I can't wait

I joked with Rebecca that she will not get any sleep Friday night because she will be so excited to get back to Utah. However, I may be in the same boat. I can't wait to get home. I can't wait to breath the mountain air and feel the soft grass under my feet. It has been great to come out and be in Texas and experience Austin. It has been so nice to visit family here in Texas, attend two weddings! and visit Dallas / Fort Worth several times. But it is now time to get home and stay home. I am so glad to have a supportive family to take care of the things that needed attention while I have been out here in Texas. I owe Mom, Dad, Hillary, Hannah and Linc big time. Being in Texas has stirred up some memories and it has been great to see family that I have not bothered to visit for way too long.

On another note, I spoke with Hal yesterday. He can't contain the enthusiasm he feels for getting hitched. It reminds me of having to wait 6 months to marry Rebecca. I have absolutely no pity for him having to wait 3 months. It really was hard waiting so long, the only thing that kept me from going crazy was that Rebecca told me she would make sure it was "worth it". After she said that I realized that the more I focused on her happiness, the happier I was. The time I was engaged went by faster because I was writing love letters to her, sending her notes, calling her up, taking her out on dates, and making sure she knew I was still the one who she was going to marry. We spent the time talking about our reception and wedding. We talked about our life together, started working out roles and responsibilities we would have, began setting expectations for ourselves, and set short term and long term goals for our family. Nearly three years later, I can honestly say I had no idea how "worth it" she was. She would have been worth 6 years. It is sometimes tempting to think, "Oh if we had only met earlier, we could have been together for even longer", but Rebecca is right; the timing and way we met and fell in love was perfect. I wouldn't change it if I could.

Switching from Saving to Spending

Our neighbors approached us with this idea to get a fence between us in April. We had started to save for a fence prior to this event, however we were not very far along the road. It may end up costing around $5000 more than we had accumulated for a budget. Thankfully we have a "rainy day" fund which we were able to dip into for the extra money needed to complete the fence project. But as the saying goes, "When it rains, it pours." The rental property has been a sleeping financial hazard for us and finally reared its ugly head in May. All in all it will be about $5000 to cover the costs to repaint, repair damage and replace worn out carpet to prepare for a new tenant. Again we did not have enough budgeted for this large of an expense. In order to cover these costly repairs while also paying the mortgage on a vacant rental property, money had to come from somewhere. While working the numbers, I realized that the fence project was not an emergency and just because our neighbors were ready does not mean we were. I realized I had switched from a saving to spending mindset. So instead of spending so much out of the 'rainy day fund', Rebecca and I found ways to afford the fence by sacrificing other budgetary wants like a vacation and new furniture for the fence and rental repairs. Once all the sacrifices were made to afford the fence, we knew we were still short what was needed. However, it felt much better to take the minimum necessary from the emergency fund. We have heard Church leaders tell us to avoid debt and establish an emergency fund; I can say that the peace of mind which comes from following this advice has been worth the small sacrifices necessary. We are back in the saving mindset and have recommitted to save and replenish what was taken out of the emergency fund briskly, and steadily.

Annoying Eclipse "Problem Occurred" Again

I post this so that it might help someone else in a similar frustrating state. My Eclipse 3.3 has been giving me this annoying message ever few minutes.

Problem Occurred
periodic workspace save.
Cannot find file C:\Projects\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.core.resources\.projects\KB-485\1.tree

This project is a large CVS repository with over 1GB of static file content (don't ask I didn't have any involvement in the creation of the CVS module.) Recreating the project would be several hours of time pulling down the files from the network.

This error was causing me to have to click ok while trying to write code. Also, I got the same error trying to even close the project.

I fixed it by navigating to the directory in the error:
C:\Projects\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.core.resources\.projects\
creating the missing KB-485 folder and creating the missing 1.tree file (just an empty file)

Then I was able to close the project and open it and the 1.tree file was overwritten and the error has been fixed.