Thursday, October 30, 2008

So true...

Kelly:
Shoot I forgot to have my snack. Oh well.
Live and learn I always say
‎‎Geoff:
lol
you do not always say that!
Kelly:
Hahahahahaha
I was hoping you didn't notice.
‎‎Geoff:
normally you dwell on it for a week
and then live and learn
‎‎Kelly:
HAHAHAHA
‎‎Geoff:
but then come back to it for an hour or two every day!

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

A new low for society

Certified Pre-Owned Massage Chairs. I'm all for reusing and helping the environment, but still. Scary.

Pool

I love the pool. I always have - I took my first swimming lessons when I was 6 months old. Okay, so they may not have been swimming lessons so much as it was moms and their kids in the pool teaching them that water exists. But I attribute that to my love for water. I took all of the levels of Red Cross swimming lessons. I was a lifeguard. I was on a swim team. I even have the broad shoulders of a swimmer - the shoulders that made the butterfly the first race I ever won. Anyway, my swim last night was great. I just feel so at home in the water. I wondered why I don't just be a swimmer instead of a "runner", but it's just so much less convenient... you can run anywhere, anytime... finding a pool is much more difficult. But I love it all the same, and it's excellent cross training.

In VERY exciting news, our H2C team is in for 2009! Our check was cashed this morning, and although I haven't received official word from the race organization yet, I have full confidence that they wouldn't cash our check if we weren't in. VERY EXCITING.

Nelson DeMille (my favorite author) has a new book out today! It's called The Gate House, and it's a sequel to The Gold Coast, which strangely enough I have never read. As of today he has published 15 books, and I think I've read 8 of them (I think I own all that I've read). I'm reading The Gold Coast right now, it's very good so far! I will go to Costco later this week to get The Gate House. I'm SO excited. I love Nelson DeMille books. I started in 1997 with Plum Island (I read it my sophomore year of high school over Christmas break while in Colorado). I have read every one of his books that has come out since then - 4 of the 6 have John Corey as the main character. John Corey is HILARIOUS. And I've gone back in time to 3 books he wrote before Plum Island, but there are a few I've missed (including The Gold Coast which I'm reading now), so I guess I have some fun reading ahead!

Monday, October 27, 2008

An excellent weekend! :)

This weekend was fantastic! :)

Friday we ended up at work late and then didn't feel like the swim we had planned - especially since the weather was so beautiful! So we opted to use our cross-training day for a walk outside instead. We did that and had a calzone for dinner. After that I decided to start a closet cleaning out project. Normally this would be super fun and I would make a big mess in the project, but with the whole house-on-the-market thing, I had to be more contained about it. Of course, it was still really fun! Geoff was on our bed watching TV or a movie or something, and I brought out an armload of clothes and dumped it on the bed next to him. He said "should I be afraid?" and I said "yes!" My plan was to take ALL of the clothes off the top shelf of the closet and put them on the bed, then be particular about what went back in (and send the rest to Goodwill). The top shelf has mostly sweaters/fleeces/cardigans/sweatshirts, plus a few workout clothes and all of my tank tops. So back and forth from the closet I went, dumping more and more clothes in a big mound next to Geoff. It was very entertaining. Then I went through the pile, refolded and re-organized everything into piles - heavy sweaters, light sweaters, cardigans, fleeces, sweatshirt, zippy thingies (like sweatshirts that have a zipper... hoodies I guess, but it seems like they didn't all have hoods!). Geoff doesn't have as many sweaters / sweatshirts so his didn't get organized, just put on the shelf in 2 piles. Then my tank tops got put in 2 piles, no real organization there either. And quite a few items to Goodwill. :) We had to run EARLY in the morning, so I stopped there and cleaned up everything. I love organizing. Oh, and I also pondered the fact that I hang my hanging tops in order by color but my folded tops are by category. That seems weird to me, and I wondered if I should change one or the other but Geoff said they are okay (well duh, of course HE said it was okay). I am a firm believer in having a system that works for the user, so I'm not going to change it even though it seems slightly weird. Maybe if we move.

Saturday morning we got up at the obscene hour of 6:30 AM. Not that 6:30 is so early for a weekday or anything, but who gets up at 6:30 just to go for a run? Ew. I ate some oatmeal and waited a bit, and we set out for a 4-miler at 7 AM. Geoff was out of control!! He really showed the run who was boss. After the run he said it was the first time he felt like he was really a runner… he just kept pushing himself a little further. I had a not-so-good run… I NEVER run well early in the morning, so that was expected for me. Mid-afternoon is my preferred running time (I think because I’ve had a chance to be eating and moving around all day so my body is just more warmed up). But we got it done! After that we went to the pumpkin patch with our friends Rick and Tiffany – they picked us up and we got the pumpkins, then ate lunch at Helvetia Tavern. Then we came back to our house just in time to see that Northwestern LOST this weekend. Sad sad day. We carved super cute pumpkins… well, everyone else did, I just picked out the seeds and baked pumpkin seeds. Then we got a call that someone was going to come to our house to look at it Sunday – PRAISE! After that we headed to Rick and Tiffany’s apartment for the OSU / Penn State game. Tiffany’s a Big Ten girl like me (OSU graduate) so we had lots of fun. They made a delicious cilantro/jalapeƱo dip and fed us pizza, wine, chocolate and other delicious things. We like them. ;-) Sadly, OSU lost too, so Tiffany felt my pain. After that we headed home – it’d been a looong day. I think I fell asleep in approximately 7 seconds.

Yesterday we went to church at 9 AM (we are becoming morning people or something). After that we went to Geoff’s parent’s house for lunch – his mom made us French dips and French fries. Yum! We watched about half the Nascar race and then headed home to get stuff done! Since we were coming from his parent’s house, we went to DSW Shoes (they live WAY closer than we do to it). I know several people who have had bad experiences there (mainly stemming from their poopy return policy) but I braved it anyway. I haven’t been since I lived in Chicago and it was AWESOME! They had a giant selection and reasonable prices. I was very pleased and I got three pairs of shoes. I was planning on 3 pairs, so that was fine… I haven’t bought new shoes (except for running shoes) since May of 2006. Yes. Two and a half years. I know I am a freak. I found the three pairs I was looking for in about an hour. After that we went to Costco for bananas, peanut butter, and socks. I needed new socks to go with my new shoes. When we came home we found the realtor had actually left a card – PRAISE! Half of the people who’ve called to say they wanted to come look at our house haven’t actually come in and this was the first one who left a card so we knew they’d been there! FINALLY! (our realtor can tell us later on if the people came based on if anyone opened up the lock box to get our key, but leaving a business card is immediate notification) Then I worked on Closet Project Part II. I got rid of 12 pairs of shoes of mine and 1 pair of Geoff’s – that made room for my 3 new pairs and to move some from our downstairs closet upstairs. Now I think pretty much all of our shoes are in our master bedroom closet. (Geoff has probably 10 pairs total and I have probably 25 pairs total including a whole bunch of flip-flops… we are not really shoe people – although I’m going to start making an effort to actually WEAR all of the shoes I have instead of just the same pair EVERY DAY) I went through my hanging clothes and got rid of a bunch of them – I also used up a bunch of shopping bags that I have been “collecting” since I moved to Oregon 4 years ago. I always save them because they seem useful but never know what to do with them – they were PERFECT for all of the shoes/sweaters/shirts I need to take to Goodwill. I filled probably 12 shopping bags with stuff for Goodwill, yay! Then we went to the gym where Geoff ran into an old friend he went to high school with and then we went to Red Robin for dinner. I unloaded the dishwasher and folded a load of laundry and I think that was about it.

Wow. I just wrote a blog on organizing my closet. I’m sorry friends! And I also need to take a lesson on proper use of ( ). I write a lot of sentences that are just ( ) with no other punctuation! I’m sure you noticed already, astute people that you are.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

3 reasons today is a good day!

1. I gave blood today! Giving blood always puts me in a good mood - even though they somehow overbooked the blood drive (I think that's a GOOD thing) and my appointment took me an hour and 45 minutes. I don't know what I love about it... perhaps the pink bandage at the end, or it could be the cookie and the excuse not to workout for the day. What's not to love? (P.S. - boys, you get a CHOICE of bandage... so you can go for a manly blue or green, you don't have to get pink. But pink is obviously the best choice)

2. Whenever I'm training for a half marathon and am traveling at the same time, I always seem to be able to recruit people to run oddly long distances with me. 2 years ago I was scheduled for a 9 miler the same weekend as a retreat I was going to. Somehow there ended up being FIVE PEOPLE (2 training for a marathon, another training for a half, me, and a guy who I think wanted to impress one of the girls) who were willing to get up at 6:00 AM and run for 2 hours through Cannon Beach. When we strolled into breakfast around 8:30 everyone else on the retreat gave us looks of insanity - understandably! This year, half marathon training takes me to a distance of 10 miles two days after Christmas. Already, Geoff (who is doing the half with me), my sister (who has always been a runner), and my friend Erin from college (running a half the week after I am) have agreed to a 10 miler with me in Dallas. SWEET! :) I love sharing the misery.

3. It's Geoff's birthday! Yaaay for birthdays. :)

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Why couldn't I have said FOXTROT?

We went to the gym tonight after work, and it was stinkin' HOT!!! It was a high of about 75 here today, and I guess the gym wasn't expecting that, so the AC wasn't on as much as it should have been. Not to mention the treadmills are UPSTAIRS which makes it even hotter. I thought it was just me, but Geoff and my other friend who was there (who was walking, not running) both confirmed it was stifling. So we cut our run short and went on to lifting - which was the reason we were there in the first place (the half marathon training schedule calls for one day of running AND lifting, that day was today this week. We decided to run at the gym despite the nice weather so that we could just lift while we were there too). That part went quite well. :)

I have been working on organizing all of my music on iTunes. It is a long tedious process... and I get through about one letter of the alphabet a night, if I'm lucky. Tonight I was reporting my progress to Geoff, and it went like this:
Me: "I got through F tonight"
Geoff: "Wow, X??"
M: "No, F. As in Fooey."
G: "That's P-H."
M: "Oh."

The man has a point. Who spells phooey FOOEY??? And better yet, who gives FOOEY as an example for the letter F??? I'm a freak.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Life

So last night I got in the pool about 8 PM. May have been 8:01 or 8:02, but as I started swimming I noted 8:00. I swam 20 laps (500 yards) and took a break. I looked up at the clock and it said roughly 8:12 or 8:13. I was disappointed because I normally swim 500 yards in 10 minutes, so I was swimming a little slowly. So I swam my second set (again 500 yards) a little harder. I took a break and looked up at the clock - GONE! Seriously, the clock was gone. I thought "Am I looking at the wrong wall? Did I get turned around in the pool somehow? Am I hallucinating? Was there an earthquake while I was swimming?" I've been swimming in this pool for 2.5 years and never had such an issue before. Upon further review (approximately .8 second later) I saw a janitor on a ladder holding the clock. He reached up to put it back on the wall - and it said 8:12 or 8:13!!!! UGH!!!! All of that work and I have no idea if I was faster or not. I realized that I had left for the gym about 7:35, so the clock was probably originally 10 minutes fast and he was just setting it back, but it was very funny. Then I swam my third set and was excited to just be done, so I never did check the clock after that one. Oh well. :) Maybe next time!

This morning I went down to the cafe at work to get some coffee and a bowl for my oatmeal. I was holding the coffee in one hand and the bowl and spoon in the other. I have no idea what I was doing, but all of the sudden - CRASH! The bowl slips out of my hand and crashes into a thousand pieces all over the cafe floor. Thank goodness nothing was in it and that I get to work early so the cafe wasn't super busy. Embarssing though. :) I commented at the time "well at least now I have something good to blog about today".

Monday, October 20, 2008

Fun weekend!

Had a super fun weekend - I wasn't feeling the best so I didn't know how it would go, but it ended up turning out really fun! Friday night we went to a local coffeehouse to see my coworker's son play the piano. He is extremely talented and it was a lot of fun. Plus I'd never been to that coffee shop before and it was a really nice place, so I think we'll be back in the future. Great atmosphere! After that we went to a pub to hang out.... we played cards and talked for a long time.

The next morning I slept until 9:30... oops! We watched Northwestern beat Purdue in the homecoming game which was tons of fun.

Sunday we ran the Run Like Hell 5K in Portland. It was my first 5K - isn't that weird? I have run 2 Hood to Coasts, 2 10Ks, and a half marathon - but never raced in the 5K distance before. It felt so short! It went by really quickly but was a lot of fun.

Yesterday also marked Day 1 of Week 1 of Half Marathon training - Geoff, Patrick, and I are all going to run the Rock 'N' Roll Arizona Half Marathon in January. At least I think we are (Patrick is already signed up). The registration fee goes up the middle of next month so assuming we are on track training-wise, Geoff and I will sign up then. The race is in 13 weeks... we are well positioned for the training plan I'm going to use (the same one that I loosely based my last half marathon training on, although this time I'm going to follow it a little more closely). Today is Day 2 - cross training. :) I'm planning on 30 minutes in the pool tonight (which feels so short, normally I spend 55 minutes in the pool, so this is great)! Geoff's going to basketball for his cross training (he plays every Monday night with men from church). SOOO excited!

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

I've been tagged. :)

I have read people's blogs in which they've been tagged for months, and never been tagged myself. But now I've been tagged by Marisa, so here we go!

1. do you like blue cheese salad dressing? Yes but not necessarily on a salad – but I LOVE it on buffalo wings, fries, etc. Probably not as much as ranch though.
2. do you own a gun? No.
3. what's your favorite drink at starbucks? Grande caramel frappucino (although it varies slightly by season).
4. what do you prefer to drink in the morning? Water, and on the weekdays I usually have one cup of coffee.
5. do you do push ups? Sporadically.
6. what's your favorite piece of jewelry? I don’t know… my wedding ring?
7. favorite hobby? Running at the moment… but it changes practically weekly.
8. do you have a.d.d.? No.
9. what's one trait that you hate about yourself? Lack of dedication.
10. name 3 thoughts at this exact moment: My knees hurt but I’m looking forward to running tonight anyway, I’m getting annoyed with people at work for not showing up to something they were supposed to come to at 10:30, and I’m glad to be blogging.
11. name 4 drinks you regularly drink. Water, coffee, wine, and Diet Coke. That’s pretty much in order of how often I drink them. Although I easily drink more water than the other 3 combined – probably 2 or 3x really!
12. current worry right now? No worries.
13. current hate right now? People who call to say they’re going to come look at our house and then don’t.
14. favorite place to be? Bed.
15. do you like to travel? Yes.
16. what color shirt are you wearing? Grey with a black hoodie over it.
17. do you like sleeping on satin sheets? I don’t really think I ever have.
18. can you whistle? To a tune? No.
19. favorite color? Pink.
20. if you could would you be a pirate? No. That’s weird.
21. what song do you sing in the shower? Well I rarely sing in the shower but if I do it’s usually a worship song, mainly because they have easy choruses.
22. favorite girl's name? Off the top of my head, Catherine, although I don’t know that I’d necessarily name a child that.
23. favorite boy's name? Tyler? Again off the top of my head. I have thought of a few good ones in the past month or so and need to start keeping a list somewhere. Just in case.
24. what's in your pocket right now? My Amex.
25. favorite bedsheets as a child? Some ridiculous black ones with green and teal stripes on them (from my teen years). I loved them but when I got to college I had some lavender ones and realized that it was oddly easier to sleep on light colored sheets. I would never use dark sheets again (although they are still in “my bedroom” at my parent’s house, so I use them ~once a year).
26. worst injury? I fell off my bike in first grade and the whole left side of my face was one giant scab. It was very disgusting looking. The teacher (Miss Messina) told all of the other kids in the class to basically avoid me… so that they didn’t cause me any more injury.
27. do you love where you live? Most of the time.
28. how many TVs do you have in your house? Two that we use. Two older ones that we don’t use – they’re in guest bedrooms and not hooked up to cable or anything, but could be used for watching a DVD. Heck, one of them even has a VCR hooked up to it!29. who is your loudest friend? Addy.
30. how many pets do you have? None.
31. does someone have a crush on you? Who knows!
32. what is your favorite book? Plum Island by Nelson DeMille. But really, any of his books, especially if John Corey is the main character.
33. what's your favorite candy? Reeses Peanut Butter cups
34. favorite sports team? Northwestern football!!!!!!
35. what was the first thing you thought of when you woke up? I had a bad dream last night and I can’t remember what it was.

To be fair, the person I was waiting for earlier when I started this blog DID show up right after I answered that question and came through in a big way!

I tag Patrick. Because I think he should start a blog!

Monday, October 13, 2008

Progress

Making progress on three main fronts:

1. Running! 7 or so weeks ago I started out running .5 miles. I increased half a mile a week (yes I know you're only supposed to increase by 10% each week....) and now I'm ready for a 5K on Sunday.

2. Picture storage! Remember how in the past several months I have promised you pictures on several occasions? And said that I wanted to start taking more pictures but needed to come up with an organization system first? Well I did that over the weekend so now I can start taking more pictures AND posting them to my blog. My goal is going to be a weekly picture update.

3. Goal setting! I have never been a big "personal goal setter" but I decided to start. I made daily goals, weekly goals, monthly goals, quarterly goals, yearly goals, and long term and/or undefined goals. The goals are in 5 big categories (career & education, family & relationship, health & fitness, personal growth / interest / recreation / leisure, and time & money management / organization / home). Then there are subcategories (for example in personal growth / interest / recreation / leisure there are 4 subcategories - recreation/hobbies/leisure, community service / stewardship, creative, and spiritual) and goals for each of the sub categories in the different time frames (not every subcategory has a goal for every time period... I'm not *that* crazy!). Anyway it's a giant matrix - 14x20 (cells in Excel). But I love it and I already feel more productive and well rounded even in just the couple of weeks since I've implemented it. I've already added and deleted a few things since I started - this is a work in progress. :) I've also already failed at a few things but I've also accomplished a ton and made steps toward some of the longer term goals. In the future I may think about posting some goals on the blog and giving a monthly state of the union... we'll see how it goes.

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Quick again...

Okay, so first of all I know I had a mistake on my last blog about grammar - embarassing! And no, I didn't edit it so if you didn't catch it you can go back and laugh at my expense. I was in a rush which is absolutely no excuse... I would criticize others and say that if you don't have time to write well don't write at all. So all it is is me being an idiot!

Anyway, my sister and I were talking tonight about our Thanksgiving plans. She's going to be here for Thanksgiving and is going to join me, Geoff, and Momlie on A Wine Country Thanksgiving. This will be our 3rd Thanksgiving going - our first with anyone else besides the 3 of us! So I said "oh, cool, you can meet my friend Thistle-Man". She said "What is that?" I said "Thistle Wines... it's a winery that I really like." "What??" "Thistle Man... Jon Jennison... he's the winemaker at Thistle Wines". "But what's a fransisleman?"

HAHAHAHAHA - when I said "you can meet my friend Thistle-Man" she heard "you can be my fransisleman".

"What's a fransisleman and why would I want to be that?"

I have nothing else to say... laughing too darn hard!!! :)

Monday, September 29, 2008

small update and a rant

Nothing like a grammar mistake to bring me out of my blog hiatus! In the last 6 months or so, it seems to have become trendy to overuse "myself". Like "you know a ton more than myself" or "Jack, Brad, and myself went to the store". What is wrong with me or I? It seems that people don't know if they should use me or I in a sentence and so they avoid it entirely by using "myself" and thinking that somehow sounds better.

My problem with grammar is that I hear these things and I know they're not right, but I don't necessarily know WHY. So then I have to google me/myself/I and find a plethora of information. Best I can tell, myself is a "special object" to be used only when you are the subject of the sentence. Like "I walked to the store by myself". "I" is the subject, so then you can use myself.

So there's your grammar lesson for the day. In other news, someone else made an offer on the house we're had the contingent offer in on, so it looks like they will end up with it instead of us. Not too much else going on!

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Airport Observations

I'm at the airport right now, I have a quick overnight business trip before my NINE GLORIOUS DAYS camping at the coast. I've been here since about 6 since Geoff dropped me off before work, and my flight's not until 9:55. That's okay, I've been online the whole time getting work done (okay, and blogging).

Anyway, I'm sitting outside of Starbucks (if you know the PDX airport, right when you pass through security on the ABC side there's that Starbucks with the lounge area? Yeah, I'm there) and at a table right near me there are 3 cops. All of the sudden a 4th cop comes whizzing in on his bicycle and screeching to a halt! I seriously thought he was going to hit their table - it was kinda funny. When he got there, one of the other cops got up and left immediately, and the other 2 stood up to talk to biker cop. I was watching this all go down when biker cop looked over at me, smiled, and said good morning. Friendly biker cop!!!

Oh, and the one other thing that happened: I went to the bathroom a little while ago and just as I locked the door to my stall someone said "Kelly? Do you have to go potty?" I was thinking "WHAT? Yes, of course I do!"... and then I realized there was a little girl named Kelly in the restroom as well. :)

More house stuff

So I can't remember where I left off yesterday, but we made a home inspection appointment for this week and it's only going to be $255!!! That is super exciting news. I guess that's the bonus of going to a house that's only a little over half the size of the one you currently live in. :) Sometimes they charge an "older home fee" but not in this case which is great.

Except then we found out that we probably need to do a septic inspection too, since we'd be on septic rather than sewer.
- There is a $150 fee for locating and unburying the septic system/tank.
- There is a $0.37 / gallon fee for pumping and cleaning the tank.
- There is a $300 fee for the inspection itself.

With a 1000 gallon tank that's full (just a guess, we have no idea how big it is or how full it is), this could be $820 on a house we may not even end up with! Which I realize is always the case when you're still in the inspection process, but in this case it's particularily a long shot because of the contingency. Ick. And we don't know if the seller will locate the tank for us and let us dig it up (apparently they are buried 18 - 20 inches under ground).

Then we had to read all of the disclosures (which we read before when we first made an offer on this home 4 months ago) and sign our lives away about lead paint, asbestos, and all of the other exciting things older homes have to offer. Makes me miss our more modern home already!

But then the day started looking up: our realtor decided that it really is dumb for us to have to do the septic inspection at this point with so much up in the air, so we're going to write an addendum to request that we do the septic inspection AFTER the contingency is up (if it ever is). Hopefully he accepts that. And if not, hopefully he at least tells us where the tank is and lets us dig it ourselves so we can save $150.

The good news continued when Geoff called to make an appointment with the sewer peeps. They asked how old the home is and when he told them, they said they don't need to do the $300 system inspection since it will fail anyway. I'm not sure if that's actually comforting or not, but it will save us $300 at least. Included in the pumping/cleaning fee is an inspection of the actual tank, so at least they can tell us if there's a giant crack or anything. So now we're down from $820 to a max (assuming a 1000 gallon tank that's full) of $370. Much more palitable. Although I'm still hoping he says we don't have to do this until if/after the contingency is dropped.

So that's the current update. Nothing has happened on our current house - no lookers yet. The sign is getting put up in front of our house today and we have an open house scheduled for 9/14 (this Sunday). If you know anyone who needs a nice house in suburban Portland, you know where to come... :)

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Movin' & Shakin'

Lots of stuff going on!! Our house went on the market on Friday, and we submitted the offer on the new house on Saturday. The owner came back yesterday with his counter which we accepted! We have 90 days now to sell our house and he asked us to get our inspection now rather than after our house sells - that way he isn't waiting 90 days for us to get an inspection and find some deal breaker after the fact. So we have that setup for Thursday morning. I'll be out of town but Geoff will handle it! He's also going to walk the property at the same time and hopefully set up a septic inspection for the same time. Craziness!

Our house is supposed to get the sign up in front of it today or tomorrow - not that that's a big deal but that will sorta be the "final" step in getting it on the market. Haven't had any calls yet, but there is an open house this Sunday so hopefully that will generate SOME interest... who knows. But imagine this: we sell and close on our house within 90 days, that's the beginning of December, so right around the 1st of the year we could be moving into our beautiful new house! (and I use the words "beautiful" and "new" both VERY loosely :)

Friday, September 05, 2008

House for sale!

So we met with the realtor last night and our house goes on the market today!!! (well, maybe tomorrow morning - depends on when the system updates or whatever) If you know someone who wants to buy a 4 bedroom / 2.5 bath house in the Beaverton, Oregon area - leave a comment in my blog and I will send you the details. Or if you're just interested in seeing all of the pictures and stuff, let me know that too and I'll send you the listing once I have it. :-) Stalkers. Just kidding. I'd want to see it too!

Tonight I'm going to Dinner's Ready to make a bunch of meals for my camping trip with Momlie that starts a week from today... YEAH!!!! So excited. :) Both about making the meals and the actual trip itself. And I have a business trip between now and then so it's going to be hectic time. Oh yeah, and we're selling our house and making an offer on another house.

That's about it... I had some character flaw (mine, not someone else's) that I was going to blog about but I don't remember what it was, so I guess it wasn't that important. I'll try to remember it later. Just wanted to give a quick update!

Monday, September 01, 2008

Embarassing Story

I was just in the copy room making some copies of receipts for a business expense that I incurred last week and for which I was submitting a reimbursement request. (that sentence originally ended I was submitting a reimbursement request for and then I remembered for is a preposition - so although it may sound odd, that sentence is grammatically correct)

Pause. Okay, after I "fixed" my sentence, I thought I remembered reading some time ago that you actually COULD end a sentence with a preposition in English. So I did some research, and in fact you can. It’s in LATIN that you can’t end a sentence with a preposition. However, when the preposition is unnecessary (at the end of the sentence or otherwise), that’s when you should leave it off. For example, when people say “where’s it at?” I grit my teeth every time! “Where is it” is sufficient. Of course, “Where’s it?” doesn’t sound quite as good, but “where is it at” is the same as “where’s it at” and it’s just adding that extra at that you don’t need! There’s your grammar lesson for the day – you can end a sentence in a preposition, just don’t add an unnecessary one. So I suppose my opening sentence above would have been correct as originally written.

Play. After I opened the copy machine after copying the receipts, the movement of opening the lid sent my receipts flying all around. The smallest one (which happened to be the biggest expense) flew right in the crack between the two pieces of the copy machine (the collating piece and the copying piece). AHHH!!! I looked around, underneath it and behind it – and then I called Geoff, who uses the copy machine WAY more than I do. Thank goodness it’s Labor Day and no one’s here. After sufficient mocking and trying to figure out a way to find the receipt, Geoff finally found the lever to pull the two pieces apart and rescue my valuable receipt. Yay!

Stuff to blog about...

Alright, finally I have some stuff to blog about. The house we were looking at back in April is still on the market - I have kept my eye on it, so I was aware that it was. My realtor emailed me 2 or 3 weeks ago letting me know, and I asked her to see if the seller would consider a contingency at this point - nope. Apparently he had received another offer that was quite low, but those buyers were "back and more serious now". Okay. Well probably 4 days later the listing price was lowered by about $15K (this was the first time he'd lowered his price in the past 4 months - I'd been watching for that, because I figured it'd be a sign he was more desperate). Hmmm.... looks like those buyers didn't quite work out now. So I asked my realtor to go back again to see if he'd take a contingency now. Sure enough, she came back and said that yes, he would entertain a contingency now (as Momlie said - "what, like do a song and dance for it?"). Oh my! We weren't really expecting that. So we deliberated over it for a couple of days, and then decided we're going to go for it. :) We asked a different realtor to come over on Friday night to tell us what we needed to do to put our house on the market - he walked through and made several suggestions (obvious stuff - touch up paint, put away pictures, put bark dust out, etc.) and we spent the weekend doing that. Our house looks fantastic now - we just have to finish up the mopping/sweeping/dusting/vacuuming etc. part of stuff and it will be picture perfect. I'll try to take some pictures tonight to post on the blog. You know me though - so don't hold your breath! So this week I need to get a pre-approval letter (our other one was only dated for 30 days, but he said he could give me a new one easily, he wouldn't have to run our credit again for 6 months so that's nice) and then I suppose we'll get in touch with the realtor we're buying with to see about making an offer. :) So crazy and random... but we are like that. We did decide (I think... again don't hold me to this...) that we're going to go ahead and sell our house whether this one works out or not. We can then live in our trailer until we find another suitable house. We weren't planning on selling for another 6 months to a year, but our selling agent told us that he is telling everyone to expect it to take 6 months to a year to sell - so that will actually work out perfectly (unless we're very lucky people and our house sells in some ridiculous time like 2 days... yeah right!). So no real action yet, but the plan for this week is: get pre-approval letter first, then make offer and put our house on market (not sure about the order for those two things... I suppose they may be somewhat simultaneous). Yikes. I've done the buying thing before but never the selling part... this should be interesting.

Here's a small funny from this weekend's house-beautify-a-thon:
Geoff: "Do you have one of those little handheld broom and dustpan things?"
Kelly: "Yup."
Geoff: "Can I borrow it?"
Hahahahaha. As though it is MINE only and I'm very protective about MY handheld broom and dustpan. That cracked us up for a good long while.

Other highlights of the weekend:
- Watching a Wildcat football WIN against Syracuse on ESPN2. There are very few things in the world better than college football!!!!!!!
- A fantastic shopping trip to Walgreens - my original total when they ran me up was around $70. After my coupons and rebates, my total ended up being -$18. Yes NEGATIVE!!! The best part is... while I was doing all of my deal hunting and gathering (I had a $10 off $40 coupon, so I had to make sure that I spent $40... and that was after all of my other coupons, so I had to do a lot of calculating... my shopping trip was slow!) Geoff was looking through the movie bin. As I was in the cosmetics section, he came up to me and said "you'll never guess what I found". I couldn't guess so he finally showed me - Blast From the Past! I've been looking for that movie for a couple of months, and no stores carry it since it's a little older. VERY exciting. It was $7.99 - but even that was included in my negative eighteen dollar total. :) So fun! I took a picture of all of the items I acquired. If I post house pics, maybe I'll include that one along with it.
- Went for a run Friday night and Sunday night. We are tentatively planning on doing the 5K Run Like Hell in October and 10K Smelt Run in February. So sore... but in reality I think that's from awkward positions cleaning this weekend (leaning over the bathtub cleaning miniblinds, scrubbing vertical blinds, patching nail holes in the walls, filling up the entire yard waste bin with weeds and clippings (okay I filled only like 75% of it - Geoff filled the other 25% with mowing the lawn), etc.)

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Catching up...

Back from camping - we had a FANTASTIC time. I believe this was my favorite camping trip ever - Friday night was clear enough to look up at the stars and listen to the new Phil Wickham CD as well as a David Crowder CD I've had for 4 or 5 years. It was perfect! Saturday we had a lovely campfire and I made way too many marshmallows. :)

Safety Tip of the Day: In any disaster or emergency situation, use your vehicle only when absolutely necessary. Do not go sightseeing. Keep the streets clear for emergency vehicles and relief efforts.
REALLY?!?!?! I was always under the impression that during a tornado was the best time to go sightseeing. I love my safety calendar. :) It really straightens me out!

Last night for dinner we had Pioneer Woman's Not Your Granny's Mac & Cheese. Spicy, but delicious! Great flavors. I love Pioneer Woman - I don't remember where I read about her, but she is hilarious and has great sounding recipes. Last night was the first one I'd tried, but it was fantastic. We biked to the grocery store to get the ingredients beforehand - I love biking, and yesterday was the perfect weather for it.

I had soy milk in my coffee this morning. I've been wanting to try it, so I took the plunge. It was alright.

Check this out - http://houston.craigslist.org/dmg/813229270.html. I know that link will be gone in a week, but here's the gist - "We were looking for a domestic helper to assist a soon to be expecting mother (February 2009) to start ASAP."
First of all - we "were"??? Then why are you posting on Craigslist if you're not still in need? Anyway, my bigger issue is what is with the "soon to be expecting mother"? Typically people just say "expecting mother". And if they're trying to say expecting soon, that's different than soon to be expecting. It makes it sound like she's going to be pregnant soon, but is not yet. And even if they ARE trying to say she's expecting soon - she's not really. It sounds like she just started her second trimester. Ahh, I digress....

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

A few more tidbits

Sunday I wasn't feeling well so I was just taking it easy. I browsed through games.com, as they sometimes have some fun games (they used to have Monopoly which was super fun) and I hadn't looked at it in a while. I saw a game saw Solitare Race so I clicked on it to play, took the tutorial, and started to play. I was like "what is going on here?" and Geoff looked over and said "HEY, that's Nerts!", which is a game that his family loves to play. I had played only once a couple of years ago and didn't remember much, so Geoff leaned over and gave me pointers on what to do and how to play. Once I got the hang of it, he started playing against me (we both played online with Computer 1 and Computer 2 as the other two players - quite fun! - let us know if you want to play with us online sometime). We played again a couple of times last night too, and I'm the reigning champion between the two of us right now. So fun!

I have been cooking lots of great things with veggies from my coworker's garden - I made zucchini bread Sunday night and balsamic vegetables last week. I've also started using the basil I've been growing. YAY.

Phil Wickham recorded a live CD at our church early in July and it's now available to be downloaded (for free if you agree to sign up for his newsletter). I've been listening to it today and it's so cool to think that the voices are the voices of my church. :) We weren't able to go, and I can't remember why now (we may have been camping), but I've heard it was just an amazing amazing night!