The House Hunting Begins

Life has been busy for me lately. Playoffs have started for Micron's Intramural basketball league and we had two games this week and have two next week. We play games after work (which cuts into my normal blog writing time). In addition, I have decided to re-enter the housing market in search of a humble abode I can call my own. And that has also taken a considerable amount of my time.

Initial Search

I started looking for a house last year about this same time of year. I figured, since interest rates were so low (they are lower now) and the market was so depressed that it would be an excellent time to get a deal on a nice house. After looking for about a month, I decided that I didn't have the money for a decent down payment and it would probably be cheaper to just rent and pile up savings and buy in a few years. Also, I was looking for a house to raise a family in and decided that it would be silly to purchase a home for a family before having a wife to voice her opinion on what would be good for a family. I figured if I picked what I liked, chances are a future wife would hate the house and then where would I be?! So, the housing search died -- for the moment.

Dream Revitalized

Fast forward to this month and after reading several great books and talking with some wise folks (aka my parents) I have decided to buy a house. But this time, I am looking for something much cheaper and plan to use it as a future investment property. My current plan is to pick up a cheap property, live in it until I pay it off, and then -- hopefully I'm married at this point -- buy the home to raise a family. Once the family home is purchased, I would like to rent out the first house and dive into the landlord profession. It's not really that I have always dreamed to be a landlord or anything, but I'd like to give it a try, and I think I might even enjoy it. Plus, the income from the rental would help to pay off the second house even faster. 

Building the Empire

Once I have two paid for homes I'll decide if I want to continue landlording. If so, I will most likely save up and pay cash for a second investment property. At that point in my life I have no intention of taking on any additional debt. But at the moment, I think a little debt may be necessary to jump start the process of building my "evil empire" bwahaha!

If only they had these sort of perks in Boise!

Realtor Hunt

So, lately I have been talking with lenders about getting preapproved and in search of a good Realtor. Last week I received my preapproval for my loan from a local Idaho credit union. I have interviewed two Realtor's so far and will be talking with a third tomorrow. The first two were excellent and this third one sounds like he's not going to make the decision any easier. I suppose it's nicer to have more options then fewer, but making a decision between three great candidates will be difficult. I plan to make my decision by the end of the week so I can start looking more seriously. 

I'm very excited to become a homeowner and will keep you updated on my search!

Weekend Highlights: Friends Drop In

This past weekend a couple good friends came to visit me. One of them is a great friend that I met in the NuHouse while in college and was my workout buddy for the majority of my two years at WSU. He is one of only a few friends from school with whom I have continued to keep in touch. So, of course I had to give them the Boise tour.

We of course sampled one of my favorite local restaurants, Goodwood Barbeque Company. Everyone loved it! After dinner we headed downtown to kill some time before the main event of our Saturday evening, the Josh Ritter concert. I rarely find excuses to go downtown so I jump at them when I can, like people visiting. It's hard to justify the time and gas to drive down there just to hang out. This is another reason I want to move closer to downtown once my time in the mansion is complete.

Twilight Criterium Race 2012

Twilight Criterium

While downtown we did some shopping (or browsing rather) and hit some coffee spots. It actually was a great time to be downtown looking to kill time because there was a sprint bicycle race going on. This was the first I had seen a sprint race, I didn't even know they existed. Basically, they roped off two blocks in the heart of downtown Boise and did "circle-track" style bike races with about 20-30 bikers. The racers ride so closely and are going about 30 MPH through hard turns, it gets intense. I hear the wrecks can be pretty brutal but we didn't see any. It was pretty fun to watch and most definitely lends itself to spectating when compared with most bicycle races which tend to be over large distances.

There were quite a few spectators watching the event and I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised since I like to refer to Boise as the Mecca for Bicycling; everyone around here seems to regularly bicycle. After watching a race or two we headed for the concert. 

Josh Ritter - This picture really summarizes his antics on stage.

Josh Ritter

The Josh Ritter concert was pretty fun. There were lots of people and I always am up for a good people watch. The antics of the artist were very entertaining: he was always smiling big, running around stage, and jumping up and down. He is a local guy from Moscow, ID (right up by Pullman, WA, home of WSU). So, of course he had some jokes about Idaho and even an Idaho song which of course got lots of cheers from the crowd. Honestly, I'm not much of a music lover but generally can enjoy any type of music. Personally, concerts are too long for my liking and at about the halfway point I am music'ed out and ready to be doing something else. This concert wasn't an exception but I still enjoyed myself and it was a great reason to get out, enjoy some time with friends, and have a good time. 

This weekend was one of the better ones I have had in Boise. It was great to have some friends visit. I always love showing friends the town; so, if you ever want to come visit me or are just passing through Boise you had better look me up!!

My Blogosphere Hiatus

Oh boy, I just looked, and I haven't posted anything since the end of June. The last couple weeks have been a blur and this will be a summarizing attempt of my vacation from real life! 

From our hike through some of the tallest trees
I have ever seen. Beautiful!

So, I took the first week off in July and headed to the Tri-Cities for some much needed downtime. On the way there I made an out-of-the-way stop in Pullman to see a couple of friends from the NuHouse get married; marking the first NuHouse couple to get married. (For the uninformed, the NuHouse was the co-ed Christian home I lived in while going to WSU. More couples have come out of that house then I can keep straight.) I hung out with my buddy Alan and we of course hit our favorite restaurant spots that we always go to during Pullman visits. 

Sunday, I made it to the Tri-Cities in time for church and enjoyed a nice day catching up with old church friends and family. The next day my parents and I headed to Mt. Rainier for a rainier camping trip than we would have liked. I'm so proud of myself for catching the spelling on that; makes me wonder if there's more to that name! It did rain for the majority of our time there, but it was still very relaxing and I had a great time. We chatted about my life and future plans and just enjoyed each other's company; something we used to do all the time that doesn't happen much anymore. We saw lots of elk and deer on the way up but we didn't see any bears so I count the trip a complete loss! I'm kidding of course. During the 7 minutes of sunshine we had we were able to take advantage of a couple trails near our campground and do some hiking, so all was not lost.

We headed back to civilization on the fourth and of course there was nothing but blue skies. Oh well, I guess that's how it works with camping. For the fourth we attended a 4th of July BBQ at the church. It was another great time catching up with people and throwing the pigskin around a bit. 

Friday, we had a family birthday BBQ for the two July babies: my cousin Kaleb and myself. I had the opportunity to help craft my own cake and frankly, it was a masterpiece of deliciousness. And most likely in the tens of thousands of calories but boy was it tasty! It was a cookies and cream ice cream cake with an ice cream sandwich base, an Oreo layer, a whipped cream layer, a cookies and cream ice cream layer, another cream layer as the frosting and then a topping of crumbled Oreos. It wasn't the most attractive cake, but it was still a hit according to the taste buds. 

On my birthday I also had a chance to go to lunch with two friends with whom I have spent many birthdays playing video games late into the night, eating homemade pizza and monster cookies! Many great memories with these two chaps: Rylan and Phil. This year no video games were involved but somehow we still coped and were able to enjoy a lunch together and then see the new Spiderman movie. It was a great time! 

It was a great week off and so great to see many people that I love and miss. Now time to get back to work! 

Broccoli Beef

The other night I made some broccoli beef for dinner. While it was tasty, the recipe is a little bit too involved for my liking and I doubt it will make it into my regular meal rotation.

Ingredients

• 3/4 lb Steak, thinly sliced
• 3/4 lb Broccoli florets
• 2 Tbsp oil
• 2 Garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tsp Cornstarch
• 1 Tbsp Water

Marinade

• 2 tsp Soy sauce
• 1 tsp Chinese rice wine
• 1/2 tsp Cornstarch
• 1/8 tsp Pepper

Sauce

• 3 Tbsp Soy sauce
• 1/4 Cup chicken broth

Directions

1. Marinate the beef for 10 minutes
2. Make Sauce: stir together the sauce ingredients in a bowl.
3. Cook the steak and garlic in a wok or frying pan until no longer pink. 
4. Add the sauce and broccoli.
5. Bring to boil.
6. Dissolve cornstarch in 1 Tbsp of water and add to pan and stir in.
7. Remove from heat and serve. 

Taylor-Made Changes

The sauce and marinade are a bit simpler than the original recipe I followed. The recipe called for Chinese rice wine and oyster sauce. Two things I don't have and wasn't about to buy to use in one recipe. So I just upped the soy sauce amounts instead.

The directions also called for blanching the broccoli before adding it to pan. But I ignored that and just cooked it with the steak and it worked out. But I think I ended up over cooking the meat... so in the future it might be better to cook the broccoli separate like the recipe requested.

You could also add in a bed of rice to soak up some of the sauce and add some carbs, but as you know I'm avoiding unnecessary carbs so I just enjoyed it on it's own.

Learning to Kill Lincoln AND Read Financial Reports

It's been awhile since my  last update on the books I'm reading. So long that I have started and finished several books since then. So, I figured now is as good a time as any to give my thoughts on the books I'm reading and have read.

How to Read A Financial Report - By John Tracy
This one is about as boring and dry as it sounds. Not exactly the most entertaining read. But I learned quite a bit from the book. He explains things like accounts receivable, accounts payable, assets, liabilities, revenue, depreciation, and on and on. Things you would find on a -- you guessed it -- Financial Report. He goes into pretty deep detail on how to read correlations between the three different parts of the report that aren't spelled out in the report itself. The first half of the book was very interesting, but then he started getting into accounting best practices and things that I didn't care too much about. I still stuck with it to the end though and actually picked up some random nuggets that might come in handy someday.

Killing Lincoln - By Bill O'Reilly
The first book on history I have read outside of school-assigned reading probably ever! I actually enjoyed it though. It was a nice change of pace and I actually learned quite a bit about President Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, the Civil War, and several other important figures around that time. My only complaint is that it got a little gruesome near the end. Mr. O'Reilly goes into a little too much gory detail, for my taste, of Lincoln's death and some of the other attempted murders surrounding his assassination (attempted murders that I never knew happened). I doubt that I will read it again anytime soon since war history isn't super high on my priority list. But overall it was a good book and I came away with a better understanding of a lot of things.

Outliers - By Malcolm Gladwell
This book was very interesting. It is definitely a thought-provoking book and a different look at how really successful people, outliers, reach their level of success. Mr. Gladwell really did his homework on some of the big names, successful cultures, and professional athletes/musicians and the reasons they succeeded; people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Bill Joy (founder of Sun Microsystems). Unlike the common "self-made man" viewpoint many American's embrace, Mr. Gladwell shows the many factors that went into the reasons that these men prospered. For instance, most of the big names in the computer industry were all born around the same time period (1955-1956). Being born at this time put them at the precise age when computers just started to take off to take advantage of them and get a head start on everyone. There are many more factors, but I won't get into them. It was definitely a philosophical book and made me think. I am sure I missed lot's of good stuff so it definitely has made it onto my "Books to Read Again" list.

Currently Reading
Be Skillful - I'm still working my way through this book in my devotions. It's going pretty slow because it references many passages of scripture and I have been looking them all up as I go. Using it as kind of a study aid. I have really been enjoying it though.
Quitter by John Acuff- I'm about half way through this book. It's an excellent read so far. The author is a funny guy and he has some excellent ideas on how to be a hard worker and work your dream job on the side while still keeping your day job to support you.
And of course my behemoth JavaScript book that I am working through. We will see when that gets finished, most likely it will be a few months!

Weekend Highlights

What I thought was going to be kind of a dull weekend actually turned out to be pretty eventful... or at least eventful enough to get its very own post. Which isn't saying a whole lot I suppose! Here are a few highlights of what I did.


JavaScript 
I started my Saturday off with some exhilarating JavaScript studying. I just bought this book (basically a textbook) on the JavaScript web-programming language. Other than being a highly-recommended, exhaustive resource of everything that has to do with the JavaScript language, it also helps hold the house down when it gets a windy -- the thing is huge, 1100 pages! And it isn't exactly light reading. Getting through this book is definitely going to be my new hobby for the next couple months. After my Sunday afternoon read I'm on page 29, yeah it's going to be awhile.

Oh and the reason for reading it? For one, I've always been interested in web programming and it's pretty similar to a few other programming languages I already know. Also, web-based apps/programs and websites is the direction I've shifted my focus for my little side-business (which really doesn't even exist yet) as well. So, the first step is to actually learn the tools to develop on the web, hence the book.


Meridian Speedway
Saturday night one my friends, Megan, got free tickets to the races at the local Meridian Speedway and invited me along. I had some reservations about how it was going to be, but it was actually quite a bit of fun. There were quite a few wrecks, which are always exciting -- one of the cars even went up and over the wall and broke through a couple of the signs surrounding the track. Thankfully, it was the only wall without fans on it, so no one was in danger, besides the driver of course.

It had been quite a few years since I had been to a circle track race. Honestly, I generally find circle track (or I guess oval would be the correct shape) races very boring...especially NASCAR where they go 200+ laps. That's probably why I haven't been in so long. But thankfully this weekend they were all pretty short aside from a few 40 and 50 lap races near the end. Plus, it was a great reason to get out of the house and do something with some friends.

The Cast Iron Skillet
I bought a cast iron skillet last summer. I figured, I'm a bachelor now. I've got my own place. I'm cooking for myself. Any self-respecting bachelor needs a cast iron skillet, right? Well, I guess not, because I didn't get very far. I think I cooked on it once or twice and it was a disaster. The food stuck like glue. The food turned black. The food tasted weird -- or maybe I just thought it did, who knows. I really don't know what I did wrong but I'm sure it was close to everything.

So, I'm not sure what has gotten into my lately -- I guess it's summer again? I don't know -- but I'm reviving the idea of a cast iron skillet. Saturday, I did some googling and found directions on how to correctly season your cast iron cookware. It all seemed to work okay. Sunday morning I attempted to cook some eggs and they didn't stick too bad, but they turned black, and maybe I'm weird but eating black eggs just doesn't seem like a great activity. It looks like I've got some more seasoning to do before I am an official Cast Iron Skillet-Wielding Bachelor!

Yes, I got lazy and couldn't think of any good pictures. Sorry for the wall of text! 

Chicken Bacon Salad

There isn't anything particularly special about my chicken salads but they are delicious. At times, I have even found myself craving them; something that strikes me as a bit odd, considering salads have only recently become a regularity in my diet.

Before I ever tried the low-carb diet my lunchtime meal was almost exclusively some kind of sandwich, be it tuna, lunchmeat, or my personal favorite, peanut butter... and yes, only peanut butter. But of course, bread is quite the carb carrier, with most pieces packing about 15-20g a slice. Naturally, it was the first thing I took a stab at eliminating from my diet since it comprised the majority of my carb intake.

That's when I discovered the beauty of the chicken salad; practically a carb-free meal, save whatever veggies are added. An entire head of green leaf lettuce has only 50 calories and 10g of carbs, half of which are from fiber. Non-starchy veggies are also generally low in carbs as well, offering vital nutrients and vitamins to our bodies.

Nowadays, chicken salads make up about 70% of my work lunches; the other portion coming from my weekly lunch with coworkers or from occasional leftovers. You may be thinking that much chicken salad isn't enough variety, but I rarely get tired of the same foods. I do try to mix it up a bit to keep it interesting by introducing different veggies (tomatoes, cucumbers, olives)  and cheeses (parmesan, cheddar, mozzarella). I have also added salsa, occasionally, for a taco salad experience.

And of course I can't forget the bacon. I don't always add the bacon, but if I have some extra in the refrigerator I will toss it in. A piece of bacon definitely adds a delicious smoky flavor to the salad.

Tomorrow's lunch looks like this:

Ingredients

1 Slice Thick-cut Bacon

3/4 to 1 Cup cooked chicken, cubed

Small handful of Tomatoes, sliced

Small handful of Mozzarella

2 Tbsp of Ranch dressing

Mixed Greens

Yes, "small handful" is a scientific measurement. The beauty of a salad is the measurements really don't matter. There is plenty of room for experimentation and carelessness and it won't be noticed in the final product. The amount of lettuce really depends on how big of a salad you want.

I grilled my chicken on my George Foreman with onion powder, garlic powder, oregano, basil, and ground pepper. Yummmm!

Directions

1. Add the meat to the bowl.

2. Add a layer of salad.

3. Add the veggies and cheese.

4. Drizzle the dressing.

5. Add a final layer of salad.

6. Secure the lid and give it a shake.

This is the best method of preparation I have found. I have experimented with the meat at the top of the salad but it ends up being difficult to get a good mixture of meat and lettuce in each bite. With the meat on bottom it's easier to get the meat from the bottom and combine it with the lettuce from the top. Sure, you're probably thinking I'm crazy, but this is the kind of stuff I ponder while eating my lunch. A good salad-to-meat ratio is important to me!

Oh, and the top layer of salad? It segregates the tasty dressing from the lid; preventing smearing that would just make inefficient use of the dressing.

Looking forward to eating this for lunch tomorrow!