Halloween *Yawn* 2007

It's Halloween. Yay. I can hardly contain my excitement.

Thing is, I SHOULD be thrilled. Halloween, of all holidays, should be right up my alley. I'm not religious, so the usual holidays don't do much for me. Halloween is the ONE holiday that I should look forward to, plan for, revel in. But I don't. This year especially… man, I just don't give a shit. I even watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" last night to try to force myself into the right mood, and it didn't work (I actually fell asleep watching it).

Earlier this year I decided, come Halloween, I'd dress up as the McMenamins Hammerhead Ale guy:

White shirt, overalls, and boots. Easy. The only tricky part would be the head, but I was determined to figure it out (foam rubber, or maybe papier-mâché). Fast forward to now, and I haven't done shit. Furthermore, I have no plans tonight anyway, so what would be the point?

Am I old? Lazy? Both, I guess. But there's more to it… I suppose everything going on in our lives right now factors in somewhere (home appraisal in two days, in-laws staying with us, etc). Maybe I'm depressed. Maybe it's as simple as that.

Shellee and her husband are dressing up as a pirate and wench this year. Oh, and I'm back in touch with Dave, an old childhood friend, and on his page there's a picture of him dressed as a fucking whoopee cushion. See? Others are enjoying the Halloween spirit. Meanwhile, I'm…. not. I'm a sad old man. Tonight I'll watch TV and hand out candy while the rest of world lives it up. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Maybe next year I'll go all out and REALLY celebrate Halloween. You know, if I'm still alive and shit.

Bijou Update

Ah, the mongrel Bijou. We've had her for about three months… wait, is that all? Seems like longer… let's see, she was born on Memorial Day (5/28), and she was about eight weeks old when we got her… So yeah, I guess that's about three months. Well, she's enormous now, and quite hilarious. She's generally pretty well-behaved, though we certainly have our rough moments (usually when she gets too excited and starts rampaging through the house and jumping on people; she was spayed a few weeks ago, which hasn't mellowed her out at all). She's just freakin' adorable (see pictures below), so it's hard to stay mad at her when she misbehaves.

My Achin' Bones...

I've been workin' like a dog lately. We've been in our house for almost three years, so it's re-fi time, which means an appraisal is looming. A bit o' history here: November 2004, T and I were naïve renters, looking to buy our first house. Our credit wasn't great, so we ended up with a crappy loan in which we'd pay predominantly interest-only at a low rate for the first three years, and then get stuck with an adjustable rate starting in December 2007. This generally means that one's mortgage payments will likely skyrocket; many people in similar situations have ended up losing their homes (you've probably heard about all the foreclosures on the news). Naturally I feared we'd be among them, but apparently we've managed to improve our credit scores enough to qualify for a fixed-rate loan with no ARM bullshit… we'll be paying more than we were before (I think we can afford it, fingers and toes crossed), but at least we won't be out on the street. Hence the looming appraisal, and hence me workin' like a dog trying to get the place looking as good as possible in order to maximize the perceived value.

The thing is… I'm a renter by nature. I don't enjoy cleaning the gutters, or trimming the trees, or laying new bark dust, or whacking the fucking weeds, or cleaning the garage, or any of the hundreds of other chores that owning a home entails. Some people get off on such tasks (the OCD freak across the street, for example, who actually measures the length of his grass with a ruler), but I don't. It's just not my thing. I worked my ass off as a kid (thanks, Dad), so I'd rather not do it now (I already work a full-time job, fer Chrissakes). *Sigh* I wanna lay in my hammock, have a few beers, watch some DVDs, and enjoy myself. I wanna come home FROM work, not come home TO work.

So is it all worth it? I dunno. I suppose if nothing else the new loan will buy us some time to figure it all out. With the new loan, the house will cost us HALF our total income each month. Wouldn't it make more sense to sell the house and RENT a house for a lot less? Three of our four kids will be out of high school in a few years, so we won't need such a big place. We could rent a big house for a few years (for way less than we're paying now), then buy a smaller house later. Not being broke all the time would be nice. Not lying awake at night stressing about money would be nice. Taking a fucking trip once in a while would be nice. Makes perfect sense to me. Teresa…. Well, she has other ideas. Don't get me wrong… I love our house. But in all honestly, I don't love it as much as I did three years ago. Three years of stress has really worn on me. Believe me, I have aged a LOT in the last three years.

Plus the market sucks right now. I'm not convinced we could even sell the house, at least not for the price we'd want (we'd need to pay off the mortgage completely, plus have some left over for hookers and tequila, ha ha). The stress continues. Being a responsible adult sucks. I think about my apartment at Martinazzi Village, with my quaintly hilarious papason furniture and the tiny storage closet, and I miss it. Life was so easy then.

I Want It, But I Can't Have It...

Yeah, it's the glorious iPod Touch. Played with one at the Apple Store a couple of weeks ago, hoping to hate it. I don't hate it. I covet it like a Bloody Mary on Sunday morning. My only complaint is the tiny hard drive (16 gb? Are you fucking kidding?), but it's a thing of beauty. Lots of Wow Factor. Sexy beast, this is. *Sigh* Can't afford it. Story of my life.

Gettin' Jiggy with the Piggy...

So I like (scratch that, LOVE) pork rinds. I understand that many people are repulsed by this particular culinary item, and I must confess that I'm perplexed by their passionate aversion to it. Vegetarians hate them, and I undertand and respect that. However, fellow meat-eaters who decry pork rinds are just plain hypocritical. You'll eat the ass of a pig, but not the skin? The texture of pork rinds is probably most similar to Funyuns, which are light and crispy and not at all disgusting (they cannot, however, replace a really good onion ring). I'd wager that most dissenters haven't even actually tried pork rinds, so their opinions are uninformed and therefore invalid. I encourage everyone to get a bag of pork rinds (also known as chicharrones, also known as fried pork skins) and open your mind (and your mouth). They're actually quite healthy (zero carbs!). They come in plain, spicy, and barbecue (my favorite; I can handle the spicy ones, but I usually dip 'em in sour cream to minimize the burn). I've even seen a microwavable kind, which I find hilarious. Anyway, I can't explain my love of them. I crave them fortnightly. I love pork of all kinds (especially sausage and bacon), so it kinda makes sense. Damn, no wonder I'm such a fatty.