One piece of advice for those buying a house, ever. If they point out the grand total pay off figure at the end of the 30 years, DO NOT LOOK AT IT. Seriously. It can instantly give you a coronary and watery bowels all at the exact same time.

Funnily enough, we were able to mask the sheer horror of the moment.

We actually take possession today at 4:15. Your run of the mill key-to-the-city presentation/ribbon cutting.

Let’s make with the movers and get this show on the road.

Hopefully see some of you all there tomorrow!

I don’t care who you are, if that doesn’t make your bowels a bit loose, you should probably not be making major purchases. It means you haven’t fully realized the ramifications of what you’re about to do. Trust me… I’m MORE than aware of what we’re doing.

What a wild ride this has been. I’m exhausted. I got a wicked cardboard cut on my pinky. House is 85-90% packed, but what we have left is the straggler shit that just makes me crazy. Perhaps we should just chuck it all and start over. We really just wanna be done.

What I find amusing is that 8 months ago, I was in a 500 sq.ft. apartment. I moved into Jess’ 1000 sq.ft. house in September. Now, we’re moving into a 2373 sq.ft. house in exactly 48 hours. I guess this means we gotta figure out a way to buy a 5000 sq.ft. house next year just to keep the pattern going, right? Umm… maybe not…

As I have stated before, the movers are scheduled 9am Saturday. After loading time, we will probably be out to the house around 11ish to start the offloading process. After that, its all about boxes, boxes and more boxes.

We would like to extend an invite to anyone who is in the area and interested to come on by and check out the new digs . It will be the first chance for all of you to bask in the glory that is “Dream House”. Come see it before it’s covered in dog hair, outdated computer hardware and Jess’ shoes. Say hello. Explore the neighborhood. We won’t have any food or drink to offer you, but please come on by anyway. Maybe unload a box or two… c’mon, it’ll be fun…

How to find us: Google Maps. (best way to enter is off of Chinden)

So, wish us godspeed in our adventures today. Come 4:15 we sign our all our spare income away.

Onward and upward!

To anyone else contemplating the same series of moves, let me give you one piece of advice… DON’T.

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Spring has sprung, and thus, #3 in my series.  View the whole series here: http://flickr.com/photos/jasonhaberman/sets/72157603859304411/

Can’t wait to get the summer shot and complete the thing.  Gonna look way cool on the wall.

Who knows, maybe I can make a buck or two off of these…

Enjoy!

Dream House on flickr.com

First, the real life events. Jess and I were asleep early early morning. I don’t think it was even light out yet. We have been sleeping with the window open because it is already pretty warm upstairs without the AC on.

Anyway, we were both dead asleep when there is this large BOOM outside. I mean loud. I’m a deep sleeper and it was loud enough to wake me up. In that groggy way, we both kinda turn to each other and ask what the hell that was. I couldn’t come up with an answer. I still can’t. It wasn’t like a firecracker or gunshot, it was much deeper. It wasn’t a sonic boom because it sounded much closer and there were no reverberations. Just one crisp, loud, deep “boom”. It wasn’t preceded or followed by any other sounds. Very strange. I kept my eye on idahostatesman.com to see if something happened that was newsworthy. But no such luck.

So, in my dream, I only remember a very short snippet before I woke up. Maybe 7 or 8 seconds. But its the content that freaked me out. In my dream, Jess handed me a large party balloon tied to a ribbon. She then took one of those safety letter openers and slid it along the ribbon until it hit the balloon and popped it. AT THE EXACT SAME TIME AS THE BOOM OUTSIDE.

I just don’t know what to make of that. Is it purely coincidence? That seems unlikely to me. Is it that my brain distorted “dream time” to make it seem longer when in fact all of that action took place instantaneously upon hearing the boom? Kinda like deja vu or something? Something else? Brain tumor? I really don’t know.

You gotta admit, that is pretty strange.

House update: We’re meeting with the home inspector today. Perhaps I will get some more photos actually taken by me to post on here. Check back.

What am I getting at? Well, we went out and did something a little crazy. That’s right. We’ve bought a new house! We have been watching the housing market for awhile. Watching prices fall and keeping an eye on the houses we liked, we pondered. Never seriously considering making a move right now. I mean, we have enough cooking at the moment without that sort of craziness.

But, we were looking to refinance the house we’re in now, to lock in a lower rate. At the same time, just for informations sake, Jess asked the mortgage broker what we might be able to realistically be able to purchase without literally putting us in the poor house. The answer surprised us. Suddenly, a house we happened to walk through an open house back last Labor Day was well within striking distance. We found a good rule of thumb as far as how much house you could afford which was a monthly payment of no more than 25% of your gross monthly income. Needless to say, we’re well below that. (As an aside, it took us a bit to realize just how well off we are with our dual incomes. Amazing.)

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Clady will always have a place in Boise State lore. You may remember a little play called “statue left”, aka. the game winning 2 point conversion in overtime in the Fiesta Bowl vs Oklahoma. His block helped seal the left end of the line (along with current Buffalo Bill Derek Schouman) to allow Ian Johnson to scamper across the goal line.

I’m going to be perfectly honest. As good as Clady was for us, I still don’t think he was the best offensive linemen that Boise State has ever had. I can recall numerous times where he was whistled for a drive killing penalty or him missing his guy and giving up a sack. I can’t back this up with numbers, but I trust my own eyes.

Still the best OL I have seen here is Daryn Colledge. Now a starter with the Green Bay Packers he graduated 3 years ago. I think he flew a bit under the radar because Boise State was not as well known then as they are now in this post-Fiesta Bowl universe.

Daryn was a 4 year starter for us. He owns both the consecutive games played and consecutive games started records at BSU, with 52 straight. We went 45-7 in his years here. One of his biggest wins was in that Hawaii game where he blocked 2 fourth quarter kicks, both returned by Orlando Scandrick and directly gave us the win.

Whenever he was matched up against a defensive end who had a lot of hype, he destroyed them. Specifically Bill Swancutt of Oregon State and Mathias Kiwanuka of Boston College. Neither of them did ANYTHING against Colledge.

When one is comparing offensive linemen, there is really very little hard data to go on. They don’t acrue many stats. I don’t think you can even use draft place as a guage either. So much goes into where a player is taken in the NFL. They don’t draft for how good a player is, they draft to how they project their game will translate to the pros. Which are not the same thing.

Then again, I’m just a fan, not an NFL scout. As a fan watching the games, I never had the confidence in Clady that I had in Colledge. So, in my book, Colledge will always be the best left tackle to ever come through the school.

All that being said, this is still a great thing for both Clady and Boise State. Having a player drafted in the top 12 is huge. It shows every single recruit that if you’re good, you can play at Boise State and still be drafted high. You don’t have to go to a Pac-10 school. You will play on national TV 5 or 6 times a year here. You will get seen.

Speaking of Orlando Scandrick, I just saw him get picked at place 143 going to the Dallas Cowboys.

In other ex-Bronco news, Chris Carr made news recently that might have been missed by some of you. He is the defensive back/kick returner who has been with the Oakland Raiders for the past 3 years as an undrafted free agent. He recently signed a contract with the Tennessee Titans for $2 million for 2 years. That is awesome. Despite being with the Raiders only 3 years he is their all-time kick return yardage leader. That is pretty impressive. Congrats, Chris.

It’s a good time to be a Bronco.

Last year, I somehow missed commemorating my blog’s birthday, or blogiversary, if you will, by a full month. This year, I missed it again, if only by a single day. I had planned to recognize the “terrible twos” with a little post, but sure enough, April 24th came and went with nary a batted eye.

In the “better late than never” department… I can’t believe its already been two years I’ve been doing this. Amazing. Feels much shorter than that. I don’t even mind that 90% of my readers are people that I know personally. I still get the occasional random hit from google, but nothing major. Like I said last year, this is mainly for me.

Some updated stats:

• 267 Total Posts by me.
• 690 Comments from you.
• upwards of 1,300 unique visitors a month.
• 19,541 spam comments avoided.

That’s not too shabby.

Going forward, I’m thinking there might be a major overhaul of the look and feel of this site in the future. Wordpress (the software used to run this thing) has been updated greatly since I started, but the theme I’m using does not take advantage of all of those upgrades. So, if I can find the time, I may start tinkering with the presentation around here. If you show up and things look all wonky, rest assured, it’s probably just me playing with it.

So, happy (belated) Birthday In The World… here’s to many more.

The movie centers around sad-sack Peter who in the first scene gets dumped by his TV star girlfriend of 5 years while in the buff. That’s right. We’re treated to a little full frontal male nudity not 5 minutes into the flick. Not that there is anything wrong with that… Did it feel a little gratuitous? Yes. Was it necessary to tell the story? That is questionable.

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