Um, Am I Really 30....?

Ick, it's true. I'm 30! Since when did I get old enough to be 30? This may be the Pearl Anniversary, but I don't feel new and white.

I remember thinking how old 30 year olds were. And now that I am one I don't quite feel as old as I thought 30-somethings should. It's and odd feeling.

As a child birthdays were always a big deal, and just like everyone else the day becomes less and less important as you realize it's closer and closer to decrepitation.

I recently took on a new department at work. I didn't change departments, I still do all the techie stuff, but also have absorbed the whole Materials Management department. As you can imagine, I've never felt more busy. So this year my didn't even see my birthday sneak up on me. But as surely as death and taxes, it did come.

Being born on Veteran's Day, I've never had to work or go to school on my birthday. It was as if the whole world remembered to pause and celebrate me...oh yeah, and veterans too, I guess. So you can imagine my disappointment when I found that my employer, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, does not take Veteran's Day off. Well those veterans have sacrificed enough already, the least I could do is take the day off and loaf around in remembrance. So I did.

After a small sleep-in session and breakfast Anna and I went to see a movie. I didn't really care what movie. I don't get to see movies in the theater much so I was happy just to be there. We ended up seeing "Cirque Du Freaks: The Vampire's Assistant" which I have since discovered was NOT based on a true story.

Afterward we ate out for lunch. I went home, treated myself to paying for some new music downloads. Took a nap. Then I played some much neglected Nintendo Wii. Thanks to me, Mario has come one step closer to saving the galaxy. He hasn't even thanked me yet.

On our way to eat at a restaurant of our choice, Anna had me drive by some friends house, The DeLongs, to pick up a cake that was made for me. The plan was to pick up the cake and then take it home and eat it after dinner. Anna had asked the DeLongs to prepare a large Mexican food meal for me as a surprise. You can't find good Mexican food on Guam (at least, not that I've found yet), so it was a nice treat. After I gouged myself and crammed the little empty pockets of my stomach with homemade ice cream cake. Anna had to roll me out the door like Violet Beauregard in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, post blueberry desert.

I got home and loosened my pants before the buckle broke. As I got ready for bed I mused on the thought of being in my thirties. Hm, is "mused" the right word? Is there a word that means "mused" but also includes "dreaded", "regretted", "feared", disappointed", and "bewildered"? No? Well, let's just say that at my ripe old age, I should be glad I'm still coherent...

Underwater Pumpkin Carving for Halloween 2009...

Every year in Guam I join the annual underwater pumpkin carving competition put on by Guam Tropical Dive Station. This may sound odd. And it is. I bet you have no idea just how boyant a pumpkin is. Try diving with one and you will. When I rented my gear I asked for 20 lbs of weights. In scuba diving, that's a lot. Someone behind me said, "Sounds like someone needs to go to buoyency class..."

The rules state that you can not make ANY cuts into your pumpkin above water. Once you are out, however, you can dry and decorate the pumpkin as you wish. So even though this is an uderwater pumpkin carving competition, you'll see some very creative pumpkins that could obviously not have been completely constructed under the sea.

In the past, I have always done well. I don't usually win for the most creative pumpkin, but I do win a thing or two in the raffels that follow. Anna and I have a tradition of winning a hotel stay. We didn't want to ruin the streak. Even though Anna doesn't do a pumkin and does not dive, she still has fun with the competition too.

The previous years I've done impressive technological feats. My first year I made a Nintendo Game Pumpkin, Hallo-Wii-n Edition. I didn't win. The next year I did a techie computer with a working DVD drive, speakers and screen, and it was playing "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown."

My losing 2007 Underwater Pumpkin Carving Entry

Again, I lost. The winners are usually fish or underwater themed. So, I decided not to do a techie pumpkin. But I just don't have any interest in doing a fish pumpkin in an underwater pumpkin carving competition where the prize is for the most original. That's like awarding the most original haircut to a bald guy. Being the 17th annual, we've seen enough "original" fish themed pumpkins over the years.

So I decided to do a pumpkin showing another passion of mine, The Simpsons. I saw a few Simpsons pumpkins others had done and I wasn't impressed. And the pumpkin the dive shop gave me didn't lend itself to ideas I had for Simpsons charachters. Also, I was off island for work until the night before. So at 10:30pm the night before, I was looking at a blank pumpkin with no ideas.

I decided that I wanted to make it a pumpkin that would be easier to assemble than my last entries. I began to think of simple charecters, people or icons that had a distinct image that would be recognizable on a 2D, monochrome surface. Then it hit me; I needed an 8-bit Mario!

I found the perfect pixelated Mario for my pumkin carving needs. Then I cut out a 1/2 inch square of cardboard and did a bit-for-bit copy of that Mario. An hour or so later I had my template.

The next morning, I showed up at the dock ready to carve. After an hour at 15 feet deep I came out with an ugly and incomprehensible pumpkin. Even though I knew what I was doing I couldn't tell what it was.



Anna and I dried it off and went to work cleaning it up and finding a way to make it a bit more distuingishable. I wanted to stay true to the monochrome and 2D look, so I decided rather than use color, I'd just get a nice black marker and create this.

Making the top a 1-up mushroom was a late edition but a good enhancement.

As I was placing the pumpkin out for dispaly I wondered if anyone would get it. So I make up a quick and easy sign so people would hopefully get it. Not a good sign if you have to explain your pumpkin.

There are actually three categories to enter. The best prize is a free diving trip for two to Australia and since that goes to most creative, that's the one I and most others enter.

These are some other entries for MOST CREATIVE.

Bowling

Home Sweet Home

Clow fish (I think this should have won)

Fish on the hook

In a surprise and dissapointing judgement call (to all but the one person), the above pumpkin of a fish caught on a hook acutally won. I can see why the judges stay anonymous.

This is the FUNNIEST:

The Cat in the Hat

I don't know if the kid called this anything, but it won a dive trip for two to Chuuk.

Here are the entries for SCARRIEST:

Freaky Clown

Organ Harvesting

Angler Fish

Witch

Spier. The winning pumpkin and owner of a free dive trip for two to Palau

So, I didn't win the pumpkin, and some winners were a bit of an upset. At least I will win something in the raffel drawings, right? Nope. Some people won 3-4 times and we got nothing, nada, bumpkis. It was disapointing day. And despite the multiple loses of the day, I still had a good time and and am still proud of my humble 8-bit Mario pumpkin.

Preggers...!

Ok, so I've been very busy lately with the move, and Conference weekend, and a new church calling as the District Executive Secretary, and also a job change (more on that in a future post). But with all things going on in my life, I have to announce one more big change in my life.

Anna is pregnant!!!

When I told my sister, Lacey, she asked if the baby was mine. A fair question. So, yes, I am the father. But we are unsure if Anna is the mother... (Figure that one out)

I am super busy and I have oh-so-much I going on right now, so I don't have a lot of pics or videos ready to go. But, I can tell you Anna's due date is May 11, 2010. And yes, Anna has constant morning sickens.

Now that Anna is eating for two I can get away with gaining some sympathy weight, right?

The Price of Homeownership...

After years of saving our pennies we have finally decided we had enough to go for our first home. The housing market has joined the economy and taken a dip. President Hussein has a significant $8k tax credit for first time home buyers. With all of that combined, the time was right.

For a few weeks we've been searching through house listings and walking through house after house. My sister recently got a GREAT deal on a nice big home in Arizona for a rock bottom price. But in Guam, the housing market didn't take quite the same hit. Also, home prices are much higher over all. We were originally looking for a house under $150k. At that price, you'd get a small, one bathroom fixer-upper house. We had to raise our max price to $200k. For that, you get an OK starter home with about 3 bedrooms and two bathrooms.

So, after much consideration we found a home that we liked and were able to get it below the asking price for $180k. The main drawback to this home is location. Our current apartment is a short distance to everything; work, church, shopping, you name it. Our new house is in Yigo, a city at the north end of Guam near Anderson Air force Base. There are a few relatively close shopping centers, but otherwise it's a distance to drive every day.

The house has covered parking for 2 cars, a big plus and very unusual for Guam. Also, the exterior over all is pretty nice.







The inside is ok, but needs some work. This was once a smaller house with 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. The previous owner took out a wall making the old master bedroom a living room and they added on two bedrooms and 1 bath to the back of the house. A good move, but some aspects of the expansion were poorly executed. The window in the old bedroom, kitchen and even the bathroom face the expansion's hallway. And remnants of the removed wall are still there, most notably in the non-matching tile work.

Decent kitchen with window over sink overlooking the water heater in the utility area.

The bathrooms look ok, but the sleek looking pedestal style sink is ultimately less functional as you have nowhere to put your toothbrushes, shaving stuff, etc. I miss counter tops!

Probably my favorite feature of the house. When walking down the hallway, you can look into the bathroom and see what people are doing in there...

Of course, buying a home is not as easy as a car. If you like a 100k car, you can drive off the lot with it and let the paperwork follow. With a home it's an uphill battle to the bitter end.

After shopping around and finding the right bank with the best rate and lowest points (and learning what that meant) we felt the worst was behind. That was the beginning. We had to pay for a new appraisal. The appraisers found remnants of termites. We had to pay for pest control. The appraisers also found some moisture on the ceiling which they thought may have come from cracks in the concrete roof. (It was condensation. Once the A/C as on it was bone dry.) We had to pay for crack repair. And then, we had to pay for a structural engineer to certify the roof. The appraisers also had doubts about the setbacks. They felt some of the house may be too close to the property line. The house wasn't too close, but the last survey and sketch was done before the expansion. Although the expansion followed along the same lines as the existing house, the bank insisted we pay for a new site survey and sketch.

Just as we thought we were done, the appraiser noted last minute that he found a government easement on the front corner of our property. Although it is our land, the easement means the government reserves the right to take back that part at any time (it's a corner home). Our fence and gate cross into that easement. So, we had to have the fence removed, take pictures, have the appraiser finalize the paperwork and then put the fence back. In the meantime, I also was narrowing down the insurance company and jumping through the dozen hoops that bank requires - including the body cavity search.

It took a month from when we started the appraisal till it was signed and completed. If you ever want to know what it feels like literally bleed money, try what I've been doing. I wasn't just bleeding money, I was uncontrollably hemorrhaging cash. I almost wanted to apply a firm turnicate around my neck on more than one occasion. Luckily we had a GREAT Realtor and friend who helped us along the way. He was willing to take a reduction in commission and negotiated for a reduction in cost at closing to help offset the issues we had to pay for.

Just when the issues were ironed out our bank informed us there was a new law saying that we must wait 5 days from the completion of the appraisal until we can close. They waited 13 days.

And of course, during the process of this home purchase we had other challenges. Our apartment lease expired the last day of September. We should have closed and been in the home by then had things gone more smoothly. When it became apparent that we would not be in the home on time, we were fortunate enough to strike a deal with the seller to let us store our stuff in the house prior to closing.

I took off work to clean the apartment and get it ready for the move out inspection. On the 30th of September when I was to have my inspection a tropical storm hit Guam and closed down business. The management canceled my inspection. Their intention was to charge me extra for staying there extra time, even though I was out but they declined to come inspect the property. I struck an agreement that I would get the key back to them before they locked up the office for the storm. So, with much less time than I had budgeted, I had to clean like the bastard love child of Mr. Clean and Martha Stewart on steroids. Other people were boarding up their windows and buying supplies for the storm. I was washing windows and relocation my stuff to the trunk of my car. My neighbors thought I was crazy. I barely finished in time. I had to keep my utilities hooked up and pay for them until the inspection, so I called the landlords every day until they finally inspected my apartment.

Anna and have been living out of our luggage at a friends house for 3 weeks. We also survived a typhoon and tsunami warning while being homeless. (Hence the lack of blogging updates along the way.) But today, we finally have closed the deal. We are officially homeowners. This weekend we will spend our first night in OUR new home.

Me, Anna and our Realtor, Tom Clark on closing. The cobwebs have nothing to do with Halloween. That is a natural effect of the bank moving so slowly.

Even after all that we have gone through, I think it will all be worth it. And as challenging as the experience was, I have a feeling the unpacking will seem even more traumatic.

One of the coolest things about home ownership is the ability to point out a piece of land from space and say that that chunk of earth is yours and yours alone. Of all the people on all the earth, that spot on the planet solely belongs to you. Here is my little piece of the big picture.

Battling Guam's Fierce Brown Tree Snake...

For a place that is nothing more than a dot on the map in the middle of the vast blue oceans of the Pacific, Guam has it's share of fame. A few years back there was an email floating around about a job in Guam where a guy goes from village to village to deflower young women when they reach a certain age. Also, anyone who knows anything about WWII is familiar with Guam's importance in the war.

But one of the best known rumors of Guam is the legend of the snakes. I've read that we have as much as 13,000 snakes per square mile on Guam; which would mean a total of 5.2 million. That's almost 35 snakes for every person. Although you can find them around the island, no one in Guam believes that number to be true. In the three years that I've lived in Guam, I've only seen one of the infamous Brown Tree Snakes. And that was a snake in a cage that some missionaries had as a pet. But after today, Anna and I think it may be a more serious threat than we had surmised.

Behind our chapel we have a large field. Anna is fruit crazy and she is always bugging me to get her some of the bananas that grow wildly there. Since they usually go to waste or are stolen by the neighbors anyway, I've gotten her some from time to time. Anna was pushing me to get them today, so I took a kitchen knife and cut down a tree that was nearly ripe. I found a gecko hiding out in the bunch. I scared him out and loaded the bunch in the back of my car.

We took the bananas home and cleaned them up. The bunch was still green, so I put them in our guest bathroom tub to ripen for a while.

Shortly after it got dark, I went to use the toilet. As I sat down I saw what looked like a skinny rope at the base of the toilet, but it seemed to move just slightly. Seeing as how inanimate objects shouldn't move on their own accord I stood up to verify my fear. Yeah, it was a brown tree snake. These snakes grow to be 3-6 feet long on average and the largest one ever found was here on Guam at 9 feet. This particular one was maybe 18 inches long and pretty small - obviously a juvenile.

I didn't want the snake to get out of sight while I went looking for something to grab it with, so I asked Anna to grab something. Perhaps that was a bad idea. Anna is a bit on the squeamish side. Yesterday she was concerned when she saw a harmless little gecko on our door. So this snake was a bit much for her to handle. The second she saw it she was up on the futon in the guest room convinced the whole apartment was now riddled with snakes, ala Snakes on a Plane.

I was able to convince her to step on the floor again so she could grab me the salad tongs. The only way to do that was explain that either she stay there and watch the snake while I get the tongs or she gets to leave the room and let me deal with it. Once she handed me the tongs I maneuvered carefully and was able to grab the snake close to the head. Although these snakes are not deadly to adults, I still didn't fancy getting bitten. Once we had the thing controlled I realized this would make great blog fodder, so I got the camera out.

The snake in our salad tongs with the vessel of its entry in the background.

These snakes do not belong in Guam. They were accidentally introduces via cargo around the end of WWII. Authorities ask that you don't release these things back into the wild. They want these snakes dead, dead, dead. Quite frankly, so did Anna and I.

I had Anna bring me a cutting knife from the kitchen. I locked the salad tongs and lay the serpent in the sink I then leaned on my sword a little. This little bugger was surprisingly difficult to pierce. It took more work than anticipated, but before long he gave up the ghost.



After he was good and dead we took him to a woodland area directly behind our apartment to send him to his final resting place.





One would think this was the end of it, but no. My poor traumatized wife hasn't been the same since. I have scoured every nook and cranny of this place looking for a second snake that my wife is convinced is lurking around. Every fifteen minutes she asks me to look again. Although she wants me to protect her, my previous proximity to the snake has made me an "untouchable" for the time being. She has been in the fetal position for the last 4 hours now and shows no sign of recovery. There has even been concerns that there may be a deadly rattle snake poised to strike in those now cursed bananas. (No, really, I'm not making that up.) Rationality has taken a back seat in this time of fear. She hasn't been able to stop thinking or talking about the snake.

"Let's move."

We are currently looking for a house in Guam anyway. "Of course, honey, we are looking. We'll be moved in a couple of months."

"I don't mean out of the apartment, I mean out of Guam."