Improvements

The house situation has improved. And the chemistry situation has improved a little. The job situation, that can wait a little while.

Daniel and I went out yesterday to look at 4 houses that were well within our original budget of $170,000. This neighborhood was surprisingly nice. The houses were cute, front yards were well kept, and it was pretty quiet. This neighborhood is about 10 minutes west of campus, where before we were looking to the east. It is mostly Hispanic, and as Carrie called it "in transition." I guess that means that it's a neighborhood that investors are interested in buying houses, fixing them up, and reselling them. Of the four houses we looked at, two of them were flips. They were completely remodeled and move-in ready. We loved both of them. The first one was a little big actually. It had two full kitchens, one upstairs and one in the basement. Six bedrooms and 3 baths. Hardwood floors, remodeled master bath.... etc. It had a nice enclosed patio in the back and a really big driveway plus a one car garage. This house was listed at $169,900 and Carrie said that's a little low, so it will probably go quickly. The second and fourth houses were occupied and they would need a lot of work so we weren't really interested. The third house was beautiful. It was on a corner lot at the top of this little hill that had a beautiful view of downtown Denver. It had a cute little cobblestone walkway to the front door. The front room was wood floors, then there was a hallway off to the right with two bedrooms and one bath. Through the front room is the most beautiful kitchen. It was big with lots of counter space and cabinet space. All marble countertops and brand new stainless steel appliances. Through the kitchen was the dining room and then to the left was two more bedrooms. They turned the garage into a fourth bedroom which was kind of weird. That bedroom has french doors that open up into the driveway in the front yard. We'd probably make that like a study room or another living room area. Another kind of weird thing is that the bathroom for those bedrooms is through the dining room. It didn't bother me enough to not like the house. What struck me most about the house was it had a lot of windows so there was a ton of natural light coming in that gave it such a wide open feeling. A good thing from an investing standpoint is that it has a crawl space under the house so all the plumbing is under it instead of through the ceiling. And since the neighborhood is "in transition" the value of the house is likely to go way up in a short amount of time.

So all of this was really encouraging. Daniel's mom also was really excited about it and she told us that she thinks Robert needs to come out as soon as possible so we can get the process started and maybe even put in an offer on one of those houses. However, Robert was not as optimistic. He thought that having the bathroom through the dining room would make it difficult to re-sell. I am beyond frustrated. I thought that he would be so happy that we found two beautiful homes that we would love to live in for UNDER budget. But no. He still wants to wait another month to come out and by then, none of these houses will be on the market anymore. We'll have to start all over again.

Besides that, I have a had a really good past couple of days. Wednesday put me in a really bad mood because of chemistry. I had my lab and halfway through the reaction I had no product. I only lose 7 points out of 100 so it's not that big of deal. The bad part was that our lab TA chose our group to stay until the very last person was completely finished with the experiment and clean up the sinks. So even though I was finished at like 3:30 I had to stay all the way until 5:30 just to spend 30 seconds wiping down the sinks. I absolutely hate wasting time. And the worst part is that then I had to run to work until 7:00. So I had a very looong day.

Thursday was fun because Hope and I got to paint :-) There's a bulletin board in the laundry room that Leadership Team is responsible for, and Hope and I volunteered to do it this quarter. So we pulled out a big white sheet of paper and splatter painted and glittered and expressed our creativity. Hope really brings out that side of me. That night we had karaoke night which was really fun too. Hope, Brittany, and I performed "My Heart Will Go On" beautifully. And Daniel and I did "Summer Lovin'" from Grease with Hope and Brittany as my backup singers and Kevin and Rick as Daniel's backup singers. Then the entire group of us sang "Bohemian Rhapsody." It was one of the most successful programs they've had. I'd say about 20 people came.

On Friday Daniel and I went to the Good Friday service here on campus. It was very soothing to me. I love going to church because it reminds me of home and is so peaceful and calming. Singing the hymns is my favorite part, but I also love reading scripture. No matter how many times I read or hear a particular passage, I get something new out of it each time. And it felt good to be part of our campus community observing Good Friday. That night I celebrated Theta Chi's Founders Day with a nice dinner with all the guys. Some of them brought girlfriends so I wasn't the only girl there for once. They played a slideshow of the past few years and I was in a surprising number of pictures. I got to meet some of their new prospective guys too. One of them is a sophomore biochem major that lives in Nelson, just like me! He's in my biology class. We talked about our classes and professors and what we want to do when we are done with school. It's amazing how Daniel's fraternity brothers become instant friends of his and mine when they join. They really do feel like a bunch of my brothers.

Today I have been working all day. I had two hours off from 3-5 so Daniel and I went to Best Buy to try out a few of their camcorders and see what we want to get for Europe. I went in thinking I definitely wanted one of the tiny pocket camcorders that are like $150. Daniel was really against that because he thinks they have terrible quality. Which, they do, I agree, but I don't want to spend $500 either. When we went we found a brand new Sony that was really small and light, but had some of the extra features that the tiny pocket cameras don't have. It has the image stabilization and 4 GB of internal memory which is a lot more than the pocket cameras have. It was on sale for $269. So we went for it. And we also bought the 4-year warranty. I definitely didn't think we'd come out of this spending $400, but we did. And we still need to get a high-speed 16 or 32GB card for it. Unfortunately Sonys use the slightly more expensive memory stick instead of SD card, but I guess Daniel's dad can get them for pretty cheap. I'm excited to start playing with it and maybe post some videos on my DU blog.

I also talked to my mom today. She took Spud to the vet finally. When I went home for the wedding and spring break, I told her that I really think he needed to go. He has giant lumps on his belly and he is just so slow. You have to yell his name really loud for him to come over. It's really sad. So anyways, she found out that the lumps are into his liver and spleen so there's nothing to be done about them. The vet said that they could rupture any time which could be a quick death, or a slow and painful one. My parents decided that he isn't in any pain now, so as long as he can still get around and he seems happy enough they're going to let it go. I'm going home in two weeks, so I'll get to see him one last time probably before they have to put him down. I can't believe he's so old. I love Spud, he is the best dog. It's nice to see how much Spud and Daniel like each other too. But, he is pretty old and such is life.

My mom also told me a little bit about Aaron. I guess he's doing really well. I wrote him one letter a few weeks ago, but I've been waiting to get some more letters before I write again. So yesterday my dad finally emailed one and the first line was "keep writing, even if you don't get a letter from me." Oops. So I wrote him a big long letter. I also got a letter from him today just for me! He congratulated me on our engagement and asked me to send more pictures. He told me that he's really enjoying getting to know the other guys, but I guess he's annoyed at some of the girls and younger guys who keep making mistakes and so they all get punished. Nicole and my parents are going to his graduation. I wish I could, but I'll still be in class. I'm going to try to write more, even though it means he has to do push ups. He can handle it.

I'm so excited to go home in a few weeks and show everyone my ring! I just wish Daniel could be there. It's going to be weird to have a family celebration without him. But he doesn't have time to fly back there.
Happy Easter!