as i mentioned yesterday, we moved from cleveland to north carolina in 2005. at first i moved down and starting working while natalie and ethan stayed in cleveland for another six months. during that time i stayed at my sister in-laws house and went home (to cleveland) on weekends.

i don’t think my sister in-law and her family minded putting me up during that time but one weekend while i was back in cleveland they moved in to a new house. i got a voice mail message with the new address but i wasn’t sure if it was the right place until after i pressed the doorbell and a familiar face answered the door.

here it is, just two years after i moved out of their place i’m moving back in. at 2:45pm eastern time we were supposed to be on a plane beginning a year long trip that would take us more than 8,500 miles away from home to new zealand.

instead, we’re traveling 17 miles to durham where we’ll all live in the same guest room of my sister in-laws house where i once stayed.

unless of course, she’s moved again.

in 2000 we bought a home in cleveland during the peak of the sellers market there. when we moved in 2005, cleveland was already a canary in the housing market and we were not able to sell our house in a years time. we ultimately began renting it.

in 2007 we decided to improve the quality of our lives by taking an adventure half way around the world to new zealand where natalie could work in a job where they would also provide a house and car.

we were promised we wouldn’t have any trouble securing visas for everyone in the family including our au pair carolina so natalie quit her job, i sold my car, i changed jobs to one that would allow me to work remotely (even if remotely was from new zealand) and we put our house up for rent.

five days before we were scheduled to leave immigration new zealand denied carolina’s visa request. apparently there’s no category that matches carolina’s request so it was denied. now we can’t travel without breaking up our extended family and interrupting the spanish language immersion both our kids have had since birth.

but almost everything is packed and the new tenants show up on wednesday. i now own two homes and have nowhere to sleep.

so you’ll notice the countdown in the right side bar has changed from “countdown to nz” to “countdown to odyssey”. i don’t know where we will be going over the next year, or in the next week for that matter, but stay tuned and i’ll tell you all about it…

in the past two weeks i have heard two separate stories where a family went to the pound, bonded with an animal, paid $100 to catch-up the animals shots and happily took their new pet home. days later, in both cases, the animal was desperately ill.

as of today one family is 2k in to their cat and another is 3k in to their dog with no end in sight…

if this is what they have in mind when they say ‘save an animal’? i think they would have been much better off taking the long nap…

i mentioned earlier i moved hosting for this site to an external provider about a month ago. an unexpected benefit has come from the server living a few time zones west of where it used to be, midnight (the time when the front page serves up the next new idea) comes hours later than it used to.

its like getting an extension on a late term paper every day…

here is my attempt to recreate the post that was lost yesterday:

a lot of people like to claim they come from humble beginnings, white trash if you will. but i have a standard that says if you don’t have a repertoire of stories like the one below you aren’t in the club (which by the way, is what you should really be glad for).

my aunt, who happens to be only two years older than me, accompanied her husband on a boating trip his company took as a retreat down at lake of the ozarks in southwestern missouri (telling in its own right, but certainly not the punchline).

having recently had a boob job my aunt was anxious to show off her new assets so as the yacht pulled away from the dock, she strolled out on the bow, took off her top and started to sun bathe. her husband, i suppose some might say my inlaw, wasn’t as keen to the topless sun bathing idea and to protect his coworkers innocent eyes, he stormed out to where my aunt was lying, demanded she put her top back on and then punched her in the face.

to no one’s great surprise, save her husband, punching a woman in the face is even more offensive than topless sun bathing so as every good white trash story goes, the police get involved. my aunt had her husband arrested and then waited in the police station, modestly attired in a towel, for more than two hours for my grandmother to come pick her up.

the only surprise here is that after the show she put on, none of her husband’s coworkers offered to give her a lift home.

today’s idea was lost thanks to the stupid security i have on this site and my session timing out… my apologies for this lousy consolation post.

i pride myself on carrying a grudge. i can remember just about every detail of every offense i decide to toss in the grudge-sack. but carrying a grudge against my wife is totally useless.

not because its petty or destructive in promoting effective communication but because my wife can’t remember why i’m cross so from her perspective its certainly more likely that i’m upset with the weather than with her.

life before the canon digital rebel xti:

life after:

i like new toys and have to exercise an extreme amount of self control to avoid getting a new one every week.

but every now and again i get something and wonder how i did so long without it. the canon digital rebel xti is one such toy…