While browsing a website dedicated to mocking the poor fashion decisions of the rich and famous, I came across this picture:

I WANT A FISH PURSE!!!!

In February, we were scheduled to dive off the Great Escape, going to Farnsworth Bank. The day before, I came down with a nasty flu (#2 of the year) and tried to sell our spots - but then the trip got cancelled due to weather anyway, so we got a refund.

Last weekend, Jeff got sick right before a boat trip, this time with Sport Chalet (flu #1 for him, whereas I am now up to #5). And again, it got cancelled due to rough seas, so we still get some kind of credit or refund.

Today, I just found out that the next boat trip we’re scheduled to go on - and which I’d probably be healthy for, since I’m sick right NOW - has been cancelled because the engines are being fixed.

This is just getting silly - we’re 3 for 3!

Just in case anyone cares, I have now in fact become sick again. Since having my blood drawn this morning, I kept feeling worse and worse (sore throat, dizzy), and finally came home after lunch to a 102 degree fever.

I guess going ahead with the blood work when I wasn’t feeling 100% wasn’t the brightest thing to do!

It’s another one of those days…

- Woke up with a sore throat that feels like I have a big lump in it, which sounds suspiciously similar to the symptoms Jeff was experiencing when sick all last week.

- Have a doctor appointment (just a yearly physical) this morning, and if I really am sick I’ll probably have to reschedule the bloodwork part, which means missing even more work.

- As if I wasn’t missing enough work already, I was so out of it this morning worrying about my throat that I forgot to bring my laptop to the office. Am currently using my old desktop, which is missing a lot of files I really need to finish any real work today, so I will have to miss still MORE work to drive home before my doctor appointment and grab the laptop.

Oh yeah. It’s gonna be one of those weeks!

I just found out that the dive trip we were supposed to go on today (but didn’t, because Jeff was feeling slightly sick and the weather looked not so great) actually got completely cancelled after all, presumably due to swell. This is the second time this year that a dive trip we wound up bailing on at the last minute got completely cancelled - we seem to be pretty good at calling ‘em!

Friday morning at IPAC was a bit surreal. At about 10am, Shelly (the secretary at the “main” desk, although that “main” desk is buried in the middle of the IPAC labyrinth) came bustling through the hallways, urging everyone to read their e-mail from Kathy (the MSC secretary).

Said e-mail didn’t materialize after a few minutes, and when I spotted Shelly heading back the other way I asked what it would be about. Apparently, Kathy had entered IPAC into an “office of the day” drawing at KRTH (oldies radio station), and won! They were on their way to the office with snacks and coffee, and were bringing someone who’d be “serenading” us as well - all the conference rooms were booked already, so we’d have to squeeze into the kitchen.

The ipac-staff mailing list was still taking it’s slow time actually delivering Kathy’s mail, so a few of us helped Shelly make the rounds and fill everyone in on what was about to go down in the kitchen. It turns out that not that many people are in their offices at 10am on a Friday morning, but we managed to get a fairly respectable crowd (mostly women, for some reason) in there by the time the KRTH van pulled up out back:

They brought in several boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts, some coffee - and a mexican acoustic guitar player, Miguel Rivera, who did in fact proceed to serenade us, mostly hamming it up to the ladies in the crowd. He was actually quite good, even!

Miguel and Kathy:

Everyone got into the silly spirit of things, getting autographs and snapping pictures. For some reason, the men didn’t seem quite as interested in joining the fun:

Fun way to start a Friday!

Sadly, here in California, house prices have gone so high that we need what’s called a “jumbo loan.” What does that mean? From the Mortgage Professor website:

Jumbo Loan: A mortgage larger than the maximum eligible for purchase by the two Federal agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, $333,700 in 2004

Lots of banks offer 100% programs for poor suckers like us who don’t have down payments, usually in the form of two loans: one for 80%, the other for the remaining 20%. The primary loan is typically a fixed-rate 30-year mortgage, or some sort of fixed/adjustable hybrid that might start to go up after 7 years (by which time, you’re hopefully moving on to a bigger and better house). The secondary loan can be just about anything; so far I’ve gotten offers for fully adjustables, fully fixed, balloons, you name it.

Sadly, almost nobody offers 80/20 deals on jumbo loans. If you live in California and can’t come up with cash for at least a 5% down payment plus closing costs, you’re pretty short on options. We could get an 80/20 easily if we could find a home for less than $350K, but that’s pretty unlikely.

The one bank that has offered us an 80/20 jumbo loan quoted such ridiculously high interest rates that we’d no longer be able to afford to eat.

So, unless the Caltech Credit Union comes through (they’re hunting for some way to give us a 80/20 jumbo loan; the investors they normally used just recently changed their policy to NOT allow 80/20s on jumbos, darn them!), this whole house hunt thing may be over before it even began, at least until we can save up 5% of a down payment…

I spoke to a realtor yesterday (recommended by my boss), and she said we should start by contacting banks to see how much of a loan we could get - then we could talk about houses.

So I put in some calls to the Caltech Credit Union and Washington Mutual, and the first question they ask is: “What’s the value of the property?”

Hm. I can’t get house prices until I shop around with a realtor. I can’t shop around with a realtor until I’m prequalified for some amount. I can’t prequalify without knowing house prices…

So I just made something up which is hopefully slightly higher than what we’ll actually spend (but not so high that I don’t think we’ll qualify).

Second question: “How much of a down payment do you have?”

Well, none. See, here in CA, by the time we could save up 10% of a house price, house prices will have gone up WAY MORE than 10%.

The guy on the other end of the phone sounded very surprised when I actually said “none,” despite the fact that several of our friends have successfully gotten zero-down loans, or 80/20 combos, or some such.

Then he said that the person who handles the 100% loan program wasn’t in, and could she call me back later?

If there’s enough of a demand for 100% loans that you have a special program for it, WHY DID YOU SOUND SO SURPRISED WHEN I SAID WE HAD NO DOWN PAYMENT?

I can tell already this whole house hunt thing is going to be a barrel of laughs.

This morning, we woke up right before the alarm was supposed to go off - to flashing alarm clocks. Apparently power had just been restored; we were probably awakened by the sound of the answering machine coming back on.

By the time I finally rolled myself out of bed, the power had gone off again, and showed no signs of returning. We have no windows in our bathroom, so I was forced to shower by feel. That part wasn’t so hard, but putting in contacts by the small amount of light leaking in from the bedroom window was pretty tricky!

The elevator was out, of course, so I walked down to the garage. Then it occurred to me: would the garage door open? Was it on some sort of backup power supply, or would I be stuck at home until the power was back?

Right before I got in the car, the lights in the garage came on, so I never got to find out. Now I’m going to be curious about it all day.

What a weekend!

Friday night, A2 and I picked up Kathy and headed to Happy Hour and McCormick & Schmidt’s, for cheap burgers and drinks. The drinks were absolutely necessary - we’d all had a nutty week and needed to vent for various reasons, plus it helped to be slightly tipsy for what followed: Bride and Prejudice at the Laemmle. By the director of “Bend it Like Beckham,” “Bride and Prejudice” is an adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic done in full-on Bollywood style. That includes people spontaneously breaking into badly-dubbed song and modern-Indian dance - I loved it! The leads were terrific, the music was fun, and one of the cute guys from “Lost” had a large-ish role; definitely a good Girls’ Night movie.

Saturday am, A2 and I headed down to Anza Borrego State Park, northeast of San Diego, to check out the wildflower bloom. The day started out well: we had a pretty drive, and after a brief stop at the visitor’s center we were directed to check out acres of wildflowers blooming just north of Borrego Springs.

The high point of this area for me was a gigantic caterpillar flopping around in one of the bushes. This puppy was about six inches long, and nearly an inch wide:

Yum!

Our original plan was to do a hike near the visitor’s center in search of bighorn sheep, but the heat did us in by the time we’d walked from where we had to park (it was seriously crowded) to the trailhead, and we heard the sheep weren’t showing anyway. So we piled back in the car and headed south, since we’d read online that the southern half of the park was putting on quite a show.

Sadly, the show never materialized - unless it referred to all the yellow hillsides, which actually got a bit boring after a while. And then A2 started to get carsick, and we got a bit lost, so it was pretty much all downhill from there!

We compensated for our lousy afternoon by heading to the California Poppy Preserve the next day, since we knew they were pretty much in the middle of peak season. Here are some non-poppies, as seen from the poppy preserve:

The whole area was obscenely windy, so we didn’t get too many good shots in. Still, it was a beautiful area to walk around, full of birds and waving grass (and closed-up poppies hiding from the wind).

Windy poppies:

Despite the weekend’s disappointments, we walked away with some nice pictures and got to see lots of pretty flowers. Both parks were definitely worth checking out while they were in bloom!

My pics: http://gallery.thelaitys.com/v/anastasia/200503_wildflowers
A2’s pics: http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/aalexov/Anzo_Barrego_Mar2005/Anzo_Barrego_Mar2005.html