I admittedly have a very weak understanding of human physiology, but from personal experience that the body typically has good built in defenses. You got some nasty bacteria in you? You sneeze it out. You cut yourself, platelets come in and scab it over for protection. You get too hot, you sweat to cool yourself off. These are all pretty gross examples, I guess, but it shows a trend.

There’s one defense I can’t seem to find though. That is against stress, as in the feeling one receives when buying carpet. In fact, the body handles stress quite the opposite. Rather than start pumping out endorphins or something useful, it tends to cause physical ailments that are unpleasant and, unfortunately, add to your stress. Anyone know why that is? I don’t really expect an answer. Just musing…

We used to think that our little girl simply didn’t like TV. It turns out she just didn’t like Nova and SportsCenter. Today, we tried out the Wiggles and she was an instant fan. The end of life as we know it has arrived. I’d heard about these guys, but I never thought I’d have them in my house. Way to go, stupid Disney channel. The lesson? Don’t get a TV.

So it turns out that it’s not a bad idea to wait until AFTER the work is done for payment when hiring a contractor. As long as they already have your money, you’re at their mercy, but if you haven’t paid yet, they get the job done right or they don’t get paid. Ah, if only we could go back in time. It probably would have avoided a lot of unnecessary stress with our whole carpet fiasco.

After doing a little research on carpet buying, we went with a local installer who could get carpet from a nearby mill. Everything went smoothly until the actual installation of the carpet (they seemed nice enough, pricing was competitive, etc.).

My wife had previously explained that we did want a certain area of the home carpeted and it didn’t get carpeted. They then told us that there wasn’t enough carpet left over to cover that area with the carpet we ordered. So we can either get different carpet placed there or we can pay more for carpet we thought we already bought.

Our other grievance was that the carpet layer left trash everywhere. I wouldn’t expect someone to sweep and vacuum and so forth, but there were huge scraps strewn throughout the house. This is in addition to a Jamba Juice cup left on the bathroom which is just unprofessional. The installer also took out some folding closet doors without replacing them. They were left in our bathroom. This would normally be just a nuisance, but when you’re already working under the stress of moving, it became a severe headache. (They told us later that it’s customary for a customer to remove these, but we were given no such instructions, even though my wife specifically asked if there was anything else we needed to do to prep the house).

The main point here is that people pay a lot for carpet labor. I understand that it’s rough work, but I would expect at least a sense of customer care. When my wife called to express our complaints, she was not treated like a valuable customer, but argued with over what was whose fault and so forth. Bad form, Ogden Carpet. Bad form.

You know how sometimes you say things and then realize that what you said is completely nonsensical, even though they don’t strike you as weird and sound perfectly natural. Let me give you an example. Today, a co-worker was kind enough to give me a ride home (thanks Cameron). On the way, he called a girl he’s been hanging out with. Now, I’ve heard about this girl and talked about her with him at work, but I’ve never met her. If we were the only two people in an elevator, I’d never know who she was.

Regardless, as I was leaving the car, I said “And tell *girl* (name not disclosed to protect the innocent) I said ‘hi.’” It seemed like a perfectly natural closing comment until I think… “wait a second, I’ve never met that girl.” I mean, if Cameron were to pick her up for her date tonight and say, “oh yeah, Lewis says hi.” She’d probably say, “Cool. Who’s Lewis?” “A co-worker.” “Why’d he say hi?” “I dunno. He just said to say hi.” “So… what are we doing tonight?” “Digging up graves in honor of the discovery of King Tut’s tomb.”

I wouldn’t want to be the source of such an awkward conversation. So why did I tell her to say I said hi? I don’t know. Just… don’t do it unless you know the indirect object of your salutation. Life’s little lessons.

What could be worse than trying to find the perfect home with a very limited time budget? Carpeting that home once you found it. Everyone’s got an opinion on where to go for pricing, service, etc.

Plus, there’s the added element of trying to pick a design that will go with your home design. This may be a difficult task on a good day. But, when you don’t know how you’ll paint it, what all your furniture will look like, or even remember exactly what the layout of the home is without being able to see it (and the previous occupant is still there), it’s a headache. Like, a migraine headache. Not a single-Tylenol headache. It’s like a call-your-doctor-to-see-if-he-can-get-you-some-type-of-prescription headache.

Luckily, this is something my wife mostly worries about. She’s great like that. Her net headache-giving ratio is way in the red.

You may notice an increase in posts at the goont as a natural result of putting a shortcut to BlogDesk in my Startup menu. That’s some good advice for any of you who may be looking for a way to write more frequently on your own blog.

It turns out that buying a house for the first time isn’t the bed of roses I’d hoped for. We’ve been looking at homes, drooling over some and scoffing at others, for quite a few months now. However, now that we’re actually preapproved for a loan and are legitimate home shoppers, the task seems to have gotten more complicated.

For one, it appears that there is no ideal area to live in. One is affordable, but trashy. Another is nice, but out of our price range. Secondly, everyone has opinions and most of them contradict. This is usually not too bad of a scenario as there are some people you just trust more than others, but we’ve gotten differing opinions from multiple people that we hold pretty high. That’s rough. Finally, realtors mean you’re paying too much for your house, in my opinion. Anything on the MLS is 5-10% overpriced since it seems like you could have gotten the same home direct from the buyer without those crazy realtor fees. The flipside is that it takes a lot of work to try to find FSBO homes and scope them out. Plus, a realtor helps with legal mumbo-type jumbo that I don’t feel like touching.

*sigh* I think I need a break. Time to play the Wii.

Apparently you can make credit card payments at increments of 30 days or less and still miss a window for a late charge on your statement. It has something to do with an overlap of a payment due date and the generation of a new statement that happens between the 15^th and the 20^th for me.

Fortunately, the nice Indian lady over at Citi (and this is a rare experience for me - I have very strong feelings towards Indian customer service…) waived the $39 fee. Anyway, lesson learned and problem avoided.