We had a great time yesterday. It was great seeing Anit, Carter and Kent, and meeting Kent's parents. Kent's parents very generously picked up the lunch bill despite my protests - they are quite generous like their son. They had stuff going on after lunch, so hopefully we can meet up with them today.

We had a really fun time at Michael L's last night too. The only problem was getting there, as he lives near Piedmont Park, and the jazz fesitval was going on last night. We had to drive for 30 minutes around his place looking for parking, and eventualy walk 10 or so blocks. Michael had a ton of strategy games that I have never played before, and there were 10 of us there. We broke into two games. Chrissy, Ward, plus two others and I played Railroad Tycoon, which was a lot of fun. Now I want to get that game, but it is a little pricey. Michael, Alexa and their side played PowerGrid. I won Railroad Tycoon, and Alexa won PowerGrid. Our game took longer, so they played some game involving time travel, and a game "For Sale".

Michael and Alexa cooked a great dinner, and then we played Mafia. It brought back old school memories. Chrissy really enjoyed that, and she played as the Mafia perfectly and won her game. I was nothing but a townsperson. It was a good time, and I would love to come again. It is one of the reasons I miss being in Atlanta. I'll have to see if Kent or Carter want to join sometime.

Now I'm just enjoying a lazy Memorial Day morning...

Our good friend Kent is going to have a brand new soul today at noon, so we are going to join him in the celebration. It should be fun. Then Mike L. has invited us again to his weekly strategy game night, but we'll actually get to go this time. It'll be good to spend time with friends, we've been around the house too much, cleaning up, etc.

It is nice to have Monday off!

The house situation is really quite funny, and like a soap opera. We have had three offers on the house, but it is still not sold. One offer this week was low and we rejected, because two weeks ago we had verbal offers for more than $10K more. Sadly both of the verbal offers didn't pan out. One guy was going to write us a contract on our verbally agreed price, and then talked to his boss about it and found out his company may be moving to Atlanta in two years. Then another family we also agreed to a price, and then at the last minute they decided our house might be too small when their two kids were getting older.

We had someone give us a "final offer" which we rejected, and they sent us an email saying they were going to go with another option. Then in less than two hours from sending us a farewell email there were at the house showing it again to a friend to get their perspective.

You get a little more adventure going for sale by owner. Fortuntately we've seen neighborhood prices moving up, but I think that some agents may still not see our house selling for as much as we have it due to the historical values of the neighborhood. That's why we've been getting offers from people without agents, and that's ok with us. 3% less to pay. ;-)

I tried to go play paintball today, as I have used my new paintball gun since I received it for Christmas. But sadly, there was a huge paintball day on Sunday at the place I was going, so everyone who was coming out this weekend was waiting until Sunday. Yet there is a 70-80% chance of rain all day, so I probably won't get to play at all.

We are getting close to a written offer on the house. We are exchanging verbal offers with a guy, and are within a few thousand of each other, discussing furniture, etc. It has been a great house for us, and we have learned a lot buying, selling and being a home owner. An education in life.

Becca, you had asked why we were selling. Chrissy is wrapping up her last year of Pharmacy school and is going on rotations now in a region several hours a way. Too far to commute. If our house was in Atlant we would probably stay. We had hoped she would be assigned to Atlanta, but they do a random drawing to decide what order your preferences are applied. Ironically, I currently have a project in that same area so it won't be as bad as we originally thought.

So we are figuring out where to go next. Chrissy's rotations are so ever changing, it will be really hard for us to get an apartment in the region. She changes spots every 5 weeks, and some of her locations are an hour away. If we were to get one, she would be set one rotation, and then in 5 weeks would have an hour commute each way the next five weeks. There isn't a great solution. We also don't know how long my project in the area will last. Lots of variables, but I feel good we'll find a workable situation.

Happy Cinco de Mayo! Five years from when we've graduated from Tech. It has been a good five years. I haven't been as good touch with college friends as I would like, but part of that is living in a town away from most friends.

Interestingly, I found out my cousin (my dad's sister's daughter) is going to start at Tech in the Fall as an undergrad. She wanted to do biomedical engineering, so I told her that Tech was the program for her (the joint program with Emory) but I haven't heard from her about it. So I was suprised to hear that's where she ended up.

Speaking of 5 years out of college, I had my ten year high school reunion last weekend. That was crazy. 93 of my 173 Westminster classmates returned. I really haven't seen much of them at all. What was strange was there choice of profession. I would guess that over a third of the 93 were lawyers. (My dad says that is because lawyers always turn out for free booze.) There were three doctors (which btw is a bad ratio of doctors to lawyers for malpractice suits), and maybe 10 or so consultants.

My Junior prom date is a school librarian in Dunwoody, who lives alone with her cat. My freshman dance and Senior prom dates are both... lawyers. A couple of people lived up to the private school snooty reputation, but I think Chrissy was generally impressed with how nice people were.

I would like to reconnect with more of those people... too bad time is so short.