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(and if I were actually enumerating them.)

While my grumbling hasn't made it to this journal, I've been doing a lot of it recently about (a) how much money we lost when we sold our old house (see the journal entry just prior to this) and (b) how much of a pain it is being to find a house that's big enough, close enough to work, affordable, and possessed of various other qualities we want (like being able to fit our dining room table).

As I said in an email to my dad recently, 'there's a phrase going around the Internet right now which is used to describe problems which, in the grand scheme of things, really aren't that bad: "first world problems". Those are the kind I have.'

To start off with, I have an incredible array of advantages--that are mostly not my doing--that make my life easier every day: I'm tall, male, white, not overweight, and have regular features and a voice that is both fairly low and penetrating when I want it to be. I'm sure I don't even notice all the ways that these things and others smooth my way almost everywhere I go.

I got a good education without having to pay for any of it: my BA was covered by my parents and the graduate school was paid for--with stipends, even!--by various other people and organizations.

I have a job that probably quite a lot of people would give someone else's left arm to get. And I enjoy it, and I think that it's contributing to important and useful work.

I have a smart, funny, attractive, fun, practical, and incredibly supportive wife. I have four kids who are healthy, intelligent, and (I expect) no more trouble than most groupings of kids their age would be. We can afford to let Megan take time off working if we want to. We can eliminate houses from consideration because they're not convenient, or we just don't like them very much.

The likelihood of us getting assaulted or robbed anywhere around here is quite small. We can drink the water and assume that it won't make us sick. We don't have any serious medical problems.

The list goes on.

Heck, if angst over trying to decide between various houses generally costing upwards of half a million dollars isn't a "first world problem", I don't know what is.

So yeah. If I can't make this work, it's my own damned fault.
jrtom: (Default)
Still working at Microsoft, splitting my time among a whole raft of different projects. Still reasonably satisfied with that.

Still not sure what I'm going to do about my PhD.

Still not finished unpacking boxes yet...but we have a working Internet connection and phone. The big things left to be done are the study, the master bedroom, and the art (of which we have a lot that we now have to decide where to put). Haven't done as much painting as we probably will relatively soon.

Still don't have all the furniture we're planning on getting (still missing: bed frame+mattress, bureau for Megan, probably a couple of futon frames), but OMGWTFBBQ we've dropped a lot on furniture and appliances since we moved in. It's a good thing we have a decent income, because otherwise we'd be scroooood.

Still haven't posted Corwin photos for June.


Still not King.
jrtom: (Default)
the new house

Captions not as clever/funny as those for Corwin's pictures, sorry. :)
jrtom: (Default)
Megan, Corwin, and I came back from our May 2006 whirlwind tour of the Pacific Northwest a week ago. The first week was spent in Portland helping friends get ready for their wedding, and the second was in the Seattle area looking for houses for our impending move to that area.

Even more long-winded than is my usual wont. You've been warned.

Portland )


Seattle )

The house. )

So, yeah. It kind of went like that.

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