Got Sims 2, Silent Hill 3, and Gradius V on Friday & Saturday, for a grand total of … $45. SH3 was $10 at EB, Gradius V retails for $30, and Sims 2 was free, ’cause we get a free copy of any games released by our studio. Which is cool. Next week, Def Jam: Fight for NY comes out, and I can grab that for another $20, so I might do that – looks like an interesting game. Stared at the Futurama Vol. 2 box set this afternoon, but realized I’d rather save the money & spend it on a good frying pan, to use when we get our gas stove, which should be sometime in the next month or so.

Ah, the diary ‘o capitalism.

On another expensive note, jumping back into the home repair thing again. Whee. Our neighbors across the street had a guy looking at their roof the other day. Is a friend of our neighbor across the street named Rod. Kurt (our neighbor) recommended him, and he’s a good friend, so I asked him if he knows anything about windows. Our front windows are still leaking, and though Jose & Co. spent some time patching up the cracks in the stucco, it became clear within five minutes of talking to Rod that Jose & Co., though nice, and quite reliable for interior work, really didn’t know fully well what they were talking about when they did the original “re-seal” on the front of the house. Rod pointed out a couple things that had been done wrong, such as the “weep holes” in the window being plugged up – this is likely the original stucco guys’ fault, as the original stucco is what’s covering up said holes, but Jose & Co. didn’t fix that, and made it actively worse by caulking them shut, if the water even had any way out to begin with.

So, anyway, Rod estimated $700 to tear out some of the stucco, and try to see whether the windows were flashed right, clearing out the weep holes on all the windows, and guaranteed the workmanship for 3 years. He wrote up a contract, which is more than any of the previous contractors did, and I gave him a down payment of $200. If it works, it’ll be totally worth it. If it doesn’t, it’ll be at least good to know what’s right, and what’s wrong. And that’s cheaper than the $810 I just paid to get the gas line to the kitchen installed.

Yeesh.

So… yeah. Money money money. Crazy stuff.