DAMN-uary

Pretty much.

Hi, fans.

Last year, February was our big Month o' Snow.  Five snow days in a two-week period, it was ridiculous.

Well, this year that distinction certainly goes to January.  Since returning to school from Winter Break, we've had four in the month of January.  And, unlike February, these were scattered about, so they weren't necessarily part of the same system.  It's been absolutely brutal at work with my students:  we haven't been able to fall into a routine since being back in school due to this large number of snow days, and on top of that we've had two professional development days, and two half-days. Factor in an additional two days of assemblies and altered schedules, and you've got a sure-fire recipe for reduced test scores and an increase in student misbehavior.

Thank God for teenagers.

Anyway, that's about all that's happened this month, to be honest.  Kris and I are continuing our ongoing quest for a new place to live with little prospects (not a lot of inventory on hand, unfortunately), so on weekends we devote a day or two to viewing what few properties are available to check out.  The girls have scouts on a weekly basis, and besides that not much else has been going on in the Hough household this last month.  As always, I've included a few snippets of the here-and-there for your viewing pleasure.

See ya next month, folks. . .

Okay, so technically this was from December, on my way down to visit my Sausage Pad compatriots at the end of the month.  My back-roads route down to Kalamazoo from Midland - which shaves off about a half-hour of drive-time - takes me down a bunch of farm roads in between these Dutch-looking windmills, each of which are a hundred or so feet tall.  Definitely surreal.

I sold a rare Nintendo Club figurine on eBay that had been sitting in my drawer for years  - my first eBay sale in over a decade - and used the proceeds to purchase a 3-LP, 180 gram, colored vinyl recording of the Who's Live at the Isle of Wight concert (along with Live at Leeds - which I already own - one of their best concert performances ever captured.)  It's probably one of my favorite LPs in my collection, and sounds amazing on vinyl. 

Dad and Cindy dropped by for a visit with my nephew, Jax, while they were in town getting their dog, Bailey, groomed.  He was a big fan of Abby's Star Wars toys, and enjoyed shooting his aunt in the face with proton torpedoes. 

Alayna's new favorite thing to do on her drum set. . .

Abby brushes up on her math skills in a Star Wars-themed workbook.  Of course.

While Kris and I haven't had much luck this month finding a new house, Yours Truly has been doing something else to speed along the process:  packing for the move.  While purging our house of crap we don't want to move, I came across my old iBook laptop from 2002.  Sadly, despite being plugged in, it no longer turns on.

I found this in the laptop bag along with the iBook: instructions on how to burn an Audio CD.  In case anyone out there needs to know how to do that.

The record collection underwent another purge this month, too.  I ended up getting ride of about 60 albums/boxed sets this time around, which trimmed more of the fat from my collection (including this set you see here.)

Throughout the Record Purging process, I've also started to catalog my collection through Discogs, using its phone app.  I can enter in the serial number of any album, input its record/sleeve condition (using the Goldmine Standard regularly used with vinyl), and add it to my online database.  This tells me how much each album in my collection is worth, how much my entire collection is worth, and organizes my hundreds of LPs into convenient folders and genres.  I've found that this is a solid activity to undertake while the girls are busy watching TV.

More of the same, from the Hough girls.

Outside the newly-opened Radio Wasteland Records, in downtown Midland.  Our realtor, Rick, told me of this place while we were looking at houses once, and said that it had only been open for a day or two.  After church one day, we all swung by to check the place out.  It's a small, family-owned joint and still in the process of setting up, but their prices are decent and I was able to find six or seven records at a pretty good price.  Unfortunately, while I was there, the local NBC 25/Fox 66 crew rolled in to interview the owners and patrons, so Kris quickly ushered the girls out of the store and texted me this picture from the parking lot.

While I was in the store shopping, the owner of the place approached me and asked if I'd be willing to do an interview with the reporter.  Later that evening, my buddy Smitty posted this picture to Facebook - he had been watching TV down in Ithaca when he saw this story.

It should be noted that Yours Truly doesn't have a lot of on-air television experience, and there's probably a good reason for that: I'm absolutely terrible in front of the camera.  They interviewed me for about five minutes - on why I prefer vinyl to other forms of media, what I think about a store like this opening up in Midland, etc. etc. - but they ended up cutting most of it because, well, I'm a really, really shitty interviewee.

There you go:  my two seconds of fame.

After a successful record haul (and a not-so-successful interview), we stopped by a Tim Horton's to reward the girls for their good behavior inside the store.  Of course, they had made a little bit of a scene when they saw Nirvana's Nevermind on the shelf, but one can hardly blame them for that.

After a lack-luster day of house-hunting, having a snowball fight across the driveway.

On Martin Luther King Day - which all of us had off  of school - I took the girls into my classroom with me so I could work on grading a few things, meet with other Social Studies teachers, and catch up on crap before getting students again the next day.

We don't go anywhere in this family without packing up some toys, stuffed animals, and snacks.  'Cause you never know when you're going to need a handful of Shopkins.

The Cannonball leaves her mark on my white board. . .

Another recent purchase:  the newly-remastered Led Zeppelin: BBC Sessions.  Jimmy Page himself helmed the remastering process, which included a whole new LP-worth of previously-unreleased material.

Another commute to work, another morning stuck at the frickin' train tracks outside of Dow Chemical. . .

Trying our hand at this balance game thing that everyone was playing at Christmas. . .

Surprisingly, our kids don't suck at it.

Making a mess in their room with Shopkins.

A rare moment of sisterly love (it doesn't happen often.)

One day the girls were insistent on making Kris a meal, so this is what they whipped up for her:  chips and salsa, an apple, a granola bar, toast, and a cup of water.

Doing some yoga

At the Roll Arena for a Chestnut Hill exclusive skating night. . .

As always, you couldn't keep Abby off the skating rink, and you couldn't keep Alayna on the skating rink.

Alayna prefers playing games and winning tickets.  To each their own, I guess.

These games are such a scam:  you put in $5 worth of tokens just to win 25 cents worth of crap from the 'store.'  I'm in the wrong line of work. . .

Abby's really happy her sister isn't skating with her. . .

The Mad Scientist, back at it. . .

Abby fell asleep reading a book.  Again.

Noah and Alayna, during an after-school play date (I'm not sure - I didn't take this - but it looks like Alayna has a frickin' icicle hanging from her lip.  That doesn't surprise me in the slightest.)

Being groomed for some purpose.  I can't imagine it's for school, 'cause even I wouldn't let Abby go to school wearing that. . .

At school, some random evening.  I'm assuming it's for Girl Scouts, but who knows.  Kris needs to share with me what the hell's happening in some of these pictures from her phone. . .

- Brian

...And the Hunt Begins Again

Found this in a basement of a house we looked at.
May it forever haunt your dreams.

Welcome back, America.

The Houghs have been living in central Michigan for about a year and a half now, but regardless of the fact that we're both holding down well-paying jobs and are in close proximity to all sides of our family, we still aren't feeling 100% settled up here.

And that's because we're still living in a f***ing Rental.

Not a bad floor plan - if not a little small - and
the appliances were pretty old.

While this little house of ours is getting us by - there's plenty of storage space for all our crap, the neighborhood's great, we're centrally located in town to just about everything you could ask for - it still isn't quite 'home.'


The house we've been renting since June of 2015 is small, it's old, and the yard looks like a hobo without his shirt on.  We have my Granny's piano in our dining room, my library has been sitting in a mountain of cardboard boxes atop steel shelving in the basement (undisplayed), and I have stacks of swords everywhere because there's no real place to display them properly.

Long story short, Kris and I are ready to be home-owners again.

I know I've mentioned this before, but we were fortunate enough to make a decent chunk of change off the sale of our Majorama House in Orlando.  To date, that money has been sitting safely in our local Credit Union, biding its time until we can use it to throw down a down payment on our next house.  This next house of ours, dear readers, shall hopefully be the last house Kris and I ever purchase, and I'm aiming to die in it as an old man.

Checking out a built-in library in a property

Preferably in front of the fireplace, with a sword across my lap and a Who album on the turntable.

Anyway.

Now that the Holiday juggernaut has come and gone, and things have once again fallen back into a familiar grind - Kris and I are back at work, the kids are back in school - we've decided to start actively looking for a new place to live.

Our current lease is up in June, so while we're entering the market at a less-than-opportune time (not a lot of inventory available in the dead of winter, so it's definitely a Seller's Market up here in Midland), Kris and I are hoping we can catch something within the next few months and be able to move out before having to extend our lease any.

Checking out a not-so-nice deck of a house that could have worked,
had the owners actually bothered to take care of it these last couple decades. . .

After asking around, Kris and I were led to a realtor that works through the same real estate company we use as our landlord's rental agent.  This guy, Rick (at left), is known for being straight-forward and honest with houses, which Kris and I prefer.  We wanted someone with experience who won't fluff a place up if he doesn't think it's worth it, and fortunately that's not something we have to worry about with him.

After being approved through a lender, we were ready to start viewing available properties. . . and I remembered how much I loathe house-hunting.  Of the five we saw over the course of the last week or so, some were nice, others were comically bad, and some could have worked if only one or two things had been different regarding the floor plan.  Neither of us want to settle, considering we're betting on this next house to be the last we ever own.

I'll use this particular house on Mason St. as an example.  This old Dow-designed house was in our price range, in a desirable neighborhood, with some great landscaping, and three living rooms. . .

. . . a built-in library, with a nice staircase, room for a piano, and an indoor opening that looked down into the kitchen. . .

Slate floors, plenty of retro charm. . .

. . . BUT antiquated windows that would all have to be replaced (they were from the '60s or '70s.)  And replacing an entire house's windows is not cheap, folks.

 Nor is replacing an entire house-worth of peeling wallpaper.  Had this house been about $100,000 less, Kris and I would have pounced on it, but, sadly, we had to pass on it.  This sort of 'on one hand this, but on the other hand, this' thing is starting to get really, really old, and we've only been looking for a week or so.  Can't imagine how many more white hairs I'm going to start sprouting if we're going to be at this for a few months. . .

Rick and Kris, inspecting another property's living room windows. . .

Kris and I have realized we need at least three bedrooms and two bathrooms in our next house (well, four bedrooms or three bedrooms and an office space for Kris, to be exact.)  We'd also need a Living Room (for the couches, TV, etc.) as well as a Family Room (for a fireplace, our library, the bar stuff, etc.)  A two-car garage, a large basement (to house our storage, our exercise equipment, drum set, girls' playroom etc.), and a shed.  In addition, we'd like to be on this side of town, near the kids' schools and where the neighborhoods are a little quieter.

Retro '70s basement, anyone?

Maybe that's frivolous, maybe that's being too picky. . . but, damn it, you know what?  I'm pushing 40, and I deserve this crap in my life, already.

We'll keep you posted with how this whole disaster of a situation unfolds. . .

- Brian