Jon & Virginia

You have to get the other party to agree in a timely manner to your price and conditions(carpets cleaned, septic pumped etc. . . ), then you have to get an inspection.  The inspection consists of paying a man to let you watch while he goes through EVERY system of the house.  Including being on the roof, in the attic and down i n the icky crawl space.  If your doing this in the winter, make sure you wear a coat, I did not and froze my butt off.

After the inspection you have to figure out which things that were broken are livable for you, and which things you want the seller to pay to fix.  Which then takes time and stress(hoping that they will fix it so it is like a new house).  Once you settle all that there is still the mortgage , escrow, enerest money, and TONS of paperwork to sign and find(as in old W-2’s, paystubs, bank statements etc. . . ).

Thats about where we are.  We will be getting our keys on March 31st, which seems so soon.  We have so much to do outside the regular house buying stuff.  Organizing the apartment, and figuring out how the heck we plan on moving all of our stuff down the 3 flight of stairs we had to haul it up when we moved in 1 1/2 years ago.  So if your local. . . . HELP?!?

We will TRY(notice the emphasize on try) to keep you updated

Virginia

Pictures here.

I am tired of the bi-partisan political system of my parents generation! I understand that we all have different opinions and it only makes sense for people with similar views to form groups. But I believe that one of the biggest problems with these groups, the two major political parties, is that they are so large that they must rely on large contributions to maintain their organizations. A situation that makes them vulnerable to the will of the individuals and corporations that are making the biggest donations. America is not a democracy and we do not call for a full population vote over every issue. To do so would make today’s bureaucracies seem tame. We are a democratic republic. In short, this means that we elect individuals that we believe have similar opinions to our own that we entrust the authority to make decisions in our best interest. One of the biggest issues that I have with the current leadership, democrat and republican combined, is that it seems that the decisions are not made in the best interests of the majority of the people, but in the group that has the most vocal lobbyists. If you combine that with the knee-jerk reaction that seems to assume that every small issue requires federal legislation. We have taken the sovereignty away from the states of the union.

As far as foreign policy goes, I agree that a response needed to be made to the attacks on our country on September 11, 2001. But what I do not agree with is in the way in which we have responded. Even President Bush seemed to not have a good idea of how to respond to an attack that was not launched by a sovereign political state. Perhaps if he had a better understanding of the Constitution he would have known about what is called a letter of marque and reprisal. In article 1 section 8 the Constitution defines this as congress granting the president the authority to use military forces abroad, in a limited, warlike manner, against an adversary that is not a foreign state. This is the manner that was used by President Thomas Jefferson to respond to the Barbary pirates. As it stands right now Iraq is demanding that remove all of our troops by 2011. To do anything different will effectively be an occupation and will only further hurt our image in the eyes of our adversaries and allies alike.

The election of 2008 will undoubtedly be a major milestone in US history. We have a national debt of over 11 trillion dollars. Did you know that in 1835 us US did not have a national debt? President Andrew Jackson pulled all of the federal government’s money out of the federal reserve and paid the national debt that year. And now, in just over a hundred and fifty years we have accumulated over $30,000 per person in debt. I believe that a large part of this is due to the fact that we have an economic system that is based on trust rather than on actual currency. The federal reserve system creates money as it sees fit and loans it to the government at an interest rate that is chosen by a small collection of financial elitists. I was recently surprised to learn that the federal reserve system (commonly known as the federal reserve bank) is not actually a federal agency at all. While it is endorsed by the federal government and sanctioned by congress as the sole authority for the control of US funds and currency, it is actually a tax-exempt, for profit, private organization. The federal reserve system was created in 1913 over a Christmas recess when most members of congress were absent. It was initiated by a group of wealthy bankers who lobbied (perhaps with their campaign dollars) to get a bill passed that was in no one’s interest but their own. Today it is owned by the Rothschilds of London and Berlin; Isreal Moses Seif of Italy; Kuhn, Loeb and Warburg of Germany; and the Lehman Brothers, Goldman, Sachs and the Rockefeller families of New York. That’s right, the majority of the federal reserve bank is owned by foreigners. And every dollar that the IRS collects is given to the reserve, only to be loaned back to the government for interest! For more information on the way this works and what we can do about it see http://endthefed.us/. [Note: They have one of the worst websites that I've seen since 1993. They not to let the poor presentation discredit the validity of the message.]

Now that we’ve started to really realize how much of a shamble the country is in? Who can we turn to that we can trust to help us get things back on track? The popular opinion seems to support Brarack Obama in this regard. Before I address Obama I will say that I have a great deal of respect for this major oponent, John McCain. I believe that he is a very honorable and passionate man. But I do not believe that he has the answers on how to fix what is wrong with our country today. Again, we have had enough of our father’s politics! (And yes, I do lump Joe Biden into that catagory as well!) But one of the major issues that I do have with Obama is that he supports abortion. Including voting against a bill to ban partial birth abortion. I believe in the sanctity of life and that life starts at conception. So who do we have left to choose from?

This year I voted for Chuck Baldwin. Even though I would have been happier to vote for Ron Paul, had he been able to win the republican presidential nomination. I voted for Baldwin because of his stance on reducing the size of the federal government. We have far too many agencies that are failing, redundant, or simply performing tasks that should not be performed by the federal government at all! As for the ‘radical’ idea of disolving the IRS; you may be interested to know that the IRS was created at the same time as the federal reserve bank. For a more detailed look at Baldwin’s stance on the issues, click here.

The bottom line is, do your research! I can’t believe how many people I know have not even been to each candidate’s website to find out what they say their position is on the issues, much less to compare what they say against their voting records. America, we are in trouble. And if we don’t do something about it now, it will only get worse. Do your part next week. Vote.

Having said that we have been married about 5 weeks. Things are awesome. If you haven’t seen the wedding/honeymoon pictures we encourage to go see them on the right of the page. We put up a ton, and are always finding more to post.

2 weeks ago I was bar tending and scooping ice when the door to the ice machine broke and fell on my foot. I had to go to the emergency room and be checked out. No broken bones, just a deep contusion luckily. So I was sent home to rest(on crutches, which was hilarious). The doctor had to fill out a few forms for my work since it happened on site, but was very vague about when I could come back. When I went to work a few days later (my next scheduled shift). I worked for a few hours then was sent home being told I was not allowed to be there until I had gone back to a doctor again. Now that we are married, I have limited medical coverage on base until november 1st. So I can’t really be seen there for free yet. As for the doctors around town, noone is taking new patients, so we tried to go back to the ER and get the doctor who filled out the paperwork to be more specific, and she wasn’t on the scheduled for the week. To make a long story short, I can’t go back to the ER, the company won’t pay. I barely managed to get a appointment at another clinic, but it was for a few days away.

I went to the clinic and was told I could work modified duty until October 29th. Which just meant 4 hours at a time so I is not on my feet a lot. Brought that back to my work and they told me I can’t work modified duty at all. So now I is off work until Thursday this week, and still have to go to the doctors again next week. So to sum it all up, just because I thought I should get checked out and was pretty ok, I now will be out of work for almost 2 weeks.

On the plus side, we have a clean house. . . and our thank you cards are out.

The food was pretty good and we both had a great time.

One month ago Virginia and I flew to New York to finish final wedding arangements, and actually get married. It was an event that both of us have been waiting for, and looking forward to, for a very long time. Unfortunately we didn’t even get out of Washington state before the complications started. We arrived at the airport in Seattle about 2.5 hours early for our red-eye flight, and were greeted by a (relatively) friendly agent from Delta. After a few failed attempts at the kiosk check-in, he asked what our destination was. After telling him, we were informed that our flight had been cancelled weeks ago and that they had never told us. We spent a little bit of time working with an agent and were finally able to get seats on a flight to Atlanta, GA that was leaving in less than an hour.

For those of you who have never been to the Atlanta airport, great job! Those of you who have will understand the pain of figuring out what terminal your next flight is and taking the underground train to that terminal. However, signs will point the way if you elect to walk the several thousand feet to the next terminal. Ours happened to be just under a mile away, so we elected for the train. Within a minute of stepping out of the train the power in the airport went out. I’m pretty sure that most public places are required to have emergency lighting, but since the Atlanta airport has been under construction since anyone can remember, they evidently haven’t gotten around to installing that yet. Within a minute or so the lights had come back on. However, the escalators did not. We hiked up the stairs and walked what seemed like another mile to our gate where we laid down to sleep through most of our 6 hour layover. Finally, 15 hours after we departed home, we arrived in New York.

Most of our time in New York was spent working on wedding plans and buying things that we hadn’t been able to order online. The days went by quickly and before we knew it Friday was upon us. The company that we had hired to setup our tent was supposed to show up at around 8am. We were going to be there to tell them where we wanted it, and then I was supposed to setup chairs and tables for the reception. Around 10:30 we got a phone call from the front gate saying that the tent company was here, but that most of the workers were not going to be allowed on the base. I was able to very quickly figure out why setup and delivery was so cheap. They were not using American labor, and as it turns out Guatamalens are not allowed on US military bases without a prior background check. A heated debate between Virginia and the tent company got us nowhere, and they were unable to provide any additional help. As you’ve probably already seen in our pictures, my groomsmen and I ended up setting up the tent with the help of Virginia’s dad and the one guy from the tent company. It took us quite a bit longer than expected, and we barely were able to finish in time to go home, shower, change, and get back to the site for the rehearsal. And during the day while we were playing tent makers, Virginia, her mom, and most of her brides maids spent the afternoon making all of the food for the reception. It was a lot of hard work, but the food turned out amazing and lots of people commented on it.

Just a few hours later I was saying goodnight to my fiance for the last time. The next time I saw her would be when she was walking down the isle as my bride. I have to say that I was a little surprised, but neither of us got cold feet the night before. I could easily say that it was because we were so tired we didn’t have the energy to worry about it, but I think God helped to put our minds at ease as well.

Saturday was a beautiful day that started very early for both of us. I had to get up and go to the ceremony site with my cousin Michael to setup chairs for the ceremony and then go and get ready for the day. Virginia was also up early getting her hair done and doing all those girly things that they do to look beautiful. And she was the most beautiful bride ever! The ceremony flew by and before I knew it we were married. We had an amazing time at our reception and made a thousand memories. We were both sad when it was coming to a close and the party was over.

We spent another full day traveling to get down to our resort in Jamaica for the honeymoon where we were greeted with cold washcloths and champagne while we checked in.

More about our trip to Jamaica to come tomorrow.