slimbiscuit on Saturday for the Tristan trade-off, which turned out to be harder than we thought - we got pretty attached to him, and basically now we need a dog of our own even more than we already did. We did some research online, and it turns out that Yorkies are pretty goddamned expensive. And we'd rather do an animal resuce thing anyway. We'd ideally like a puppy, which are somewhat hard to get in shelters, but whatever - we're not getting one until we buy an apartment. Speaking of which...2. We used some online mortgage loan calculators to see what sort of mortgage we'd be able to get; it seems that we're not likely to get very much. Which is somewhat hard to believe; it's not like we're dirt-poor. In any event, it seems that even a 2BR in Astoria will be too expensive, but a 2BR in Woodside (where we are now) might be doable. We're gonna meet with a local real estate dude next weekend and see what we can do. Then, of course, we have the whole pre-approval hassle, and all the other insanity...
3. In happy news, Kath's sister is getting married! She called us last night to say that she'd gotten engaged. This is fantastic news, and we're all very, very excited about it. Congratulations, Susanne and Aaron!
4. One of you posted a link last week to an interview with 2 of the guys from The Stone Roses; couple that with one of my favorite little jokes in Shaun of the Dead where Shaun doesn't want to get rid of "Second Coming" ("I like it", he sheepishly says), and you get part of my soundtrack for the weekend. "Second Coming" is not a great album, but there are parts of it that are awesome, and John Squire is a freakin' guitar genius. Not because of his lead playing, which is more coke-addled than virtuostic, but because of the arrangements - he makes Doug Martsch (Built to Spill) look like some wanna-be 4-tracking moron.
5. Actually, strike that. You wanna know who's a genius? Stravinsky. There's a genius. I've been listening to "L'Histoire du Soldat" all weekend as well, which is one of my favorite pieces of music of all time (especially this recording) and I'm just continually blown away by it.
