Hawker Sea Fury

I’ve been going to air shows since I was a kid, and this specific plane has always always caught my eye for some reason. The combination of a five blade prop, folding wings for carrier storage, the Royal Australian Navy emblems with a kangaroo, and a seafoam paint-job… it’s just plain cool. I haven’t seen it in years because of bad timing and not going to as many shows recently, and I’ve never once seen it fly. I saw it taxiing back from a run once, but that was it. So getting not only see it again finally, but to see it fly formations today made me ridiculously giddy.

Info on it from the warbird registry.

ChiefLUG propaganda

discouraging

As I’ve mentioned before: I’m currently looking for a house. Nothing fancy, just a decent place in a non-ghetto area. Plenty of options available and I’ve driven all over the place… but the few that I’ve decided to try for have only ended in disappointment.

It’s a crazy market right now: there are lots of foreclosures, so lots of homes on the cheap – but also lots of buyers and investors out trying to take advantage of the ridiculously low rates. When I make a move either my offer is too low or I’m too late to even be considered. It would be a bit less frustrating if I could find out how much over the list prices they’re going for… so at least I wouldn’t be wasting my time on any that are bound to jump out of my range… but that’s not quite how it works.

Nothing to do but keep looking.

change of plans

So, after seeing all the fun the guys were having at the BSG auction the past few days, I decided I had no legitimate excuse not to go down there on Saturday. A three and a half hour drive down (and back the next day) was easily worth the experience…

When else would I get to see such a vast assortment of props on display, get a chance to sit in the screen used Viper, meet Micheal Hogan (“Saul Tigh” – the XO on Galactica) and have him sign a copy of the Unknown Soldier picture for me? Never!

Yesterday was the best snap decision I’ve ever made. I’ve got a lot of pictures to sort and upload. And Ry: you’re awesome for facilitating this epic experience and letting me crash at your place.

meanwhile, down in LA…

I wanna die right now.

OK, not really, but I’m insanely jealous of the ChiefLUGers down south who got to dork around the Battlestar Galactica auction setup for the past two days. It figures that as soon as something awesome like this pops up I get a pile of work out of nowhere plus a pet project for the owner, pretty much trapping me here. I was cool with it at first, because at least my Viper is on display down there too, but then I saw this:

-that’s Grace Park (Boomer/Athena!) signing Andrew’s Raptor. And here’s Luciana Carro (Kat!) signing Ry’s hangar. On top of that, they even got to climb into Starbuck’s Viper on display… how frakkin cool is that?

Seriously. I wanted to go look at the auction goods anyways, then they invited the hangar display out there… I had plenty of reasons to go. But with as little work as there is floating around, I just couldn’t skip out. I hate being responsible sometimes.

I hate suspense

So here’s the latest on my house hunting endeavor: two Fridays ago I’m sitting on my couch at my apartment after work and my Realtor calls me because a nice place just became available that day. Lots of people had been looking at it already because the price was ridiculously low and it was in great shape. After looking at it, I was very impressed, so I decided to make an offer. Two hours of paperwork on Saturday later and the waiting began. She told me it usually takes banks 3 to 5 days to make a decision and get back, so don’t expect an immediate response.

Monday at lunch I get a call saying there were other offers and I needed to aim higher (understandable; as I offered list price and it was low to begin with). So I bump it up and she tells me we may know by that evening.

It’s now a full week later and we still don’t have an update – so I’m thinking the bank went with someone elses offer and just neglected to tell us to bugger off. I hope I’m wrong, and I guess I could be… but the past week has been excruciating and it’s not getting any better so far.