Archive for "Wishlist"
It will be a sad sad day!
Posted on November 7, 2007 by Brian under Games, Life, Toys, Wishlist.
A few months ago I decided that I was going to cancel my account to World of Warcraft. This does not mean that I loose my character or anything like that it just means that I am not going to pay to play for a while. I looked online to see when my account ends and it says that it ends on November 22, 2007 4:16 AM PST. That happens to fall on a Thursday I am thinking of taking that Thursday off and just staying up and playing WOW till my account disconnects. It’s what any good WOW player would do if he was going to take a break from playing. Don’t get me wrong, I love the game! and they are coming out with yet another expansion that I want that will raise the cap to level 80 (I just hit level 70 on my Warlock) and add a new series of skills and powers to my character. However, the reason I am stopping for a while is because we really want to get our house done and on the market. I don’t want any distractions from me doing that so I am packing up anything that might be a distraction to me. The WOW is getting turned off for a while, the X-Box is going to get put up for a while (or I may let my dad play Halo 2 on it till I get moved. you know to see if I can get him hooked, lol!) and the PlayStation is going to go to Game stop to see if I can get anything out of it, maybe get some credits toward a PSP game or something. But the point is I want to completely focus on getting the house remodeled so that we can move out and into a nicer house. Ching said last night that when we get into our new home I can turn my account back on and play again because thats all we will really be doing, staying at home playing games and watching movies. We wont have the money to do anything else. I am hoping that we wont go into serious debt because we have a new house but I do want a house that will make her happy. We are trying to find a comfortable middle ground right know. I am sure that we will find it eventually but we have about a year before we really need to look, at the moment its just all a dream. Until we get this house fixed up and looking better we have no hope of selling it and getting into anything so first thing is first. Until then, I will be sad because I can not deliver my other worldly level of pawnage to the unsuspecting n00bs that reside within the World of Warcraft. Maybe I can ask for the expansion for Christmas, that would be a definite motivator to get me going.
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Flint Hills National
Posted on October 21, 2007 by Ching under Life, Wishlist.
Holy cow! This $1.4 million dollar house is probably the highlight of our 2007 fall parade of homes adventure. You haven’t seen amazing until you’ve seen this house. It was breathtaking!
Let’s start with the fountain in the front patio/courtyard area. The front courtyard (I don’t want to call it a front porch because it is so much more than that in size and design, specially with the beautiful fountain) is accessible from the kitchen and the formal dining and the front door. On a nice summer day, you could easily just leave all of the French doors open when you’re entertaining.
When you walk in, you are greated by this really expansive great room, “great” is an understatement. You could fit our entire house in the great room. It is so big that it has two fireplaces, one on either end. The covered deck has vaulted ceiling and spans the entire width of the house. The kitchen has a huge island, bigger than Australia.
All of the bedrooms have attached bathrooms. The most of the bathrooms are strategically located in between two bedrooms so they are shared. These are not accessible from the hallway because these are specifically for the bedrooms. The house has several half baths just for visitors. The shower in the master bath could literally fit half a dozen people.
The huge bar in the basement boasts granite counter tops. Actually, I think all of the counters (including the bathrooms) were all solid surface, granite or marble. The walkout basement also has a fireplace. It is truly an amazing house.
Brian and I felt out of place and out of our element. We are these poor schmucks who would never have set foot in such a beautiful house if it weren’t for it being part of the parade of homes. It makes me wonder what kind of people can afford to live in such homes. I don’t think I’d ever own a house like that in my lifetime, not even if we won the lottery.
I love checking out these amazing houses in the parade of homes. It makes you go ooh and ahh. Sometimes it is depressing, but I find visiting parade homes more fun than depressing so Brian and I go check them out anyway.
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Ching Wants a New Bag
Posted on October 17, 2007 by Ching under Wishlist.
I want a new bag! I want a new bag! I want a new bag!
Why are bags so expensive? I found this bag at Franklin Covey which I thought I liked, but it’s freakin’ ginormous! It looks like luggage. They did have this nice business tote, though. But I already have a laptop bag.
They have a whole bunch of bags at 60% off right now because the new bags are coming in January. Maybe Brian will surprise me with a new bag. Hint, hint.
Kidding aside, I have the best work group ever! They gave me a couple of gift cards, a boquet of flowers, and a musical card for Boss’ Day. It felt like Christmas! The musical card was a challenge to read because everytime you opened it, it played that “All Star” song from the Shrek movie really, really loud. I love getting musical cards for others, too. I just never realized how bad it is when you’re trying to be quiet. LOL.
Anyway, it was very, very sweet and generous of them. I told Brian I feel really bad because I have been so swamped and stressed out lately. With everything going on, I haven’t had the time to spend with each person that I want to; I set some aggressive goals this year based on last year and I haven’t done as well at achieving them. It’s just one thing after another after another that you have to work on. Since there’s only so much of you, things get accomplished at the cost of other things. Right now, my team is getting the short end of the stick and I feel terrible.
Brian they just want to do something nice for me, so I should be happy instead of feeling bad. And I am happy. Thanks to my work group I might just get a new bag!
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Bathroom Fixtures
Posted on October 14, 2007 by Ching under Sponsored Post, Wishlist.
Brian and I went to Thuy’s this morning to setup the encryption for her wireless. Michael was there and made breakfast for everyone. I was really impressed. I was expecting donuts. We had wheat toast, eggs, bacon, and sausage. It was really nice of them to feed us. Thanks, Thuy and Michael!
Brian and I figured it would take two seconds to secure her wireless. It actually took a bit longer because we didn’t know the password to the router. It was no longer the default. I told Brian to do a factory reset so it would revert back to “admin” as the password. He did a reset several times, but he was doing a reset like he does on ours and it didn’t work. He kept thinking that the router was reset, but the default password still wouldn’t work. Anyway, I finally convinced him that it’s not reset so he read the reset instructions. For Thuy’s router it was slightly different. Once we restored the factory defaults, it took seconds to change the login for the router and setup the wireless encryption.
Once we got that up and running, we connected Thuy’s laptop, my laptop, my phone, and Thuy’s iPhone to the, now secure, wireless network. I’d never really played with Thuy’s iPhone before. It is really cool. Seeing how it connects to the Internet and displays web pages really sold me. Anyway, after all was said and done we there for about an hour and a half (breakfast, setting up the wireless, playing with the iPhone, and all). I promised Brian we wouldn’t take more than an hour but it actually worked out perfect because I managed to talk Brian into checking out the parade of homes entries on the West side of town and the model homes didn’t open until noon.
The models we visited today were in Hampton Lakes, Watercress (a very fancy neighborhood in Maize), Evergreen, Fontana, Ridgeport, and Falcon Falls. All were in the Northwest area close to Thuy’s apartment except for Falcon Falls which is on the Northeast side of town. We went to check it out anyway because it was on the way home.
The models varied from inexpensive to mid-range to really luxurious. What we noticed was that the quality of construction and materials were pretty consistent with the prices, e.g. the cheaper homes used low quality, low cost fixtures. It was amazing to see the variety of faucets, kitchen sinks, bathroom fixtures, and such. I think the homes in Watercress used Kohler faucets. They looked really fancy and expensive.
In the category of inexpensive homes, Hampton Lakes and Falcon Falls are pretty comparable (no fancy fixtures or anything, just the basics) but we both agreed that the homes in Hampton Lakes were constructed better. Anyway, it will be a while before we are in the market to buy. We were mainly just curious to see what’s out there. Brian and I have a long road of home rennovations ahead of us. We’ve set a pretty agressive target of having our house ready by next selling season. I think by then there may be new neighborhoods in our price point that won’t se so disappointing in terms of layout and construction quality.
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2007 Fall Parade of Homes
Posted on October 13, 2007 by Ching under Life, Wishlist.
The 2007 Fall Parade of Homes begins today. It will run every weekend from noon to six for the next three weekends.
If you are curious what the trend is in home designs and floor plans these day, you can check them out this way. You can download the parade of homes guide here.
Brian and I are pretty clueless when it comes to these things, but we know what we like. We like lots of huge windows that bring lots of daylight into the house, open floor plans where you see everything as soon as you walk into the house, large kitchen preferrably with a walk-in pantry, three-car garages, walk-out basements, a nice big covered deck so you can put nice deck furniture out there, space in the basement for a movie/media room, a master bath that has a separate shower with at least two shower heads and large enough for ten people (in case Brian and I gain even more weight because we like to shower together), that sort of thing. Not that we can afford any of this, but while we’re dreaming of our house wish list let’s just go all out. LOL.
I think the popular house styles these days are ranches. At least that’s what we like. We don’t like multi-story homes with lots of stairs to deal with. We only want stairs that lead to the nice, bright walk-out, view-out basement on our wishlist. We don’t like home that are mazey with lots of partitions. We like it to be open to maximize all the light coming through the windows.
We actually found a house on the West side of town that fits the bill. Brian doesn’t like the West side, but I think he might consider it for this house. Of course, there is only one snag. At the $266K price tag, we can’t afford it. LOL. Isn’t that always the problem.
We have to save, save, save. And then, we need to make sure we get our house fixed up nice so we can get a reasonable return on it. Which is going to cost money also. Ugh! I’m getting more and more depressed as I type this. Sob.
Speaking of dream homes, we checked out four of the model homes at The Hawthorne last weekend. When we drove by, I picked my house strictly on the beauty of the facade. I told Brian, just you watch this house is going to be the best one. He picked his house, of course, and was convinced his choice would be the best. We looked at all four homes, looking at mine last. Guess what. Mine was the best! Brian was converted as soon as he saw the media room with the digital projector, tiered auditorium style floor with oversized couches, and the surround sound built into the walls. I sure know how to pick them. Even from the street.
I think the price tag on this one was $550K. It’s very nice with the main level being about 2500 sq ft. The floor plan is show below so you can drool over it as well. It’s not the same as actually walking in the house with your shower caps for your feet. Maybe when we win the lottery (or the World Series of Poker says Brian), we can walk in it without having to wear the stupid foot shower caps cos then it will be ours! LOL.
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