Sunday, October 29, 2006

Pictures!



Sunday, October 15, 2006

The apartment is mine!!!

Today Pat and I went and looked at the apartment again, and then I put in my application, and guess what? I was approved on my own, without Pat cosigning :D I have to give them an extra $300 refundable deposit as security, but I can go it alone! So, that means that on Wednesday I can send them the first $300 to secure the apartment in my name, and then the weekend after this coming weekend will be my move-in day :D

I've been running my budget out all the way until July of next year, just to make sure this is gonna work. It is going to get tight in the immediate future with all the move-in expenses and missed work during the holidays, but after the holidays are over with it should steadily get better. Here's how it looks.

Breakdown of known expenses:
$955/mo rent
$102/mo cable (TV, Internet, Phone)
$120/mo power & water
$40/wk gas = $172/mo gas
$30/mo cell phone
$150/mo food
$120/mo entertainment
$100/mo spending money (this is my primary fudge buffer, since I've already over-budgeted for both food and entertainment, this is pure gravy)
--------------
$1749/mo expenses


Breakdown of income:
$15/hr for 40 hours = $507 direct deposited every Wednesday


Short-term budget for the move-in:
$100 as of Sunday the 15th
+$405 pay (because of that sick day)
$505 as of Wednesday the 18th
-$300 deposit to secure apartment Wednesday the 18th
$205 as of Thursday the 19th
-$150 van maintenance on Saturday the 21st
$55 as of Monday the 23rd
+507 pay
$562 as of Wednesday the 25th
-$300 move-in deposit Friday the 27th
$262 as of Saturday the 28th
-$100 paint Saturday the 28th
$162 as of Monday the 30th
-$154 rent as of Tuesday the 31st
$8 as of Tuesday the 31st
+$507 pay
-$45 power as of Wednesday the 1st
$470 as of Thursday the 2nd
-$75 cable installation on Saturday the 4th (this may be free with my package)
$395 as of Sunday the 5th
(from here on all necessary moving expenses are out of the way)


Long-term budget through June '07: (this assumes $0 starting money, as that $395 will probably go to furniture and other apartment stuff)
+$2028 pay in November
-$1749 expenses
$279
+$2028 pay in December
-$1749 expenses
$558
+$1521 pay in January
-$1749 expenses
$330
+$2028 pay in February
-$1749 expenses
$609
+$2028 pay in March
-$1749 expenses
$888
+$2028 pay in April
-$1749 expenses
$1167
+$2535 pay in May
-$1749 expenses
$1953
+$2028 pay in June
-$1749 expenses
$2232


So, there you go, it's public, and the math is right, and it's all based on a worst-case scenario. I assumed that I would have no income over the holidays, plus I started with $0, plus I assumed no nights/weekend part-time job or anything.

I'm so excited, I'll post pics of the apartment as soon as I can, as well as paint colors I'm thinking about. One that I definitly want to try is a steel blue... we'll see what I can find at Home Depot. Anyway, it's freezing in this apartment, I'm gonna go snuggle under my Boeing fleece blanket with a Stormy on my lap and a book and enjoy this gloomy rainy Sunday :D

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Pics from the drive to work

This really isn't from work, it was the sunset last night... beautiful colors on the cloudbank.

This is my morning view of Mt. Rainier as I'm heading south on the 405. It has been even more beautiful on a couple of occasions, but regardless, the angle of the sunlight hitting it is just fantastic in the morning.

These are a few of the partially-changed trees at Boeing, you can see how the leaves that get the most afternoon/evening sunlight are bright red, the ones behind them are just turning yellow, and the rest of the tree is green. Also, the piles of leaves on the ground are a fantastic mix of colors, if I hadn't been driving my car I would have gotten a better pic of them.

This is the view of Whistler I get while headed back north on the 405 after work. It's wonderful to me that either way I'm headed I get an incredibly beautiful snow-covered mountain to keep me company. You can't really begin to understand just how huge these peaks are until you realize that I'm 90 miles away from Rainier and about 150 miles away from Whistler, yet they are clearly visible pretty much every day... Posted by Picasa

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Fall Pictures

This is the stray that I harbored for a couple of nights before she moved on... she was the sweetest thing, wanted love more than anything else, and her fur was so soft and thick.


This is the apartment building across the way steaming in the early morning. The night temp was dropping into the 40's, but daytime temps were still in the 80's.


A few uniformly transformed trees, these are pretty rare, as most trees only have a couple of branches that have changed colors. And yes, they were even more beautiful irl.


A few nice leaves I saw from our deck, I love the sheer spectrum of colors you find up here... in C-burg, it seemed as tho all the leaves changed yellow/orange and then dropped and turned brown within like a week, but I've been seeing this slow transformation happen for the past 2 weeks and it's just barely started. Posted by Picasa

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Ahhh life

I'm dictating this post using speech recognition on windows vista 64 bit, so please pardon any mistakes. I'm also a feeling sick today which is one reason why I'm here dictating this instead of at the museum of flight.

Class Boeing has been going great. I'm learning a lot of very useful stuff. There have been a lot of arguments and tension in the classroom this past week, but we all moved past that and started on Thursday with a clean slate. I finally have remote access setup from home which is really really awesome because it lets me study on my own time and refresh what we learned on Friday before the test on Monday. I bought a Lego tie fighter for my desk, and last week I earned a pride at Boeing certificate which I treated in for some binoculars with a Boeing logo. My joint strike fighter models are coming along slowly but steadily.

I'm working on a wish list at Amazon .Com as well as one at the Boeing store for Christmas. I can't keep the holidays of my mind with all the leaves changing color and the cold snap we had recently. The Pacific Northwest has just about the most beautiful fall I've ever seen. Either I had forgotten how many different colors leaves change or the colors out here are simply more vibrant. Either way it's beautiful and I wish I had someone here to share it with. It would be awesome if Jen, or mom and dad, or mom, or dad, could come see this.

I'm also thinking of adding another cat to the family particularly once I get my own place and am working eight hours a day. I know stormy needs and would appreciate the company. While browsing petfinder.com I saw a border collie/chocolate lab mix. She looked exactly like Gussie, except she was entirely brown. She had all black and white puppies. Beautiful dog. I wish I could get a dog but there's absolutely no way to take proper care of one. So I'm thinking maybe I will get a Bengal cat. Like stormy they are good for allergies, but they're one of the youngest domesticated breeds of cats. They were first domesticated only 80 years ago. I'd like to get one of the snow Bengals but they are more rare.

Well, dictating is actually pretty fun, but it's still learning my voice so I had to correct a lot of mistakes. Otherwise, vista 64 bit rc2 has been very impressive, it finally has driver support for practically all of my hardware. So far I have not had any application compatibility issues. Keeping my fingers crossed. You know, it feels weird to be talking to a machine about that machine, especially in a derogatory manner. I guess I should stop that ;)