Week 1

So we've been living in our new house for about a week now, and Sara began her first day at her new school today.

We're starting to adjust to our new home life. Driving to work each day, I pass several miles of far, open land, with only bales of hay and cows around. It's quite a dramatic change from anywhere I've ever lived before. I remember saying once (I think on this blog), that I would rather live in a condo in the city, than in a house in the countryside. Ok, so I'm a hypocrite. I do live in the countryside now. To buy a condo in the neighborhood that we used to live would cost us more than double what we paid for our house. So, it's just not realistic. I guess, to some extent, I understand my brother more for wanting to live out in Murrieta. Murrieta, like Manor, is pretty much a cultural void. Although, unlike Murrieta, I don't need to drive for 2 hours to re-enter civilization (for me, it's more like 15-20 minutes).

Living in the countryside does have a few advantages, though. The air is cleaner. You can actually see stars at night. On a warm night, it might be fun just to sit in our backyard and look up at the sky.

Our cable/internet was reconnected on Tuesday. There's been a lot of news lately. The earthquake in Haiti. The soon to be defeated Obama health care reform bill. And the late night talk show war going on between Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien (I'm on Conan's side, by the way. I think he totally got the shaft on that deal. Leno sucks.)

I'll probably have another blog entry about the health care bill later, but I find the whole situation pretty sad. First Clinton tried to get it passed, and failed, and now Obama. I'm really puzzled by the whole backlash against health care reform. Well, more to come on that later.

Sara seems to like her new school a lot. She has to take the school bus this time since her school is not within walking distance (hell, nothing is within walking distance from where we live). I thought maybe she'd be scared to get on a bus full of strange kids this morning, but she just ran right in. Kyle followed her on, but I had to pull him back, which made him cry for the next 20 minutes. I guess he's ready for school too.

(Picture: My new neighbors)

Feeling The Cold

It's times like this when I miss living in Southern California. It's the middle of winter, and it's still 75 degrees in Los Angeles.

Here in Austin, it's about 28 degrees, and tonight it will drop down to 14 F (-10 C).

That is freaking cold. Ok, ok, I realize that in other parts of the country, it's even colder than that. I read somewhere that North Dakota was going to have a low of -50F at one point. Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that something like instant death once you step outside???

My point is, being a Southern Californian, I've never experienced a winter this cold in my entire life. Never. It didn't get this cold in Taiwan, either.

We just got our electricity bill today, and it was $116. For us, that's a lot. Our normal electric bill is around $50, so now it's double because we have the heat on constantly. I was a little shocked at the bill.

"If our electricity bill is $116 for this apartment, imagine what it's going to be once we are living in a house." I told Christy. $200? $300? Oh, I just can't wait for all the little financial surprises that are going to come my way once we move into our house.

Luckily for Austin, there isn't any rain in the forecast over the next few arctic days, so we won't see any snow out of this. Although I would love to actually see some snow here, I think it would be chaos on the roads.

So, it looks like this weekend will be spent mostly indoors, trying to keep warm, like most of the country is trying to do.....except Los Angeles...you lucky bastards!

New Years Resolutions 2010

It's that time of year once again where I try to make some resolutions for the new year and hope to stick to them. Last year I did pretty well. Getting the family into a bigger apartment, and getting out to see my mom were at the top of my list, and we did both. I also predicted that by early 2010, we'd be going back to Taiwan for Chinese New Year. Ain't gonna happen.

This month we're moving into our new house, and the money we would have spent on going to Taiwan went toward our down-payment on the house. So all I can say is...we may go to Taiwan for Chinese New Year 2011. David's girlfriend Pi Chi told us that they're planning to get married this year (after 5 years of dating!), so I'd like to be able to go back for that, but I may not be able to. I still keep trying to get David and Pi Chi, and Christy's parents to come out to see us, instead of us going there. I know David and Pi Chi have a lot more disposable cash than we do.

As for my resolutions, first off, I do want to have a decent vacation this year, but not an expensive one. A local, US vacation, where we can just drive somewhere for a few days or a week. We've thought about two different ideas: a trip to Mt. Rushmore and Yellowstone National Park, or a trip to Disney World in Florida. Both have advantages and disadvantages. The Yellowstone/Rushmore trip would be cheaper, but the kids not might enjoy it as much as Disney World. Disney World might be more fun for them, but it would be more expensive and we'd have to drive through states I don't really want to drive through to get there. I haven't been to any of these places before, so I'm hoping to make at least one of them a reality this year.

I also need to let go of the anger I've had toward my brother and sister last year. Those of you who read my blog regularly probably know about how my sister stood us up in Dallas last year and how it really pissed me off. And there is still the ongoing feud I have with my brother over him sticking my mom in a nursing home after she bought him a house. While that will always be a sore spot for me, the only way I'm ever going to have total peace in my life is just to accept what happened and move on. I don't see any warm family reunions happening in the near future, so for now it's probably best to just not think about them for awhile.

Christy will probably request that I talk about our personal life less on this blog, and stick more to impersonal topics. There's a pretty major crisis going on with her family right now and one of the first things she said to me was "Don't talk about this on your blog!" So...I'm abiding by her wishes....although it is a good story.