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There's no easy way to say this, and I'm sure it's going to disappoint a lot of people, but there's really no other way to say this other than to just say it.

I've started drinking soda again.

It's been about 6.5 years since I drank soda regularly. In those 6.5 years, I have had a sip or two now and again, mostly to try some new concoction like Vanilla Coke or Wild Berry Pepsi, but I quit drinking soda as a general rule.

My folks visited me a few weeks ago and I picked up some Sprecher's Root Beer for my dad. When they left, he didn't take it with him, and Sprecher's Root Beer is the second-best root beer I've ever had, and... well, that's pretty much what happened. From there, I decided to re-try some other root beers at Culver's, McDonald's, at A&W... I may not pronounce "root" correctly, but I do love me some root beer.

Since then I've also had some other sodas here and there and I've come to remember why I stopped drinking them in the first place: they don't sit well. I never feel better after drinking a soda, and I often feel worse. And, aside from the Sprecher's, none of them are so good-tasting as to be worth the trouble.

So, yeah, the pendulum has swung pretty far back the other way here, but I anticipate it heading back toward the middle some time soon. I'm not going to be a militant non-soda drinker, but neither am I going to start drinking it on a regular basis, I don't think.

It was a pretty good run, 6.5 years. It wasn't like it helped me all that much, though. I filled the void (my stomach) with plenty of other stuff that was way worse, I'm sure. And, as I'm constantly reminded by pretty much everybody, since I don't eat veggies or fruits I'm probably headed to an early grave already, so why hurry the process along?

So that's it. Probably not earth-shattering to anyone, but I thought I'd let you know. And for those of you who are bothered by such things (approximately 51% of you), feel free to read "pop" instead of "soda" throughout this entry, and those readers in the South can just read "Coke."

Labels: food

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Labels: house

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It's been almost three months since I posted anything of substance. When I don't blog for a while, I feel guilty, like I'm letting a responsibility slide. I don't even check the hit counter if I haven't blogged in a while, partly because I don't want to be depressed about losing any audience I might have had and partly because the guilt I feel over not blogging, sort of an "I don't deserve to have readers!" kind of thing.

It's funny to me that my last substantive post was about floating, since I now feel like I'm in over my head. The first month of school is always difficult for computer techs, but this year has been worse because we made a lot of changes over the summer. I feel like I haven't made any progress on my list at work, and I hate that while I'm working on one problem, I'm not working on another one. Prioritizing is hard for me, and using the "I like this teacher better than that one" system isn't the best one to follow, I've found. So it's not a matter of keeping anyone happy, it's about trying to keep as many people less mad at me at once as I can. I have actually made some progress here and there, but I'm just waiting for that one teacher to get really mad - and I wouldn't blame them, I just hate to have it happen.

At the beginning of the summer, I started thinking seriously about buying a house again. I wasn't necessarily in the best position to do so, but they're willing to work with a person's situation these days, and I found some great people to help: Sheila at Countrywide and Brett at Coldwell-Banker are two folks I'd recommend to anyone in the market for a house in the area.

I looked at two houses sorta on my own, but both of them fell through for various reasons. Both houses were being sold by friends, and I liked the idea of not having to go through the process of looking for a house and having one available that I was already familiar with and liked. After those opportunities didn't work out, I bit the bullet and set up an appointment with Brett to go house-looking. Melissa was in town and she went along with us, and I was super-glad. It's always easier to have someone else along, especially someone who's in your corner.

I had expressed an interest in having a house with a basement, so Brett showed me two older houses that were so equipped. Neither one was exactly right, with one of them being actually a little scary - think Nightmare on Elm Street boiler room kind of basement - so we moved on to newer homes without basements.

I liked the newer homes well enough (newer was appealing, too, because newer theoretically requires less work for a while), but nothing jumped out at me and said "Buy me!" Stands to reason, right? Who finds a house on their first time out? Well, as it turns out... I do!

On the way to the newer homes, I was telling Brett about one of the houses I had looked at earlier in the summer and described the layout to him. He was familiar with it, since it's a common enough layout in the newer homes in that part of town. After a minute or two, he said, "You know what? A house just came on the market that's got that layout, but with a full basement."

Aroo?

(Read that last paragraph in a Scooby Doo voice for best effect.)

So, yeah, turns out the layout was almost exactly the same, but sure enough, it had a full basement, with the main room in the basement being finished, even. I liked the house when I walked in, but seeing the basement sealed the deal for me. Before we left the house, I said, "This is the one. Let's do it." We went back to Brett's office to sign some preliminary things and from there it was pretty much a whirlwind of lining up financing, getting an inspection, and a whole bunch of other things. Three weeks later, I was sitting in a closing, signing papers with a pen that I hated because apparently official documents can't be signed with my favorite mahogany pen, they have to be in blue or black.

Ten days after that, I moved in.

I knew buying a house would be different than renting - I'm responsible for everything and can't call the landlord to fix stuff and all that - but I wasn't prepared for the mental changes. It's not as bad now a month later, but when I first moved in, I was overwhelmed by it. It's not that I'm now in more debt than I've ever been in, that doesn't really bother me, for some reason. It's the rest of it. I honestly would sit on the couch and mentally go through the things I needed to do on the the house and it and freeze up and not do any of it. It was like I couldn't even process the tasks of unpacking and painting and trimming the bushes and looking for appliances and cleaning and all of the rest of everything. I would come home from a day of being overwhelmed at work to being overwhelmed at home, and I didn't handle it very well. I feel like I haven't slept well in a year, and I'm now dealing with stomach problems on top of it.

Be honest: how many of you saw this coming? Four out of five of you reading would have said beforehand that I was the last person in the world who should buy a house, but none of you ever said that to me, that I can recall. I'm not blaming you, I just wish I could.

Now, I will say, it isn't all bad. I am getting used to it. Some day I'll have everything painted that I want to have painted (and if you want to help, I will let you!) and I will eventually have everything out of boxes. In the meantime, having people over is no longer akin to packaging sardines, I never have to fight for a parking space, and the litter boxes are miles away in the basement rather than right off the kitchen. I can play my music as loud as I want to and I can leave the six-foot corn stalk in my front yard if I want to (and, strangely enough, I do want to). Eventually I'll have people over for gatherings on a regular basis and I'll start learning how to do some of the fix-it-y things around the house, and pretty soon I'll forget that I stressed so much. I hope.

While I work on getting to that point, I'm going to do my best to not focus on the fact that I'll spend more in the coming year at Lowe's than at Best Buy, because if I do it'll just depress me.


(Pictures of the house, pre-move-in, in case you hadn't seen them yet.)

Labels: house

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