House? Finally?

Well, well. I think we might maybe perhaps sorta be at the groundbreaking. Still hard to tell. Salesguy e-mailed me to say that the permits will be done by the end of this week. This week! And get this -- the Great Design Center Lady finally e-mailed, too. Appointment is on Friday. Lots happening with the house on Friday -- Salesguy to add the new insulation stuff, Design Center and then a meeting with the mortgage lady to lock in our rate for 180 days. 6.5% for 30 years fixed ... sounds decent enough, although I asked for interest-only ... and we only gave 5% down, so uh, are financing 95% at that rate? Seems unlikely. Guess we'll find out.

So that's that.

Back to Memorial Day for just a minute. My parents, having upgraded their entire kitchen, decided that they should take a break from upgrading the house. However, my brother and I decided that no, they still need a new television. They were rocking the console business. You know, the one on the floor, in the cabinet?

Off to CostCo. We got a nice HD-ready forty-some inch flat panel LCD there. Pretty nice. But I have an issue with CostCo's insistence that you need an HD tuner and HD cable or Dish to get HD channels. Not true. I thought it was, but after flipping through the channels, I found out that the locals -- ABC, CBS, etc., all have an HD broadcast for some of the programming available on the non-digital cable my parents have. PBS also has it, and boy is some of that stuff sweet.

Anyway, the viewing highlight came on Sunday. The Indy 500 was on ABC. In HD. Now obviously since I live here now I should have just headed on down there (in the rain) to see the thing myself. But watching it on HD? Spectaculicious. So, so, so nice. Made me seriously consider getting an HD tv right there on the spot. The double bonus was that during the rain delay we went out for some shopping. When we got back, the race resumed.

The only issue that I would have now other than price and space is that there aren't enough channels and programming in HD. Specifically the Tour De France on Versus is probably not going to be in HD. And um, well, I guess everything else is. Although all that HGTV stuff probably isn't ... Anyway. The other issue is that I don't want to buy a really expensive tv because then I'll have to watch it. Then again, I paid a lot for the bicycle I have, and it's not like I'm riding that everyday.

So we drove back via Pittsburgh which was fun as usual. I'll get the rest of the week updated including the trip to the Velodrome later. But first, something completely different. (And it's late, and I have to go to sleep).

I read this past week in At Home with Jennifer, a Whirl publication, that the average American moves 11 times in their life. I decided to count the lifetime moves in my now 28 years. Here we go.

0. Somerville, NJ
1. Lancaster, PA
2. Lancaster, PA (we moved down the street. But I'm going to count this because it was pretty significant.)
3. Pittsburgh, freshman and sophomore years (no need to count the trip back to Lancaster o'er the summer, although it was a full-blown move. Had I lived in different rooms freshman and sophomore year I would have counted it. But somehow I didn't.)
4. Pittsburgh Bates Hill (South Oakland for life!)
5. Pittsburgh Ward Street (You suck, Favish)
6. Pittsburgh Hardie Way (Baba Yaga)
7. Lancaster, again
8. Philly, Chestnut Hill (The Villagio)
9. Ardmore, Walton Ave (Oscar!)
10. Lancaster, again
11. Pittsburgh
12. Carmel, IN
(13). Fishers, IN (Where we're building)
(14). Beach House (Some beach ...some place. Where we're retiring)

Thankfully I'm most of the way through the moves.