I wondered into the grocery store the weekend after Halloween, only to be greeted with wrapping paper and Christmas cookies. What the hell? I had to check my calendar, nope, it’s still November.

Why does America choose to totally skip over Thanksgiving? Is there no money to be had on turkey and football in the backyard with the fam?

For me, Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday. You don’t have to stress out about what to buy that Aunt you only see once a year, or get all creative on making a costume no one else has.  You slap on some jeans, a sweater, and fast for two days so that your tummy will be completely empty to take in all the gut busting goodness. You don’t worry about counting calories, and you have that second piece of pie. You come together with the ones you love to give thanks for all that has been bestowed upon you in the past year. You share stories of children learning to walk, raises at work and new additions to the family.

But appearantly, all that goodness isn’t good enough to keep the commercial beast at bay. I’m already getting red and green mailers, catalogs of expensive toys, and TV commercials about where you can get the cheapest candy canes and fake trees.

I just want some pumpkin pie, coffee and good conversation with family I don’t get to see often enough. But I suppose, you can’t sell that.

Alright, alright, I missed some days. I fail.

I’ve been caught up in this silly house thing, but it looks like the timing isn’t right after all. I’m approved for the loan amount, but the mortgage payment would be double my rent payment now… yeaaa not going to go back to eating ramen any time soon. So, maybe later.

Kaleb and I have been thinking about purchasing a house come next year, after all the loans are paid, credit cards cut up… well… I jumped the gun.

I found this super cute patio home over in North West Mesa that is more than what we’re looking for. Three bedrooms, two baths, a good sized backyard for a mini-wiener, an Arizona room, a remodeled kitchen, a fireplace, and… something that’s hard to find on a condo in Arizona, a two car garage!  Not to mention it’s in our price range.

Well, today, we went to go look at it, I was floored and willing to hide out in the huge walk-in closet in the master bedroom. Kaleb wondered around and checked out all the rooms, noticing there weren’t cable drops in two of them. We spent a lot of time just wondering about and making sure there weren’t and deal busters to be found. Needless to say, we were definitely interested in it.

But is the timing right? Is the time ever right? We’ve handed over all of our financial matters to a loan advisor and she’s getting back with us next week, that will be the real hitch. Once we get that all figured out then we’ll really be able to jump in feet first. Wish us luck!

I came across a great article this morning that discusses how to make your links stand out while not making them a pain in the ass to use. Links are great assets that can increase the value of your content by providing supporting material for your discussion and satelliting your topic to similar sites throughout the web. But, if your users can’t find these morsels of greatness or if they get annoyed by the way the links are provided, the whole value is lost. To learn more about the art of hyperlinks check out the full article over at Coding Horror. You may also be interested in a quality assurance article regarding the use of “click here” by the W3C.

This is just a happy little reminder about the Phoenix Facebook Developers Garage event!

What is a Facebook Developers Garage? It’s an opportunity for developers, marketers and any one else to learn more about Facebook, Facebook applications, marketing through Facebook applications, building applications and everything in between. Highlights of the event include a presentation by Dave Morin of Facebook on Platform and a detailed look at the evolution of the Red Bull Roshambull application by Nate Warner of Red Bull. Seating is limited to the first 150 that RSVP to this event, so if you have interest be sure to get in early! Click here to RSVP

Date: Wed, Nov 14th, 2007

Time: 6-9 PM

Location:
Tempe Center for the Arts,
700 W. Rio Salado Parkway,
Tempe, AZ

Agenda:
6:00 pm - Networking & Refreshments
6:30 pm - Keynote Speaker: Dave Morin, Facebook
7:15 pm - Marketing Facebook Applications – Chris Johnson, Terralever
7:30 pm - Application Presentation: ‘Roshambull’ presented by Nate Warner, Red Bull
7:40 pm - Facebook Application Development, presented by Scott McAndrew & Joel Neubeck, Terralever
7:50 pm - 5-minute Apps and Ideas mini-presentations (If interested, contact one of the Event Admins)
8:30 pm - Live Social Networking
9:00 pm - Let the afterparty begin (location TBD)