Monday, July 31, 2006
Weekend fun and more houses.
So my friend Rob (Freshman) and his fiance came up for the weekend. Thankfully the weather gave us a break for the weekend and wasn't as hot as it has been thanks to some much needed rain. The weather in Duluth has bee crazy, we're supposed to have the hottest July ever (granted that puts us at an average 70 or something with temperatures over night, but hey, we live in the "air conditioned city").They got up around 8:30 and we all met another friend at Applebee's for happy hour. On Saturday we went golfing. I'm really not very good, but neither was anyone else, so it was okay. We went to a course in a neighboring city, Proctor, which was nice because it's a bit cheaper and not very busy, so we didn't have anyone pushing us behind. Somehow I managed to get a bogy on one of the holes, due only to the fact that I managed to drive the ball on the green on the first swing. Definitely not a norm. Mike was the best of us, with like 48 or something (out of 9 holes) followed closely by Rob. The rest of us were in the 60's or more...
After golf we stopped at Dairy Queen, made a quick stop to look at a house and then headed to Mikes to grill. There was a bit of rain that delayed grilling for a bit, but it wasn't too long. My room mate Becky and Rob's girlfriend Leah pass the time by playing Tetris. Oddly they were both really good at it. After it rained we grilled and played bacce ball. On Sunday Rob and Leah left fairly early and after that I went back to the same old boring stuff.
We've looked at five more houses now, with some promise. One was really nice, had a yard and enough space, but the bedrooms were tiny. Another was nice, in good condition, but overall a bit small. The third house had plenty of room and is still a possibility, although it wasn't the best location and had coin-op laundry. The house we saw on Saturday was the best. It had a two door garage, a huge sunroom and even bigger living-room, a really nice, big deck, a nice kitchen and separate dinning room, good sized bedrooms, a bathroom with separate tub and shower, laundry and was nicely located just outside town. The big downfall was that we wouldn't be able to have anyone over. Apparently it has a really small septic system that it shared with the house next door, so she said even if we had people over for a short time it could back up... So anyway... We saw one more house tonight. It was really nice, had a nice kitchen, sun-room, gas fireplace and a yard, but it was a bit small, had coin-op laundry and the shower was in the basement and was a bit questionable. So, we're considering some of the places, but might see a few more.
Later tonight we had this huge storm come in and it really pored. Sewers and streets were flooding and there was lightning all over, which we don't get a whole lot of because it's often too cold here for it, but it heated back up good today. We actually had a heat advisory. The really cool thing is you could look up the hill and see that a ways over it there were still blue skys. The bad part is that now my basement is wet (where my bedroom is, thankfully the room stays dry). Anyway, it's time for bed now. Feel free to leave comments, more than likly it will make my day to know someone cares.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Slumlords
So we've been looking pretty hard for a house recently. We went and looked at house tonight and it was actually really nice and pretty affordable. The only thing was when we were waiting for the landlord to come show it to us, the nieghbor told us he was the "landlord form hell!" and that he tries to keep everones deposits, which seemed to fit as he wants twice the month's rent for a deposit. As he was showing the house to us he was like "tenants did this" and "tenants did that" about ever little thing wrong about the house. Apparently, the former ternnants are paying his wife to clean the house because it wasn't clean enough... seemed pretty clean to me! My though was "is it going to be clean enough when we move out?"... i don't think so. And like the first thing he told us was how heels were the worst thing for wood floors (because Becky was wearing them) as if to say "well i'll be charging you for damaged floors..." I've never had any problems (for the most part) with a landlord, but I guess it's somethig I'm going to consider...Monday, July 24, 2006
Backpacking
Well, it was an interesting weekend. On Friday, my friend Rachel came up and we went out for a few beers. Then, on Saturday we headed up to Finland (Minnesota) and hit the Superior Hiking Trail. The weather was great on the way out and the hike was really nice. About three miles in we found the first lake, Egge. It was nice and we took a break there for a while, but we really wanted to make it to Sonju Lake, so we kept hiking. Along the way we came across the bear trapper's cabin which was interesting. It still had furniture and such inside. After about four miles the trial got harder and we started to feel it. Sonju was 5.9 miles from the parking lot (so it was about a 12 mile round trip) and we didn't bring nearly as much water as we should have (thanks to me and my tiny water bottle). We were dead by the time we got to the campsite. We had pitched our tents and made a small fire. I was excited to try out my tiny backpack stove, but neither of use were hungry and I felt sick. We had planned on getting water from the lake, but it was so low we would have had to walk through a bunch of mud even past the dock to get any, and lake water didn't see too appealing even though we had purification tablets. Around 7:30 it started to rain, so we decided to go to bed. The next morning we packed up and left camp at about 8:00. There was another campsite on the lake where people were staying and we considered asking if they had parked at the closer lot, only about a mile away, but didn't. The trip back was painful, but we made it. We actually made pretty good time too. It only took us about 4 hours to get back. We were defiantly happy to get back to the car and appreciated the seats. We stopped at Betty's Pies in Two Harbors on the way back for lunch. We had to wait a bit, but I didn't care as long as I was sitting. I think I could have sat there forever. We got back into town at about 3:00. I was so stiff, and I'm still trying to stretch back out. All and all, it was really fun, but I'd never go that far again unless I knew I was in good enough shape.
Monday, July 17, 2006
TLL
Well, I'm back from vacation. It was great! The weather wasn't the greatest, but it wasn't bad either. It was a little cool a couple of days and rained a bit, but the nice days were perfect. This year was a bit interesting because most of us are legal to drink now, so we got a little P & A in. I had to quit a bit early after feeling sick from drinking that Miller after a bunch of light beer. My Uncle Scott brought a keg from his local brewery which was good. Grandma brought a new game, "marbles" as we called it. We got Dusty to tube, which was good, although you could say as much for me. Scott had a new tube that was really nice. I managed to kill Bambi on the way home, luckily for me it was small.
I got back to Duluth on Saturday and it was like 105 degrees, so for most of the weekend we tried to hit as many air conditioned places as possible. On Sunday we went to a lake in Wisconsin meet a friend who lives in D.C. and was in the area for a wedding. Today I'm back at work with more or less nothing to do, but I get to start a new project this afternoon, so hopefully that will keep me busy for a while.