I slept decently last night. By 1AM, I was completely wiped and I fell asleep with my computer still on playing a tv show off of the Internet. The Internet is a great thing. I want to meet that guy who invented it one day and shake his hand.

Anyway. I got up this morning at 10AM. I really didn't want to, but, I told my parents that I'd meet them at my grandmother's house at 11. Actually, the meeting was supposed to be at 11:30, but I forgot and thought 11 because I'm awesome like that. So, I got up, got dressed, and drove out toward Simpsonville. As I got closer to Simpsonville, I realized that I was going to be 30 minutes early but I didn't really mind. I like being early anyway. I'm usually early to most things.

I got to the house around 11AM. I pulled into the driveway and sat there for a few minutes.

Eddie Holeman, the IT director at Southside Fellowship, called me with an HTML/CSS formatting question for something he was trying to do on the church website. Once I figured out what he was trying to do, I was able to give some useful advice on how to fix the problem. We talked for a few minutes and then he hung up.

My parents showed up around 11:15, so I really didn't have to wait that long. We went inside and started looking at the house. I brought a camera which, if it weren't for the fact that I always have a camera with me, would have made me look smart and prepared like any good potential renter or buyer.

The whole point of looking at the house was to get a feel for its condition and to see if it was a place where Tim and I would want to live. Of course, I've been to the house tons of times. Growing up, we used to go over there once a week for dinner with my grandparents and stay pretty much all evening. And I practically lived there during the summer when my mom was a teacher. But, my parents said it would be a good idea to look again with different eyes. Most everything looked the same.

I knew this before going in to the house, and was kind of concerned about it, that all of the electrical outlets in the house are two-prong.

The wiring in the house is pretty old, I think. It is an old house, after all. I had my mom turn off the breaker to one of the outlets and I took the entire box out of the wall to look at the wiring, and, yep, sure enough, there is no separate ground wire. Only the hot and the neutral.

Tim showed up a few minutes later and we all looked at the rest of the house. Most everything is in expected condition given the age of the house. The kitchen is lacking a refrigerator (not sure where that ended up) and the kitchen flooring needs some cosmetic repair. And for some reason, there is a dryer in the middle of the kitchen. I don't remember that being there when I visited in the past. I wonder if it moves.


Most of the inside of the house was painted recently, so the walls looked nice. There wasn't any heat on in the house. I thought it felt great. My mom said that if I think a 50 degree house is "comfortable", then I probably have issues. But we all knew that.


The bathroom mirrors looked kind of cool. Big and oval. I had my parents pose for a photo op in one of them.


We spent about 45 minutes overall looking at the house. I think most of the family is excited about the possibility that Tim and I would be renting it because we would be good tenants. I like the house. I don't want to live there forever or anything, but being able to stay there without owning the house and having the rent money go toward keeping my grandmother in her own room in the nursing home seems admirable.

Everybody left around noon. Tim and my parents went to lunch, I think, and I headed to my lunch appointment with Zack. I knew I was going to be about 15 minutes early to Oriental House so I decided to go over to Lowe's to look at electrical outlets in anticipation of having to replace all or most of the outlets in the house. I didn't want to leave my DSLR in the car so I brought it into Lowe's with me, but I got a lot of weird looks from employees just by carrying the camera around. I stayed for a few minutes and then left and drove over to Oriental House.

I sat in the front area and replied to some emails on my phone while waiting for Zack to show up. We ordered our food and sat down. The food was great as always. Zack and I talked about some photo stuff. He shoots with a really nice Nikon D200 that I try not to be jealous about whenever I see it. After lunch, I drove us over to Circuit City. I heard recently that Circuit City announced they will be closing all of the stores. I can probably imagine why... most people read about my unsatisfactory experience on Thursday at Circuit City... it caused pandemonium and bankruptcy within a day, and now they have to close. Hey, you don't know. It could be the reason. That or maybe they can't handle finances well. I don't know.

The store was packed out today, which was surprising. I think everything was 10% off. I didn't even want to buy anything. I just wanted to watch other people fight over stuff. Zack and I walked around for a while and then his mom came to pick him up. I talked to his mom for a minute and then I left and headed out.

With nothing else to do for the day, I decided to go to the church and sit in my office for a while. On my way in, I stopped in the youth trailer to say "what's up" to everyone out there. Only Tommy was there. We talked for a minute and then I went inside to my office.

I started doing some research on the ungrounded outlet issue and finally decided that the easiest solution would just be to buy GFCI outlets for the important outlets in the house. Eddie stopped by while I was researching and talked to me about something he was trying to do on the church website. I used to be a web developer before I started working with the media at Southside, so I was able to speak knowledgeably about how to best fix his problem. As I was typing up pseudocode, I decided to just fix it for him, which didn't take long. He left around 3:15pm and I finished it for him a few minutes later.

I managed to avoid doing any actual work things today. I'm not sure if that's "good" or "bad", but either way, I didn't really care. Alex Bolan, a high school student and camera volunteer with the tech team at church, stopped by to talk for a few minutes. I ended up following him back over to the CD ministry room where he and Tommy were making copies of a video. I hung out there for about 30 minutes and then headed home.

On my way home (around 5:30), I called Tim to see if he had eaten dinner. I met him over at Southside Christian School and he followed me to Chili's on Woodruff Road. When we came in, the hostess at the front paused and looked at me. I was expecting her to ask "How many?" (which, I also thought would have been obvious, but.... eh) so I said "Just 2". She looked at me again and said something I didn't really understand. It sounded like a question. I said, "What?" and she repeated it but again, I didn't understand clearly. I knew it was a question so I just said "I don't care", which I figured was a good response to a question that I didn't know. And then she said "Just sit wherever then". So.... we did. And now I know that the "lounge" side of Chili's is for smokers.

I watched one of the flat screen tv's in the "lounge" area of Chili's during dinner since Tim doesn't talk when he eats. There was a lot of media coverage in anticipation of President-Elect Obama's innaugurational speech tomorrow. Tim and I ate pretty quickly, I paid for dinner, and then we went home.

On my way home, I called my parents and talked to them about the research I had done on my electrical concerns for the house. My mom is still waiting to hear back from my uncle as far as legality on renting the house... who has to pay taxes on that income, etc. The house is technically in my mom's name, I think. The rent money will go toward helping keep my grandmother in her own room in the nursing home for as long as possible. I talked to my dad some about the electrical stuff, and then my mom told me to look at some numbers and tell her a ballpark range that we could afford to pay to stay there.

Tim and I sat down and I went over our entire budget for Cost of Living with our current apartment, covering rent, utilities like power, water, etc. In our apartment, the water is paid by the complex and is an amenity/part of the rent. The heat and air conditioning affect the power bill. In the house, we would have to pay for water and the house is heated by natural gas. So, we have some other bills in addtion to just power that we'd have to pay. I basically went through everything and figured out an appropriate range that we could afford to pay to live in the house, given its current condition. My mom and the rest of the family don't want us to have to commit to a lease agreement, which is kind of nice, I guess, although I like commitments. I may be the only (almost) 25-year-old single guy that does. Ladies.

So, no lease agreement basically means that we could move out at any time. I don't think they're going to try to sell the house anytime soon, and besides, if my parents kicked me out of the house, I'd just come live with them anyway. It's probably in their best interest to not do that. Haha.

I'll be talking to my potential landlord (Mom) again soon once she hears back from my uncle. We'll talk rental fees and if everything gets squared away, I may be calling on everyone that I have ever helped move to come pick up my stuff for me. And that's a lot of people, so I expect you to all be there. You didn't think this friendship was one-way, did you?

Later,

Joe