Genius In Progress

And now, we are ALMOST to the present. Upon returning home from Florida, I picked up the keys to my new house and headed straight there. Kelly met me there a little later, and after heading to Meijer to pick up a shower curtain and some other things so that I could spend the night, we plunked down on bean bags (the only furniture in the house at the time) to watch Keeping the Faith on my laptop. I got visits from John, and Johannes and Abbie to check out the house during the process of the movie, and Kelly and I eventually gave up on trying to finish it because we were both falling asleep.

I then proceeded to spend my first night in my new home on a groundpad in a sleeping bag (which I continue to sleep on, until my bed arrives on Saturday). The house is continuing to get more and more furnished, and is getting lots of visitors (yay, keep them coming), and I am sure getting it up to fully livable status will be quite an adventure, but for now, I am having lots of fun!

That’s all for now. I am sure I will update more in a month or two.

After all the stress of purchasing the house (thank you God for making the house possible, and thank you all for your prayers as well), as timing would have it, I left for Florida. Less than 11 hours after signing the final document to purchase my house I was in a car heading to the airport, having not slept at all in the time in between (I left at about 4:15 in the morning). Kevin and Mike and I met up and drove to the airport, and headed down to Orlando.

Once there, after finding out my luggage was still in Detroit because a baggage handler had had a concussion or something else of the sort, I waited in line for about 45 minutes to give them the address of the hotel to ship it to when it did eventually arrive on a later flight. We then proceeded to rent a car, head to this gigantic hotel/resort, and get ready to spend a perfect day outside. My lack of a suitcase was a little problematic as it was 82 and sunny outside and I was wearing jeans and a long sleeve shirt, but it all worked out.

After unpacking a bit at the hotel, we headed to this golf course, designed by Jack Nicklaus. Mike and Kevin golfed, and I manned the golf cart and the peanut gallery. Basically we spent the whole afternoon relaxing on the golf course in the glorious weather.

The next 4 days were spent in Microsoft lectures / classes learning about new features of the upcoming development tools. There was some informative stuff and a lot of repetitive information, but overall it was useful. On the last day we relaxed again. We got to check out the ginormous swimming pool facilities of the resort (huge, huge pools intertwining through caves and stuff) and just relaxed before heading home. We did have one other intriguing incident on the trip involving attempts to leverage the power of rear wheel drive on a Dodge Magnum, and a gas pedal becomming detached from the floor, but that’s a story to be told in person. On Thursday afternoon, we headed home.

Following my fun weekend in Toledo, the longest week of all time began. It was the culmination of the last 6 months of stress in trying to purchase a home. The whole week was a roller coast of ups and downs…. first it was a go, then it wasn’t going to work, then it was a go again, and so on; back and forth the news went… talk about emotionally taxing. Thursday, March 17th (my original closing date) came and passed with no house. Friday rolled around, with the closing time of 12 PM come and gone. We rescheduled for 1 PM, and at 12:30 PM I still did not know whether I would get a house or not. I was sitting at work, stewing and debating getting food, but not wanting to be inaccessible if the 1 PM was a go.

Finally, I gave up and decided to get food. 3 seconds (literally) later the phone rang with the news that the closing was a go and that I needed to hurry to the bank and get the downpayment. The closing was a long process, starting with about 2 1/2 hours of waiting for the proper documents to get faxed / emailed / whatever to the title company, followed by 30 minutes of signing documents. Just as we finished signing, a phone call came from the bank saying all the documents were wrong and they were sending new ones and I would have to sign it all over again.

At 5:15 PM the papers were finally signed, though sadly the funds didn’t transfer until Monday, and I was leaving the next morning at about 4 AM, so I had a house, but no keys. I came back to the office and shared the news, at which point a party at my house was suggested. I mentioned my lack of keys, and someone pointed out that it was my house, why didn’t I just break in? As amusing as the concept was I held off and headed home to pack, with this house in my thoughts:

My New House

So, it’s been about a month since I last posted, and quite a month it has been. As I have stated before, my posts never come in single entities, so I will try and post the major events as seperate entries.

Starting off the month last month (as it does every month) was the Club Christ concert. The turnout was not quite as spectacular as the previous month, but it was enjoyable, as it always is. Qedem played their second to last show (last Club Christ) in their current form, and Dawn Xiana Moon played again, which was quite enjoyable.

Later that week (well, the Friday following that Saturday), I saw Dawn again, this time playing at a coffee shop in Dexter. I really enjoy her music, and despite her claims that it is depressing, I find a lot of the songs peaceful and even uplifting. Anyhow, we started talking between sets and then continued after the show, and it came up that she was going to Toledo for a show the next day, and had no ride. One thing led to another (ie I offered to give her a ride) and I ended up having the pleasure of spending a day wandering around Toledo with Dawn.

Highlights of the trip included driving on some of the worst roads I have ever experienced, some cool photography, excellent chineese food at some little place that I still don’t understand how she knew about, and another chance to hear Dawn play her music. All in all it was a Saturday very well spent, even if I didn’t get my normal sleeping in.

Johannes printed off a bunch of Rich Mullins songs a while ago to add to the huge stack of songs we have on the piano that we play all the time. I had previously known one or two of them, but he loaned me one of Rich Mullin’s CDs (the last one, actually) and I have been listening to them, and realizing more and more how awesome they are. The lyrics I think are even more impressive than the music. The lyrics of the following made me think when I stopped to read them:

Hard To Get

You who live in heaven
Hear the prayers of those of us who live on earth
Who are afraid of being left by those we love
And who get hardened in the hurt

I’m reeling from these voices that keep screaming in my ears
All these words of shame and doubt, blame and regret
I can’t see how You’re leading me
unless You’ve led me here
Where I’m lost enough to let myself be led
And so You’ve been here all along I guess
It’s just Your ways and You are just plain hard to get.

– Rich Mullins

Something tocuhed me about the part about being lost enough enough to let myself be led. It just reminded me that God works in mysterious ways sometimes, that may even seem like abandonment at the time, but He always knows what is best for us, evening when we have no clue. Our God truly is an awesome God.

It’s turning in to quite a month (as in, a block of 30ish days, rather than the month of February or March). Joy departed for Ireland after 2 weeks in the US visiting. It was quite a pleasure having her visit and getting to see her and Johannes together, despite the fact she kept poking the bear and doing that thing with her eyebrow! The Pinkness also came to visit on Saturday, so we got to see her, which we hadn’t in a while, so there was all sorts of excitement going on.

In addition, the house purchasing process continues… I got the 3 lbs of paperwork in the mail yesterday for the loan, and it should probably take me a couple hours to finish that off. The inspection last week went very well and there was very little problematic with the house. Assuming all goes well, and that the loan can be completed in time (they were worried slightly about being able to complete the process in less than 30 days), I will be closing on the house on March 17th. The shame is, I leave for a week-long developer’s conference in Florida a day later, which will probably drive me nuts. Ah well.
All in all, life is quite excessively busy, but enjoyable. Thank you God, for answering prayers about the little details and the big ones.