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Home buying

The wife and I have decided it’s time to buy a house. We both agreed that since we’re not planning on moving again anytime soon, we’re ready to jump into home ownership. So, to educate ourselves on the home buying process, we headed off to Barnes and Noble and picked up Home Buying for Dummies and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Buying and Selling a Home. Looked at a few books in the store, and decided on these ones. I figure in about a year and a half or two, once we’ve paid down some of our credit card debt and saved up for a down payment, we’ll finally have our own home somewhere.

I’m looking forward to it.

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174 000 miles

Made it to 174 000 miles on my 1991 Accord today. That means I’ve owned this car for 40 000 miles and just over 4 years. Car’s holding up pretty well, aside from some body problems. Nowadays it doesn’t get driven around nearly as much as when I first got it. Having to do a few major repairs every now and then, but that’s to be expected as parts wear out. Eventually I’ll have to replace it, but hopefully I’ll be able to squeeze another 40 000 miles out of the car. I want to see this puppy roll over to 200 000 miles.

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Construction noise

The CT scanner below my office was removed a couple of weeks ago, and now they’re doing renovations on the room getting it ready for a new CT scanner. A few days ago they were doing some drilling through cement or something. Now it’s some kind of repetitive hammering noise. Floor work or something perhaps. I don’t know what they’re doing down there, but it’s loud and rattling my brain.

I think I shall be leaving work early today so I can escape this racket.

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New tunes

Added a couple of CDs to my collection today. As a Canadian, I’m naturally a fan of The Tragically Hip. I happened to be browsing around the local Cat’s Music waiting for the barber shop to open, and found Road Apples and Fully Completely in their ‘Dog Pound’ (used CDs) section. The price was right, ($6.50/CD), so i just had to grab them.

Ahhh, decent music for a change…

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Staying put

Well, turns out we won’t be moving after all, and I won’t be working at Duke this fall. The wife has been having such a good experience in the research lab she’s in and seems to be clicking well with her mentor, so she’s decided she wants to stick around. I suppose it’s just as well. She’s already established some connections with people here, and she thinks getting into med school here will be a little easier than in NC, even though there’s more of a choice there.

So now I have to come up with a way of breaking the unfortunate news to my would-have-been colleagues up at Duke. My friend Ehsan will be disappointed. I’m a little disappointed. I was looking forward to taking on some new challenges at Duke, but it’s not like I had my heart set on it. I’d have been happy in either place. The important thing is seeing that the wife gets to pursue her goals. I’m sure everything will work out nicely in the end.