Saturdays TV viewing, sorry honey

It's been a lazy day today. Which I guess tends to be a typical Saturday for us. We've basically been sitting around watching TV all day, getting caught up on the DVR. We record a lot of shows so we're always running behind on stuff. Cheri records a bunch of stuff as well but she usually watches most of those while I'm at work. I don't have a problem missing all of the reality TV that she watches. She can watch all the housewives, singing, dancing, little people and crime shows all she wants, but I'll pass. Sorry honey.

We've been saving up all our episodes of the Tonight Show because we usually watch those and @Midnight when we run out of stuff to watch. I've been catching up on the @Midnight episodes at my moms because she hasn't been home while I'm waiting for the kids to get off the bus so in the past week and a half, I've worked it down from 20+ episodes down to 7.

          

I watched Z Nation while Cheri was making lunch since she doesn't care about that show. Then we watched Satisfaction which pretty much ran us out of all of our shows. I figured I could get caught up on some sports that I had recorded.

I usually record all of the Chicago White Sox, Indianapolis Colts and any Michigan Wolverine games and by any I mean all sports. If I record it and don't watch it live, I check the score and delete the games if they lose. Why would I want to watch my team lose? The only games I do anything I can to watch live are Michigan football and men's basketball games.

First, I deleted the Michigan hockey game, I only watch those when there is hardly anything in the DVR and it was still over 50% full. Then I watched the Michigan women's basketball game against UCLA. They lost the game but I rarely get to watch them because they rarely broadcast them, at least around here so I watched it anyways. I have a little connection with the team as I took my daughter up there for a basketball camp last season and she got to meet most of the girls. We also drove up there about this time last year because I had off of work and watched a game live. After the women's game, I watched the men's basketball game against Northern Kentucky from earlier in the week. Sorry honey.

By the time that game was over I figured I'd cut my wife a little slack and we watched a few episodes of the Tonight Show. We never used to watch these talk shows (other than Cheri who watches Ellen) but we love Jimmy Fallon so we've watched it ever since he took it over. We watched 3 episodes and then it was just after 6 and I knew the Michigan men's game was on so I checked to see if it was recording and it wasn't, apparently it wasn't on TV but I could stream it, which means I had to watch it live. Sorry honey.

I loaded it up on the WatchESPN app and streamed it to the TV through my Chromecast and watched them take on Youngstown State. They've looked great the last few games but we'll see how well they do when we get into the Big Ten schedule next week and the opponents get a lot tougher.

After that game was over, we went back to watching Fallon again and got another 3 episodes in before Cheri decided she couldn't keep her eyes open anymore. So here I sit, watching more basketball. I've got a couple of Bulls games on the DVR as well so I'm watching them take on the Philadelphia 76'ers from last week. On the plus side, former Wolverine point guard Nik Stauskas is on Philadelphia so I get to check up on him too.

There's been a lot of basketball today, not that I'm complaining. Cheri probably is though. Maybe tomorrow we'll finish off the last 3 Fallon's and the 7 episodes of @Midnight before I go to Netflix, I'm trying to rewatch all the episodes of the X-Files before the new ones come on in January and I'm only midway through the 2nd season. Then again, I do still have 2 more Bulls games to watch, plus the Colts are on tomorrow. Sorry honey.

Star Wars thoughts

No, I haven't seen it yet, it's not that type of post.

I am of course, super pumped for the new Star Wars movie, even though I probably won't go see it for a few weeks. Because as excited as I am to see it, I still hate people more. I will not go sit in a crowded theater and watch it, I'll wait a few weeks until all the hype is over, then go see it.

I loved the original trilogy but wasn't a fan of the prequels. I know that's not a new concept but the reason I like the first 3 but not the 2nd 3 is a different reason then most. I got into the characters from the original trilogy and I think that's why I couldn't really get into the prequels. They weren't the characters that I grew up with, at least for the most part.

Before you start going, ahh, you're full of crap. It's the same for Star Trek. I loved the original cast of Star Trek, I love the original series and the movies, that is, up until the Generations movie because that was the last of the original cast. I like the movies after that, just not like I loved the others. I never really got into all the other Star Trek TV series either, Enterprise, Deep Space 9, even the beloved the Next Generation. They're OK, I don't hate them, but I don't love them either.

When they brought back the Star Trek movies a few years back, I loved them. Why? Because they were the same characters. Yes, they had different actors and they were more or less, prequels as well, but it was the same characters. Kirk, Spock and Bones were back, and it was awesome. I've loved that they brought back my love for Star Trek because other than watching reruns or Netflix (I rewatched the Original Series awhile back) that was all they were, reruns. Now there are new stories with the characters I love.

Back to Star Wars, I'm looking forward to the new Star Wars because a lot of the same characters are going to be in it. I realize that they aren't the whole story but they will be there and maybe I will like the future Star Wars movies because of this one where they are kind of, handing off the torch, so to speak. So, like I said, I'm excited about the new Star Wars movies, not like a lot of people are, but excited none-the less. I'm just hoping it doesn't disappoint with bad story lines for the original characters.

My daughter is going to see it tonight, she asked if I was jealous. I said hell no. I am jealous that she is seeing it, but no movie is worth dealing with that many people. Even the new Star Wars.

All the posters above (except for the last one) were taken from one of my new blogs Movie Posters. I only post posters of movies I have seen which is why the last one is not on it, yet. I have it saved for when I do see it so I can post it. I copied a bunch over from my tumblr account so I posted 50 a day for 3 days but from now on, it will probably only be a week, if even that so feel free to join along.

Weekly round-up

On Monday this week, the realtor let us into the house just so we could measure windows and stuff like that. We took the kids with us so they could check it out, they've only been by it, never in it. I think they are both pretty excited about it, probably get more excited after we paint since my son's room is a lime green and my daughter's room has a fish mural on her wall. They were running around the rooms excited, none of us really wanted to leave. It sucks that the house is sitting there empty and we can't move in until we close.

On Tuesday, we met with an insurance agent because we have to have home owners insurance in place before we close. We went ahead and met with him to get quotes on car insurance as well to see if it was worth it to switch those over since you get a discount for having multiple policy's. He told us about this little blue thingy they hook up to your car and it monitors stuff like how fast you're going, how close you're following other cars, and you're mileage. If you don't break any of the "rules" then you get a 10% discount on your policy.

• Speed - as long as you don't go over 80 mph, you're good. So as long as I don't travel, I'm good, because I tend to set my cruise over 80 mph. I'll be good around town though.
• Driving to close - It apparently monitors your speed decrease or in other words, if you have to slam on your brakes. I don't really agree with this one, just because I slam on the brakes doesn't mean I was following too closely. What if something runs out in front of my car or someone pulls out in front of me, how are those my fault?
• Mileage - I believe he said as long as I don't break 12,000 miles a year, which would be a piece of cake since I only use it to work and back for the most part. I bet I average less than 15 miles a day and my car generally sits all weekend because if we do go somewhere, we take Cheri's.

I'm not real impressed with them at the moment considering it's now Sunday and I'm still waiting on the quote for the cars. Tuesday will be a week. I'm not sure if it will be cheaper anyways since we are currently with Geico but we'll see.

On Thursday, we went up to the hospital to visit a family member, hung out with them for about an hour then headed home. Cheri annoyed me on the way home, I was driving on a back road but we were coming up to an intersection with a main road so the lane broke into 4 lanes and there was a bunch of people sitting at the light. Cheri glances up from playing games on her phone to see all the brake lights and freaked out like I wasn't going to stop at all. She screeched my name and grabbed the handle on the door. I told her she either needs to keep her head down or up, no raising it up and freaking out over nothing. No side-seat driving.

On Saturday, we cleaned out the kids room and packed what we could. We ended up with 8 kitchen bags of trash and 5 bags for Goodwill and a box of books for the library. It sounds like their rooms were filthy but they keep them clean for the most part. A lot more clean than I ever did as a kid, you could never see my floor. This was all stuff in the closets and clothes they didn't wear anymore. I loaded up the car with the stuff for Goodwill and dropped my son off at his friends house for the evening and went to the local Goodwill drop off. While I was unloading the stuff I noticed my back tire was low so I headed over to the Martin's gas station because they had free air. Nope, not anymore, now they want $.75 for freaking air, there ain't no way I'm paying that so I went over to my moms and used my stepdad's air compressor, afterwards I decided to Google and see if anybody had free air anymore and the only place listed was Casey's Food Mart, which of course, was right across the street from Martin's where I was. Guess I should have Googled earlier.

It's usually a tradition that the grandparents take the grandkids to cut down their Christmas Tree but they had to cancel because of the aforementioned family member in the hospital so she's been helping out a bunch with that side of the family. So today, my brother and I decided we would surprise her and we took all the kids out, picked out a tree, cut it down and delivered it to her house. My stepdad was there so we set it up in the stand and he trimmed up the bottom so all she has to do is decorate it. Which she is going to do sometime this week and have the grandkids over to help.

That's a fairly busy week for us, most of the time we don't do much. I just want this month to fly by so we can get into our house. It's currently 63 degrees here (average this time of the year is mid 30's and snow) so I'm expecting by the time we can actually move, it will be below zero because that's how my luck is.

Home, Kids and Work - aka: Life

As of right now, we are waiting to hear from the bank on the exact day of our closing. He was estimating the 30th a couple of weeks ago and I know that all we were waiting on was for the appraisal on the house to come back to make sure we weren't overpaying otherwise they wouldn't have given us the loan. We heard back from the realtor and they received the appraisal on Thursday so I would assume the bank got it as well. So like I said, we are waiting on the bank.

The realtor is supposed to take us into the house tomorrow evening so we can measure windows and get a better feel for the place. That will hopefully help us how to set up the living room. Not that it really matters, we can always figure that out when we move.

We've been trying to figure out the layout of some of the rooms. Cheri has most of it figured out but we're not sure how we are going to do the living room. I made the comment tonight that we won't know how to do it until we figure out where the outlets are so we can put our recliners next to those. Have to be able to plug in the laptops and phones while we're watching TV. There is also a smaller living room in the basement that we planned on hooking up a TV with a couch and recliner down there. We'll hook up the game systems down there as well so when the kids have friends over, they'll have a place to hang. Just one problem, we need to get a TV to go down there. We could probably use the TV out of our bedroom but it's an old one and it'll be a pain to hook up these modern game systems to that old ass TV. Needless to say, we'll probably be shopping for a TV when we get our tax check in the new year.

I'm hoping once we move I will be able to pick up walking again since I won't have to wait until the kids get off the bus at my moms. I can go straight home and go for a walk before they even get home. Not to mention we will be living in a neighborhood so I can walk without traffic as well. I also know how

The kids on again, off again relationship with their mother is off at the moment. They didn't want to go over for their last weekend because they can't stand the JackAss. You would think when your kids hatred for your husband out weights their love for their mother, that the mother would do something about it. The Ex got upset when the kids said they weren't coming over anymore and told them not to bother coming over for Thanksgiving and they haven't talked since. I'm not sure how long it will last, especially with Christmas coming but I know Samantha is actually ticked off at her mom at how she handled the whole situation so we'll see.

Not looking forward to tomorrow at work. We are switching over to a new computer system because we were bought out earlier in the year. Our system was newer then our purchaser and instead of them upgrading, it was cheaper to downgrade us. It'll probably be a mess all week.

Early resolution talk

Way back in 2013, I posted my one goal (resolution), I still haven't completed it. It was to own a home. It's not because of lack of trying though. We've been trying since then. In a little over a month it will be 3 years of trying.

We started off just trying to raise our credit scores. Mine was trashed before and then on top of that, my divorce trashed it more because the Ex doesn't pay anything off so I had to pay off everything that was hers but had my name on it as well. Cheri just didn't have a score because she had filed for bankruptcy when she got divorced. She was divorced sooner than I was but the bankruptcy was one of those that you pay off in payments so she didn't get credit for it until it was payed off. The problem was, when she moved up here to be with me, her Ex stopped paying his half and we had to pay it off as well. Basically, the exes screwed us, royally.

At the beginning of this year, we were finally approved to buy a house. The problem now, was finding one that we wanted. We have specific things we want in a home because we have no intention of ever moving again. We are 42 years old and we plan on dying here.

Our needs

• Decent sized kitchen with lots of counter space. Cheri spends quite a bit of time in the kitchen between suppers and occasionally baking. Our apartment has no counter space so she wanted counter space.
• 3 Bedrooms, 2 baths. We still have 2 kids at home plus a room for us so 3 bedrooms. 2 baths because we don't want to share a bathroom with the kids. In our apartment, everyone but myself shares a shower and that gets hard on occasion. If we had to settle for 1 bathroom we could have but we really wanted 2.
• A ranch style home. Between Cheri's back and MS, stairs are getting harder and harder for her to do so we wanted a ranch just so there were no stairs. Plus I'm fat and old so there's that.
• It had to be in a certain school district. We didn't want to change the kids schools, they both love where they are and we do as well.

That's it, which to us wasn't a lot. Out of those 4 things, the hardest one to fill was the last one. The school district we wanted to live in just isn't very big and when houses go up for sale, they go quick. It's the best school in that county by far. After spending a few months searching and not coming up with 1 house that fit that criteria, we started to look at having a modular built. We found land that we wanted, it was good location in the district, it was cheaper than most of the land so we checked into that.

The first thing we found out was our credit scores need to be even higher for a construction loan. So we starting working on getting our scores up again. This took a few months, again. When we were finally approved to build, the lot we wanted sold the week before. Any other land in the district we were willing to live, was double the price so now the home we had picked out to build wasn't fitting into the budget because the land was costing more.

Cheri still looked online every so often for homes to buy and she finally ran across one that we thought might fit our needs. She walked through it with my mom while I was at work and fell in love. I went through it the next day and approved (not that I would have said no) and we started on the paperwork to put in an offer.

That was about a month ago. Today, we are slowly packing up so we will be ready to move when we sign at our closing at the end of the year.

So we will start 2016 in our new home. 3 years later, we will fulfill the only resolution we've had for the last few years.

We are beyond excited.