Thursday, June 21, 2007

Just In Case You Were Interested...

'Nicholas' means...

From the Greek name Νικολαος (Nikolaos) which meant "victory of the people" from Greek νικη (nike) "victory" and λαος (laos) "people". Saint Nicholas was a 4th-century bishop from Anatolia who, according to legend, saved the daughters of a poor man from lives of prostitution. He is also known as Santa Claus (from Dutch Sinterklaas), the bringer of Christmas presents. He is the patron saint of children, sailors and merchants, and Greece and Russia. Nicholas was also the name of two czars of Russia and five popes.

I bolded that one word because of its significance. The Patron Saint of Sailors and Merchants. See, Sailing and Selling were in me from the beginning!

These are my Kids, Billy, Jane, Thomas and '4real'

Yup, you read it right. There is a couple in New Zealand that want to name their child '4real'...no joke. They said that they were so struck by the sight of the baby on the ultrasound that they felt that they needed the child to know how they felt...for the rest of his life.

Their reasoning is that whenever you give a name to someone, the name means something. If you want to know what your name means, then you have to go through the process of looking it up in the name dictionary...oh, how hard that must be for some people. They figured that if they named their child '4real' then the child would always know that something was indeed '4real'.

The Government thus far has blocked the naming of the child stating that a name cannot begin with a number. So, right now, the parents and the New Zealand Government are in negotiations to come to terms with the naming of this kid. The Government won't out and out reject the name yet, but for this kid's sake, I hope they do.

If the two sides can't come to an agreement by July 9th, the child will be registered under the name 'real'. Under New Zealand law, no child can go without a name for more than 60 days after birth, so they're really under the gun to get this kid a normal name.

Why would you want to name your kid, '4real'? This simply makes no sense at all, but hey, who am I to judge...right?

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Home Shopping

It is probably the most humbling experience one can have, when you start shopping for your first home. Natasha and I started looking around for a nice place to live, somewhere on the mountain preferably.

But whichever house we seem to look at, they're all like a million dollars. We're looking to spend $160,000 - $18o,000, that should keep the payments relatively reasonable. The trouble is, for that kind of money, the houses are surprisingly tiny...I mean really tiny.

There are a couple that Natasha has found that are pretty nice and reasonablly affordable, we'll see how they work out.

So, the search goes on, hopefully we'll be able to find something that will allow us to have enough room to start a family. Wish us luck!