Rural Land and Tattoos
Posted on June 9, 2009
So, my parents have finally made the decision to get out of Cincinnati. They don’t quite have a destination, but they’ve finally come to the point of action- awesome. I love my parents, but I DESPISE Cincinnati. All we do when we visit is eat. Here is my short list if you’re visiting-
Skyline Chili- my fav by far- at least twice a visit.
Blue Ash Chili- monster sandwiches- excellent.
Penn Station- Philly Cheesesteak with mayo, no onions no peppers + ketchup.
Graeters Ice Cream- Cold death in a cone/cup worth it.
UDF- cheap hand dipped shakes/yogurt
La Rosa’s- pretty good pizza, I always get a 3 cheese calzone- worse for you.
They’ve resisted for years, with uncertainty in jobs/economy/insert fear here, they’ve stayed put. But as I’ve always said, you don’t plan for disaster. We can only use our current situation to gauge our future with the full realization that it can change but we can’t live in fear. God always provides- we just can’t be presumptuous. I’ve struggled with this in the past- but that is another story (I don’t believe I deserve anything other than death). So where to? I’ve gotten the “I have no idea” response for years, but that isn’t an “out” for me. As much as you can hide behind uncertainty, there will always be things/places you don’t prefer. So they don’t want to be in the north- check, or the west coast- check, the east- check, Florida- no, NC/SC are out cause they’re even farther away from Kimmy. My dad can’t take the Alabama heat- no offense taken, and has no desire to be in AR, MS, TX etc. That leaves Tennessee. Ah yes, the land of no income tax and probably more rednecks than KY and AL, but still behind MS. Also, (I probably shouldn’t follow that sentence with this) my grandparents, one aunt and two uncles. My grandparents are super amazing and humble people- love them so much. But, in reality they don’t want to live in the same area (Knoxville) so they have their own space and lives. I couldn’t agree more.
My dad still travels a lot- so Memphis and Chattanooga are out (small airports). I do love Chattanooga- /wave to Katie and Jimmy. So Nashvillesounds like a plan. I did some research and found that SE Nashville has some pretty reasonable rural properties. Murpheesburo looks like a pretty cool little town. I called Jimmy and he actually spent real time there while attending MTSU. He gave it great reviews and likened it to Pelham- my old stomping grounds. So my mother calls me three times this morning saying we’re going- whoa. I’m not used to this much actual commitment/action. So she asks me to pray- of course I will. But this whole thing got me on this huge land kick. There is so much land available right now people are trying to get rid of. Oh man oh man! So I start looking into some here in AL-mistake. Shew wee the bargains! 200 acres for $995/acre- gasp. We have access to Julia’s family land that is pretty close, but it isn’t mine. That sounds kind of strange, I know, but really you can’t do anything without permission- what fun is that? It isn’t freedom unless my name is on the deed. So what I find is that owning land is a lot like getting your first tattoo (not that I have any). You start small, and collect them all! So our plan is to get some property of our own- something we can work on care free and maybe one day self-sustain. I’m not sure of the timing or the how, but it is certainly on our list. It may be a small getaway and grow from there. I haven’t even decided which region I want to be in- the deals are certainly in Western or North Eastern AL. I’ll be keeping my eyes out and will keep you, my faithful few subscribers, updated!
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Yayy Windows 7
Posted on June 9, 2009
Ok, so it has been a bit too long since my last post. This’ll be a tad bit more of a Windows 7 beta update. Long story short- I’m really enjoying it. I like the polish (and the Polish language!), but even more the performance. Even on my macbook it cooks- unless I go IE8 crazy. It had an image shudder when I overloaded it. To be fair, I’ve had that when on my main machine (quad core blah blah) lets IE7/8 get over about a GB in memory.
This iteration I’ve decided to mix things up a bit more and keep my task bar on the left side vertically. The logic is that most pages on a widescreen monitor don’t utilize the horizontal real estate and benefit more from the vertical. So far, it pleases me:)
I also enjoy the simplicity of the mouse over stacks that show a small preview of the current open apps. It takes a bit to get used to it, but the Aero looks great. I know that OSX fanboys make fun of anything Windows, but I use both and I tend to use Win7 more on my macbook than Leopard. Even vs. Snow Leopard’s bells and whisles announced at the WWDC- meh. I’ll try not to rant, but let’s say Apple doesn’t present fair comparisons a lot of the time. Maybe when I’m older I’ll actually post on the fabrications and pitfalls about the full switch.
Darn you Apple- look how you distracted me! A lot of what I’ve enjoyed in Win7 is felt performance. I’m no Peter Parker, but I spend enough time on computers and have gained some super spider senses when it comes to felt performance increases. Oh that could lead me in another tangent- felt recoil of shotguns! I resist. As stated before, I wish I had even more robust test system to run Win7 with at least 12GB of ram and 2 cards in SLI. In October I’ll be rolling out Ultimate on my primary desktop- maybe more (I normally have 5+ machines running all the time). With “XP Mode” I’ll be able to use all the older programs without a hiccup. Now if we can convince Microsoft to stop with the 500 SKUs and settle 3, I’d be happy (Home, Pro, Ultimate). Until next time!
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