It’s amazing what purchasing a home can do you for you. The things that you previously had no interest in suddenly sound exciting. My wife and I recently purchased the house we’d been living in for nearly two years. It’s a great location. Off the main roads, but not far from anything we need. In fact, the only things of extended distance are work and church. Work is roughly forty-five minutes a way and church is a little over and hour. I certainly don’t mind the drive to work as it gives me a chance to wake up in the morning. And the ride to church is but a small sacrifice to make for ideal living location.

So what makes this location so great? Well for starters, everything we need is just a short drive away. Groceries, family, parks, beach, dining, etc. But at the same time, we’re off of the main roads, so it’s very quiet and peaceful. Plus, my neighbors are my cousin and his wife and then my aunt and uncle further down. Then when you factor in that my aunt and uncle own all the land behind all three of our properties including a large field and an extended distance into the woods, my kids effectively have a back yard anyone would be envious of.

Of course, now that the property is mine, things that previously held no interest seem suddenly exciting. About two weeks ago I walked into Home Depot for the first time with home owner eyes instead of “I need to get such and such at Home Depot” eyes. I had only gone in for one simple item, but for the first time, the power tools section beautiful. I spent way too much time looking at drill bits for my power drill, even though I didn’t need any. I spent time looking over hatchets as there’s some branches I need to hack down behind the property, despite the fact that I can probably just borrow a chainsaw from my uncle. I almost bought a lawn mower just because I wanted to mow the lawn (I still technically need to get one).

Since then, I’ve been researching gravel and fill online. There is a muddy area behind my property that I want to completely cover with rock to prevent vegetation from growing and put a fire pit in there. Eventually, I plan to build my own grill from brick.

I’m looking to get some good rakes and mulch. We’ve got a lovely stone wall that’s been falling into disrepair. Some of the stones have long since embedded themselves into the ground. I want to dig up the stones that have fallen and place them back upon their former glory. I want to remove most of the vegetation near the wall and cover it with mulch to improve it’s beauty.

Inside the home is no different. Now that we have power in the garage, I’m going to be moving all my exercise equipment in there (I have no intention of storing vehicles in it, mostly because it’s on the opposite side of the house). I’ll have a great area to work out and listen to the AM radio. That’s right, I found an old AM radio in the garage and cleaned it up real nice. This way I can listen to Rush Limbaugh when I exercise. Nothing get’s the blood pumping like Rush Limbaugh. Only Alex Jones is more effective.

I’ve already carved out a section of the basement for my wife’s Rock ‘n’ Roll band, Drive by Todd (shameless plug) and now I’m slowly working on carving out my section of the basement. I’m carefully working on making my video game cave, with consoles going back roughly forty years. Now that I own my own space, I’m finally looking to get everything hooked up. Buying the right power strips, the right adaptors and switch. And if anyone knows where I can get a good Sony BVM at a reasonable price, that would be awesome. Video games aren’t going to be the only thing in my area of the basement. I’m going to be hooking up the VCR and building up a substantial VHS horror collection. There are so many great, but lost horror flicks you simply can’t get on DVD, BluRay, or streaming. Also, there’s the simple fact that a lot of the older ones are just better on VHS. A Nightmare on Elm St is one of my favorites, but I don’t recommend any of the recent releases. They cleaned it up too much and you can see everything that you weren’t supposed to.

There’s so much I’m looking forward to doing, stuff that never would’ve carried any interest in me before. It’s a brave new world with such strange people in it, namely me.