The adventures of Joe and Erin

I have decided to use Picasa for my photo storage. We were using my own web gallery but with most everyone is plugged into the online sites and there are a bunch of cool plugins. After looking around for awhile I decided not to use the popular Flickr site and opted for Picasa. Flickr has a bunch of strengths but Picasa seamlessly plugged into my Blackberry, plus it had a bunch of cool plugins for Wordpress.

These are some photos of us taken by my buddy Steven Kassing. Click on the picture for a larger size. I’m also uploading all our previous albums to our web gallery.

We’ve been lazy with the updates this summer, but don’t worry, we’ve caught up on the photos!

Here are the recently updated albums:

• More Seattle pictures
• My Birthday trip to Victoria, B.C. with our friends Bas and Lisa
• Steve and Mayte with my God-Daughter, she is so freakin’ cute!!
• Markus and Liz’s Wedding in Mt.Shasta, California

But no, I will not help you with your taxes…

My licensed was officially issued today by the Washington State Board of Accountancy.  You can look up my license on the Board’s website:

http://www.cpaboard.wa.gov/LicenseeSearchApp/default.aspx

Just put my last name “Lotz” in the name field and click ‘Search for Individual CPA.’  You’ll find me! :-)

On the housing note: Joe and I found a townhouse we have put an offer on and the seller accepted.  We just had our inspection done, and now we’re ploughing through loan docs trying to get money! Wish us luck!!

So Joe and I have been fantasizing about this time in our lives for years now… Last Thursday we were preapproved for our first home loan! We are going to buy our first house this summer!! Our lease is up in mid-August, so we expect the whole process to consume us for the next couple of months.  We have already begun house-hunting and are meeting with our real estate agent for the first time tomorrow evening.  We’ll definitely keep everyone updated as we search for our first ever dream home!! :-)

Erin and I witnessed a car crash yesterday.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004392648_seattlecrash05m.html

The Porsche was behind us at the stoplight and caught our attention because the driver and is female passenger were dancing around and having a good time. Once we started off they floored it and flew around us into a sharp turn. The back-end got loose and started to come out when the driver over-corrected. The car went squirrelly and ended up in a side skid. It hit the curb and shot across the lane and hit another car head on.

The convertible Porsche ended up under the other car. The driver was killed immediately and the female passenger was in critical condition. The firefighters cut the other driver out of her car. Since we were the primary witnesses on the traffic report we were asked by the newspaper for an interview but we declined.

This certainly was an unfortunate event and not something I would ever like to see again. It is weird to see someone having fun on a rarely sunny Seattle weekend day and the next minute be dead. I think the lesson in this event is that life is precariously delicate.