So we had an offer on our property in Auburn, WA about a month ago (we’ve had two offers now).  As part of their inspection results, they requested several items which simply didn’t, and still don’t, make sense.  Specifically, the buyers required that the foundation and electrical wiring be updated to 2008 code requirements.  It’s a 1941 home, not 2008; code changes don’t apply retroactively (for single-family homes, anyway).  There’s no problem with the existing foundation (i.e. slippage, cracks, etc) or wiring, so why (sh)(w)ould someone demand that a 1941 home be updated to 2008 code requirements?

We agreed to the buyers’ others requests but said no on these two items —  “No, we’re not going to rip walls out [which are lathe and plaster – not nearly as quick, painless, or ‘clean’ to demolish and replace as drywall] to replace wiring nor make foundation structural changes.”  Seems logical to me.  Surprisingly, though, the buyers walked.  Their agent’s message was that it “wasn’t good enough.”

Now, I understand this is a buyer’s market, I’m not an idiot (sometimes, anyway).  I understand that when you’re in a buyer’s market, and you want to sell, you sometimes need to play the dumb game of acquiescing to what are sometimes frivolous requests.  So we did that for all the other requests, we acquiesced.  But wiring and foundation?  No.

Maybe I’m just too dang proud, and 1yr from now when the property remains vacant and unsold I’ll wish I’d acted differently, but at this point, anyway, it still doesn’t make sense.

Poor Mrs. Smith hasn’t been able to sleep well in, oh, about 4.5yrs now (ironically about the same time she became pregnant with our first child… I doubt there’s any correlation, though).  Some days it’s worse than others.  Yesterday was one of those “worser” moments.  I feel impotent, utterly unable to remediate the problem.  Like most guys, especially engineers, when there’s a problem, we don’t want to just hear about it and do nothing – we want to fix it!  Well, I haven’t yet discovered the way to fix this one.  🙁

Something’s gotta change for Mrs. Smith.  I’ve discovered that I can get by successfully with considerablyless sleep, from both a routine and once-in-a-while perspective (not that I don’t enjoy sleeping, I just have many obligations that require that I be elsewhere physically which thus precludes a lot of sleep).  Unfortunately, she’s the one that handles “Eagle,” the smallest Smith, and his sleeping habit (or lack thereof) is driving her bonkers.  And when Momma is bonkers, so goes the rest of the family relatively short order.

Clearly the Lord must know a better way, so I’ll continue to seek His guidance, because I’m at the proverbial wits end.  Any suggestions, especially from those that find themselves in a similiar pickle with their spouse?

So, for our date night I thought I’d surprise Mrs. Smith with ice skating.  It’s something we both enjoy immensely yet haven’t done since we’ve met over, over six years ago as of Halloween.  She’s even carted her ice skates around with her since we were married.

We dropped off the kiddos with the Finnels, with whom we have a regular babysitting-exchange (and the Tolleys – yay!), and were off.  Got some food at the Costco food court (much cheaper than a full-blown restaurant, that’s for sure) and were off the the ice rink.

We quickly discovered that neither of us were… uh, well, any good.  Any proficiency we’d had in our youth was clearly expired, along with general flexibility.  I did observe significant improvement in both Mrs. Smith and my own skating throughout the hour before we were kicked off the ice for the zamboni (how often does one get to use the word “zamboni” – neato).  Unfortunately, just as we were ready to get off somehow, inexplicably, Mrs. Smith fell and cracked her head on the ice – OUCH!  🙁

On that cheery note we decided we’d better stop, so we went and got the kids.  Not the ideal way to end our ice skating adventure, or our date, but I think we’ll have fond memories of tonight’s date night… eventually.  Poor Mrs. Smith.  As anyone who’s smacked their head on ice can undoubtedly attest, it hurts!

“I fought the ice and the – ice won; I fought the ice and the – ice won“

I spent the day, from 9-5, in training for an XML database/application server. Although the concept is cool, it’s rather dry material to study for an entire day (no discredit to the presenter). I’ve noticed that many of the people present have heavily imbibed the “Kool-Aid” though, whereas I’m skeptical of the vendor’s claims.
Going on a date night tonight with my dearie, Mrs. Smith – wahoo! 😀

This is a test of the emergency broadcast system. BEEP.

If you see this message, then I’ve successfully configured the blog to receive incoming email messages and categorize and post them.  Yippee!

I’ve added some additional photos to the picture frame header.  I’ll add more as I find the time.  I like the random photo display of the fam.  🙂

So, today (well, yesterday technically, I suppose, since it’s past midnight) was our Stake’s Temple Day (SLC Temple).  As expected, we had a difficult time find a babysitter throughout the entire day.  Fortunately, Mrs. Smith’s grandmother (“Grams”) was willing to watch the kids for ~3hrs (bless her!).  So we went to the Church Museum to play at the “I am a Child of God” exhibit.  Then we dropped off the kids and Mrs. Smith and I went to the Temple.

We arrived just in time to attend the “chapel session” where we heard from President Moore (Stake President), and recently called President Lunt and his wife (1st Counselor in Temple Presidency, called last week).  After their comments we participated in baptisms.  That’s where Mrs. Smith and I first met, actually – doing baptisms in the San Diego Temple on Halloween night, 2002 (another story for some other time).  We’d not participated in baptisms together since then, so it was a neat experience.  😀

A few other ward members were present throughout the day, but we saw very few, and overall the attendance was poor, in my estimation.  I hope that more attended throughout the day and simply weren’t at the chapel session.

So, I’ve already spent more time on this than I likely should, but the Smith Fam blog is finally coming together.  I registered the domain name some time ago, but only now that I’ve seen how active a ‘blogger’ my wife has become, only now do I see the value.

It also helps that one of my co-workers pointed out an article in the July or August Ensign wherein Elder Ballard discusses blogs and their value.  Moreover, he encouraged Church members to be active bloggers, to use it as a forum to share testimony of Jesus Christ.  Accordingly, I’m now an official blogger.  😐

So I’ve enabled the stats plug-in, primarily for Mrs. Smith, but it loads an obnoxious blue bar across the top with a “random” post (which I’ve discovered isn’t so random) that I cannot remove.  I’ve looked through the plugin code but it appears the image is called as a function of the call out to wordpress.com.

Grrrrrrrr, I don’t like that.

Hello World.

If that doesn’t indicate that I am, in fact, an uber-geek, then I suppose nothing will.