New House

Written By:  Andrew Eide

This is a photograph of our new home. It is “new” for us but the house was built in 1991 so it is actually turning 27 years of age in 2018. As of January 3, 2018, we have owned the home for 60 days since we went to Closing on November 3, 2017. On January 8, 2018, it marks the 60 day period of when we moved our furniture into the home and slept in our home overnight for the first time.

Due to purchasing an existing home, that has been purchased and sold numerous times since 1991, you can imagine that we have some repairs that needed to be made, and some still needing to be made, but overall this home was in very good condition since the owners we purchased from took care of the home inside and out, and the repairs we needed to make were minor.

A few disadvantages of this home include the following. It is a two-story home with a two-story living room. This causes the heat from the heating system to rise so that the upstairs area is often 10 degrees warmer than downstairs. Nothing we can do about it when the living room is completely open until the top of the stairs. The other item is that we wish the kitchen was larger with more storage space available but since we don’t use the garage, and we installed three large storage shelves in the garage, we have enough storage overall to suit our needs. The other item is that the actual dining room is carpeted and since we hate to eat on the carpet we put our dining table in the kitchen, near the patio door, and we eat there on the vinyl flooring. We turned the dining room into a “den” where Keira has her television on the wall where she can play video games, Wii games, and watch movies.

The advantages of purchasing this home include the following:  Compared to other homes we looked at this one required the least amount of repairs to fix things. The heating and air conditioning units were replaced recently. The heating system in the attic was replaced about a year ago and the air conditioning unit, a 3-ton unit, was newly installed in August 2017 just before we purchased the home. The size of the home is 1,964 square feet which is larger than we expected to be able to purchase. We viewed a lot of homes, before viewing this one, and most of the others were under 1,600 square feet and they cost from $20,000 to $40,000 more than this one. Our back yard is larger than most of the other homes we viewed before deciding on this one. My rough estimate is that from the back of the house to the back of the fence it is from 60 to 75 feet and the width is from 50 to 70 feet.

We have lots of work to do in the Spring to get the backyard ready for a vegetable garden. The only problem we have is there are lots of Squirrels and they love to eat vegetables we will grow. We will do our best and whatever the Squirrels don’t eat we will enjoy.

New Babies

Written By:  Andrew Eide

Since we are walking into the new year of 2018 I decided to write a blog about the concept of new things such as new baby humans and new baby animals. I have limited my graphics to that of a newborn human baby and a newborn puppy as I don’t feel the need to overload my blog with too many graphics.

It doesn’t matter if the item you are viewing is a newborn human baby, a newborn puppy, or even something as simple as a new plant sprouting in your garden. Everything starts small and tiny and grows larger. Some of these items that start out small, and often defenseless, grow at a very fast rate and others grow at a slower rate, depending upon the environment and how generations of reproduction has dictated things.

One example is that of a prey animal such as a deer or other wild animal. Usually the babies are born and able to walk and run within a matter of minutes. This is due to generations of their species being prey, or food, for predators. It just comes naturally that their babies would be able to stand, walk, and run, quickly to avoid being eaten.

However when human babies they are pretty much unable to do things on their own and they are considered defenseless for at least one year. Then at the one year point they start to comprehend how to do things on their own but they are still pretty much defenseless and that is why human babies remain with their parents until they are out of their teen years. A way different concept when you consider that most animals will leave their parents when they are about six months of age.

New Years Resolutions

Written By:  Andrew Eide

When a new year comes into existence two things happen. One is that most people want to celebrate the doing away with the current year and launching into a new year and the other is that most people make resolutions they want to accomplish in the near year. Both are usually doomed to failure.

I honestly don’t care if I am in the year 2017 or 2018. It is just another day and another number added to the number of years. Since time on Earth is a man-made concept for how to determine time in certain segments it isn’t relative to what the Universe is doing. For all we know time is a fluid item in the Universe and it doesn’t have a beginning or an end. For us as humans on Planet Earth, which is miniscule compared to the entire Universe, then how we determine time is meaningless in the overall concept of things.

On the concept of making resolutions to keep in the new year I’ve never met anyone who kept all their resolutions. Maybe it is nice to make a list to put in front of you to remind you what you want to accomplish but if every year you accomplish one or two of the dozen or more resolutions then you have failed so why keep doing it year after year throughout your life?

I have a to-do list of things I wish to accomplish but they are not things I need to list as resolutions to accomplish because they are normally in-real-life things that I am trying to accomplish on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. Since I am continually attempting to resolve these items at all times I never feel a need to make resolutions to lead me into the next year as New Year’s Resolutions.