I just wanted to quickly update you on my status. (No, I am not dead, obviously.) I have been watching as much of the NFL preseason as I can, some Mets games on TV, and playing my most recent games and even games that are the oldest in my collection. I got an HDTV for myself. I still don't have service for either TV, but I hope that will change soon. By the way, my TV is a 20 inch LCD monitor by LG that can reach a maximum resolution of 1366x768. As a matter of fact, the TV is what I am using now as a monitor for my laptop. I just threw away two TVs today (both are broken). I watched WWE Raw tonight on SciFi. My PlayStation 3 (my brother and I swapped ownership of the two systems to allow him to cancel a debt he owed me) is in my room on the 20 inch HDTV.

Now, onto the biggest news. My parents want to remove and replace the upstairs with a bigger addition that will almost completely reorganize the house. The bad news is that they have yet to receive the money to do the job. They wanted a home equity loan, which is based on the appraised value of the house, which they received as being $210,000 from an appraiser sent by Chase. Another bank is supposed to send an appraiser out to the house on Tuesday. While I honestly thought $210,000 was a low number as far as our house is concerned, I don't see it reaching the $300,000 they would need to recieve the money to upgrade the house. I am thinking it is anywhere between $250,000 and $270,000, but I could be wrong. All of this being said, I really don't want them to do the work on the house now. I think it would be a waste of their money at this time to do the job. I am also really eager to acquire HD programming as soon as possible, although I know it is greedy to say that. Finally, I think that the loan is going to cause them to work harder, risking injury and fatigue to pay back the money they borrowed.