Ticket to Salvation

I took (and passed) my real estate school final this morning (I scored 86%, 75% is the minimum). Whew! Memorial Day weekend will be much more enjoyable now. It's been a long time since I've had to take a 152 question multiple choice test. I'm not looking forward to the next. It's quite interesting to compare the amount of effort that goes into getting a real estate license vs. college graduation. The real estate course is a 75 hour course, which equates to about 3 semester hours. In comparison, after 5 years in undergraduate school I had amassed about 180 hours of college credit. Graduate school added another ~24 quarter hours of credit. In a way, I think that's one reason I didn't want to be a real estate agent... Even now, I don't think being an agent is my ticket to salvation, but I do think it will allow me and Randy to move into areas we really enjoy (real estate being one of them).

After grading I got a report on the number of questions I answered correctly for each section of the exam. I answered 100% for math - natch. The lowest section was government (do you know who administers the Fair Businesses Practices Act in your state?). I definitely will study more before taking the State exam, but definitely feel more confident now. :)

Shotgun Wedding???

I originally thought I would steer clear of any posts relating to politics... but...

The recent agreement between the Democrats and Republicans over filibusters/court nominees/nuclear option is just too much to pass. I suppose the good thing is that the two had a meeting of the minds and moved forward, and I'm sure most people around the country will see it that way. However, what I think will be overlooked is the reason the agreement was needed in the first place.

That reason is simply that the Republicans wanted to change the rules, yet again. It seems that the Republican mantra has become "if you can't win outright, just change the rules." It all goes back to 2000 when the Supreme court effectively decided the election. Then they changed the rules regarding ethics investigations to help Tom DeLay. More recently Congressional Republicans used Terry Schiavo as a pawn in their political gaming and stepped in with little or no legal foundation. Very recently, the Republicans wanted to exercise a parliamentary maneuver to stifle filibusters so that Democrats couldn't block Bush's political nominations.

Congress' recent actions have helped it earn the lowest approval rating since 1997. Call it what you want, but I think the recent "marriage" between the Democrats and Republicans over the filibuster issue is more of a shotgun wedding than a holy matrimony.

Update: May 27 New poll on Bush, Congress

Happy Birthday!

As mentioned in an earlier post, I spent most of the day Saturday in a Real Estate cram course (9AM-4PM) - whew! *Lots* of tests and review - but well worth it. I *very* much needed it.

That night Randy and I went to dinner with friends (at Vinocity) to celebrate Scott's upcoming 30th birthday (oh, to be young again!). We finally got to meet his long time friends Liz and Freddie (from out of state). A great time was had by all, but don't assume too much from the martini pic - I only had two! We've learned our lesson (too many times)... But that's another story.

Afterwards we all trekked over to Jason's new condo at Carlysle Heights - fab! He's done a great job decorating in just three weeks. And to think what our place looks like after 10 years!!! Gee!

At any rate, we left early so I could sleep and go to class again on Sunday - whee! I'm planning on taking the school exam this Friday. I'll keep you posted.

p.s. As several of the people at dinner Saturday night are avid bloggers, we discussed the frequent masking of identity on blog's by referring to people with either initials or their online moniker (e.g. "midtown shuffle"). Although I made use of actual names, I will in the future make use of online identities when available.

TGIF!

I am *always* elated for Fridays - of course!

Unfortunately though, I will be in a Real Estate "cram course" all day Saturday and Sunday. The fact that the weekend weather forecast is awesome makes that suck even more so. I guess that's what I get for taking 6+ months to finish the online course. C'est la Vie!

Things I won't get to do this weekend:

1. Get drunk tonight.
2. Relax at my pool Saturday afternoon (and drink!).
3. Go to Phil's pool party Sunday afternoon.
4. Clean house (as if).
5. Blog! (right)

Actually, missing #3 isn't too bad since I'm the fattest heaviest I've ever been - 140 pounds! Yikes!

I'm sure that somehow, I'll manage to squeeze in some fun even with the classes... Randy and I have a gift for that.

Go Google yourself!

A somewhat unrelated article I was reading on the internet prompted me to go look up my name on Google. To my surprise (I'm so modest), 5 of the top 10 results were indeed for me. Yay!

Speaking of names, my friend trayb mentioned a very cool web application they other day which displays the popularity of the top 1000 names over the last century or so. When I was born, Jonathan was number 81. Check it out.

Here we go

After much consideration I decided to start a blog. Probably my greatest reservation is that I won't update it often enough to be interesting... However, it seems there is always something interesting in my life to talk about, and I'm actually much better with written communication (that is, more likely to email/instant message than anything else) so, here goes...

Update on a few things in my life:

Work-related:
I've completed about 90% of the work needed to get my real estate license. My partner, Randy got his license last summer and has enjoyed moving into the real estate industry. Our goal is for us both to be working in the industry full time. Yay! :)

The Library
About two weeks HGTV filmed at our house for an upcoming episode.. (Actually, High Noon Productions did the filming and will create the segment for the show.) We don't know when the show will air, we don't even know the name of the show! The show may be called Rezoned, or they may give it a different name before the season starts. Regardless of the name, the show is based on Building Character and focuses on converted spaces. They filmed for probably 8 hours and will condense that into a 5 minute segment, so hopefully they'll choose the times when we're not making fools of ourselves... we'll see.

Additionally, last weekend (May 14 and 15), our neighborhood Kirkwood, had a Spring Fling and Tour of Homes. Our house was on the tour again and it was a lot of work fun. It's always nice to meet people who visited the library as kids and for them to say we've done a great job with renovations, etc. Next year though, we're planning to enjoy the festival and tour as attendees. ;)

Mmmm k, nuff for the first post...