I will readily admit that some shows on HGTV are moderately entertaining.  I will even concede that some I enjoy. But, when it comes to House Hunters, or perhaps the drastically diverse, exceedingly ethnic House Hunters International, I scramble for the remote – to turn up the volume.  Besides it being a show created for armchair-quarterback-designers/architects, here are a few examples of why I have to watch it.

• Everyone (I’ve seen) on these shows picks from 1 of 3 choices.  Really?  How about, “Nah, most of these options were out of my price range,” or “I’d rather not blow $200K on a wood box that I almost like.”?  Can’t be real.  Almost makes me cringe.  Hurts so good.
• Real people get so awkward on camera.  The funniest (and most annoying) thing about the show is the commentary by the prospective home-buyers.  It makes me want to cry.  They say the most mundane, irrelevant, bimbo things.  For instance, say they are touring Home #2.

Host:  So Tammy, what do you think of the kitchen in this space relative to Home #1?

Tammy:  Well, you know, I do like the kitchen.  The cabinets are great – you know, the doors…you can open them; and then there’s the flow from the living room.  People can see in here from where you are.  I really like it.  And the pantry, it has plenty of shelves for canned food.

Host:  Yeah.  How about the windows?  They are new double-paned glass.

Tammy:  Oh, those are great.  I really love windows and the ability to see the outside – especially from within the house, although, from outside, things inside are also visible through the windows.  Also, I like the ability to live indoors.

Host:  Fantastic.  Let’s look at the master bedroom.

Tammy:  Ok, great.  Oh wow, this is awesome.  There is definitely room for a bed in here.  This is where we would sleep.  The carpet is soft on my feet.  It is softer than hardwood flooring.  Also, a carpet could be placed on floors in other rooms to soften them up a bit.

Host:  Nice.  Yes, carpets are soft.

I continually find myself interested in reading new books, and learning about new things. But, I lack the discipline to finish one before either purchasing another, or actually purchasing and starting another.

For clarity, I have decided to post the books I am currently reading, and that portion of each which I have already consumed:

The Black Swan, 60%.
The Reason for God, 45%.
The Shack, 8%.
Blink, 25%.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 1%.
How to Get Into the Top MBA Programs, 75%.
Blood Meridian, 20%.

From this, you can see that I actually do read books (or at least I read?). I can’t seem to finish a book.

I think that the problem lies in the fact that I am convinced that I just HAVE to get the next book and read it.

What do you think? A deeper problem with satisfaction? Perpetual grass-is-greener mentality? ADD?

Let me know if you too have problems with this.

*N.B. Since writing this draft several days ago, I have purchased 3 new books. Surprise, surprise.

We decided to reward ourselves (more on that later) by spending some extra time in New Orleans on our way to Seaside, FL. We ate very well, and all in all had a great time. While in Seaside, we decided one night to commence with the July 2008 Craig Family Financial Overhaul.

For a couple of months here and there we have been able to add considerably to our savings account, but we decided that our inconsistency was more than an annoyance, it was a problem. The ultimate problem, it turns out, is our nonchalance and indifference to the active management of our finances and the rationalization that comes with spending hard earned cash on wants.

I decided to dive a little further down the rabbit hole. I decided to build a spreadsheet that would track and label our spending according to category. I used the following categories to break down the expenditures:

• Insurance (Renter’s and Auto)
• Cable (TV, Internet)
• Car Maintenance
• Cell phone
• Credits (Could easily have been lumped into deposits category)
• Deposits
• Eating Out
• Entertainment (Renting movies, going to movies, going out)
• Gas
• Groceries
• Home Maintenance
• Miscellaneous (Cokes at the gas station, etc.)
• Personal (Clothes, gadgets, Woot! stuff, etc.)
• Rent
• Savings Deposit
• Tithing
• Travel
• Utilities

These may not work for everyone, but they fit for me. I have Bank of America, and they make it pretty easy to manage your stuff online, but I wanted to export to Excel – which is a great option.

Once I exported the file to Excel, I selected everything and sorted according to date so that I could compare month to month expenditures in each category.

Could you guess where we were spending most of our money?

It was on eating out. We spent 8% of our income on eating out. It may not sound like a lot but when compared to 2% spent on groceries; it’s sick! If we flip-flopped these categories we would save a ton of money, because groceries can feed you for a fraction of the price. If this is the case, why do I continue to eat out so often? Here are a few thoughts to consider:

• I feel like I have a refined sense of taste, or that I’m “kind of over that eat at home biz, I mean, I’m not in high school.” What a joke. I’m no connoisseur or anything of the sort, so why try to convince myself and others that I am?
• I think I deserve a nice meal for having a hard week. Or weekend. This fallacy is hard to overcome sometimes. It’s like going up to someone and saying, “Hey, I’m feeling underappreciated, so I’m going to burn this money.” Double-whammy.
• Feeling like breaking a weekend tradition of going to the sushi place will literally end my life. We go to the same sushi joint every Saturday night when we are in town, and drop like $80 bones. Don’t get me wrong, the sushi is the best I’ve ever had, (check out my post on SushiBar), but can I really afford to eat there so often? No! Rationalizing is the enemy.

Some practical solutions we’ve started implementing:

• Sit down Sunday afternoon and plan out the meals for the week. We try to pick meals that will carry over so that the leftovers won’t be as redundant. For example, this past week we made some homemade spaghetti sauce and added some ground beef. We got enough for spaghetti Sunday and Monday nights, and then used the rest of the ground beef for a hamburger grill out with friends Tuesday, and then got a $3.00 pre-made pizza crust which allowed us to use the rest of the spaghetti sauce.
• After the meals are written down, make a quick sweep of the fridge and see what you need. Before, we would get home and realize that we already had a bunch of the stuff we just bought. Make the item by item list of stuff after the sweep, and avoid generalizing – it only aids rationalization. For example, don’t write ‘Salad Stuff’, you’re just psychologically positioning yourself to say, “Yeah, those organic-fat-free-vitamin-infused-live-active-soy beans are what I was talking about,” write what you need. Lettuce mix, carrots, cucumber, celery, dressing.
• Only buy what’s on the list. This is hard to police on yourself, but easy when someone else is with you. That’s why we go to the grocery store together.

I’ll update you later on the success (or failure) of our attempt to narrow our margin. I’d love to hear some tips you all have on saving with respect to eating out, or any of the above-mentioned categories. Post some comments.

I can distinctly remember when my father taught me to play. This may date me, but who remembers when LifeSaver Holes were popular? They came in tubes the size of a roll of pennies. Anyway, those were our “stacks”, our chips. We would pull out the trusty TV trays and sit on the couch for hours playing 5 card draw. At the time, I had a problem with eating my own bets. Not so much anymore.

It wasn’t until much later that I began to appreciate the skills my dad had try to teach me at a young age.

During my sophomore year at Ole Miss, the World Series of Poker blew up, and I was introduced to Texas Hold ‘em. A quick run down of Texas Hold ‘em:

Each player is dealt two “hole cards” face down. A round of betting. The dealer turns over 3 community cards that each player can use to better his/her hand. A round of betting. The dealer then turns one card over. A round of betting. Finally, one last community card from the dealer is turned. Final round of betting. Read ‘em and weep.

I’ve played a lot since then. We would play at least once a week in college, and trips to Tunica, MS (local gambling city) weren’t as rare as they should have been.

I’ve won some, I’ve lost some, and most of all I love playing. I think there are a many things that draw me to the game: competition, exhilaration of the win, outsmarting your opponent, odds/probability, and the list goes on.

I wanted to document the play-by-play of a recent online hand (yes I play online poker).

I play poker online occasionally. I played for about 10 days straight when Virginia went out of town for 10 days. I started out around a month ago with a $150 deposit into my favorite site (rhymes with Rodog). I have systematically worked it up to quite a bit of money, and was “sitting at a table” last night where the blinds were $5/$10 – a table that I would never sit at live.

It was a six person table, and the average stack was about $1000. At the time of this hand, I had about $1200. I was on “the button” (was in the dealer position), which means that I’m last to bet in a given round when I was dealt 7d8d (7 of diamonds and 8 of diamonds), which I like. The action went as follows:

First to act folds. Player to his left raises the big blind to $35. Next player folds. I look down at 7d8d and smile, of course I’ll call this. I love calling raises online with mediocre hands like this. I may lose money on the flop when I don’t hit it sets me up perfectly for the situation I’m about to describe. Ok, so I call the $35. The small and big blinds both fold, leaving just the initial raiser, and myself following him.

What do you know? The flop brings 8s-8c-5h. So I’ve got a set of 8s and I’m thinking this guy has a decent hand (AJ-AK, 1010 and greater, etc.), but nothing that can catch up to me. Plus, how could he put me on calling with a single 8 in my hand?! So I’m sitting pretty. He’s first to act, and he takes a while before betting $75. There’s already $85 in the pot, so he’s trying to take it down immediately. I kind of laugh on the inside. I quickly call the $75 to try to play like I have something, (reverse psychology). The next card was probably the best card in the deck for me. It was the king of clubs. So on the board, we have 8s-8c-5h-Kc. It’s his turn to bet again. He waits maybe 5 seconds after the king fell before betting $185. So there is $235 in the pot when he bet $185. As I said before, this is a great card for a couple of reasons: (1.) If he has something like Ace-King, it allows him to hit his top-pair, (2.) if I raise, it looks like I have a king and he may call just to try to split the pot now that it’s so big. SO. I decide to raise to represent a king, thinking that surely he can at least tie a king. I raise to $695. This means that there is now $1115 in the pot. He waits for a long time (~30 seconds) before re-raising me all in for ~$200 more. At this point, I figure the only thing that can beat me is KK and, there is a slim chance (albeit very real with online poker) that he indeed has that. I mull over it for 0.5 seconds before calling the extra $200. That $200 call made the pot $2025! Low and behold, I played it just right – he flipped over AA. Pocket aces are a loser when I’m calling with 78 suited! The river was 10s; so he shipped all of his chips over for the $2025 victory.

The best part about this wasn’t the money. It was the fact that I outplayed and outsmarted that guy. I called when it didn’t cost me much, hit, and then played like I didn’t. I then raised precisely when I should have, (AA would love to see someone raise when a King hits), to take it to the bank.

That is why I love the game. It’s all in the head.

As many of you know, beach towns produce good seafood. I have generally liked seafood for most of my life, but it’s been the tame kind (i.e. fried shrimp from Red Lobster, or the occasional gourmet crab cake). Living in Corpus Christi has opened my eyes (and tastebuds?) to seafood – through necessity. When it comes to food diversity in the Coastal Bend, we’re batting about 0.190. Therefore, seafood brings a new option for me, and one that I can pretty much trust will be a good one; as all of the fish is very fresh.

Enough with the background. I used to hate sushi. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t eat it. In high school, a group of guys started eating sushi each week on a certain night. I wasn’t in the group, but I joined them occasionally. It took some serious intestinal fortitude to hold down the new slimy substance that hadn’t found a special place on my pallette just yet. But, like most things, the more I ate, the more I came to appreciate raw fish.

Moving down here, I didn’t exactly think about the abundance of opportunity for sushi, but in our exploration of the finest in two-star dining, we were fortunate enough to stumble into the best place on Padre Island. Sushibar, is an awesome place to enjoy a relaxing night in Corpus Christi. The website allows you to view pre-recorded video of the restaurant and its patrons as they eat. I don’t know why. The people who work there are all really hip, and the place is furnished in a very modern asian way. Huge, high quality pictures of people eating sushi flank the walls, and several flat screen TVs show totally random closed-circuit broadcasts of their favorite abstract music videos and breakdancing competitions.

Onto the best part though. The sushi is the best I’ve ever had. I’ve had sushi in a lot of places, too. Places like Uchi in Austin, Two stick in Oxford, Little Tokyo in Jackson, Nagoya, Aka, Stix, etc. And none even come close. A typical meal…

Start off with some ninja noodle salad. Literally – pasta noodles, crab, tuna, squid, avacado, homemade srirachi and green onions, etc. It’s like a seafood pasta salad. Accompany that with seaweed salad. Very finely shredded seaweed, cucumbers, green onions, and sesame seeds, covered in a very light, sweet oil based dressing. We’d likely have some of the gyoza next. Flash fried pork dumplings garnished with eel sauce, and green onions. These are unbelievably good. The goto rolls for us are the “Flying Fish” and the “Geisha”, but we also usually get one or two of the special rolls of the night. Last night, it was blue marlin, avacado, krabstik, cream cheese, and green onions. Ridiculous. Occasionally we’ll have some fresh peppered yellowfin tuna, but their specialty lies in the Escolar (white tuna). Here’s a PDF of their menu.

If anyone comes to visit us down here, I’ll take you to eat here. If it’s not the best sushi you’ve had, it’s on me. Until next time.

I stood in line for about 3 hours with Robbie in July(?) to the the iPhone, and I haven’t regretted it. But alas, I am on the prowl again. Unlike many other gadgets and things I’ve bought, the iPhone didn’t escort me to the hell that is buyer’s remorse. I’m happy to say that I still enjoy using the phone, and find that it actually does make aspects of my life much easier.

But, the time has come. The reason that I want to get the phone is so I can run Windows Mobile applications — which the iPhone is incapable of doing. The software I want to run is a Forex charting software that enables me to place real-time trades.

With the Treo, I’m hoping to better sync my Outlook (work) calendar with my Google Calendar and iCal from home. This should prevent me from missing meetings, keep current reminders about tasks, etc. I know that I can do all this with the iPhone, but I’ll be honest, I just like the Windows setup better. I’ve been saying it for months…I just want a new ThinkPad. My MacBook Pro is great and all, but I still prefer Windows to OSX, AND I’m a designer. I even prefer designing with Adobe CS on a PC. Just a preference.

If you know anyone who wants a great MacBook Pro at a fraction of the price, let me know. Here are some specs:

Model Name: MacBook Pro 15″
Model Identifier: MacBookPro1,1
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 2 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Serial Number: XXXXXXXXXXX
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled

Just email me if you are in the market. I can be reasonable.

Anyway, back to the Treo saga. Virginia has been wanting an iPhone, so I think we are just going to switch the iPhone to her number (which involves her getting a new SIM card AND re-activating through iTunes – gag) and add a new data package to support the unlimited data that I *need* after being spoiled with the iPhone.

Until next time.

The main purpose of this trip was to go bouldering. Bouldering is a more rudimentary, fundamental form of climbing in which the climbers don’t use harnesses or rope. The routes are mainly on boulders that rarely exceed 20 feet, but that doesn’t mean that it’s just all fun and games. The reason that bouldering is so attractive to most followers of the sport is because it doesn’t require a lot of setup, and it can be done while relaxing and enjoying simply being outside. The gear involved is minimal: climbing shoes, chalk, and a crashpad. The crashpad is exactly what it sounds like. Because you don’t use ropes, the crashpad assists in breaking the fall so you don’t break an ankle or something else.

OK, back to the story. We loaded all of our gear, 2 crashpads, 3 backpacks, a cooler with all our food, and a Rubbermaid store-anything type container, and the dogs into/onto Alison’s Blazer and hit the road after I got off work Thursday. Our first stop was Hill Country Natual Area in Bandera, TX. Unfortunately for us, the sun decided to go down at the scheduled time – we pulled into the campground at around 12:00 am. It was cold. Surprisingly, we were able to set up our campsite using only the light of the moon…and our headlamps and flashlights. But seriously, the moon was bright. I love how drastic the difference between city sky and country sky is. It makes me feel good. So, at about 12:45 we piled into our tent (Virginia and myself, for clarity), and I fell asleep for the longest segment of the night in my 55 degree summer bag. About 2½ to 3 hours later, I woke up freezing. When packing I thought to myself, “Hm, I don’t need the rain fly. It’s not going to rain.” And I was right. But the mesh that covered nearly 2/3 of our tent (that would have been covered by the fly) sure let a hell of a lot of cold air in. At this point I had a decision before me. Do I (a.) tough it out and prove that I’m man enough to brave the elements, or (b.) wake up Virginia and tell her that I need to get in the 15 degree sleeping bag with her. Of course, I opted for choice b. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t fun. It was miserable. But it was warm. If it had been a 2 person sleeping bag, that would have been one thing. The 15 degree bag was tight – meaning that we each had to be satisfied with the position we were in before we determined it comfortable. Every 20 or so minutes I would have to re-adjust and wake her up to say something as dumb as, “Hey, can I move my arm?”, because I literally lacked the ability to control my upper torso. It was like I was in the vice grip of an artificial-down filling stuffed anaconda. After moving my arm, I would decide that I’d put it outside the sleeping bag, above my head (envision a person standing straight up and raising his arm to the sky — only prostrate) to allow enough room for my chest cavity to expand to bring in enough air to breathe – only to realize 20 minutes later that my arm was asleep, and approaching frost bite. And this ensued until my alarm went off at 6:00 am.

After coffee, we packed it up and headed to Enchanted Rock, about 1½ hours away. It’s a rather large state park centered among two outcroppings of rounded bald-top rock. The main dome and the small (?) dome were the mammoths that towered over the boulders that we were after. We hiked for a while before finding some boulders that were on the guidebook. The rock there was very tough on the hands. It had a lot of crystals embedded in the main rock (think concrete covered in sharp pea gravel). We climbed in one spot for a while, then hiked around the main dome before stopping for lunch. We made it back around to the front of the complex near where we began and settled there to boulder for the rest of the day. It was excellent. Warm with a breeze and sunny.

We spent the night at Inks Lake State Park, which was about 40 miles away. A sleeping bag situation happened that night also, but we slept better because we decided to put the crash pads in our tent for cushioning. We cooked a legit breakfast of pancakes, hash browns, and bacon. It’s always gonna be a good meal when all of your food is the same color.

Austin was our next destination. We bouldered at a scenic park with a creek/lake, and then went to REI and a (much needed) drive in hamburger joint before heading back home. All in all it was an excellent weekend.

We have looked in every area of Corpus Christi: Del Mar area (where we are now), the Southside, downtown, on the Island, etc. We most like the old, charming section of town (Del Mar). We’d like to find one that we can fix up, and have been attracted to homes that have lots of big windows, 3 bedrooms, 1+ baths, hardwood floors, back decks, interesting roof lines, and ones that seem easily refurbishable. We scour Remax for homes in the 78404 zip code. We like the following:

House 1
House 2
House 3

There’s also an interesting website where you can search by address to find out what kind of taxes the current owners pay and the history of the price of the house. This could obviously help in filtering out ridiculous asking prices by doing your own comps in the area — you can search by street, and that way gather an idea about how much similar houses on the same street are priced per square foot.

The only thing that we worry about is whether or not we’d be able to recoup our costs if we were to move in less that 5 years. We don’t have any firm plans yet, but definitely don’t want to leave ourselves hung out to dry.

Another completely different option that I’ve actually been thinking quite seriously about lately: communal living. I’ll save that for a later post. Let me know what you think about the houses or the housing market.

We settled on Bodum’s 12 cup French press, and a Copco tea pot that does in fact whistle. So far the experience has been a little rocky. My next door neighbor is a coffee fiend, and I tried to offer him some “French press coffee” insinuating that it would be better than coffee he tried to make – that blew up in my face. My coffee:water ratio was off miserably. It was like 3 day old coke that was in that Styrofoam cup from the greaser hamburger joint down the street – except it was hot. The coffee has improved drastically, though. You’d think that a chemical engineer would immediately grasp the concentration concept, but I obviously thought that I could bypass the cumbersome (read: essential) instruction book. Wrong. One scoop grounds/ 4 oz cup o’ Joe.