken. We waited for them print and were struck by another sign. My wife's printed but then the store ran out of photo paper and couldn't print mine.

SIGN #7:
The UPS store told us Walgreens across the street could help us. Over to Walgreens. We joked that if there was one more sign, we have to believe it wasn't meant to be. Walking in to the photo department of Walgreens there was an employee cussing and hitting a photo machine. We thought it would be funny if it was the machine that printed passport photos. It was. Needless to say, we eventually got my passport pictures and headed on our way. This last sign put us past the 1pm deadline and we began to believe that the trip wasn't going to happen.

There was still one last thing to do. Call the border. I wanted to be sure that we could or couldn't get into Canada and then return to the US with the cornucopia of documents. Believe it or not, we were able to get a hold of US Customs. Two officers confirmed that if we could prove our citizenship, there’d be no way they’d refuse us entry into our homeland. We felt like we had enough and the officers agreed. Now to call Canada. Go figure, we found only one number for Canada and they were closed on Saturday. So we called US Customs again and asked if they had a phone number for their counter pas. Interestingly, the officer said that Canada wouldn't care and to go for it.

Not strong enough of an answer. My in-laws were in Canada during this. Out of support, they asked the front desk of the hotel about required documents. The front desk said a passport was required to enter and exit Canada. This was consistent with the WHTI. But they weren’t done there. They also asked Canadian customs. It was determined that to enter Canada, as a US citizen, you only need a birth certificate and a picture ID to get in. But it really comes down to individual border officers and their attitude. Catch one on a bad day and you could be stuck.

SIGN #8:
So really, it came down to a gut check. Do we feel comfortable loading everything up, heading to the border, and tempting fate for an answer? It had seemed that the universe didn't want us to go. We slept on it and intended on getting up on Sunday morning and making a decision. Well I got up, everyone else slept in. At about 9am after counsel from a friend and then from my mother, it seemed like I needed one more sign and that could only be read at the Canadian border. So we loaded up and left three hours later than I had hoped.

With the all ready heightened level of anxiety about the impending lack of appropriate paperwork and the overall anticipation of an awkward border conversation, we encounter a wicked web of traffic in both the Renton and Everett areas which bring our trip to an abrupt halt. Is this traffic jam another sign that we are choosing to avoid? We acknowledge it and patiently move on knowing that the true test of the conviction of the universe and its animosity toward our vacation waits only miles away.

When we got to the border we realized that the entire state of Washington was there too. And apparently, all of these drivers want to be in my lane. So there we are, waiting to plead our case with a Canadian border agent with expired and temporary documentation, unwillingly letting people pull in front of us due to their lack of driving skill, and secretly hoping for approved passage into the Great White North.

The suspense of waiting while talking to the border agent was petrifying. But after a few simple questions about firearms and pepper spray, we moved on into Canada. We made it. So tempting fate and taking the 150 mile leap of faith for possible disappointment and the potential unfortunate chance of being Debby downer and becoming an absolute ass to my family if this would have been an unsuccessful journey was worth it.

We kept on driving and eventually made it in decent time considering our late start. We only had one melt down by Son #2 as well. About 25 km from whistler (keeping it metric because we're in Canada) he just lost it. He was done with driving and wanted out of the car. Needless to say it was the longest and loudest 25 km of my life.

The whole process made picking up our condo keys that much more meaningful. The literal and figurative journeys were full of land mines and potential disappointments. Apparently, you got to work for what you want even when all signs would indicate disappointment. That's not to say this works in all situations. But I will say that I’m glad we stuck with it and took the chance.

The next big challenge is leaving the peace of this place and journeying back to the US border. Without proper documentation, who knows what can happen. We could be trapped here. I guess I better get a Canadian tuxedo so I can fit in.

UPDATE:
After an uneventful southbound trip to the US Border, we were greeted with only a 60 minute wait. In actuality, we hit the border at the right time by chance. Additionally, we hit the correct lane for coming back too. The US Border officer was pleasant and let us through despite our expired passports and temporary driver’s licenses. She actually said, “Welcome home” as we passed through. Despite all of the signs which appeared to be negative, we were able to have our vacation, I shredded the mountain, and we were able to get back to our homeland with no stress and anxiety; all with the incorrect paperwork. Here’s to breaking the rules and taking chances.

Planning for a trip with Son #2 is always a challenge. It’s more than a trip. It’s a journey. You begin planning by gathering all of the variables of the travel equation. It’s a function of distance, time, and the amount of fish crackers you have within arms reach. A very close cousin, who’s special to me, was having her wedding in Sacramento. How were we going to get there? By air or by road?

It was either 2 hours of screaming with 150 of your closest enemies or 12 hours of screaming with family in a box on wheels. The automobile prevailed in this instance which seems counter-intuitive. But given the price of airfare for an entire family, the courtesy on other passengers’ ears, and the pricetag on my heightened anxiety, the decision was easily made.

The drive there was uneventful which doesn’t lend itself to much content here. But the story here is how Son #2 is unpredictable and at any moment, things change. After several gas and food stops, we had burnt through 13+ hours of driving and checked into our hotel in Roseville, California. We rolled in about 10:30pm to find our room equipped with two beds and a crib. In theory, this should work. Getting the kids ready for bed was easier than getting them to sleep through the night it would turn out.

Because things were wrapping up, my father and I headed down to the hotel bar. Unbeknownst to us, hotel bars in the Marriott in Roseville close at 10:00pm. Bad business if you asked me. Back to the room. Son #2 was not cool with sleeping on the first night. Constant crying. As we’ve learned the hard way in the last 23 months, he’s not cool with a break in routine of his life.


As I mentioned earlier, the purpose for the California trip was to attend and enjoy my cousin’s wedding. I was excited to be there for her. The catch is that both of our boys were ‘ring security’ in the wedding. In a strange coincidence, I was a ring bearer in her mother’s wedding 30 years earlier. I wasn’t sure if any good could come from this. With Son #1, give him responsibility, he rises to the occasion to please. However, with Son #2, let him off the leash and there’s bound to be a train wreck.


Rehearsal went well and the boys hammed it up. But the true test was when the rubber met the road for the actual ceremony. After getting all did up and waiting for the ceremony to begin, my wife and I agreed that I’d strategically place myself up front so that if Son #2 got unruly or nomadic, I could intervene. This would be conducive to keeping all children herded together.


If my cousin and soon-to-be husband, ceremony, location, and weather weren’t as perfect as they were, I’d say the ring bearers would’ve stole the show. Son #1 and two of his little cousins walked hand in hand as they entered the ceremony and approached the alter and groomsmen. Son #2 took his own sweet time and marched to his own drum down the aisle bringing up a distant rear. He walked up, stopped at his brother, did a lap around the officiant, and then walked back down the aisle the other way. Eventually, I caught up with him and held him removing escape as a possibility. The wedding was amazing and we all were very proud to see my cousin come so far to find happiness and wed the man of her dreams.

Reception involved Son #1 and #2 not liking the dinner and making a special request for crispy chicken and French fries, and what can only be describes as a strange yet intriguing style of interpretive dancing.


When the boys reached critical mass, we headed back to the hotel to plop them down for bed. Out of ingenuity and the courtesy of AT&T, we crafted make-shift baby monitors more commonly known as mobile phones. With free minutes to other AT&T phones, my wife called me, we put both our phones on speaker, left one with the boys in the room, kept the other, and headed to the bar for a beer. We could easily hear them out in the bar. Yup, on record as a bad parent. In actuality, our room was no more than 50 feet from the bar and we could see the door.

The next day we took off for home. Son #1 had school and I had to work. Obligations to the establishment for both of us.


The drive through Shasta was epic with the fall colors, curvature of the road, and lack of traffic. And did I mention there was a lack of screaming? If entire drive could have been like this, I would’ve drove for years. Too bad because things changed as we exited Oregon. Son #2 lost it and was inconsolable. Looking back, we can only guess the kid who needs structure and routine in his life was fed up of the weekend of hustling and 1500 miles of driving. We stopped at a truck stop and took him out of car seat and buckled him in with wife. He was so upset; we had very little choice in the cold and dark. He eventually calmed down and fell asleep on her while buckled in. Yup one more illegality for the trip. First baby monitors, now this. Because I’m writing this entry in the comfort of my own home, you can reasonably assume that we made it. Immediately, we put the kids to bed and the trip was complete.


To round it out, I got sick and missed the next few days of work. But that is such a small sacrifice to have had the opportunity for all of us to road trip together. It was a great journey that I can look back at fondly. Even though during it I was irritable at times. But more importantly, it was amazing to be in attendance at my cousin’s wedding. I’m so proud of her and how she has grown into an amazing woman even though at times she was a rotten little kid. Love you cuz and thank you greatly for letting us share your very special wedding. Everything was amazing and the boys behaved great and lived up to their ‘ring security’ title.

Once again, I’m late on my monthly review of a new piece of audio entertainment. It’s been one thing after another and excuse on top of excuse. While I was commuting home on the train today, I was listening to the subject album for the review and penning my thoughts down. Late again. Writing about what you like should not be this hard though. But it’s after a tough day of work where you are in meetings with the man, interrupted by needy co-workers, and had an overall bad day.

I hopped off the train and marched over to my ride in a hurry to get home and grab my bike in order to get a little riding in before the autumn monsoon hits the Seattle area for the next six months. I’ve been thinking about canceling my satellite radio account. I don’t spend enough time in the car to warrant the ridiculous amount of scrilla I pay for this service. However, on the drive home…..it hit me.

Glad I didn’t cancel it yet because I heard a song that changed it all for me. From beaten and bewildered to hopeful, optimistic and realistic.

It got me thinking and reflecting about a couple nights ago where I was short with the kids. I bring this baggage home from work and sometimes count the minutes until the loudness created by my offspring finally goes to bed. I don’t want to be that dad. I want to be the dad clutching every moment to that very last second and enjoying it until it’s gone. Eagerly awaiting that next moment with them. I am that dad.

It’s a feeling I felt brewing inside me. Value things more. But not just that, show that things are of value to you. A bad day, a bad week, a bad month doesn’t diminish the value of those things in your life. An epiphany of sorts, if you will.

I’m going to hold Son #2 just a little tighter and a little longer at bedtime. I’m going to make sure he’s at peace by rubbing his back to relax him. Then make sure when I lay him down in his bed he knows that his dad loves him.


I’m going to build that train set with Son #1 all over our bonus room, off the table, onto the windowsill, under the foosball table, and around the couch. Oh yeah, and we will play Lego Batman until his mother unplugs the Wii. He needs to know that he is the best.


And the running, jumping, sliding, and stomping on our refinished hardwoods? Well, maybe I can loosen up a bit and enjoy that those moments of destroying my house are finite. One day in the very near future, I’ll be boxing those kids up and helping them move in to their own houses. And believe me, I’ll be running and sliding on their hardwoods. You only live once.

The simplicity of holding my wife’s hand, a tender kiss, and a well timed honest compliment are the intricate fibers the weave a tight relationship that weathers those bad days. It’s not weak to be in love especially when her heart is shelter.


Everyday can’t be the best day but you got to let it go. I’m going to make a better effort to drop those bags of the day at the door. The kids are tough and push my buttons on routine frequency. But those moments of soulful bliss with them are worth it.

Those of you reading this entry and relating to the challenges of your day, you’re not alone. Listen to the song here on this blog’s playlist, take the lyrics to heart and hug those kids of yours, don’t let the mundane job make you light your break room on fire, forget that fifth period teacher sweating you for your homework or who you will take to the Homecoming dance, don’t worry about mowing the lawn today your grass is brown, so what if you’re car is broke down or needs service because it’s a piece of junk anyway, do what you can right now and don’t hesitate to make the day better.

Sometimes one small thing like a song can reboot your soul. Turn it up.

The procurement of our new residence has been much more atypical this time around when compared to our last two home purchases. I would guess some of that has to do with being older, more mature, or just more of a jack ass. In any event, we went in this relocation process with a different attitude than the last two.

Let’s recap the history of how my wife and I engage real estate. The first place we bought in 2003 involved a shrewd middle aged female realtor. My wife, who didn’t have that title during this history lesson, and I were strolling around downtown Long Beach looking for a new place to rent. She and I had worn out our welcome at the shack which a friend and I rented in Long Beach. Apparently, it was time to stop living like a college kid. While walking around the Snoop Dogg’s neighborhood, we saw this not-so-engaging sign with the realtor’s disenfranchised mug on it. We thought, “Maybe we should buy something instead of renting.”

We were no where near a financial readiness to comply with such a commitment but we did it anyway. The long and short of this story is that we had little cash, cold called the realtor, looked at four properties, and bought the last one we looked at. I borrowed money out of my 401K for the down payment and we made it work. Our first home purchase, an impulse buy. And it worked, we bought low, sold high and subsidized our next home purchase significantly.

The second purchase was significantly different. The major difference in that purchase was my wife, who was now my wife, stayed behind in Long Beach while I found a job in Seattle and relocated without her. So we shopped by correspondence. I physically looked at 1,000,000 houses. Okay, maybe not that many. But I guarantee it was quite a few more than four homes like the first purchase. This agent was recommended by family. It was a better experience and I felt a little more educated and less pressured to ‘get my shit together’ like the first deal.

We looked at new, old, sheds, tents, shanties, and lean-to’s. Everything. Ultimately, we settled on new construction that was barely even framing when we found it. We were able to customize it. This was a far cry from the mid-80’s place in Long Beach. When my wife relocated, we got into contract and this new structure became our home. Similar to the LBC, we bought low and lived there as house prices soared in Seattle and enjoyed the mammoth amount of appreciation.

Then everything changed. The economy went down like a $2 hooker. We lost a lot of equity over the last year in that house. Despite the unfortunate turn of fate, we still were forced to make future altering decisions. Son #1 was heading off to kindergarten. The school district where the house was built had been great. Then, the city of Renton annexed the area. The new district sucked balls. We had to move in a rough, yet improving, economy.

To make things more complicated, we chose to sell this home outright and wait and see if we could find our dream home. This gave us the greatest financial leverage while exposing us to the most risk of being homeless. After a period of time which tested the miniscule amount of patience I had, our home sold. Not nearly the windfall from our last home. We made a tenth of the net proceeds that we received in the Long Beach sale. Suck. Because of the lack of a contingency, we got stuck renting an apartment while we continued to look for our next home.

And then, a foreclosed property came on the market. We looked once. We looked twice. Then we low-balled an offer to the East Coast bank which owned the property. The process of dealing with a bank owned property is nothing short of annoying and slower than watching grass grow in winter. After an offer, a counter offer, a counter to the counter offer, and a counter to the counter of the counter offer, and three weeks had passed, we were in contract for our next home. Inspection, appraisal, and waiting. We were told that the bank would tell us to pound sand if we found anything wrong with the property short of the roof sliding off or the spontaneous combustion of the siding. None of that existed so we were locked in and waiting for the close of the house. And that’s where it gets more interesting.


Our closing date was the day after our annual visit to the Mecca of downhill mountain biking, Whistler. Being out of the country makes it difficult to sign your closing paperwork. To counter our absence, the title company called to set up an appointment for signing the documents before we left the country. It’s a national company with no local office, so they offered me the ‘convenience’ of having a mobile Notary bring me the paperwork. Let me just say this; the mobile Notary was the biggest joke and most unprepared professional I’ve ever encountered.

Not only was she late, she was one and a half hours late, in disarray, and brought her disrespectful 11 year old son. She shows up, marches in, doesn’t shake my hand or offer an apology, and allows her son to plop down on our couch and launch On-Demand in search for his preferred programming. What the Hell? She then has the nerve to try to convince us that her creepy son can entertain our children


More excuses. The documents at the last signing were incorrect. Her printer broke and she had to go to Kinkos. Whatever. She clearly hadn’t looked at our documents before this. She thought we were refinancing the shoebox apartment in Renton we were living in despite the fact that the paperwork lists a 30 Year fixed loan on a property in Puyallup. Awesome. Page by page, she read the title of each sheet but couldn’t provide a description. I swear she was dyslexic based on here reading. Fortunately for me, I’ve been through this several times before and knew what to look for in the paperwork.

The Notary kept saying that there were forms missing and we would have to fix it before we left for Whistler. There was nothing missing. Keep up the good work, idiot. So I informed my realtor of the experience. Conveniently, the title company neglected to let him know the time of the signing so he didn’t get to experience it first hand. From what I understand, he had a ‘professional’ discussion with the escrow agent about their choice in notaries. I received a very apologetic voice message from the title company about it.



Despite the atypical process in this purchase and our experiences along the way, our loan funded Monday and the sale recorded with Pierce County. We are now proud owners of our new home in Puyallup. It feels good to have this chapter close and the next open. Now we just need to knock out the projects around the house we want completed before we move in at the end of September.

With our keys in hand, we dropped by our new home that was minutes old in our possession. It felt great to let the boys run the gauntlet of the rooms. This is it. The future. My groms will grow up here and become adults just minutes from where I grew up. And with any luck, they’ll move out and quit mooching off their mom and dad. In all seriousness, I'll miss the Renton house. It was our first house here in Washington after we lost family and our lives were shattered. We brought our two little babies home to it. Many, many memories. But our new home will be better.

Once again, real life disrupts my creativity. I spent this last month worrying about tons of things I had very little control over. For this ‘New Music Monday’ I had hoped to review some new entry which was more listener-friendly so that more readers would be inclined to check it out instead of my thrash, in-your-face, angry, the-system-is-against-me, music.

Sorry. I ran out of time. Out of due diligence, I’m opting to fall back on an old reliable. Now, it sort of just fell into my lap and maybe that’s what makes this review even more appropriate. This is one of my favorite groups of all time. I only have three groups where no matter what they release; I’ll fawn over it no matter how horribly it sounds or resemble the aural equivalent to excrement. And this is one of them.

Authority Zero is back together after taking a little break with the new release “Stories of Survival.” I love this fricking band and always felt like if I were to ever have pursued music with my little brother, this is what it would sounds like. For the uninitiated Authority Zero is loud with a heavy influence of ska, reggae, and skate punk. Successfully and efficiently, it channels my inner-13 year old adolescent.


Before I go into the review which will obviously be ‘unbiased,’ let me explain my obsession. It was summer 2004 and we’d been through an absolute shit stain of a year. Unbeknownst to us, it was going to get a little worse. We moved up to Seattle from Long Beach as our lives took a dramatic turn with the loss of my brother, the pregnancy of my wife, the dysfunction of my job, and the impending terminal illness of my mother-in-law.

While looking for a house, my pregnant wife and I were living with my mother-in-law in her little rambler in the hood. It was a small place with my wife, me, my mother-in-law, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend’s son all to live. No privacy and one hell of a commute to work. One night, the five and half of us were watching Third Watch. Bored by the episode, I remember hearing a song at the end of the show which hit me hard. The show was good at locking in great music at the end as the story was wrapping up. Once, even Green Day and “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams” was used.

Anyway. The song was “Find Your Way” by Authority Zero. I was on the internet, searching out newsgroups and threads the next day to find out who the hell this band was. And after work, I hit Best Buy and picked up “Andiamo.” That record was life changing. I’ll always remember everything my wife and I went through in 2004 and 2005. Authority Zero is my life then, just as it is now.

So this is less about a review and more about how music can map your life. It marks major intersections with signage on your life’s journey. Forever, “Andiamo” will mark loss in my life and the start of a great family. In a coincidental parallel to then, we’re going through major life changes now. And again Authority Zero releases a record which zeros in on my soul with laser-targeting accuracy.

“Stories of Survival” is just that, a collection of stories of making your way through the chaos of life and holding on to the few things that matter; your faith, your friends, and your family. Don’t get me wrong here; it’s edgy, fast, and loud just like my life. But get past that and listen to the message in the lyricism. Jason DeVore is an incredible storyteller who can capture emotion and bottle it like lightning. This record is what feelings sound like.

To make this easy on you, I’m not going to subject you to my weak musical assessments. Instead, I ‘m going to note a few songs and the poignant lyrics of each which really connected with me. I hope this will encourage you to find music out there which, just like a very close friend, will take care of you in your formative times.

“Brick in the Wave” – Do you remember acting up and acting out. Not following the herd Now they see it in your eyes. Your actions speaking first as you rise with a will to survive.

“Get it Right” – No you’re not dead, no not quite yet. This is your time, How far will you take it?

“Crashland” – As we stand in awkward silence, and we see these crazy things. As this world goes on corrupted, we lose sight of our being.

“Liberateducation” – Here we go again. Liberated and alive, with unrelenting words and a strong will to survive.

I know that listening to a genre of music like this can be a little intimidating and even tiring. It’s loud and fast. But don’t discredit the purity in the emotion that created it. Those feelings are woven through the lyrics. Because of all that my wife and I have endured over the years and even now, Authority Zero is knotted to the thread of my existence. People are always looking for a signs to guide you. For me, I found it in this music.

While your preferences may differ greatly from mine, I encourage you to open yourself to the healing powers of feelings put to sound. Whether you like Dave Brubeck, David Hasselhoff, Cher, or Authority Zero, there’s a message out there specifically tailored for your heart. You just got to listen and your life will change.

The prospective of this move has been pretty strenuous on my soul and my family. I think under normal circumstances, (and when I say normal I mean when I was 25, had no kids, no bills, no wife, and no stuff) this would be a slam dunk move. However, I have stuff now. I have baggage. I have kids.

Now the last three or so entries have briefly painted the picture of our current home issue. So let’s have a comprehensive recap:

We are pretty fortunate to be in a position where we can sell our house because we want to and not because we have to. At closing, we stand to garner some net proceeds from the appreciation of our home. It will be nice to pocket that cash even if not as excessive as our home sale in Long Beach six years ago. This time around, we opted to throw our house on the market to see if any first time buyers would use their tax incentive on our humble abode. A side note is that we knew that moving was inevitable. We weren't in the school district we liked nor did we really like the surrounding neighborhood. Now that I’m growing up, I realized that I needed to make decision about our future based on the best interests of my family. Specifically; my children and their education.


That realization doesn’t come without elements of surprise and disappointment. We decided up front that we'd sell our house outright and then look for a new home in our desired areas. This would give us the greatest financial leverage in negotiations. But it also exposed us with the largest risk to be homeless. Our home sat on the market for about 45 days with a steady flow of showing appointments. But we were always the second choice despite showing well. We're in a neighborhood where the comps were Soundbuilt homes which artificially influenced value. In a buyer’s market, a seller is a price taker. So we stood to not profit as greatly as we would have hoped.

Finally, a couple placed an offer on our home at list price with very little concession. The buyer’s inspection was effortless and we had only two items to clear the sale. Following that, we knew we could begin to search out a replacement for our house. We only had one more hurdle in the form of the appraisal. We needed that to come in at list value for the buyer’s financing. We've looked at a ton of properties and it's become painfully obvious that my wife and I are very picky. While we were instructed to do a philosophical cost/benefit analysis of our must-haves and nice-to-haves, we collectively decided that we didn’t need to compromise our wants. Sure, there were areas that we could be more reasonable. But this new house is it.

While searching, the clock was ticking and we knew that if we found a prospective home by ‘this’ date, we could coordinate closing and not be homeless. Well, that point passed and we had to find temporary housing. Understanding that we had high standards for our new home, we realized that there was little chance that our homelessness would only last a week or two. So we sucked it up and began to consider apartments. I haven’t lived in an apartment in 11 years so this was going to be a significant step back.

So here we are today. We have a lease for a three-bedroom apartment signed and we are scheduled to return to the search in the near-term. We move into the temporary housing this week. A move like this makes you focus on just what you need to live comfortably as the lion’s share of our possessions will be placed in storage in my parents' garage. So we will be doing a double move; out of our house and into storage and an apartment. When we find a home, it will be another double move; out of storage and an apartment and into our new house.


What’s kept me sane during the process of not being able to sell, not generating the amount of proceeds I wanted, not finding a suitable new home, and the impending job change at work has been my very best friend; my wife. A couple of disagreements and some silent treatment are really the only issues that this pressure cooker of a move has created. We're pretty lucky. I can only imagine what this situation is doing to the boys. It seems like Son #1 is handling it like an adventure. But Son #2 has been a lot more inconsolable lately. He won’t eat much and fusses ALL of the time. He was loud to begin with but this is now a noticeable change. We can’t help but wonder if the uncomfortable nature of the environment is affecting him. I’m looking forward to getting this behind us so the boys can be happy.

So we are looking in specific neighborhoods for homes with very specific requirements. Tunnel vision like that limits your options. However, when that nugget is found and you have mitigated your compromises, you will be completely content with your purchase. It feels like we're literally ‘knocking at the door’ right now. Stay tuned.

Over the course of the last few weeks, I feel like I've had very little time to decompress. And for the most part that is true. The rain has kept me from riding, work and transitioning to a new position has filled the tank to a maximum level of stress, and the future state of my family’s residence have kept me in a sullen state of confusion and left me with no time to formulate any synthesized thought about the aforementioned topics.

So I’ve been hoping at least one thing would settle in my reality so that a slight bit of normalcy, or whatever my altered state of reality defines as normalcy, would return and I can substantiate something of some interest to scribble in the electronic byte-like walls of this blog.

You ask and you shall receive. Well, maybe it’s not so cut and dry. But what I’ve found over the most formative years of my life is that I don’t like making single life making decisions. They seem meaningless and trivial. I like having everything completely in disarray and fucked up so that I can ultimately stress out about the manic convergence of life changing decisions on top of me at that moment. I perform best when everything is on the line. Never have I been risk averse.

So now my family joins me on the quest to discover where my professional career will take me. Philosophical questions like “What do I want to be when I grow up?” they are now entertaining. At work I have come to the realization that I am no longer challenged intellectually so I am shaking every tree to see what fruit of opportunity drop. But we don’t stop there. Son #1 is rapidly growing up and just graduated pre-school. Now this isn’t a miracle so to speak. But given the fact that his father was kicked out of his pre-school graduation, it concerns that father that no good can come of this. Needless to say, he graduated but not without drama. That is an entry in and of itself.

With his graduation, we launch in to the next educational phase of his existence. The public school system. We are in the precarious position of deciding where we want him to go to school. The neighborhood we live in sucks balls. So we decided a few months ago that we would sell this house and move into a better school district where we felt that Son #1 had a chance to be taught by real teachers who give a shit. We decided to sell our current home out right and risk living out of a box until we found our next residence. That would give me the greatest financial leverage to negotiate rather than navigate the murky uncharted waters of contingencies.

Those are the two marquee situations that we are currently evaluating. But as I said, I have a penchant for making all of my life changing decision all at the same time.


In my current professional role, my technical aptitude has been buried and I was continually being passed over for new opportunities. In the recent past, there has been the old cliché of when it rains it pours. I am in the fortunately unfortunate position of having multiple interviews for new intellectually challenging positions and will be able to choose my course. In the next week, I will begin my new challenge as a product manager for the work horse and best seller of our product offerings. It has the most threats in the market and is the most dynamic in the form of innovation. A great challenge.


As my wife once told me, the house situation and the work situation were interdependent and when one settled the other was soon to follow. Needless to say, one week after I committed to my new position, we had a second showing of our house to a couple that made as a competitive offer that was within our range of acceptability in a degraded market. To formally enter a contract to sell your home, you need a successful inspection. We were very fortunate to find only two minor things needing to be addressed. With completion of those, the rest is up to the buyers to get there financing in order with a visit from the appraiser. This still can provide a hitch in the process but we are hoping for the best.

Now we are on the clock to find a new home in the area of our choice, with the configuration we desire, and the future of memories we're going to create. We've been out three times now to look and are pretty excited to get the process going. This will be the third house we have bought in the last seven years. With any luck, we can stay in it for awhile. This decision is based on the greater good of the family and our future so I’m sure it will be perfect.




While it is stressful to do everything at once, sell a house, buy a house, change jobs, and protect your family from adversity, I welcome the adverse challenge. My life has always been like a snow globe. When the snow settles, I shake the shit out of it again.

When you spend the majority of your conscious day working for the man, you look forward to the solace of your own abode and the compassion of your family unit. It’s easy to lose sight of the comings and goings and daily happenings around the house when you are chained to a desk. It’s no different in my house. Coming home from the office always presents and interesting set of daily circumstances. Will I lose my patience with a driver who seems to have lost his or her ever-loving mind? Will I speed down a suburban street ‘above’ the speed limit only to have a local yahoo on a motorcycle chase me to my house, pound on my front door, and scold my wife in to lecturing me about posted speed limits? Or, will I enter the house only to hear the siren-like screaming of children being firmly, but parentally, accosted by their mother for the latest in disorderly conduct?

Typically, it is the latter of the list above.

I like dinner. My kids like dinner. My wife, I think, likes dinner. The problems lie on both sides of the dinner equation. For the parents, it’s the patience required to prepare the dinner. On the kids’ side, it’s the patience required to wait for the dinner to be prepared and the ability to outlast the parents when the dinner is not to their expectations. The stage has been set, dinner is on the table, now for the drama.

Son #2 used to eat everything we put in front of him. If you recall from previous posts, he skipped the bottle and baby food phases of development. He likes adult sustenance. Well, he did until recently. Son #2 believes, or at least I’m interpreting the screams as this, that it’s his God given right to eat cupcakes and crackers for dinner. He used to like meat and veggies. Now, it’s fish crackers and confectionary goodness followed by a glass of soy milk. Unfortunately for him, and my ears, this isn’t an acceptable meal. Let the screaming and arm waving begin.



Son #1 is a different breed. He has developed a liking for certain food products. And by that, I mean two specific items. The first being French fries, nondescript fried potato goodness. They can be crinkle cut, shoe strings, or tater tots. The second food of preference is chicken of the crispy outer covering variety. According to Son #1, this is how chicken naturally occurs in the universe. Apparently, we have visited KFC a few too many times. No matter how many times I try to explain that chicken exists in many other forms, some much more healthfully than others, he denies my culinary claims.



We don’t eat cupcakes and crispy chicken every night so you can tell there are 'disagreements' at the dinner table.

Because of such differences in opinion and the heated conversations which occur while seated at our table, I’ve devised a way to make this experience much more enjoyable. A drinking game.

Each time that Son #2 throws a veggie on the floor, points toward the cookie dish, and exclaims, “Cup,” we drink. Each time Son #1 asks the food related question, “Have I had this type of chicken before?” we truthfully answer, “Yes,” and he then retorts with an enthusiastic, “No I haven’t!” we drink. It functions on the same premise of the Sarah Palin drinking game. Each time she utters the word “maverick” a player takes a swig. Simple rules, just like Palin, for a simple game.

An unsuccessful dinner will ALWAYS lead to a successful drunk. Feel free to modify these rules to fit your household.

In all seriousness, we have defiance and crying at the dinner table. And typically, it comes from all four members of my family. Have we have created a little bit of this defiance and reactionary behavior by the way we portray ourselves? There’s a little nature here where the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. But I think nurture might be heavily outweighing it in this instance. I’ve been thinking lately about how much children attempt to emulate their parents.

Think about it. How many times have you watch little Johnny pick up the phone, place it to his ear, and pretend to talk? We all think that it’s cute. Son #2 does it and we pretend he is calling his grandmother. But the reality is that he learned this from observing us. Why would dinner behavior be any different? I’m concerned that when we discipline our children, we raise our voices, especially if at first shot they don’t listen. They’re learning that it’s acceptable to raise their voices. I can’t help but wonder, are we raising our voices too often at our children? At times during dinner, it feels like it’s a no win game.

Most times, dinner is full of humor. It’s the occasional circumstance like the other night which paints a negative picture. Arguing about eating, timeouts, and early bed times are sometimes necessary but still sting afterward just the same. I love my two boys and need to remember to reflect back on my resolutions as well as how I like to be treated as a person and project that on to them.

Until then, the drinking game is a great idea. Here's to college and everything I learned there. Bottoms up!

When I started this blog, I had four cardinal rules to follow. The first, never to name names. I didn’t want to single out people or draw attention to those who didn’t like the spotlight. The second rule was to ‘try’ to keep my entries less than 1000 words. Not doing so well with this one. The third was to use music to compliment the blog entry and capture the theme. The final rule was to never discuss work on this platform. This was basically for the same reason as the first rule. Furthermore, my current employer believes that its disjointed and damaged reputation is a function of its underlings blogging and Tweeting the company news to the outside world thus influencing the media to slant its opinions in a less than favorable direction. Yes, that MUST be it and not the blatantly obvious planning and execution dilemmas plaguing the company or the obvious avoidance of full disclosure of information to the news media within an appropriate time frame.

I decided that while my employer struggles to right itself and threatens the employment of the hardworking underpinnings holding this rickety mess together, I would buy a new automobile. A wiseman might ask ‘Why would you buy a new car with the potential of job loss?’ Ironically, it’s the one element in all of the chaos that I can control. It would be an understatement to say that I’m obsessive about decisions I make in life. My wife would probably characterize me as being a tangled neurotic mess of nerves and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. That’s not too far from the truth. So this thread is more about how I make my uniquely insane, yet educated, decisions and less about the purchased vehicle.

Interestingly enough, it started with an internal dialogue where I convince myself that I need something new. I was driving somewhere for some reason and was annoyed with traffic and the fact that I wanted to drive in a faster/slower/louder/quieter/lower/higher/your attribute here/ vehicle. Once I get to this point, it’s useless to consider any other responsibilities. I end up becoming so consumed by my current vehicular dilemma I generally forget about birthdays, anniversaries, and changing Son #2’s excrement-laden diaper. For this purchase, there were approximately seven unique prospects in different categories and segments that fell in and out of favor over the last two years.

Before I even drove any of the prospects, I began the careful assembly of the greatest financial analysis toolset to support my decision. I like to create spreadsheets to analyze and review stuff. I have spreadsheets for everything from the NPV of household expenses, to ROI on electronics, to long-term investment analysis on family financial status, to bike jump trajectory sensitivity analysis, to Son #2 name/meaning decision trees. I think you get the picture. The latest exercise started with a simple worksheet that outlined financing terms of an auto loan. Then it grew.

I added pull down menus for decisions. Then, fair market value sensitivity for the trade-in vehicles was added. I added dynamic real-time credit terms. The list of vehicles was expanded to include the seven vehicles but with various trim levels, configurations, and respective pricing. This data fed right back into the financial model through the menu driven system. Next was a sensitivity analysis piece which was driven off of the user decision matrix to illustrate the various lending scenarios paired with trade-in/down payment scenarios. All of this was controlled by a simple front end that accessed all of the decision variables on the back end. The goal here was to simulate as many financial scenarios possible for each vehicle.

Time to drive the vehicles and build in a performance metric to help influence decision making. The experience driving the cars is outside the scope of this post. Just know that I may now be on Johnny Law’s radar for neurological harassment of local automotive sellers. I went back and ‘refined’ (read: obsessed over) the spreadsheet. The driving experience and the spreadsheet narrowed the search to a two-vehicle race. Based on my value-indicating, financial-prognosticating, penny-pinching, performance-evaluating, number-obsessing spreadsheet, I finally decided on a vehicle.

The dealership provided eight different options of this vehicle because of my option configuration was impossible to satisfy. I had to make a sacrifice. I needed to build a second financial model spreadsheet for these eight versions. Each one had its own worksheet with its own financial model in the image of my first evaluation tool. This version then factored in manufacturer rebates and refined the trade-in scenario based on the current administration sales tax incentives. On this spreadsheet, I had a summary page which evaluated and scored all of the performance metrics of the vehicles, the positives and negatives of each, the dollars spent per positive and negative attribute, and every other metric I could think of to attach some sort of ‘score’ to. At the end of it all, all eight vehicles had a normalized ‘score’ based on all of the metrics. The top three scores became my three choices.

A deeper evaluation had to be done. Three different vehicles with three different prices and option compromises. Stay with me now, in the second spreadsheet, on each worksheet for my three final choices, I created one more sensitivity analysis based on trade-in and down payment. At this point, I knew my financing and potential cost of ownership. Now I just needed to determine how much the dealer ‘will’ give me for my trade-in. Financially, (trust me here) it made the most sense to trade-in a vehicle and receive the economic tax benefit rather than sell the vehicle outright and put a larger payment down. There was a ’tipping’ point and I had to make sure the dealer gave me a fair market value where I would get the best trade-in assessment.

Long story even longer, I’m the proud owner of a new family mode of transport. Gone is my motorized partner of the last eight years. Am I any more relaxed now that this is behind me? Who knows. But I will say this: at least I can commute to my potentially terminal place of employment in style and not-so-eagerly await the notification of the lack of need of my marketing services. If I am out of work in the future and you are in need of a 10GB spreadsheet that will thoroughly calculate your weekly Starbuck’s bill, I’m your guy.