Of Homeownership, Basement Bongos, and More Stuff About Ben I'm Sure You're Just Dying To Know

Hey there all! It's Ben. I thought I'd better post again because Alyssa has been stealing my thunder with all of her "cutesy" Alyssa-esque posts. Dang her. Anyway, Thursday we closed on the house (I think my wrist is STILL sore from signing) and yesterday we did a bunch of work therein, including yanking out carpet, sorting through all the junk left by the previous owner (which included the rare treasure, like a telescope in the attic and a pair of bongo drums in the basement), and transforming the window seats in the living room into a pile of firewood. My dad even came up from St. George to give us a hand with the carpet, and it was great having him there. So yeah, there's a ton of work to do, but it will be worth it in the long run.

Apparently I've been "tagged" again, this time by the Beefinator, so here goes nothing...

8 Favorite TV Shows: (seeing as how we don't actually have TV, I only watch one of these, #1, regularly)

1. The Amazing Race
2. The Simpsons (mostly reruns of older episodes; the show started going downhill about ten years ago)
3. Seinfeld
4. The Cosby Show (I watch this while I'm doing the treadmill in Alyssa's parents' basement)
5. Nature shows like National Geographic, Animal Planet, etc.
6. Whose Line Is It Anyway?
7. Okay, this is where I have to start racking my brain trying to come up with something that I've actually watched in the last ten years or so... ummm... MacGyver? (Hey, come on, he was AWESOME)
8. Frasier

8 Things I Did Yesterday:

1. Went garage sale-ing with Alyssa, her mom, and their friend Carolyn and bought our little selves a paper shredder, a stuffed giraffe, "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" for VHS, a bookshelf, and a sign with a "G" on it for our front porch
2. Delivered a bag of assorted foodstuffs to the Scouting for Food thinger for Calvin
3. Went to Wal-Mart with Alyssa and rooted through their 5-dollar DVD barrel in search of the rare gem but found nothing of the sort; also bought a TV converter box for Calvin
4. Lunched upon corn dogs and leftover Famous Daves spare ribs--a magical combination
5. Risked my life by infiltrating our new mouse dropping-infested attic in order to rescue the telescope (which Alyssa promptly dropped down the ladder, but it turned out okay)
6. Looted various other rooms in the house, finding booty galore--arrrr!
7. Bought Subway sandwiches and potato chips for the crew
8. Planned out a marvelous CTR class lesson for today (Sunday) that will involve, among other things, baptizing a Batman action figure

8 Favorite Restaurants:

1. Kamen Thai Cuisine in Logan (actually, I'm pretty fond of Thai restaurants in general)
2. Red Lobster
3. Cafe Rio
4. Aladdin, in Boise (specializes in Egyptian food)
5. Some Basque restaurant we went to once in Boise--can't remember the name, but it was way good and they gave us free dessert because Alyssa found a tag in her food
6. Olive Garden
7. Texas Roadhouse
8. A&W (not technically a restaurant, but I love their floats!)

8 Things I'm Looking Forward To:

1. Fixing up our house to the point where we can, you know, actually live in it
2. Adopting!
3. Going to the Philippines with Alyssa next year
4. Going to Venezuela with Alyssa in three years or so (we're hoping to visit Angel Falls)
5. Actually finishing a novel (which I have yet to do in the 20+ years I've been writing) and maybe even, you know, publishing it
6. Eating (today being Fast Sunday and all) (not that I'm whining)
7. Tonight's episode of the Amazing Race--I'm rooting for the cheerleaders...to GET ELIMINATED already
8. Nick getting married--of course, he'll have to actually have a girlfriend first... Get on it, man!

8 Things on My Wish List:

1. Some really gnarly googly-eyed chameleons for our new home
2. Fruit trees for our backyard--cherries and peaches at minimum, maybe apricots too
3. For Alyssa to get her fanny home from visiting teaching so we can get to church on time
4. For the cheerleaders to get eliminated on The Amazing Race
5. That it would stop snowing! What season does it think this is, anyway?
6. That my uncle Dave will recover from his cancer
7. That my mom will get a break from all of the bazillion things she has going on so that she can actually come and visit us some time
8. That the mountain gorillas don't go extinct. Poor guys...