Homeowners!

What's that photo? Why, it's my hand holding the keys to a house the wife and I just bought. We had our closing yesterday and all went well. We gave huge amounts of money to many people - most of whom we'd never seen before. Apparently that's how buying a home works.

In any case, we are property owners. Word up. We don't move in until June as the sellers are renting the house back from us until the end of May. Then we're tearing out their beautiful purple carpet that they have in every room of the house. Thankfully there are hardwood floors beneath the purple madness.

It's nice to have this part of the process all over. We'd been looking for a house since last fall because we're tired of flushing apartment rent money down the toilet. Plus, our apartment complex keeps upping our rent while lowering the amenities they offer.

Searching for a house was sometimes fun and sometimes a pain. Believe me, we saw some real crapholes. Baltimore has many a craphole house to offer. I also learned what the phrases use to decribe a home really mean. We saw a house full of mold We saw many houses with their front porches closed in using totally non-safe and against code methods. We saw a home where a "newly built extra bathroom!!!" was actually a toilet in the basement with some blankets hung up around it as "walls." We saw a house where the previous owners smoked so much that we could see where they had all their pictures and paintings hanging on the walls. And so much more. It was quite a ride. We also tried buying three homes before this fourth one finally came through for us.

The house does need some work, but it's nothing major. We're going to paint and tear up carpet, refinish floors, etc... We're also going to tear off the amazingly beautifully rusty green corrugated metal awnings the sellers thought would look nice over the porch and windows.

And there's a photo of the front of our house - complete with the awesome awnings and astroturf front porch. Amber said we should play putt-putt on the porch. I like that idea.

Other property details: A rowhouse, two bedrooms, 1.5 bath, very tiny yard, parking pad in the backyard (Halle-fricking-llujah!!), a partially finished basement. It's maybe about the same size as our current apartment - only on three floors. And that's fine, we don't need tons of space. The neighborhood is nice, all the neighbors look like they take care of their property and lawns. I also love the back alley behind the place - it's clean and has a nice city feel to it.

There's also a park down the street with basketball courts and a baseball field and grass. Plus, now we're so much closer to the city - which is excellent.

And there it is - we're homeowners. Now starts the battle of us and renovations. In the back of my head floats the horror of the movie "The Money Pit," but I think we'll be fine.

Hooray for first-time homeowners!

Photo Phriday

Ah, Friday - what a wonderful day. My Friday blog post is all about photos. To start it off, I just added some new cell phone photos to my Flickr page, so scroll down and click that link if you want to check them out. I love my cell phone camera.

And secondly, the most important part: Yesterday when I was uploading the cell phone photos, my loving wife wanted me to take one down. I viewed it as harmless (a photo of her dozing off at the Orioles game we went to), but she didn't like it. Thus, a small battle began. She threatened that if I didn't take it down, that she'd scan the senior photo of me she has in her wallet and post it on her blog as retaliation. I called her bluff, saying she had no access to a scanner and if she were to do such a thing - it would so totally "be on."

Shortly after that exchange (gotta love Google chat), I received an email from Amy with a digitized version of my high school senior photo. Oh man, she does have access to a scanner.

I had already removed the dozing-off photo of her, but now I thought - you know, it would be fun to start a "Post An Embarrassing Photo of Yourself" inter-blog thingee. Why shouldn't I let you wonderful readers see my high school senior photo? It's humorous enough for all to enjoy.

Then I worried. What if someone randomly passed through the blog and decided that my high school photo was so hilarious that they would have to right-click and save it and email it around to all their friends? What if I became some silly internet phenomenon - That chick with the big hair and saxophone? Then what if people spent time trying to track me down for news stories - "Everyone wants to know who the crazy big-haired saxophonist is - well News Channel 8 FOUND HER!!"

I'm giving this blog and the internet world perhaps too much credit - but you never know. And honestly, I wouldn't care if people saw this photo - everyone has embarrassing school photos. So laugh all you want - I still know that somewhere in your attic or your parents' house is a whole stash of photos of you with your "I love the Cure" hair or "I have a tremendous overbite" smile or "Look at my awesome tight-rolled jeans and cinched sweater with crimped hair" overall image.

But, anyway, I still decided to black-bar my face. Which actually makes the photo even funnier. And so without further ado, here is one of my senior portraits from high school - circa 1996.

Admit it, you think it's totally awesome.

But after I looked at this edited version further, it just didn't seem human enough with that criminal-like black bar. So I edited it more to make it better.

There, much better.

So, if you feel like participarting in the "Post An Embarrassing Photo of Yourself" thingee, go right ahead. If not, no big deal. I just had to share this and beat Amy to the punch - not that she had planned to do it herself since I removed the offending photo of her.

And if you're curious, I also have Amy's senior photo in my wallet. Maybe I'll go find a scanner myself.

Misc.

Some musings and anecdotes from the past week:

-I recently learned that asking a farmer how large his farm is is like asking a woman how old she is. That's what a Tennessee farmer told me.

-I was standing next to a very large sheriff, all decked out in his black SWAT uniform with a gun and such...and then his phone rang. His ringtone? The theme from the TV show COPS! Only it didn't sound all cool, like an original recording as a ringtone. It was the synthesizer-cell-phone-sounding version. Yeah, real tough.

-I was finally spotted. I have other friends in my improv troupe who have been noticed on the street before because someone saw them in a show. That had never happened to me.....until my flight out of Baltimore early last Monday. The flight left at 6:50am, so I was tired and bedraggled looking, I'm sure. As I dozed off against the window before our flight even backed away from the gate, a woman touched my arm and said, "Excuse me...I'm sorry, do I know you?"

Me: "I don't think so."

Her: "You look really familiar. Do you do theater around Baltimore?"

And from there she figured out that she saw my troupe's New Year's Eve show. Then she gushed about it, which was cool. That's always better to hear than someone saying, "Yeah, I saw that, it sucked giant ass. I want my $10 back, jerk."

-After a long conversation with a woman in Rutherford, Tennessee, who had been thrown around inside her minivan with her three daughters by a tornado....and they walked away from the whole thing with only a few scratches, a funny thing happened. I was amazed by the story and it was on my mind as I left the church building and went back out to my car. When I turned the car on, the song "All I Need Is A Miracle" came on the radio right away. I found that interesting and oddly coincidental.

-I stepped outside a comfort zone with one disaster responder and was received very well. It made sense, though. I was watching him cut down this giant tree that was leaning precariously over a home. The tree had been shredded by a tornado and would fall down in the next big gust of wind, I'm sure. Anyway, this responder guy was in the tree with a chainsaw, and with a little help from a tractor, managed to get all the huge dangerous branches to fall not on the house but over in a clear section of the yard.

I was amazed, it was really cool and I hope I can be that crafty with a chainsaw sometime in my life. Anyway, I got back into his truck with him (he was giving me a tour of some areas) and said, "Bill, if I may use a swear word for a moment - that was totally bad-ass." I was worried he'd be offended, but also thought maybe he'd understand, too. I mean, the word "bad-ass" really was the only word that captured the awesomeness of what he had just done.

Fortunately for me, he cracked up with laughter and I think was even able to talk more openly with me after that point. Never doubt the positive power of an appropriately-placed swear word.

-Yesterday at a severe storms conference, I was sitting in a very large amphitheater listening to His Awesomeness Max Mayfield (director of the National Hurricane Center) speak. He spoke about last year's hurricane season, storm surges, destruction, hurricane prediction, this year's coming hurricane season and more. After his 45-minute talk, the moderator told the crowd we could break for five minutes. A guy sitting behind me goes, "Great, I really need to use the restroom."

When he returned, he sat back down with his friends behind me, laughed and said, "Man, glad I got to go then - talk about a storm surge!"

Thoughts

Sometimes this blog is me being silly, and sometimes it's me being serious. I have some humorous anecdotes to post about my trip to Tennessee, but first I wanted to post this entry that I wrote in the midst of my travels last week. It's not meant to be a downer, just something thought-provoking. Hopefully. In any case, it's the type of thing that runs through my mind at times while visiting places now home to such destruction.

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What do you say to someone who only days ago was thrown around inside her van with her three children when a tornado sucked their vehicle off the road? How about when they show you that they walked away from that with only scratches? Or when they describe the experience as "suddenly everything went white and fuzzy, and I know I was upside down for a minute because I felt it"?

How do you process the feelings of seeing tornado-ravaged countryside? Homes crumbled like they were nothing? Giant trees snapped like matchsticks, the branches broken at awkward but sharp angles, dotting a landscape that now looks like a horror film background? Pieces of people's lives now stuck in trees and strewn across fields and in muddy roadside ditches and streams? How about when you see someone's collection of baseball cards blown across an entire field?

How do you react when you see the inside of a home from the outside? Its contents now on display because the front wall and roof were ripped right off - as if it were a dollhouse with removable parts? Did you notice how serene it looks inside - the piano where it's probably sat for years, the kitchen with a bar opening up into the living room, the couches and recliners facing a missing wall and now overlooking the decimated field behind the home? Were you able to picture all the family gatherings that took place in this home?

How do you describe the smell of homes being burned because they're too far gone to be rebuilt? What about the flower display in front of the home where someone's mom died? How about the contrast between those flowers and the giant hole where the house used to be, complete with flames because what's left is being burnt?

How do you do it?

Good Times
I got to hang out in DC last night, which is always fun. Sometimes I forget how cool a city it is. The improv troupe was performing at the DC Comedy Festival.

I tell ya, there's nothing like putting eight improvisers into one minivan and keeping them in it for about an hour. There was singing and dancing, horribly obscene jokes, and shouted directions as everyone yelled out the lyrics for Usher's "Yea!."

The show went pretty well, too. In one short 20-minute set, I got to rub my nose on the floor and pretend I was a My Little Pony poster. There's some theater for you.

After the show, we headed over to Tryst in Adam's Morgan for a round-up of drinks and silliness. I added some photos of the fun to my Flickr site, so scroll down and look at the link on the right for some photos. The photo above shows my drink choice vs. that of fellow troupe member Jody. He's a wine guy. It had been some time since I'd been PBR'd, so I had to indulge.

We didn't get home til late, after another fun minivan ride - this time with several inebriated players singing along with Nelly, Styx, The Eagles, Sean Paul and Kelly Clarkson. Don't tell us we're not an eclectic bunch.

This weekend should be fun. I'm rock-climbing Saturday morning, then it's off to a birthday dinner that evening. On Sunday it's a Red Sox game and then improv practice.

And from there I head to Tennessee for four days to cover tornado recovery. Busy busy busy, but that's okay. Better than being bored.

Thank you!

This is a thank you post. First off, thanks to those who made me smile and laugh earlier this week. Much appreciated.

Secondly - thank you to my favorite online satire site, The Onion. In this article, they point out that in the Young MC song "Bust a Move," the line about your best friend Larry's brother Harry choosing "you" as his best man makes no sense. I've thought that for years as I've sung along to the rap. Glad to see someone else noticed that.

It's the little things.

Happy thoughts
I could use a few smiles and laughs today, gang. So, if you feel the urge, please leave a joke or smile-inducing something-or-other in the comments. It will be most appreciated.

To give you a smile, to the left is a photo I took while down in Mississippi. I thought it looked like the bird-version of that over-used poem and photo "Footprints."

"Where were you, o Seagull, when I needed you?"

"I was on your back - you were carrying me as I stole some food right out of your hand. Also, sorry about the poop on your shoulder."