Month: July 2005

Last night some friends of ours took us out on their boat. We put-in in downtown St. Clair and moved north to Port Huron and even a little out into Lake Huron. [Picture above is the Blue Water bridge, one of the busiest connecting points in the country between Canada and the U.S.]

This was my first trip on the river or on Lake Huron, so obviously it was new to the kids as well. We had a blast as it was a perfect evening. The weather was gorgeous, the waves on the river weren’t bad, and the company was the best. Dick and Cathie are fantastic hosts, I had never seen them in this role before!

A good break

With all that is swirling around us for the next 24 hours, this was a welcome break. Yesterday was a whirlwind of a day with golf in the morning, looking at houses from 9:00-1:00 PM, making an offer on a house, and then this. Today I have normal church responsibilities. But, I also have to go out to lunch with a visiting missionary family and entertain, head down to my in-laws house to pick something up, [A 2 hour drive round trip!] and set up for tonight’s bonfire. Holy cow it is going to be a long day.

No news is _____ news

We don’t know yet whether or not our offer on the house has been reviewed. So at this point, we’re just waiting. We have until 10:00 PM to hear anything from the seller. Tick tick tick tick.

I just got back from our real estate agents office. We have tendered our very first offer on our very first home. (It’s picture is directly below this one.)

The details
It’s a 2 story Colonial originally built in 1810 according to the township records. It was apparent relocated to this location in the 1910s or earlier. Though I’m not 100% about this, the talk is that it was once a Toll House. We look at this as not only a great house for our family, but a great place to entertain people.

It features 4 good sized bedrooms, 1 and a half baths. I like that fact that downstairs is the half bath since it’s always a little weird to have guests in my shower space. All of the bedrooms are upstairs and I like that too. It keeps the living space more private.

We love the living room and dining room. They are huge! The formal dining room is 22×11 and the living room is 19×17 at least. The living room has a fireplace and under the carpet are hardwood floors. The whole house is flooded by the many windows… We dig that. The kitchen is nice, though not fantastic. We think it’s quite usable.

Another HUGE selling point is the very large backyard. This is perfect for having fun, fires, BBQ’s on and on. We think the kids will love to have a place of their own to play. I can definitely see a playhouse going up.

Some of the other things it has are a 2.5 car garage, wrap-around porch, a nice laundry room… And a few other things I’m forgetting.

The verdict
The offer is in the sellers hands. We should find out something by Sunday evening. Eeks! This is scary, but fun at the same time.

Oh yeah
We’re leaving for Northern Ireland in 9 days. Why not buy a house?

This is house #4 on our final 4 list. It’s the cheapest, has the most square footage, etc. But we worry a bit about this house since it was built in 1810. 

This is house #3 on our list. It’s worst feature is that it’s on a busy road. It’s the 2nd most expensive of the final 4. 

This is house #2 on our list. And it is also the most expensive. 

Stocks
I took advantage of yesterday’s early morning “terrorism sell-off” to make a quarterly adjustment in my stock portfolio. I dumped the sluggish Coca-Cola Company [KO] in favor of the best of breed Intel. [INTC] I did this based almost entirely on my new favorite TV show, Mad Money with Jim Cramer.

I held Coke for about a quarter and while it did go up about $4 I didn’t get around to cashing out. Just like the casino I didn’t follow my head and press the “cash out” button. All told, we held the stock for 90 days and made $.60 per share plus a dividend of $3.31 a share. Not terrible. I was able to buy Intel during the early morning slump near it’s 2 week low of $26.20. I just set a limit at $26.25 and waited for the market to hit my number. So… I’m pretty excited about that. It’s already gone up to $26.87 as of 9:51 AM today. This morning a big analyst upgraded Intel’s earnings expectation for the 3rd quarter, so the stock is on the move up, up, and away. As I look at my streaming ticker from E*Trade I see that most of the buys for Intel are massive! Holy cow… Maybe one day I’ll own thousands of shares of companies… Maybe.

Taxes
My heart sank the other day as I went to the mail and saw the return address of “Internal Revenue Service.” I don’t cheat on my taxes, but pastor taxes are a tricky business and I’m always afraid I’ve screwed it up. I could see through the envelope “amount you owe” and “penalty” and I was almost sick. With the house hunting at full throttle… This would put us out of the housing market. To my relief I learned that while I did mess up my taxes, it was only by $1.00 with a $.01 penalty. Phew!

House hunting
This afternoon we are looking at about 5 more houses. There are two here in the village of Romeo… So we are excited about that. There are still 2 from last time that I am interested in, so we’ll see. Two of the houses today are within 100 yards of each other. But both are also on a major street in our area. We are still thinking that if all goes well, we could do this in a week. More on that later.

Earlier today I gave a brief and very self-centered reaction to the bombings in London. Rather than convey my shock and sympathy, my mind went immediately to “how does this effect me.” I wish I had reacted differently. In retrospect it only shows how selfish I am at a time like this.

And yet, there is no getting away from this simple truth: This mornings attack bear some effect on our trip to Northern Ireland.

Earlier today I contacted the leadership of our mission trip. I asked… “In light of what has happened, do you think that everything will proceed? At whay point would we rethink our plans?”

Here is the response I got back:

Hi PA –

Actually, I had one of my trip leaders traveling from London/Gatwick to London City airport at just the time the blasts happened. He made it to the airport and on up to Liverpool fine.
I am going to copy in this email an email I just received from A-, the Summerserve coordinator for Northern Ireland.

Just for your information, we have a direct flight from JFK to Dublin. Dublin of course is in the Republic of Ireland. We will then take coaches up to Belfast. The Irish Republic and Northern Ireland are a separated from Great Britain, Wales and Scotland by the Irish Sea. We will not be going anywhere close to London or even the land mass that England, Wales and Scotland are on.

Here is A-‘s email:

Hi D-,

I’m sure that you’ll have heard the news by the time you read this. I suspect you might have some uneasy parents calling you, so if you want to reassure them you can remind them that Northern Ireland is quite separate from England, separated from London itself not just by a lot of miles but also by the Irish Sea. The team will be nowhere near London at any time.
It looks like an al Qaeda attack, and all previous incidents of this kind have been one-off attacks with no follow-up (9-11, Madrid, Kenya, Bali), so if they follow that pattern there should be no danger anywhere in the UK for some time to come. I’d suggest it’s timed to coincide with the G8 summit which will be long over and done with by the time the team arrives.

In conclusion, we wouldn’t see this as increasing the personal risk of anyone coming to Summerserve Ireland.

Blessings,

A-

So, there you have it. Let me know if you have any other questions, or any of your students or parents can feel free to call me directly.

Blessings!

D-

And with that, I rest.

With the Northern Ireland mission trip just 11 days away, today’s terror attacks have caused some concern within the leadership at Romeo.

I am busy reassuring myself that this doesn’t seem to bear any effect on our trip at all… but I think I am kidding myself. I am just waiting for the phone to ring with the voices of concerned parents.

My opinion on the matter: If God is sovereign and omniscient, then when He told us to go on this trip and confirmed that by providing the funds needed through hundreds of faithful people… God knew this too would happen and our being in Belfast during this time is part of His sovereign will.