One of the coldfusion bloggers that I read regularly, Ray Camden, wrote a really amusing blog entry about Star Wars and his 5 year old son.

Ray is a Star Wars freak, as you can tell by the title of his blog, "cf Jedi Master," and he has several young children - and a 5 year old boy, in particular, who is the main subject of his story.

Read the story here.  It's funny.  Look for my comment and his response, too =)

Adrienne and I saw this house in Kelly West Monday evening.  It's a construction project, scheduled for completion in August.   It is a 3 bedroom, 3 bath story-and-a-half with 2300 square feet.  It's located in the Kelly West subdivision, which is less than a mile from our current residence.  The list price is $224,700.

Click through to read more and see elevation and floor plans...

So now that I've achieved free stuff nerdvana, I'm addicted.

I've already got my free Mac Mini and my free ipod shuffle, and I'll be receiving my free iPod and my free Toshiba 24" TV/DVD/VCR combo in a few weeks.

Now I want a free digital camera.

So if you want to help, click on the following link.

http://www.FreeDigitalCameras.com/?r=17787616

My old digital camera is nice, but it's bulky and only 3.1 megapixels... time to upgrade!

Adrienne suggested that we replace our garbage disposal because it's so ridiculously noisy that it might deter potential buyers from buying our home.  A silly notion, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone asked us to replace it as part of their inspection.

It works, but it's REALLY noisy, and makes the entire sink and counter vibrate.

So... another trip to Home Depot.  I bought a 1/2 horsepower In-sink-erator - the smallest model they had - for $62.  The existing model was also a 1/2 horsepower version so I wasn't downsizing or anything, I just didn't want to spend very much.

It said it used a "Quick-lock" system and chances were good that all I'd have to do was unscrew the old disposal and screw on the new one...

Oh if only!

We had some potential buyers view our house last night, and apparently, one of them talked to our neighbor a bit, who commented on being in a flood plain.  This obviously caused the buyer some concern.

While part of his yard is actually in the 100 year flood plain, our house is not.  None of our yard is in the flood plain.

Luckily, our realtor and their realtor can show that our house is NOT in the flood plain, and hopefully that'll be that.  But it puts doubt and concern into the buyers mind when it should not be there at all.

In other news, we think we may have found the house for us.  It's over in Kelly West - new construction.  It's 2300 square feet for $224,700.  If you look here, it's the Tahoe B floor plan.

Our biggest concern is that Kelly West doesn't have a park or a pool.  But I think we can work around that.  We'll see.

Well, the garage sale went well, and the house cleaning went well, and our house is now show ready!  We had 5 showings yesterday, and our realtor took us to see several as well... one in Vintage Grove, one in Haddon Place, one in Scotts Mill, and a new construction project in Apex (not in a development).  And one in Dogwood Ridge.  The only two we liked were the one in Vintage Grove, which at $242,000 was a bit more than we want to spend, and the one in Haddon Place for $229,000.  Unfortunately, the one in Haddon Place was on a high traffic corridor and we didn't really like that.

I've asked Kevin to research and possible show us the following houses:

So yes, our neighborhood garage sale is tomorrow, and we missed it last year, so we've got a TON of stuff to get rid of.  Plus we're going to be moving soon, so that's another good reason to have a garage sale.  8am to noon... but the first buyers usually show up around 7.

My dad is coming over tonight to set up the booth he uses for his craft shows, that way we can set up the booth and get a lot of our stuff set up tonight... otherwise we'd have to get up at like 5am tomorrow!

I'm a Sports Geek

Yes, it's true.  I have full intention of either watching or listening to the NFL Draft tomorrow afternoon.  I'm mostly interested in two things:

• Who the Lions pick
• Where my favorite players (from the University of Michigan) go.

I'm also interested because of the drama this year.  There is no bona-fide #1 draft pick, but if the 49ers pick a quarterback #1, that quarterback is going to expect to be paid like a #1 draft pick, and to last year's Eli Manning, that meant a LOT of money.  Everyone agrees that the available quarterbacks this year are simply not worth it.

Personally, I think the 49ers should draft Braylon Edwards #1.  Edwards could be a great wide receiver, and they wouldn't have to pay him anywhere near what Eli Manning got last year.  Plus, Braylon is from Michigan =)

Yeah, I'm a sports geek.

So, thanks to the power of www.webworksllc.com/I_Like_You.html, I'm managing to get a lot of free stuff!  I saw that my free ipod shuffle shipped today, my free mini mac order has been approved and is processing, and my free ipod is awaiting approval and should be sent to the vendor for shipment this week sometime.

In addition to those three items, I've got 5 confirmed completed offers for a free flat screen, and I only need 8.  I plan to get the 24" Toshiba TV/DVD/VCR combo, but the 27" Sony WEGA and the 19" LCD monitor would be nice too!

I love free stuff.

We've officially submtted an offer on one of the houses we looked at.

Read more after the jump!

Daycare called today.  Emily was sick, so I went to pick her up.  She had a fever and complained about numerous things.  After a nap, we went to our 5 o'clock appointment and it turns out that she's actually fine - has some kind of virus or something.

A while later, I remembered something.  I had scheduled a DUMUG meeting for 5:30 in the Alumni Affairs office.  That's the Duke University Macromedia Users Group, of which I am the user group manager.

We had a remote presenter who was ready to present, and nobody was there.  I wasted a lot of people's time tonight and I feel pretty shitty about it.

The most fun part about potentially selling our house is the work we're going to do to get it READY to sell if we have to put it on the market all of the sudden.

I spent much of the day today working on the garage.  I bought some rubbermaid 22 gallon storage bins, and a rubbermaid 4 drawer unit, and another plastic shelving unit for the garage.  We have GOT to get organized. 

Read the rest after the jump...

With our first round of house searching out of the way with no clear winner and really only one worthwhile house out of 5, we're now going to look at 5 homes in Scotts Mill, a subdivision down the street from us about a mile or so.  Scotts Mill is a very nice, very large neighborhood.

Here are the 5 houses we're going to look at.  I'll add comments after we see them.

http://www.hpw.com/SearchPages/Detail.aspx?MlsNum=791081
http://www.hpw.com/SearchPages/Detail.aspx?MlsNum=789151
http://www.hpw.com/SearchPages/Detail.aspx?MlsNum=784809
http://www.hpw.com/SearchPages/Detail.aspx?MlsNum=790891
http://www.hpw.com/SearchPages/Detail.aspx?MlsNum=793230

UPDATE 4/11/05 - We're also going to look at this house tonight:

 http://www.hpw.com/SearchPages/Detail.aspx?MlsNum=795236

These are more expensive, the first is $227,000 while the other four range from $246,000 to $255,000.  The first is probably too small.

We're going to look at them Monday night.

North Carolina is the only state on the east coast without a lottery.  Our state house of representatives recently passed a lottery bill 61-59 and it is now up to the state senate.

To this effort, I wrote some email detailing my concerns to both the represenatives and the senators for Wake County, and in the comments that follow, I will post their responses.  The letter was basically the same to each senator, and the letters to the representatives were similar, except for obvious changes since they already voted on the bill.

We gave the builder a small check yesterday to hold a specific lot for us, but Adrienne and I are both concerned about being able to afford that particular house.  We do like it a lot, but we're going to look at used homes too.

Here are a few links to homes I asked our realtor, Kevin Woody, to show us.

UPDATED 4/9/04 - I've added comments regarding the houses below:

http://www.hpw.com/SearchPages/Detail.aspx?MlsNum=787813 (Crockett's Ridge)

Easily the nicest house we saw.  Great condition, nice lot, beautiful yard, nice floor plan, has just about everything we want.  And at $217,000, it's not a bad deal.  But it wasn't perfect, and we're basically looking for perfect right now.  We might even consider making an offer on this, but our realtor suggests that sellers are often unwilling to negotiate price too much when the potential buyer has a house to sell.

http://www.hpw.com/SearchPages/Detail.aspx?MlsNum=791343  (Crockett's Ridge)

The exact same model as above, except the fireplace was on the side of the house instead of the back.  However, the yard was in terrible shape, it had a strange deck that really looked half-finished, and they put down this nasty-looking pergo laminate in most of the first floor (foyer, hall, dining, living, breakfast area, and kitching).  Plus, the island had some weird laminate tile around it that was different.  The pergo looked like it had been self-installed, and not very well, there were lots of gaps under the quarter round.  The house was vacant and obviously had been for some time.  It has potential, but giving that they are asking $2,000 more than the previous listing, they're gonna have a hard time selling it!

http://www.hpw.com/SearchPages/Detail.aspx?MlsNum=789877 (Amherst)

The owner was still at the house when we arrived, so we went to Greenbrier then came back to this one.  It had a very nice upstairs, and a gorgeous kitchen, but I didn't care for the remaining layout of the first floor.  And the back yard was not only in terrible condition, it was virtually unusable.  About 3 feet beyond the back of the deck was a 45 degree slope up about 10 feet, then it flattened out again, where there were some tree stumps and dead trees and stuff.  It was hideous.  And the landscaping on the slope was poorly kept too.  I'd rather have no yard at all than this yard.

http://www.hpw.com/SearchPages/Detail.aspx?MlsNum=789234 (Greenbrier)

This one was in really good condition.  It had a beatifully upgraded kitchen, a very nice back yard, a roomy master with a very nice master bath and walk-in closet.  The other three bedrooms upstairs were not overly large, and they did not have walk-in closets.  The two story family room was pretty, but not large enough for a sofa and loveseat.

http://www.hpw.com/SearchPages/Detail.aspx?MlsNum=778215 (Shephard's Vineyard)

No tub in the master bath, no walk-in closets.  This was the only house we saw with a laundry closet instead of a laundry room.  It was also nearly 20 years old, with what looked like original appliances, and I didn't much care for the dark wood molding and the wood paneling in the family room.  The neighborhood is very nice, but I can't buy a house without a separate tub and shower or walk-in closets in the master.

UPDATED 4/8/04 - I've adjusted the links above to show the 5 homes we're looking at this weekend.

They range in price from $218k - $225k, which would be considerably cheaper than the new home.  They also range in square footage from 2040 to 2200, which is also considerably smaller.

HOORAY!  Our dark chocolate fantasies are now being realized!

Once you go dark, you'll never go back.

It seems that dark chocolate M&Ms will become available very soon, and to promote this, they've come up with a very interesting web site that is a sort of Star Wars parody, which includes a full blown "movie trailer" previewing these new "dark" M&Ms.

http://www1.mms.com/us/mpire/

It's pretty damn funny!