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Today is the day we close on our new house.  Sarah and I are both looking forward to having a place of our own, even if it means some extra work in the short-term. 

Per UW Credit Union Standard Operating Procedure, it appears that the closing costs we are being charged are wrong.  The credit union is charging us twice for credit reports.  Of course, getting someone at the credit union to actually answer a phone or call us back is something of a Sisyphean challenge.  So, we’ll end up paying the extra thirty dollars in the short term, only to spend hours and hours fighting to get it back from the clutches of the evil, unwashed bank gnomes in the future.

Sarah and I saw the Minnesota Twins deliver a brutal spanking to Bud “Chintzy, No Shame, Prevaricating” Selig’s Brewers on Sunday.  As much as I hate the Brewers and their owner, Miller Park itself is pleasant.  We were twenty-five rows from the field but it felt like we were very close to the action.  All the hoo-hah between innings gets quite tiresome after an inning or so.  Bubble Cam.  Kiss Cam.  Sausage Races.  Trivia questions.  Guess the attendance.  Guess which hat has a baseball under it (three-card monty style).  T-shirt toss.  Grounds crew shows.  Etc., etc., etc.  How many times do they need to display the two hot tubs they have beyond the right field fence?  There were 25,000+ people at the game.  Did it really make sense to continually exhort the crowd to explore the hot tubs?  Were 12500 of us going to fit in one tub while the other 12500 crowded into the other?  Do people actually go to Brewers games to sit in a hot tub?

You wouldn’t know it from reading the words on the virtual page, but I’m typing this with a new keyboard.  One of the keyboards we have at home died yesterday, so I bought a new IBM keyboard.  Don’t let anyone fool you, there are qualitative differences between keyboards and the IBM keyboards are the best on the market.

Sarah made an angel food cake last Friday from scratch.  Wow, what a flavor difference compared to a store-bought angel food cake.  The cake is moister, the flavor is more intense.  When drenched in fresh, ripe local strawberries, the cake is quite a treat.

Ironically enough, a friend of mine in Minneapolis closed on his house yesterday.  I asked him over the weekend when he was going to get a dog.  He thought that might happen in late July early August.  That is when we were planning on getting a dog.  Now we have to think up something wacky we can do that my friend and his wife won’t do just before us.

Why is June here so much like April?  Did a presidential fiat banish summer for the non-Republican dominated areas of the country?

Interesting book if you ever lived or worked in or near Silicon Valley:  The Nudist on the Late Shift, by Po Bronson.  The narrative is just a shade dated at this point, but the book is still compelling reading.

Sarah and I finally made it to the theatre to see The Matrix Reloaded.  We both agreed that the movie was an excellent movie.  I found the action sequences, in many cases, to be boring compared to the overall story.  It was also interesting for us to see the movie because some parts of it were filmed in Alameda while we were still living there.  It was interesting to see what Hollywood can and does do to turn real, everyday locations into fictional locations.

Other movies we’ve seen of late:

• Bend It Like Beckham – Predictably predictable but enjoyable nonetheless.
• The Bridge on the River Kwai – Excellent movie, for the most part.  Alec Guinness was fantastic.
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – Surprisingly, it held our attention quite well.  The story itself was interesting enough that it almost didn’t need the special effects.
• X2 – As a devotee of the various X-Men comic books, I set a pretty high bar for this movie to clear before I would admit liking it.  I’m happy to report that the bar was not only cleared, but with several inches to spare.  Now all I can do is hope that this particular movie franchise doesn’t degenerate the way the Batman movies did after the first two installments.

So, poor people don’t get the same tax credits as everyone else.  Somebody notices this and starts talking about it in the media.  Suddenly, the Bush administration decides that this was nothing more than an oversight that should be rectified immediately, oh, and could there be an additional plum or two for the rich folks, at the same time.  Nobody talks about trickle-down economics anymore, but the Bush administration is certainly full of faithful followers of the same.  It’s too bad that just a trickle of benefits reaches those who need them most, compared to the flood of tax breaks currently inundating the well-to-do.

The flat roof of our current house pleases ducks.  Yesterday morning I went out to get the paper, and on my way back to the house, I noticed a pair of ducks standing on the roof of the house.  Sarah mentioned that she heard them walking around and that it sounded like a very small person trying to walk very quietly on the roof.

On my ride home yesterday, I noticed what appeared to be an ad-hoc citizens committee forming to investigate the Madison storm sewer system with two flashlights and a large cardboard box.  Further investigation revealed that all the members of a duckling parade, minus the mother duck, had fallen through a sewer grate.  I offered my assistance (there was plenty of manpower but a distinct lack of organization), but the police officer on the scene informed me that animal control was on the way.  It seemed likely that Animal Control would take this situation well into hand, and that I would be just a bystander, so I pedaled on my way home.

I now understand why John Ashcroft, he of the secret "Sodom and Gomorrah Were Right!" Society, lost an election to a dead man in Missouri before becoming Attorney General of the United States (What was Bush snorting when he made that decision??).  In case you missed it, Ashcroft was in Congress this week pushing for an expansion of the (fascist) USA Patriot Act.  Ashcroft was upset because he isn’t allowed to threaten enough potential terrorists with the death penalty.  You see Ashcroft thinks that people commit terrorist acts against the US because they currently do not face life in prison or the death penalty if they are caught committing certain terrorist acts.  What part of suicide terrorism does Ashcroft not understand?  Does Ashcroft honestly think there are terrorists out there thinking, "I would never dream of being a suicide bomber/pilot/truck driver/etc. if I would face the death penalty at the hands of the US government after committing my act of martyrdom.”?  Memo to Ashcroft:  They are called "martyrs" for a reason, John.  Is he planning on executing the terrorist ashes or putting the bloody, sticky terrorist bits in prison for life?

Tis the season for birds to attack bicyclists in Wisconsin.  Two bicyclists were attacked at different times by a red-tailed hawk last week.  One of the bicyclists sustained a moderately serious neck wound.  As I was riding home yesterday through the University, I rode by a flock of Canadian geese that was grazing on a grassy strip between a catch pond and the road.  There were several goslings mixed in with the adult geese.  As I pedaled closer to the group, one of the adult geese raised its head and started eyeing me.  As I got really close to the flock, the alert goose charged towards me while honking wildly and flapping its wings!  Fortuntely, there were no cars to my left as I swerved wildly to that side while trying to avoid being battered by an angry goose.

The loan officer with whom we have been "working" at the UW Credit Union seems to have an incredibly powerful case of CDD (Competancy Deficit Disorder).  She is so incompetant, she can’t even lie convincingly.  The reason I used quotes around the word working at the start of this paragraph is that we don’t so much work with her, as lead her around by the nose.  How anyone could become a loan officer at a bank or credit union without even a basic grasp of time, customer service principles, or the English language is beyond my power to understand.

No, we'′re not dead.  We've just been really, really busy.  Since I last wrote in this space more than just one or two things have been keeping us busy.

For starters, Sarah and I have working our way down the pothole-laden road to home ownership here in Madison.  It seems as though the entire home purchasing industry is designed to move in two modes:  light-speed and trapped-in-tarpits.  Banks move at the speed of dinosaurs trapped in La Brea; everyone else moves at a rate of speed that would be illegal if it involved travel on an interstate highway.  Need a home inspection tomorrow?  Sure, no problem.  Offers and counter-offers that expire eight hours from now.  Not even worth discussing the time element (or lack thereof).  What?  You want a pre-approval letter?  Oh.  That will take a minimum of ten business days.  An appraisal?  That takes on average thirty days.  Why is that that banks are singlehandedly trying to resurrect the idea of a not-just-in-time economy?

So, anyway, barring any more bank-related fiascoes (our loan officer is a bit of a blame-shifting, forgetful, nitwit), we will be home owners on or about 24 Jun 03.  The house we are purchasing is a ranch-style home on Madison's West Side.  The house has a little over 1100 square feet of living space on the first floor.  The basement is a full basement, but about 650 square feet of the basement has been finished to some degree.  As such, the house has about 1700 sq. ft. of space in which two bedrooms, one and one-half bathrooms, and a variety of other rooms are crammed.  It needs some work (a touch of plumbing that we will do ourselves, a new roof, and a new electrical panel) in the short term.  Like all houses, it also has some long term needs (lot re-grading, an exterior paint job, new/more insulation in the attic, etc.).  So, we should be busy playing house during the next few years.  If you cannot find me, try the local home improvement center.

In addition to buying a house, I have been busy playing home health care worker.  Sarah hurt her knee while we were out biking on 18 May 03.  We were riding the Military Ridge Trail and were taking in the town of Mt. Horeb before turning around and heading back to Madison.  However, Sarah planted her knee wrong at an intersection, her bike started to pull her over into traffic, and she ended up placing all her weight on the planted knee at a funny angle.  This was the knee in which her ACL was torn when she was younger.  So, I helped her into a local bookstore, where we waited for the local emergency medical services.  Soon, two police cars showed up, as well as the world’s largest ambulance.  Sarah and I rode in the world’s largest ambulance to the UW Hospital in Madison.  Once there, our lengthy and thorough examination of an Emergency Room exam room was occasionally interrupted by doctors and the like.  They prescribed a series of pain-killers, a set of crutches, and an appointment with an orthopedist.  We saw the orthopedist on Wednesday morning.  He scheduled Sarah for an MRI on Wednesday afternoon.  We then made a trek to visit the UW Sports Medicine department on Thursday morning.  Once there, the Sports Medicine doctors told us that they had gone ahead and scheduled Sarah for surgery the next morning.  So, Friday, 23 May 03, found Sarah headed into the operating room at the UW Hospital for some arthroscopic surgery.  I brought her home that afternoon.  Since then, she has been fighting boredom at home because, until last Thursday, she was unable to drive, bike, or even walk very far (because she is still on crutches).  However, since the surgery the swelling in her knee has diminished significantly, and she is even able to almost straighten it out.  She has to be on crutches until at least 12 Jun 03.  By then, I’m reasonably certain we will be planning a bonfire in the backyard onto which the much maligned crutches will be cast.

Both of these events have more than kept Sarah and I busy.  While I was/am playing home health care worker I keep threatening to unionize.  Sarah keeps threatening to break out the puppy-dog eyes.

But, just in case we found a free minute or two, Sarah and I have been planning a wedding for this fall.  Sarah has been researching local venues and we have visited several in the last week.  In addition, she has been dress shopping with one of her local friends.  Preliminary negotiations regarding music, catering, and the like have been bantered across the dining rooms table.  The progress is slow, but certain.

Today, we took time for a picnic at the UW Arboretum.  While we were lying on the blanket, post-gorging, four wild turkeys made their way across the park no more than twenty feet from us.  Big, ugly, but colorful birds.

From our Obligatory Political Commentary Department:  George W. Bush and his Administration.  Their reign of evil, and not even thinly veiled arrogance continues, unabated.