time to park the corvette

Big news from the DeGroot household. We've just been informed that the offer we placed for a new condo has been accepted! We are now (almost) the proud owners of a condo in the Brewer's Hill area of Milwaukee right near the restaurant, Roots.

It's not far from my current place, but the condo is pretty slick and a little bigger with 2 bedrooms and 2 baths (and 2x what anyone should be paying for taxes) and a little over 1400 square feet. Plenty of room for me to be able to lock myself in a separate room when I need a little "Derek Time" away from the family. Of course, I never really need that given how wonderful of a family I have. (whew, I hope that made up for the previous sentence).

One sad note is that my first ever home purchase, the place once referred to by a friend of mine as the equivalent of Sam's Malone's corvette from Cheers, will be sold to another to enjoy. The place where I first stretched my legs feeling a huge sense of pride that I was able to afford a place and take the big step of aquiring a home mortgage. It seems like only yesterday I moved in there with no living room furniture except for a used recliner which I placed in the middle of the huge living room with nothing but white walls and windows around me. Countless people used to walk by on the Riverwalk laughing at me (I had no window treatments at the time) as I sat there, reclined, with a big smile on my face having a High Life. Ahh, the good old days.

Now, the place has a woman's touch and is much more "homey" because of the addition of many things like paint colors, pictures, candles and of course, donating most of my things to Goodwill without my knowledge.

It's very exciting but now the fun begins...we need to sell our place! Who's looking for a new condo?

Contact me immediately and if we complete a deal, you will not only be buying a pimpin' condo, but also you'll be purchasing my love...which lasts a lifetime.

the negotiator

I make myself sick sometimes. Just two short posts ago, I say that I'm in a blogging funk and plan on breaking out of it and yet, here I am, waiting another extended period of time before writing. Well, now that I have just expelled that emotion, time to move on.

I'm not one for grieving.

So this past weekend a couple co-worker friends and I made a pilgrimage up to the my homeland of Green Bay for the third annual Packers Fan Fest. It's an event that gives fans an opportunity to meet some of the players, get autographs, check out Lambeau Field including some areas that game day fans can't see like the players locker room. Really nice event. It was quite a group of fans there too. First, there was the normal Packers fans like my friends and I and then there were those who were let out of their parent's basement for their once a year journey out into the sun away from there couch made of cheeseheads. Wow. There's some weird people out there folks.

And, I think I found a new career path, Sales. For the first time at Fan Fest, rather than have be a free for all, the Packers organization gave fans 4 tickets for certain players at certain times to get autographs. If they didn't like what they had, they could go to an area in the Atrium called the "Trading Pit" or "Derek's Slaughterhouse" as I like to think of it. Not to brag, well yes, to brag, I was a machine. When all said and done, I parlayed my 3, second rate players and 1 current head coach into a list of 10 or so former Super Bowl players and personnel.

It was ridiculous. I had people bringing me the players I was looking for for crying out loud. In the words of Jim Rome, and an inside joke from the weekend, I was PHENOMONAL.

Then there was the shadow.

We were in line for the locker room tour and as we moved through the maze of ropes like cattle, this, what can only be called a "socially challenged" person (see the second group of fans at the event I alluded to earlier), was literally inches behind me and/or Andy. We had to work together to keep this dude and his wretched breath behind us. It was incredible. No hint short of an elbow to the gut was getting this guy to back up. In hindsight we should have probably just asked him politely to move back, but that's not in our nature. So what do we do instead? That's right, we have the third member of our party take pictures of us making strange faces as the SCP (socially-challenged person, keep up people) is hovering over our shoulders.

Good times, looking forward to next year. Go Pack in '07!