My Life – Page 151 – Chris' Site

Amazing – Saylorville

Wow, this is just amazing. I can’t believe this was taken by Saylorville lake! So close to where I used to live, I wonder when it was taken? I found it on NASA’s site, but no real commentary.

What in the WORLD happened in Asia yesterday? The two Asia funds that I own dropped 10% and 13% yesterday! OMG!

Check out the LA Basin area, pretty damn crazy. You can clearly make out Redondo Harbor and Marina Del Ray, can you find where I live? (Note, it’s 3.1Megs, so it might take a minute to load)

Apparently 95% of Americans have had pre-marital sex. Good job Bush! Those abstinence only programs SURE are working!

Check out this great interview with Gov. Vilsack.

I’m not sure how I feel about him running for president. He’d be way better then Bush, obvsiously. But I don’t really think he did that great of a job in Iowa.

Today is the last day of work for me. 🙂 So far the week has been pretty straight forward and boring. I didn’t go biking at all because it’s been to cold! Today after work I am driving out to Pasadena to pick up Chiba, then we are going to drop my car off in Chino. From there we are going to go out to dinner and then to Charles Phoenix’s Retro Holiday Slide Show. Which looks exciting! After that he’s dropping me off at the airport for my red-eye flight!

I land at 8am tomorrow in DM, and hit the ground running for appointments to look at houses and the like! Exciting! I really hope one of these come through. I’ve got my eye on a nice 4-plex in Ankeny! And I think I’m finially starting to figure out this whole mortgage business. Ugh!

Oh, and if anyone is avalaibe, would you please check in on my cats on the 26th?! PLEASE!

Till Iowa! Adios!

PS: Back in EARLY 2004 I got my first Mac Laptop. I’m currently on my Third one. The first and second were both named “Zetta Bytes”.. I was reading an article today and apparently in late 2004, Sun came out with the ZFS or Zettabyte File System! Bastards stole my name!

If anyone wants to steal my current computers name, it’s WakoBytes. Feel free to make her a personalized Filesystem. What a great christmas present! And My wireless access point is YoctoBytes, my iPod is called YottaBytes, external HD is AttoBytes, PakoBytes is my MythTVbox and I’ve re-purposed ZettaBytes to my home database Server.

Sleepy Weekend

Well, it’s been another boring yet long weekend. Friday, I can’t really remember what I did. I know I had lunch with this guy Geoff, and he was cool. Also did more Loan things, Country Wide finially got back to me, with an 8.5% interest rate! Bastards. So I think I’ll go with the first guy who called me with 6.5%. But we shall see. I’m just so scared of getting ripped off. Geoff gave me the name of this guy, so I’m going to call him too.

Saturday I got up and did a ton of stuff. I had a lunch meeting at this place called Clementine (VERY good food) and have some more contract work to do. So that’s exciting, after that I came home and did a bunch of other stuff. Ended up going out with Chiba that night. We went and saw Blood Diamond. After that we went out to dinner for him and just hung out and talked. I got home about 4am and went to bed.

Sunday morning I woke up about 10am and was going to go on a bike ride, but it was FREEZING. So I laid down on the couch for a little bit and was going to go biking at 1 when it was warmer… I didn’t wake up again till 3:30pm. 🙁 Opps. So Sunday was pretty much completly wasted. Got up and made dinner. Chiba called in there and said he was going to go to Weho to meet some friends and asked if I wanted to meet him there. So I went off to Weho and we hung out again. Apparently Daniel (germany boy) moved out. lol. So that’s good news. 🙂 Chiba and I went out to dinner and talked for a while, so that was nice. I left after that and he and his friends went to The Abbey.

I can’t believe we are only 7 days from Christmas! I’m so excited. I leave Wed night and I have to pack and everything yet. I haven’t done anything yet! I think the plan is that on Wed after work I am going to go and drop my car off in Pomona @ David’s and he is going to fix it while I am gone. Chiba is going to drive me to the airport. Then on Wed when I get back Chiba will pick me up and we will go pick up my car. Hopefully this will all work out!

Have I mentioned how fucking cold it is here?!

Later.

Alcohol

Dear Alcohol,

First & foremost, let me tell you that I’m a huge fan of yours. As my friend, you always seem to be there when needed. The perfect post-work cocktail, a beer at the game, and you’re even around in the holidays, hidden inside chocolates as you warm us when we’re stuck in the midst of endless family gatherings. However, lately I’ve been wondering about your intentions. While I want to believe that you have my best interests at

heart, I feel that your influence has led to some unwise consequences:

1. Phone calls: While I agree with you that communication is important, I question the suggestion that any conversation of substance or necessity takes place after 2 a.m. Why would you make me call those ex-boyfriends/girlfriends when I know for a fact they do not want to hear from me during the day, let alone all hours of the night?

2. Eating: Now, you know I love a good meal, but why do you suggest that I eat a taco with chili sauce, along with a big Italian meatball and some stale chips (washed down with WINE & topped off with a Kit Kat after a few cheese curls & chili cheese fries)? I’m an eclectic eater, but I think you went too far this time.

3. Clumsiness: Unless you’re subtly trying to tell me that I need to do more yoga to improve my balance, I see NO need to hammer the issue home by causing me to fall down. It’s completely unnecessary, and the black & blue marks that appear on my body mysteriously the next day are beyond me.

Similarly, it should never take me more than 45 seconds to get the front door key into the lock.

4. Furthermore: The hangovers have GOT to stop. This is getting ridiculous. I know a little penance for our previous evening’s debauchery may be in order, but the 3pm hangover immobility is completely unacceptable. My entire day is shot. I ask that, if the proper precautions are taken (water, vitamin B, bread products, aspirin) prior to going to sleep/passing out face down on the kitchen floor with a bag of popcorn, the hangover should be minimal & in no way interfere with my daily activities.

Alcohol, I have enjoyed our friendship for some years now & would like to ensure that we remain on good terms. You’ve been the invoker of great stories, the provocation for much laughter, and the needed companion when I just don’t know what to do with the extra money in my pockets.

In order to continue this friendship, I ask that you carefully review my grievances above & address them immediately. I will look for an answer no later than Thursday 3pm (pre-happy hour) on your possible solutions & hopefully we can continue this fruitful partnership.

Thank you,

One of your many fans

The right house…

So, the search if off and going now. Officially.

However, it has not been an easy trail already! I figured the hardest part would be the financing, finding a realtor and getting in to see places would be easy right? These people make their living off of selling houses. They’ll call me back in two seconds. Not the case.

As previously stated, I was going to jus call up Bish. I’ve had a friendly relationship with him for a year while I was dating Adam. Although after that I didn’t talk to him, I assumed that he’d still be on friendly terms with me. Afterall, what did I do to him? Nothing! So I called him. Three times, never once did I get an answer. I left a voicemail, no call back. I sent him an e-mail via the Iowa Realty site. No calls. I’ve left messages for a few others as well, and still nothing!

These people want to sell houses, right? So why do they not return calls. The housing market is cooling off, I shouldn’t have to be tracking down and stalking these people to be their customer. They should be coming after me!

I’m getting the same run around with people in the mortgage industry! I figured I’d start with some local banks, so that I could go in and talk to them and get the full run down of what I needed to do. I don’t want to go around to a bunch of places and get “pre-approved” and have that ruin my credit score because they are checking my report and what not… So yesterday I called about 5 places here in the South-Bay area. WaMu, Citibank, places like this. I call and tell them that I am wanting to purchase an investment property and would like to make an appointment with someone to come in and talk to them. They all say. “I will tranfser you”.. Transfer, Voice mail… I leave a message.

Do you think a single one of these people has called me back? NOT ONE! Not a god damn one of them. Don’t these people want to sell a fucking mortgage? What is wrong with them! So on my way home I am driving by a US Bank and just stop in. I talk to a very nice woman who clearly has no idea what she is doing, but takes my business card and PROMISES that someone will call me back before EOB. Did anyone call? NO.

What happened to banks where you can’t get fucking service worth shit. Seriously, I’ve got EXCELLENT credit, I’m a great credit risk. Why don’t these people want to loan to me!

So this morning I go online to start looking for places. E-loan, DiTech, CountryWide, etc. I decide that I want to stay away from County Wide, due to my previous experience with some of thier employees. So I check out Interest.com, they of course say that CountryWide is my best bet. So I put in a thing to have someone call me.. I’m still waiting.

So then I decide to go the LendingTree.com route. I go through that and put in all the information. Within 15 minutes i’ve got 5 calls. I take the first one, and it’s a really nice guy from First Meridian Mortgage. He’s very helpful and gives me all the information I need and we talk though it all. Since i know my credit score he can easily pre-qualify me and get me the interest and all that information without running a credit report. Then if I decide to go with them I’ll have to do the Credit report, etc.

Next up, I return a call from Amerisave. Woman tells me they can’t do anythinbg without running a Credit report. NO thanks!

So then I return a call from this guy in Town Financial Corp. He just sounded stupid, and did’t really give me any information that I was asking for and just kept going around and around as if he were reading script. I told him he wasn’t very good at selling his products and hung up on him. Idiot.

This is just such a headache! Why do they have to make this process so god damn hard and annoying.

Just you wait till I get around to bitching about the closing costs!

Compensation…

Ok, another really long and busy weekend!

Lets see…. Friday I went out to dinner with Hector and like 8 of his girls. Very awk at times, but it was fun. It snowed at The Grove which was cute! I loved it. He was very nice, but honestly I hated the girls we were with. I also felt a bit left out at times cause they kept talking about school work and all this stuff that was just so 2 years ago for me! haha. Hopefully he and I can hang out again soon though. Chiba was mad at me for going out though. 🙁

Guerrilla Gay Bar was TONS of fun that night though, the place was SO PACKED that you couldn’t move at all. But it was still great. The crowd was Sooooo different then the typical WeHo group, so that was really nice. Just wish I had talked to more of the people there.

Left about midnight because I was tired, from being up since 3:30am, and plus it was just getting tooo crowded in there. Called Chiba and we talked for a bit. Got home and just crashed.

Got up at 6am Saturday and did a couple hours of work. Went off and did laundry. I always stop at Albertson’s on my way to buy some quarters, the same one that I buy ALL my groceries from. I always get two rolls, never had ANY problem before geting these. I buy a bagel, a thing of milk and get $20 in quarters. This time, i’m told they can only give me ONE roll, it’s always been this way. They never give out more then one roll. Very annoying. So I go across the street to Wells Fargo and since I’m not a fucking customer there they CHARGE me $2 to buy a fucking roll of quarters! EXCUSE ME!? WTF! Fuckers. Yet another reason why I hate banks! Sadly today I have to go to one to talk about a home loan!

So anyways, I go and do my laundry, come home and put the laundry down and then get side tracked with about 10 other projects. First I finished the clock, then I cleaned out my closets and then I cleaned my apartment and did some other stuff and then finially got around to putting the laundry away. Did I mention that I SMASHED my finger in there too?? Ouch!

By the time I was done with all this it was late, so I loaded my bike in the car and went to bed.

Sunday I got up, and went biking. Long ass ride, froze my ass off. But it was good to get back out there, we went up and over Sepulveda into the valley again. Went to the gym after and showered and then headed over to Chiba’s for lunch. I got there and he tells me that he’s already had lunch, but he told me he hadn’t so that I would come. lol. What a strange one. So we went out to lunch and then went and got him ice cream. I stayed for awhile and we talked.. Apparently this guy he dated back in the summer is coming to visit him (from Germany) for a couple weeks over christmas/new years… And he wanted to see how I felt about it… Honstly. I’m a bit annoyed, but on the account that this has been in plans since long before I met him, and the fact that we’re not exclusively seeing each other I suppose it’s fine. But since he will be AT his apartment the whole time, that A) means they will probably be fucking, B) means that I won’t have any time to see him. Just a bit annoying. Not that he and I are fucking currently anyways. Ok. I’m clearly not getting my point across.

Do you all remember the post a while back where I put the picture of the car that was totally smashed when it was parked on Pacific Cost Highway… Anyways. While I was driving to the bike ride I saw one MUCH worse… Someone had rear ended an SUV that was parked along Hawthorne, pushed that car into the car infront of it, and then pshed that car into the car infront of IT and pushed that one into the one infront of IT! So there were a total of 5 cars in the accident, only one of them had a driver! The first SUV was basicallyl FLAT. Whoever did that had to have been FLYING down hawthorne blvd.

As many of you know, I’ve been taking on any extra jobs I can get… So I’ve been looking on Craigslist mostly. It amazes me what these people are offering to pay for things. Some of it very complicated stuff that they are like. “$10/hr” or something as equally horrible! I really just want to reply to all these idiots and tell them they aren’t going to get someone _good_ to do it for that cheap!

Anyways. I’m off now to call some realtors and the like.

Adios!

PS.. I thought this was cute: