Ouch! My arm hurts!

Actually, its fine. But I did give blood today. :)

Em donates with some frequency and usually tried to guilt-trip me when she gets home each time. This time, the American Red Cross was taking donations on our campus (in the basement of my building in fact) ... so I had no excuse not to go. I was happy to see they had a steady stream of people coming through, and they said it had been that way since they started with no signs of them slowing down. I still don't like the sight or the feeling of the needle going into my arm but everything was pretty painless and I was in and out in a jiffy.

Hurray For Em!

Proudly, I would like to let everyone know that Em received a really good job offer yesterday for a school counselor position at a great high school here in town!

It has been a long road for her to get this (crazy schools start posting jobs in February but don't have HR departments who will contact people when the position has been filled) but she was finally given a chance to show her stuff in a couple interviews the other week and nailed it. :-) A current counselor at the school is going on maternity leave in October so Em will be filling in for her for the remainder of the '07-'08 school year and thus will have first dibs on interviewing for positions for the following year. The job should be some great experience for her, and will let her really help some kids.

Congradulations Babe!

Labor Day Weekend Wrapup

Happy Belated Labor Day (and congrats to all of us American who are working too hard ;-) )

Em and I had a rather lazy Labor Day weekend which I think was perfect. Between actually getting to sleep in, getting cable near the end of last week (finally) in our new apartment, 2 different BBQs with Em's family, Tempura night with at our apartment with my parents and watching Em beat my dad at XBox .... it was a good weekend.

** Tempura night went better than I was expecting (I feared large amounts of grease everywhere and a few days of food smell, but niether happened luckily). The second grocery store I went to had tempura batter which made making a TON of food a piece of cake. Between the peppers, broccoli, cauiflower and sweet potatos, we had plenty of food. I also tried out a recipe for PopCorn Chickpeas. Flavor was good and a fast and easy snack ... but they didn't turn out crispy like they should have. My guess was that I needed to have the oil hotter before I put them in. Definetly going to try these again. **

Today I was supposed to have an allday follow-up class on TDD/TFD (Monsanto offers an internal certification which this class is a step toward: 3 day class, 1 day class, X number of hours of using the technique with mentor review...), but the instructor was sick so it was back to my normal work.

I have some more house-hunting info to post and I want to get a post or 2 about personal finance topics up soon, but I haven't finished any of the posts yet. Thanks Kooz for the tip about the county websites (assesments and tax info). STL county has a real nice website and a ton of information on it.

This weeks goals are to actually secure a safety deposit box, finish up scanning our important documents, and get them to the bank. Also, hopefully I will be able to catch up on my scanning/shredding of bank statements/bills so that they are in the computer and not in our filing cabinette.

Completed Projects!! #1 - "Book" Book Shelf

Thats right folks. Step right up and see the 8th wonder of the world! An amazing feat that may never be seen again in the history of the humn race!!!

A completed project!

[someone go make sure Josh is still breathing]

I have been wanting to do this project ever since I saw the instructable for it a long time ago. I believe I may have posted about it in the past (but am too lazy to search for it), but here is a brief description again: Basically, the project was to create a self supporting bookshelf from an existing book in such a way that the supports can not be easily seen from a normal viewing angle, thus making it look like the books were stuck to the wall without any support.

This past weekend, while taking some books back to the library I glanced through the old books they had for sale and noticed two that were a decent size, had good hardback covers under their plastic coatings, and one had a perfect title ;-). For $0.5 a pop, who could resist? So I picked up two that were the same size (my first attempt would be on the other one, just in case).

The process for building the shelf went like follows:

1. Measured everything about the book (outside and inside dimensions)
2. Went to the hardware store and found some suitables "L" brackets that I thought would work for ~ $1.50. I decided on a couple that were about 3" long and two screw holes per side. Smaller ones would have nice since they would have been hard to see, but larger ones would make it stronger and easier to use both screw holes. I decided to use two b/c I wasn't sure how sturdy they would be or exactly how heavy the books would be.
3. Decided how far through the book I wanted to mount the brackets (lower on the book meant that more of the book was supported by the bracket, but also meant I could only get a screw into one of the holes. I compramised and positioned the bracket in the upper half.
4. Outlined the brackets on the top of the page where I wanted the top of the bracket, and using a razor blade, cut out rectangles from the pages going down until the brackets could sit flush with the desired page.
5. Next I had to notch out the pages that would be above the bracket (so that it could sit flush with the wall) and the top cover slightly.
6. I had some small nuts and bolts laying around so I drilled out two small holes through the middle pages of the book and thread these through so that the inside part of the bracket would really be mounted to the pages instead of just glued.
7. I made up a mixture of elmer's glue and a bit of water (to thin it out) and painted this on every page so that they were glued together, with the brackets mounted in their correct posistions.
8. I let this dry overnight with a large stack of books on top to make sure that the pages were glued together and that any extra glue squeezed out.
9. The next day I found some pages I had missed so I used some clear tacky glue on the outside edges to fix these. This also helped to make sure that the sides were clean and smooth.
10. When that was all dry, I mounted them to the wall with 4 x 1.5" screws and I was done!

Yes it was a decent amount of work given the size and utility of the shelf, but I think it turned out great! Here are a few more photos of the finished product (the rest can be found here). Sorry I don't have any during construction (Em had the camera with her that weekend).

Some words of caution and things I will change for next time from the build:

• Given the weight and size of the books I have put up right now, I probably could have gotten away with just one bracket. The size ended up good; bigger and you might have be able to see it. If you took the time to find a stud to mount it to or used special dry-wall mounting brackets it would have also worked with a single bracket. As it stand, I can put a fair bit of weight on it without any worries.


• Cutting the parts out of the pages was time consuming but easy. I put a piece of cardboard under the pages where I wanted to stop, and it was pretty easy to cut through them. Drilling through the pages for the bolts was way faster than cutting, but MAKE SURE that you have everything lined up and measure properly before you do. Also MAKE SURE you have the pages lying flat like they are when the book is closed when you drill. I did it by myself so neither of these things happened exactly right and the holes were a bit on angle. Everything ended up ok, but it took a lot of forcing to have the book lay flat when closed.


• Glueing all the pages took a long time and was a pain. Thinning out the glue helped a ton when used with a small paint brush. The problem was that when you painted a page and flipped down the next one (while holding up the dry ones) the new page doesn't land flat like it should when the book is closed. Its pulled back a bit. Well, this is fine until you go and try to close the book and the pages can't slide anymore b/c of the glue. Luckily I was able to fix this. I don't know of a better way, but if anyone can think of one, let me know.


• Adding the bolts took some time, but really made the whole thing much more secure.


• Mounting the brackets lower inside the book would have made the page gluing process much easier since they the pages would have been suppored by the brackets instead of hanging below the brackets stuck together only by glue.

Overall, I was very pleased with how it came out and will try and do the other one soon. The jury may still be out on how asthetically pleasing they are or how well they go with the other stuff in the office, but I am please and Emily doesn't hate me :) Love you babe.

One thing somone mentioned I believe in the comments to the instructables page was that someone could add strong magnets to the inside of the book and mount another book (also with added magnets) underneeth the one mounted to the wall. That way, if someone came by and tried to remove the bottom one to see how they were mounted, the bottom one would slide away like magic with the others still hanging there. Funny idea, but too much for me ;)

House Hunt Part 2 - What I have Done, What I want to Do

Thanks for the comment Kooz. It perfectly transitions me into my next post: What I have done so far, and what I want to do in the near future...

Things I have done so far...

First, after a gracious offer form a relative, we got a copy of our FULL credit report and scores. Last year when we were shopping for a new car we did the AnnualCreditReport.com thing and received our report and scores. This "soft" pull was not very detailed but helped us ensure that there weren't any glaring problems on our report and an idea of where we stood. The good old Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 allows all Americans the ability to request this information once every 12 months for free. This is extremely helpful when researching any large purchase or credit application.

The report we received recently was a full "hard" pull. From what I can gather, "soft" pulls will not effect your credit score in any way and only pull the basic information. The "hard" pulls can effect your score if there are too many in a certain period of time (depends on each credit bureau's formulas). It is truly amazing how much information they have about you. Every piece of credit you have ever had, what your monthly payment are and have been, how many inquires have been made on your credit in the last few months, your exact balances, any late payments you have made or other interesting notes...... it goes on and on.

Luckily for us, and because of our anal paying of bills on time and not over extending ourselves, our credit report was squeaky clean. The only negative remarks on it (its nice, each bureau gives there scores as well as some reasons why they have been lowered from perfect) related to the length of our established credit history, the number of accounts it showed us as having with balances and the number of inquires we had recently.

None of these were really bad, but they were the only things cited as having lowered our scores. The credit history thing, we can't do anything about except let time pass. We don't really have that many balances, but Em's student loans are broken out into various accounts and our names are on some old accounts with our family (which is good b/c it greatly increased our credit history since they dated back a number of years). Finally, since we had moved and every utility and service runs a quick credit check to make sure you will pay your bills .... ours was slightly lower b/c of that (electric, apt. complex, home phone service ....)

As I said, overall they were great (the average credit score being around 770). Its good to know that everything is correct, up to date and looking good for when we apply for a loan.

The other thing I have done is to finally start tracking and looking at our spending and finances. Quicken to the rescue! After ~2 years of threatening to do it, I finally sunk my teeth into it just before the beginning of August and I have to say, I am loving it. Each weekend I spend about 20 minutes entering in transaction from the past week, making sure all of our accounts are up to date, etc. It gives me a good feeling having a much better idea of where our money is, where it is coming from, how fast its leaving and what kind of return we are getting on our investments. I will probably post more on this subject and related ones when I start my personal finance posts, but for now ... Quicken is a good thing. Its going to give us much better concrete numbers as to how much our expenses are and what percentage of that is needs/wants.

Next steps...

• Start putting together all of the information I have read and can find out about the various mortgage options out there, what the trade-offs of each are (pay more now or later, more tax deductions or not, less money down or higher payments....). I would like to have a good idea of this before I start talking to lenders so that for each one I can circle the ones they offer, and after plugging in there rates, be able to see the short term and long term impact of each.
• Research what programs are available in our area to help first time home buyers
• Keep looking around at homes in various areas to get a good sense of what $$ will buy you what in what part of town, what our theoretical price range can get us, and what kinds of features can alter the price of a home.
• Look into what lenders are our best bets when it comes to mortgages and try to better understand the buyer/seller/Realtor(s) relationships and services

My thought is to post an article about each of these as I get through them or at least find out some real information. I have many more things on my ToDo list, but those are the ones I want to work on in the immediate future. If anyone has any suggestions, would like more information, or thinks my thoughts are crap .... please let me know. ;)

House Hunt Part 1 - The Begining

I put together a fair bit of notes and thoughts I have about house hunting, what I have learned so far, what I am doing, what I need to do, etc .... but I think its a bit much for one post. Therefore, I am going to start out this series with a much briefer statement of intent and my initial thoughts on what I/we are looking for.

We are looking to buy a 2+ bedroom 2+ bath house in approximately 10 months when our current lease will be up. That means (from my rough estimates) we will need to officially really start looking for a house in the late April time frame (so that if we find a great house, we don't have to pay for rent+mortgage for very long).

Some features that at least for the time being are top on our lists of needs and wants (seperating the list will come in the following months) are:

• garage (at the very least covered parking)
• decent size house and lot (doesn't need to be too big, I have never lived a huge house)
• big enough yard for a dog to run in (I can't wait until we have Rudy or Truman ... yes we have names for the dogs we want before we have them ;) )
• we prefer older and more unique homes to your standard Suburbia ranch or two story. A small interesting house with some character is what we want.
• going along with the last point, we are thinking to live much closer in to the city than where we both grew up (out in the suburbs). I wouldn't have guessed this one growing up, but I really like the community atmosphere and the age of older neighborhoods.
• we plan on living in the house at least until the our future kids are ready for kindergarten, maybe a bit longer so school districts are a factor but not a for sure limiter

My/our main goals for the meantime include getting a better understanding of various areas of town, what $XXX,XXX will get you in each area, what we can comfortably afford, how much home improvement projects will really cost in dollars/time/sanity, and decide on what specific things we have to have in our first house and what things we would love, but don't need.

My intention, given the positive response everyone gave, is to document what I find out, what resources I am using, and what things we get right and wrong.

For now I will leave you with some of the resources I am currently reading. My next post will hopefully talk about what we have found out so far, what we are in the process of doing and some of my questions about different mortgage options (Alex, your first step is to remember how to spell it ;-) ).

• Resources I am using (books, websites, RSS)
• -- Idiots Guide To Mortgages - currently reading, less detail but good
  
• -- Tips & Traps When Buying a Home - Third Addition by Robert Irwin - I couldn't finish this one. Right out of the gate they were pushing houses as investments and that you can/should borrow as much as possible so that you can get a good return. Had a few good tips and traps to watch out for (especially when it came to home inspections) but I didn't want to find out.
  
• -- http://allfinancialmatters.com/
• -- http://www.thesimpledollar.com/
• -- http://www.doityourself.com/
• -- http://blogs.move.com/first-time-home-buyers
• -- http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/
• -- http://www.smartmoney.com/
• -- http://www.bargaineering.com/articles/buying-a-home
• All of the above links are to sites whose RSS feeds I subscribe to that have had house buying, mortgage or home repair articles lately. I read all of the pretty much everyday and they usually have some really good advice. As with anything, you have to take it with a grain of salt, but they often agree on things or at the very least give me insight into something I need to read up on.
  

Google Reader Subscriptions

If anyone is interested, here is a link to my current Google Reader subscriptions in whatever format they export to. I would suggest glancing through the XML and finding the ones you like before importing them all (there are ~120).

Let me know if you find any of them interesting.

** Also, there is a link on RegenMyToolkit about how I don't have to clean anymore ;)

*** Anyone have any idea what is going on with the spacing of the text on my blog? Ever since I switched templates it keeps fluctuating mid post and I am not doing anything different that I know of.