Blog-World Catch-up

The network here at work appears to have crashed so since I can’t do much else right now (oh, how dependent we are on computers!) I figured I’d do some catch-up blogging.

In the world of weddings, we’re at the 150 day mark - not that I’m counting. This past weekend I fashioned a bouquet of fake hydrangeas for the bouquet toss at the reception. I think it looks kind of weird, but Adam says he’s going to get one or two more flowers to fill out one side and then hot glue them all onto the styrofoam holder thing tonight and it should be fine. One more thing done. Yay! I still haven’t gotten myself out to the hair salon to check on pricing and scheduling. I considered doing it on Saturday when I was up in Appleton anyway but I decided against that. I think it will be less busy sometime during the week. Unfortunately this week filled up pretty quickly so I’m not sure I’ll get around to it. I’m waiting for the bridesmaids dresses and my veil to come in so I can head back up to Kaukauna (hopefully with Catherine, the roommate) and see the whole package put together. This will also allow me to check whether my chosen undergarments, shoes, and jewelry work with the other elements of the ensemble. Fun, fun. The guest list continues to change so hopefully it will be finalized in the next month or so. I have to revise the invitations again because we changed our RSVP date (apparently there was some miscommunication between Adam’s mom and me) but after that’s done they should be good to go. I need to do some research on the addressing format though. The invitations we have don’t have an inner (unsealed) envelope so I don’t know if I should be putting “and guest” on the outside envelope or include some little slip of paper or something on the response card to indicate if they get to bring a guest. I don’t know what the standard practice is so I need to research that before I go ahead and print labels. I’ve got time to mess with that a little still.

In other news, Adam saw that a house about two blocks down the road plunked a “For Sale” sign on their lawn last week. He thought it looked like a nice house, we looked it up online and indeed it looks nice and is not a bad price. The open house this past weekend was from 11-12 and since I was up at church for the 11am mass for bells I couldn’t go and Adam was at work. So we got in touch with the realtor his parents used when they bought their house and asked if he could get us in to look at it. We’ve got an appointment to do just that on Thursday. We didn’t intend to start looking for or buy a house until after the wedding but Adam is getting antsy about interest rates and housing costs. And with our rent increasing in May, perhaps it’s a good time to start thinking about it. We have an appointment with a mortgage specialist on Wednesday so we’ll see what they determine about our credit-worthiness. Our major problem is going to be the down payment issue. This would have been a problem regardless of when we planned to buy a house. I was hoping to be able to scrape together perhaps 10% but at this point that’s unrealistic. We’ll see what our options are on Wednesday and go from there. I read an article yesterday that said 43% of first-time home buyers don’t put anything down. I also read about 80/20 piggyback loans. But I guess we’ll see what the experts tell us we can do. In addition to the house we saw right down the block, the realtor sent us 62 other houses in the area. Of that list we narrowed it down to 15 houses we might want to take a look at. Our criteria are pretty basic: at least 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, 2 car garage, central air. Other than that it’s more a case to case determination. Of course, the clincher for me would be a great kitchen whereas Adam is more interested in the garage/basement/workshop space opportunities. I guess we’ll see where this takes us.

On a completely different topic, I attempted to make my yearly doctor appointment a few weeks back and learned that my usual doctor is on leave for an indeterminate length of time. Hmmm. So now I have to go to the other doctor, an OB/GYN, and they were already booking for the end of June, more than a month after my desired appointment. And she doesn’t book appointments earlier than 8am. *sigh* So now I’m stuck with a 9am appointment the last week of June with a complete stranger. Boo.

We made our hotel reservations for Lori’s wedding in May this past weekend. So we’d better be invited because we’re coming! Dad and Cheryl haven’t gotten an invitation yet either so I’m not going to worry about it quite yet.

I’ve got my monthly IMA meeting this evening. It’s our first annual Ethics Workshop. The IMA recently changed their CPE requirements for CMAs and they now need 2 hours of ethics training each year so our president figured we could help our chapter members out by providing this for them as part of our normal chapter year. Smart thinking. It looks as though we’ll have a larger crowd than usual. Some members of the Packerland (Green Bay area) chapter are coming as well as some ladies from the CBMN. It should be a good time but I think I’ll be kept busy for a while seeing as how the treasurer won’t be there tonight. At least it’s in a familiar venue so I won’t have to figure out where I am.

That about sums up what’s on my mind right now. I’ve got some Rotten Tomatoes reviews to catch up on as well as some recipes to post and a book review to write. The network is still down so perhaps I can get some of those done now as well. :)