The Secret

Tonight I watched the Secret. I first heard of this movie a few months ago on Oprah. At the time I decided not to order it and figured that at some point I would come accross it again. I looked at the video store but didn't see it there or on netflix (a mail DVD program). About a month ago I was in Virginia for my brother's graduation. While I was there I bought a DVD player so he gave me a case of DVD's to bring back from Virginia since they were moving out here and had sold their TV and VCR in preparation for the move. I looked through the movie and didn't think anything of the one called the Secret until tonight. We were looking for something to watch and decided to look up the movie on the internet that we were unsure of and I realized that the Secret was THE SECRET from Oprah.

I have watched the movie tonight and would like to officially state what I will acheive...

Within a year

1. Puchase a single family home in a quiet family neighborhood.

2. Make improvements on our new house.

3. Continue to contribute to my 401K and increase the bi-weekly contribution to $100.

4. Get the raise I have been waiting for by being the best manager.

Next year

1. Go on vacation to Montreal and New York

2. Trade in the truck and buy an SUV

3. There are other goals that I plan to reach but they are confidential :)

We have now gotten the paperwork for the loan pre approval that we were waiting for and are now ready to put in an offer on the house. I hope to be able to get together with our real estate agent on Saturday night in order to put in the offer. On Sunday after work I am planning to go out and price some appliances for the house and also carpet or time samples. The kitchen, entryway, hallway to the bedrooms, laundry room, and dining area are already a really nice tile pattern, but the cartpet definitely has to go. I would love to do wood but I wouldn't want to remove the tile (it is in really good shape). We also need a toilet tank top as the one in the house has a crack in the second bathroom. We also will need the matching shower curtain for our bathroom set. We currently have only one shower as the other is a half bath. I can't wait to move in, yes I know the house isn't ours yet but it will be.

We need...

1. Fridge

2. Washer

3. Dryer

4 Stove

5. Carpet

6. Paint

7. Ceiling fixtures (2 are missing)

8. Toilet tank top

9. Back yard needs watering system (all the grass is crunchy)

10. Wall patching stuff

11. New door frame for back door

And probably a bunch of other stuff. We went and looked at two other houses that are the same model that we are buying and it is amazing how different the house can be when different people live in it. I really like the layout of this perticular home because of the open living room, kithcen area. I am gonna go day dream about all of the options.

Buying a home

Buying a home is really tough. We have been working with a real estate agent for a couple of weeks now. We went to see a couple of homes last weekend and would like to make an offer on one of the houses we saw. The area we are looking to move to is called Queen Creek. It is a very new area and has started to develop in the last 4 years. It is south east of Phoenix currently in what seems like the middle of the desert. There is a wal-mart and two strip malls but not really anything else out there yet. It is really excitting though. In the area where we currently live we cannot afford a single family home with a yard and a garage so we are going to make the move which is approximately 45 minutes from where we are currently. Fortunately, I work oly 30 minutes away from our new (hopefully) house.



In the city where we live currently the apartment complexes in the area have recently started to convert to condos. There are a lot of units for sale but we really want to have a real home and our current apartment is much nicer than the complexes that are for sale.

Anyway we are currently waiting to hear back in regards to our mortgage application. We need a paper stating that we have qualified for a mortgage before we can put in an offer because the property is has been foreclosed on. A few years ago there were all sorts of special offers for 0% interest and a lot of first time homebuyers purchased homes and did not think that the adjustable rate of the mortgage would be a problem and I guess it is because quite a few of the homes have been foreclosed on.

We are going to keep our fingers crossed and hope that we get a good answer.

Friends

This is going to sound really harsh but I dont ever go out of my way to make time to see friends. By the time that I am done with work I just really like to be at home watching some tv with JJ and relaxing. I however have decided that I need to find a hobby where I can meet people that are in similar places in life as me. I don't have any friends here my age that are married or know people that are in similar jobs. I cannot hang out with people on my staff because I don't want to be in a position of treating them differently from other employees. The only thing that I really have in common with the people that I work with is that our paychecks are signed by the same person.

They are nice people but half are younger than I am and like to party and are all single. And the other half are older than me and have multiple children, or are retired. So when I do go out with them like tonight (for Cathy's power hour) all I have to talk about is work and I feel weird about that. It probably doesn't help that I don't like to drink. I just don't think that anything tastes good. Why pay $6.00 and tip for a drink that doesn't taste good when a coke only cost $1.50.

I think I'm going to pick up the city programs flyer and see what is being offered. I would like an art class like ceramics or something like that. Maybe I could meet people there.

Tonight I had inventory night and it was pretty upsetting. A couple of weeks ago I found some discrepancies in my liquor sales versus the amount of product we had used during my daily liquor inventory. I think that night I was blowing off steam at the other club with the dining room manager and said "that is it I'm going to can everyone", and apparently someone overheard the conversation and told my staff about the comment this past week, so everyone is already on edge. Well, during my end of month inventory I found another product missing. So that added to my aggrevasion. I really hope that nobody besides that theif knows what happened to the missing liquor cause otherwise I am really disappointed in my staff.

Now that it is 3:00 am and I have to work tomorrow I am going to head to bed.