The Bawdy Cloister

Involuntary Downsizing

Two weeks ago I received a letter in the mail stating that our landlord intends to sell the Cloister, so they would not be renewing my lease. However, they were willing to give me first option to buy and they'd take into consideration money saved by not having to put the place on the market and have it sitting empty.

This news came at the worst possible time, because my lease expires in May.  I had been planning to take May-July off work to study for the bar, NOT a good time to be moving.  I wasn't too keen on buying this place (or any place for that matter) because I have a financial plan that will land me a nice place in about 2 years from now.  I asked the owners what they were willing to sell the place for and I scoffed at the quote.  Essentially, these folks bought the property 2 months before we rented it.  And they got a deal on the place.  They're real estate investment types and own 12 other properties in town.  They intend to sell all of them this year.  The "deal" they were offering was $25,000 more than the current appraisal and probably close to $40,000 more than they paid for the place when they bought it just a year and a half ago!  I checked with a mortgage broker and learned that I could qualify to buy the place if I wanted to.  I entertained that option for about a day, the plus being I could avoid the hassle of moving.  But I figured that money could get me a lot more house if I shopped around, especially in this market.  Moreover, if I held out 2 more years like I was originally planning for, I could get even more.  So with that bit of knowledge I knew a move was imminent.

So last week I look out my livingroom window and I see a moving truck in my neighbor's driveway.  A guy pulled up in a shiny black SUV and planted a "For Rent" sign in their front yard.  I ran out and asked about it.  The realtor told me he hadn't even listed the place on the computer yet and the family wouldn't be cleared out and the place cleaned up until mid-December, but if I gave him a security deposit he'd hold it for me for a Jan 1 move-in.  (Most places don't hold property more than 2 weeks, so this was perfect!)  I ran down to my property manager's office and had them draft a letter stating I could end my current lease on Jan 31 without penalty.  This will give me a one month overlap allowing me to move all my stuff into the house across the street in January and give me time to settle before taking time off work.

The only negative is that the house across the street is much smaller.  The place I'm in now is 2600 square feet, the new place is only 1600.  That's 3 rooms worth of furniture the new place doesn't have room for.  A lot of our big furniture won't even fit up the stairs.  So the plan is to use the livingroom downstairs as a storage facility and do most of our living upstairs with only a fraction of our stuff.  On the bright side, 2 years from now I'll have limitless options.

Needless to say, if you think my blogging has been sporadic recently, just wait till December/January.  I'm going to be a busy bunny.

No Longer Baching It

Mrs. T just returned home tonight from a 10-day trip in Japan.  The Acolyte and I took full advantage of her absence and got to play in some places we otherwise wouldn't get to go. 

For example, Mrs. T has not yet been willing to let her baby climb on large outcrops of granite.

She also doesn't allow him to panhandle on third-world street corners.

And of course there's her prohibition against playing around rusty cotton gins and barbed wire fences.

We're glad she's back though.

 

Overheard

The other day I was sitting near a couple of women.  One was trying to tell the other why their friend was recently admitted to the hospital.  But she couldn't quite remember the diagnosis:

"Was it cardiac arrest?"

"No, it was something more serious."

Rowdy's Roadtrip in Review

Back in August I wrote a post anticipating my meeting with Lucy.  Well, that day has come and gone.  A few weeks back I packed the wife and kid in the car and drove them to Houston to see the exhibition.  I was impressed.  In addition to Lucy, they had a number of skulls from various hominid species, some I hadn't even heard of.  Granted, just about all I know on the subject comes from Donald Johanson's book, Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind.  Johanson is the guy who discovered Lucy back in 1974.

The book contains this chart:

It shows Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy's species) as a common ancestor to two branches of the hominid tree.  The genus Australopithecus continues to include the species africanus and robustus and the genus Homo breaks off and includes the species habilis, erectus and sapien.  The chart also shows that the genus Australopithecus went extinct a little over a million years ago.

The book discussed several other species as well, but those listed on this chart were the ones I remembered most vividly after finishing the book. The problem was, the book was published around 1980 and hadn't been updated.  Therefore it didn't contain discoveries made in the past 25 years.  So you can only imagine how fascinated I was when I got to the museum and saw a chart that looked more like this:

To my delight, it contained three new genera: Ardipithecus, Kenyanthropus and Paranthropus.  Obviously the number of species had grown as well.

The book discussed the controversies that invariably arise when it's time to name a new genus or species.  The controversy usually isn't so much about what to call it, but whether it's truly distinct from one already acknowledged.  Needless to say, distinguishing where one ends and another begins can be tricky and paleoanthropologists don't often agree.  As a result, there's not always consensus and a skull might go by two or three names depending on the academic holding it.

The Institute for Human Origins has an incredible interactive documentary on its website called Becoming Human.  If you launch the documentary, click on "Lineages," then click on "The Human Family Tree" you can then select the name of an academic and the tree will highlight their theory.  It's pretty amazing.

At any rate, the exhibition was wonderful. 

So last night I found myself back at the museum in Houston, this time by myself, holding a ticket to hear Donald Johanson speak.  The lecture was conducted in the museum's IMAX theater.  He spoke for nearly an hour and a half and presented slides on the giant screen.  Me and about 400 other nerds sat enraptured the entire time.  We were the lucky ones.  I was told by one of the staff that the lecture had sold out almost immediately (I got my ticket on September 7) and that tickets were being scalped online for up to $400!

After the lecture I had a chance to meet Johanson and tell him how great it was to hear about all that's happened in the field since his book was published.  He then told me he's currently working on a book to be published in a little over a year that'll pick up where the last one left off.  Hurray!

R.T & Donald Johanson, Houston Museum of Natural Science, 6 Nov 2007.

And the next thing I knew I was modeling on the internet

Some weeks back I got a call from someone asking if my beard was for-hire.

I said yup. 

Here's the result.

It's time for you to shut up and kneel before me, please.

You might recall that last February I got an excited call from my Dad thinking he'd traced our genealogy back to William the Conqueror.  There was just one link in the chain that was iffy.  We still haven't figured that problem out, but it doesn't matter anymore.  We found a solid link through another branch!  Check this out, no asterisks in this list:

1.  Rowdy Theologian, his father is

2.  Old Methodist Theologian, his father was

3.  Grandpa Theologian, his father was

4.  Great Grandpa Theologian, his mother was

5.  Amy Perrine, her mother was

6.  Lillian Burdsall, her father was

7.  Middleton Burdsall, his father was

8.  Samuel Burdsall, his mother was

9.  Dorothy Chrispin, her father was

10. Paul Chrispin, his mother was

11. Margarite Owen, her father was

12. Joshua Owen, his father was

13. Owen Humphrey, his mother was

14. Elizabeth Ferch Sion Howell, her mother was

15. Sibyl Ferch Hugh Gwynn, her mother was

16. Jane Ferch Owen ap Huw, her mother was

17. Sibyl Griffith, her father was

18. William Griffith, his mother was

19. Joan Troutbeck, her mother was

20. Margarate Stanley, her mother was

21. Joan Goushill, her mother was

22. Elizabeth Fitzalan, her mother was

23. Elizabeth DeBohun, her father was

24. William DeBohun, his mother was

25. Elizabeth Plantagenet, her father was

26. Edward I, his father was

27. Henry III, his father was

28. John, his father was

29. Henry II, his mother was

30. Empress Matilda, her father was

31. Henry I, his father was

32. William the Conqueror--my 29th great grandfather.

Grandpa!!