Well we had a big week.  Our house contract was ratified.  I got a call to setup our appointment for the Design Center to choose our options and upgrades.  Shinta was overly busy with a big project at work this week, so I ran over there to get a quick run through and pictures of everything.  That gave us a big help in starting to think about exactly what we want before going in and choosing.  We spent most of the week reading up on various things trying to get up to speed on everything (appliances, flooring, lighting, shades, etc).  We’re certainly far from being experts, but we are a lot farther down the road now.

This weekend we got our taxes done.  Luckily, it looks like we’ll be getting a refund.  It’s not a ton, but every bit helps.  We went back down the the edition we’ll be in and took a look at a couple of the inventory homes (and the model home) to see how the mostly standard options look compared to the upgrades.  The standard kit isn’t bad.  It’ll be fine, but we’ll see what kinds of upgrades we might be able to afford up front to make things a little nicer and not need upgrading later (the idea being why pay twice).  Some things (like the balcony railing) look like necessary upgrades, but it’s going to be up to how much they numbers come out to be.  The railing upgrade in the model home was nearly $9000, and that’s way out of our budget for ALL the upgrades we do combined.  We’ve made a list of priorities and we’ll go through it at the design center with real numbers to see how it works out.  One thing we’re fairly certain about is not going with the option to have some of the major appliances be supplied from the builder.  We’re fairly sure they won’t have a very wide array of options and we’re still sorting through exactly what we want.  We’ll have six months to get that worked out and find what deals we can.  The two appliances included (the dish washer and range) we’re hoping we can do some changes on too.  I’m wanting a gas range, but it’s electric by default.  Also, we don’t know if the color/finish is selectable (it better be).  There’s so much to keep track of…

I haven’t posted in quite a while and a lot has happened. I don’t know where to start and I’m sure I’ll forget something, so here goes:

We’ve continued our restaurant tasting. Since the last update we’ve been to Erling Jensen’s, Ruby Tuesday’s, Lulu Grille, and Bhan Thai (twice). We went to Eriling Jensen’s in celebration of my birthday and getting a job. The full-fledged review is where to find the detail (not written yet), but it’s quite probably one of the best restaurants in Memphis. Bhan Thai has the best Thai food we’ve had in Memphis (Chao Praya being a close second). Ruby Tuesday’s has buffalo burgers. I’ve been missing my buffalo fix and I’m finally finding some here. Incidentally, I found out about Erling Jensen’s while looking for buffalo meat here. We went to Lulu Grille today for lunch (more buffalo burgers). And since we’re on the topic of food, I should mention that the little cafeteria at work has an excellent tasting Italian sub sandwich for CHEAP.

Speaking of work, I’ve completed my first three weeks. My luck seems to be holding up not only in finding a job so quickly, but also finding a good one. I really enjoy it there. The people are friendly, and there doesn’t seem to be the pervasive flow of people jumping ship you find in some companies. To me, that’s a good sign, and I’m excited to see how this goes. That reminds me to complain about taxes. My god I hate taxes. I was looking at my paystub and realizing that I’ve now paid more in taxes from this new job than I use to even get paid over the same period of time. And we don’t have state income taxes, that’s all federal.
Also, I don’t think this has happened since my last post, but I seem to have neglected it. I finally got to go shooting again. We went to RangeUSA for their Carbine night with the Krinkov. Those frangible rounds they require weren’t 100% in feeding, but they were also so light that accuracy is probably pretty bad out my 1/7″ barrel. At the cost ($0.35/rd) I’m sure I’ll probably go again out of necessity, but it won’t be too often. I’ve got some more Makarov ammo coming in, though. The drought on 9×18mm seems to have been helped a bit. I’m gonna need it for the HCP (aka CCW in most places) class coming up.

No new movies yet. Kind of surprising, considering how many I usually see. I rented Clerks and Pirates of the Carribean so that we’ll see them before their sequels. Miami Vice is out this weekend, so maybe that one. Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis have started up again (and I completely forgot). We spent last night catching up. Gonna be good new seasons.

Memphis has had it’s 100th murder of the year. Actually, by now it’s probably beyond that, but last week I saw it on the news. Washington DC is complaining about their 18 or so murders, but they don’t have a clue. Did I mention the HCP class? Also, pretty freaky, some dude went on a stabbing spree at a grocery store. He was stopped by a dude with a pistol (not a shot fired). The news mostly skipped that little fact. That HCP is sounding even better. Also, in unrelated news, Todd Bailey (Special Weapons) posted pics of his upcoming MWS that he’s been working on for a couple years. I like it. I want it. We’ll see how long it takes for it to really be available. The SP-10 .40 caliber he said would be ready “in two weeks” (4 months ago) aren’t ready yet. Maybe I’ll be able to afford them when they come around, I just need to find an FFL I like.

Woot! I just checked my bank account and my tax return was there. It was deposited today. What timing too. Time to do my happy dance!

I got my taxes done last night and I received an e-mail today saying that my tax return was accepted by the E-file system.  It feels good to get that out of the way.  My nice little refund should be back in the next two weeks.  I think this is a new record for me in terms of being done early.