Coming Attractions

When we head to the movies, I generally try and get there about 5 minutes late so we can miss the 9000 previews that every movie seems to have. Unfortunately, we don't always luck out and we get there with plenty of time to see the trailers for terrible animation movies or the latest comic book to be made into a full length film.
We've been without internet at the house for the past few days so when I sat down to update this thing yesterday, I quickly realized that would be impossible. So here's the coming attractions for the stuff you can look forward to reading and checking out pictures from. You can look forward to posts from our day at the Pier Classic, Hiking in Mission Trails park, Chris' 29th birthday bonanza(trust me, the pictures are hilarious from this one) and house number two. That's right, we're back in Escrow!

Hopefully our internet is back tonight!

Take a hike

I'm a little behind on posts so I'm going to try my best to catch up. Two weeks ago, we headed out for the first real inspection of Torrey Pines state park. I go down there with Tom sometimes to surf just a little to the North and have seen the golf course during the US Open, but this my first time out walking around. There are a bunch of different easy trails that weave their way along the cliffs above the ocean. It's makes for a pleasant walk especially if you have great weather like we did. It basically is an out and back since the only place to park is along the 1 on the north end of the park. It was Chris, Matt, Nancy and myself that headed down. It was a bummer to not have the dogs out there with us and it was certainly a much easier hike than we're used to......I probably should have titled this "take a walk."







Rattlesnakes yes, Picnic Tables no?

And now, the rest of the story

Here's what everyone has been waiting for, the entire house story. I've gotten enough phone calls and emails with people who are curious of what exactly happened, so it's time to get it out there.
Here goes, everyone was aware of how things were moving along. We had our offer accepted then lost our loan because there was litigation on the common area of the complex. It took some serious work for our mortgage broker to find a bank that would lend the money but she came through. Unfortunately we had lost a pretty good rate, so we took a long hard look at what it was going to cost us a month to be there, and said that we couldn't do it. Then the next day, we submitted our paperwork to walk away when the buyer decided to buy down the loan so we could get back to the original deal. This was great! We were going to be back in the house, original price, everything was perfect. That Sunday was D-day, we had set up our final walk through for 3:00 pm. Of course, at about 2:45 we decide it would be a good idea to get the cars washed real quick since it's on the way. Side bar, if you've ever been to a car wash in SoCal you know that an army of Mexican's goes to work on your car and you're out of there with basically a brand new car in no time. Well, it was a little backed up due to everyone else having the same idea as we did.
If you know me very well, you know that I don't what you would consider "ton's of patience" so I start to get anxious because we are now 10 minutes late. Luckily, right before I start going nuts, Chris' car comes out and she leaves. My car takes another 10 minutes, most of which I spent talking to my parents about how were heading over for the final walk through.
I pull up to the house to find Chris' and our realtor Jim standing outside with the front door open. As I walk up Chris looks at me and says "you're not going to believe this!" Now, up until now, we've been through the ringer with this place so nothing is surprising me. I'm actually thinking to myself "oh great, they took the key box off and we can't get in and nobody is answering their phone." Nope, it's worse, MUCH WORSE!!!! Turns out that Jim, while waiting for us, started chatting with the neighbor who casually mentioned that there was actually secondary litigation pertaining to the individual units and the concrete slab's the houses are built on being cracked. The window's were also named in this lawsuit but this alone wouldn't have killed the deal. Regardless, you do not buy houses with possible major foundation problems. So we walked away.....no chance we were going to buy that place with those problems.
I can only describe this experience of trying to buy this house as a complete train wreck. It was one massive headache after another, I honestly think that I lost a few years off my life. The bright side of this whole debacle, we've got to believe that the next house we go for can not be this bad. I definitely believe that it can't get worse.
So that's the entire story, of course, there are more details I could put out there but that's the long and short of it. If anyone out there is thinking of buying a house get ready, it's can be NUTS!

Tweet Tweet

Just when I thought that I was full of social networking non-sense, I joined Twitter. As some of you probably know, Phish has made their triumphant return to the stage. I'm not in attendence(which turns out I'm okay with) but I've been following the setlists on Twitter and have been facinated with it. Basically, it's my favorite part of facebook, the status updates. I've never been "status update guy" but I guess now that I'm on Twitter, I'm going to have to start. Check me out on Twitter at http://twitter.com/C_Castellani

Family in town

Last weekend all of Chris' family minus her brother Pete came out to Carlsbad for a visit. It was quite an action packed couple of days! They arrived on Saturday and within two hours of being here we were already in the water for some surfing. Dan had never been before but was catching inside waves within no time. The weather for the entire weekend was absolutely perfect for the first weekend of March. Everyone back east was enjoying the cold and snow while we suffered through 75 degrees and sunny! Another terrible weekend here in SoCal.
On Sunday we headed down to Mission Beach, Mission Bay and Point Loma to check things out. Since we've been out here we haven't really spent too much time down south. It definitely feels like spring break down there. There are tons of young people, lot's of bars and even more Tattoo's floating around. It's a much different vibe down there. Here are some pictures from our weekend.





Bubble Gum Slushy.....


Lighthouse at Point Loma


San Diego.....drink it all in....it always goes down smooth!

New Kicks!

90 miles is the distance I've covered so far in my mission to complete this marathon in under 4 hours. This is a fairly ambitious goal considering it's my first one, but after seeing the guy who got kicked off the biggest loser last week run one in under 4, I'm thinking I should try for something a little lower. Maybe next time. Since I've been putting in so much time on the pavement, I've finally gotten myself a new pair of shoes. I slaved over what to get and finally pulled the trigger on these bad boys.



I'm stoked to have something comfortable, slightly lighter than my previous pair, and way more flashy......hopefully they make me run faster!