August 2005 Archives

We went and picked up my ebay pfaltzgraff dishes -- they are lovely. I went through and picked out the unique pieces and ran the rest of the set over to storage. It's nice to know if I ever break a piece or two that there are backups.

Tomorrow is going to be a long day. I need to get back into cooking and using things up, so I'm going to throw together a chicken strata pan in the morning and let it soak all day. Then I can bake that for dinner. For lunch I might throw together a chili if that beef is still good, or a simple salad.

The agenda tomorrow also includes: dumping cat litter; taking pictures of the other things I want to list on ebay and then posting the listings; laundry of jeans and towels at the least -- I want to clean out the closet and the bathroom and start putting those areas together; and doing lots of dishes.

The goal is to have Adam and Leslie over here for ebay evening on Saturday, and to have a clean(er) house while doing it!

Well, I should have been cleaning, but instead I spent the day with Leslie and Adam. We got a TON of my crap listed on ebay, went to lunch, and hung out. 24 items takes a lot of time. The menagerie missed me terribly. I did some cleaning in the morning, and will do some more tomorrow morning. Cat litter needs to be changed and I need to get more laundry done. Richard should be home around 11:30ish, I'm guessing. No idea if he'll be hungry or just tired.

From what I've heard, things did not go well for Richard and Sarah in Ashburn today, but I think i'll save all of that info for the lawsuit :)

Wussed out a bit when I burned too hard in the beginning. Did 15 minutes on the elliptical, 1.24 miles, and then switched to a light program on the treadmill, 15 minutes, 0.45 miles. Not bad overall, but I was hoping to hit 30 minutes just on the elliptical. I upped the rpm to the 52 to 55 range, i'm usually in the 38 to 42 range. I hit a mile at the 12 minute mark.

Finally got the truckpacks delivered today, woo hoo! The ceiling leak in my office area also reappeared around 9am this morning. I called the management, and even for an active leak, they'll only schedule a 2pm to 4pm service window. Thusfar the management of the Lodge has sucked major amounts of ass. I'd never recommend this place to anyone, despite being mostly happy with the apartment and the area. So, Don the maintenance dude came over again, took down the light fixture, and this time he did feel moisture. He said he'd be back in a day or two and cut into the ceiling to see what's going on. It might be a leaky sprinkler pipe, might be the uncaulked tiles in the bathroom, who knows. I'll have to shut down my computer and move it so that they can work. That will suck a lot.

More tomorrow, must sleep.

A new record for the dreaded elliptical: 25 minutes, 1.84 miles, followed by a low intensity 5 minutes on the treadmill for an additional 0.10 miles. I feel pretty good. Very sweaty and pulsing a bit all over, but good.

Richard had to be up at 5am, so it disturbed my sleep/wake patterns significantly. We finally got the truckpacks paid for. $3300 for all three, $1100 each, blah! What a fucking waste. ABF sucks so much ass I can't even begin to get into it right now. I'm going to file complaints with the attorneys general of VA, WA and MD about ABF's business practices, nothing will come of it, but I'll feel better.

I finally changed the cat litter tonight, woo. Did a few loads of laundry today as well. I want to get through all the Laundry boxes by the end of the week. Next task is moving the dresser back out into the room where the boxes were. The dresser doesn't really work in the closet and it takes up space where we could be hanging more things.

Tomorrow I'm going to start the morning with some cleaning in the kitchen and main living areas, and I'll make a large meal before lunch. The truckpacks are going to be delivered to the storage unit sometime between noon and 4pm, so I want to be ready and not in the middle of cooking something. I also want to take the time to call for a hair appointment and generally get back on track here.

Went to the mall with Leslie, got my earrings cleaned (and inquired about a pendant to match them), got my hair cut (badly), went to lane bryant and bought interview/work clothes, had dinner at red robin (not sucky, surprisingly), went to The Body Shop and spent my gift certificate from 2002, and got ice cream at coldstone (highly recommend the sinless sweet cream base -- it almost completely mitigates the barfy feelings).

So, about that hair cut. A little background... after not getting my hair cut professionally for 15 years because of previous hair cutting horrors, I finally bit the bullet in NYC in September of 2004. Arthur from Luba's Salon is a true genius -- anyone in the tristate area should definitely go to him for all their hair needs. He took my shoulder length mop and shaped an awesome, modern hair style out of it. One that was easy for me to take care of, looked great even when I did nothing to it, and just really made me feel happy and more confident and outgoing.

There was still lingering fear of other stylists, so I made it a point to travel from Ashburn, VA to NYC to get my hair cut every couple of months. Expensive, yes, but after 15 years of no haircuts, I figured I deserved to spend a little more on myself. My last Arthur cut was the weekend before the wedding, so it's been a good 3.5 months since my last cut. It still looked okay, just a little too long.

I went to Mia and Max at Bellevue Square, and got a green stylist. She did a good job of laying the ground work -- she took a look at my current cut before wetting it down, and we discussed what I wanted (the exact same cut, just a couple inches higher on my head), and I felt like this would be a good cut. We decided on an inch off the bottom and a little more off the top and sides.

Shampoo was okay, and then the comb out, and then those fateful words: "Wow! Your hair really gets long when it's wet!" A more experienced stylist would have stuck with the original plan and only taken an inch off the bottom. Not this one. She cut right to the shoulder. I watched this and knew it was all over. But, I tried to maintain optimism -- who cares if it's a little shorter in the back?

Then she did layers. Poorly. I think she made a grand total of 20 cuts over my entire head. No feathering. None of that Arthur magic where he selectively prunes the layers he's cut so that they lay nicely and complement my natural waves and hair peculiarities.

Then she said she was done. And asked what I used it my hair... I use this super volumizing gel that Arthur used to use on me. Greenchick says oh that's too heavy, want to try a mousse? Sure, whatever floats your boat. So. Mousse goes in. Then. Without a brush of any sort, Greenchick proceeds to completely blowdry my entire head. As I sit there in horror at what I see, she then asks if I want it flipped up or under or if I want it to stay like that. I said flipped up. So. She tries, with a brush barrel too wide for my hair, to style my bone dry moussed up hair. This does not go well. She can't get the sides to flip up (there's too much hair there and it's not feathered correctly), and spends more time trying to get my hair to do SOMETHING than she spent cutting it.

At the end of all of this, I come out with a cut that's way too short in the back (of course the hair shrank up again when it was dry), and hideous everywhere else. Hours later when I got home, Richard said "Your hair looks like your old school pictures" Sure enough, I dug out my first and second grade pictures -- with two absolutely awful mid 70s hair mistakes, and my hair today looks like a hideous combination between the two.

As we were leaving, Leslie said it looked okay and that she would tell me if it looked horrible, and she asked how I felt about it and I said I'm never going back there. And she said well, go back and have them fix it. No thanks -- I don't think it's in their power to fix it. Well, they can make it less hideous, but they hacked off the blueprint for how my hair should look. So, I think I'm going to call Paule Attar and see if they can fix it -- hopefully they won't charge too much.

Enough about hair :) Lane Bryant was good and bad as usual. I needed a new, non-sweat soaked bra. I came out with $300 worth of clothes (2 bras, a pair of black pants, 4 shirts, 2 camisoles). It seems like a lot, but I needed interview clothes, and if I'm going to be working outside of the house, I need a few more decent pieces in my wardrobe. And the clothes looked very spiffy on me :)

Body Shop would have been some major damage, but I ended up only spending $1.59 there :) Thanks Lelliebunny! The gift certificate that she got me for my birthday 3 years ago was finally used :) I don't even remember what all I got, and for some reason I can't remember where I put the bag either, hah.

Decided to take the puppy and Richard on a walk around the block. 1.25 miles, 37 minutes, varying inclines.

I guess I'm getting too old to go out and stay up so late like that. I felt crappy when I got up, but it was cool and drizzly so I decide to stay up and make the Italian Wedding Soup that I'd planned to do today. I ended up staying up until noon. I went upstairs and threw a load of laundry in, and promptly went to sleep until 2pm.

Tomorrow some kitchen/fridge cleaning needs to take place, and then it's grocery shopping day. More meal planning and evaluating the pantry to make sure that I don't over stock :)

20 minutes, 1.42 miles, less feeling of impending death.

Leslie and I went to see the Liz Phair show that I bought tickets for in June (before we moved, and before we even knew what date we were moving). I knew it was going to be an acoustic warm up for her tour later this year, but I had never been to the Crocodile Cafe, so I didn't really have a concept of what the show would be like.

Oh. My. God! It was the smallest, most intimate concert I've ever been to! There were no more than 150 people there, we had seats(!!) right by the stage, and it totally rocked. Mat Kearney (http://matkearny.com) opened for her, and after a slightly shakey start, he completely pulled it out and gave an awesome performance. The studio stuff is somewhat reminiscent of early Eminem, but acousticaly it was a bit like listening to a poetry slam performance that regularly broke into a chorus. It was unexpected at first, but actually quite cool :) Leslie and I each bought one of his cds after the concert was over, but more on that later.

So, Mat did 5 songs, and then Liz and her man Dino came on and played a great set. She's so beautiful and tiny and it was excellent to see her so relaxed and happy. It was great when she was telling the audience that she had to relearn how to play May Queen, and a few people laughed and she said 'hey, I see the crowd here, there are no 16 year olds here, are there? my friends and i sit around talking about you know 105 being a reasonable age, but now it's getting to be 120 is within the limits of medical science... that way, we're only a third of the way there' Such a bonding moment for us aging chick rock fans :)

After Liz was done, we filed out to the lobby and we ran into Mat Kearney, and we bought his cd and he signed them for us. He plays around Seattle fairly frequently so we'll definitely come out and see him again sometime soon.

Awesome night -- we're going to have to do many more girls night out things :)

Today was a long day. So, yesterday afternoon, I was sitting at my computer, and I felt water dripping on my head. It took me a few seconds to realize this was not Richard behind me dripping water on my head. Water was dripping from the hanging light in the dining room (which is my office). Not lightly dripping, but dripping a relative lot.

We made sure that there was no water running upstairs, and we called the emergency maintenance number. About 45 minutes later, one of the maintenance guys showed up, and said, yep, there's water. He went upstairs, and the floor in the bathroom was completely dry. Toilet seemed fine, and the bathtub/shower seemed fine. No one had run any water upstairs for several hours before this.

Since our unit has two full baths, it wasn't deemed an emergency, and we were told not to shower until a plumber could come out tomorrow. Now, I assumed that this would be an issue that would warrant 9am attention, so I made sure that we were both up and dressed by 9am.

We waited and waited and waited. I had postal errands to run that had to be done today, so I called the front office at 11:30 and was told, oh I just put in the request, someone will be by there between 2pm and 4pm. Ooooookay. So we went to the post office, which sucked, but that's another story.

When we got back, there was a note on the door that my Amazon order was left at the front office. I walked up there, got the box, came back and checked the mail to see if the bean pies I'd ordered for Adam's birthday today had arrived. They had not. I don't know if Your Black Muslim Bakery is no longer taking web orders or what, but it's pretty annoying considering I placed my order last Wednesday and requested express shipping.

Anyway, at around 3:30 one of the maintenance guys shows up. We told him what had happened, that we'd been showering there for 2 weeks and no problems, and that the water just came dripping out of that light fixture. He went upstairs, filled the bathtub, went to get a taller ladder, and let the water drain from the tub. No leaking.

He took the light fixture housing down and said it was bone dry up there. We all noted a hairline crack in the ceiling, and I mentioned that I can hear it really loudly whenever they flush next door. The prevailing theory, since we couldn't reproduce the leak with our own plumbing, is that the toilet may have overflowed next door. And. Was. Leaking. On. My. HEAD. EWWWWWWW!

Fortunately the shower moratorium was lifted and I quickly went to scrub the slime off myself :) Then we met Adam and Leslie at Canyons and had a delightful meal, despite them trying to kill Leslie with a blackened cajun chicken breast. Then we went to ColdStone and had some birthday dessert. After that we went back to Leslie and Adam's and hung out for a while, and discussed going to Mt. Rainier sometime soon (while it's still warm), and going out to Levenworth in October. Yay!

Life is good, tomorrow, or later today I guess, Leslie and I go to see Liz Phair at the Crocodile Cafe in Seattle. Hopefully it will not suck :)

After a couple of false starts with both the treadmill and the weight machine, I finally settled into 15 minutes on the elliptical (which works SO much better than the Orbitrek, btw) which said I did a distance of 1.02 miles. This caused a lot of sweating, even though the fitness center was 70 degrees (as opposed to 73 degrees the other night). If I can work up to a longer time on the elliptical, that might be a good change off some days.

I skipped out on the treadmill tonight. We have a plumber coming in the morning and I have more housecleaning to do. Also the exercising at 1am has been keeping me up until 3am, and making sure that I don't wake up until noon. This is not a good habit to get into. Richard of course got pissy and went to the fitness center anyway. Apparently exercise makes him tired.

Went to QFC tonight and did grocery shopping. I think if I go twice a week that will keep things fresh enough and on-hand enough to keep up with the cooking and eating at home.

30 Minutes, 1.02 miles, varying speeds -- and it sucked. It was slightly hotter in the fitness room so I got tired quicker.

Had a great night with Leslie and Adam -- went to Tony Roma's to celebrate Adamy's birthday and his new job. Then we went back to their place (after going back to ours to pick up the pieces of the media center pc that richard's trying to build) and had a fun evening working on the pc and watching The Cut and just hanging out. Skipping the treadmill for tonight, I did take GBIC on a 15 minute walk through the woods before dinner though.

Today kind of sucked. I wasn't feeling great after exercising last night -- we had driven there and driven back and my muscles really seized up not walking back home like normal. When I woke up this morning, I had a horrible headache. So, I took an aleve and went back to sleep until 11:15.

I worked the rest of the day, and still couldn't bring myself to cook.
Around 4 I took another aleve because I still felt headachy, and I got a charlie horse in my left calf. I think I might have been dehydrated, so I put extra water in the fridge tonight to try to avoid that in the future.

Tomorrow Richard wants hot turkey sandwiches again, and that's pretty low impact cookingwise.

The workout clothes I ordered from JC Penney's arrived today, my two sweat pants fit and Richard hasn't tried on his pants and shirts. I'm sure he'll say both are too big :)

Unknown mileage or parameters, but thanks to some stupid kids and their stupid behemouth black lab and shepard mix dogs, GBIC and I took a 30 minute walk through the woods and through sidewalked terrain, up and down hills.

I really do miss the proximity to NYC. I adore New York, and I loved taking the train up and down the east coast, but it's a trade off I'm willing to make.

30 minute walk program, 1.09 miles, I varied things a little on this one, and even experimented with releasing my deathgrip on the handles :)

Still sweating like a bitch, but it wasn't as heart thumping as previous days.

Blessed be Ryka and Rykashop.com. They delivered my sneakers two days ahead of schedule and just in time to make my walk to BofA and Sorrento's crappy coffee extraordinaire.

Now I will be able to make my nightly treadmill walk far less painful.

Bank of America, how I love thee, and oh how I hate thee. My hatred seethes at the realization that you will not allow ATM deposits into out of state accounts. My hatred burns as my feet will tomorrow when I walk to the branch to do the deposit. Hatred soothed only by the crappy coffee drink from Sorrento's that I shall get after I finish that transaction.

30 minutes, 1.09 miles, still in flipflops, horrible burning on balls of feet, and heel pain on the left foot.

30 minutes, unknown incline, 0.98 miles

Mondays are landscape maintenance days. While the smell of exhaust is unpleasant, it's beyond fabulous not having to mow the lawn. Especially not having to mow the lawn in 90+ degree weather and humidity.

This weekend I'd like to find a nursery or herb farm and get some dirt for my two planters that I brought along. It's a good time to start a kitchen herb garden so that the plants have a chance to get established before the cooler weather rolls in later this month (I'm guessing?).

After putting off grocery shopping yesterday, this afternoon we decided to bite the bullet and go. So, we drove out to Duvall to hit the Safeway there since we needed gas. At Safeways with gas stations, if you spend $50 on groceries, you get 6 cents a gallon off of gas. I was so pissed from the $2.77 a gallon that we bought when we first got here almost two weeks ago, that I vowed to get cheaper gas this tank.

So. We drove out to Duvall, and I see that Safeway's gas is $2.78 a gallon. I swear I saw it in the $2.67 range the other day, damn OPEC! I decided that this was highway robbery for gas, and I'd just do my shopping elsewhere. We turned around and headed back up the hill, and decided to hit Petco for more Littermaid cat litter. After some not listening to my directions, we finally went the back way to Petco, and after 10 minutes of looking, I remembered we didn't get the cat litter there the last time.

Then we decided to do dinner early since it was right around the corner. After dinner, I went to Target (which had the cat litter), and got more of the cleaning supplies on my list. We checked on gas prices, and $2.78 a gallon was actually cheap -- who knew.

We haven't eaten since 3:30ish when we went to Claim Jumper, so I guess it wasn't that terrible.

After watching some tv, we went out and did the Safeway shopping and tank fill up at $2.72 a gallon (thanks to the discount). Then home, put groceries away, walked the puppy, and then off to the fitness center.

We decided after a couple of aborted shopping missions that we'd go to Claim Jumper for an early dinner. Two soft drinks (diet coke for Richard, Iced Tea for me), a cheese burger, and a whiskey chicken full plate for me, plus tax and tip: $40.00.

The Whiskey Chicken was weird. It took me a while to figure out what the "whiskey sauce" was. Applebutter. No whiskey, just applebutter. Not something that I'd order again, but it was decent.

I think next week might be a trip to Coho.

30 minutes plus warm up and cool down, up to 5.0 incline, .86 miles.

One of the issues we decided that needed to be addressed once we moved is the massive amount of money we spend eating out (in addition to buying groceries). Eating out is rarely healthy, and it's expensive -- everyone knows that. But, I didn't realize how expensive it was until I sat down and took my last credit card statement and totalled everything up. $958.89. In one freaking month! That doesn't even count the gas and the wear and tear on the car.

Our new plan is that we can go out once a week. Even if we budget on the high side at $50 per meal, that's still only $200 per month. That saves us $9,600 over the course of a year. Holy crap.

30 minute walk program on the Lifecycle treadmill, said I went 0.79 miles. That is all.

Yesterday afternoon was spent updating my resume (which I hadn't cracked open since 2002), and sending it off. I've heard about the interview process, and frankly, I'm not all that optimistic about making it through that.

I have mixed feelings about the prospect of going to work in a structured environment again. Will I be able to get back into the flow again? I hadn't realized how frustrating it's been working here -- there's been so little true success that made any differences that I'm constantly feeling beaten down.

Getting a stable job is the smart thing to do though. Owning your own business has its rewards, but only in rare cases is it exceedingly financially successful. Lack of health insurance, scraping to make ends meet, and general uncertainty have taken their toll on my psyche, some times more than others.

We'll see how things go.

For the past several years, I've officially been unemployed, i.e. no income. Richard's been the technical bread winner, and I've helped him out in a full time capacity running his network. I fell into that after we moved to VA, aka the land of no jobs.

Working with Richard has been okay -- considering we've spent 24/7 together since September of 2001, it's a miracle we haven't killed each other :) But, without monetary reward, it doesn't feel important, and it's not always been valued. When we decided to move out to Redmond, everyone joked that we were being bought out by Microsoft (from their lips to God's ears).

I hadn't given much thought to ever getting a "real job" again... other than the occasional threat to quit working for Richard and go become a Sandwich Artist(e). But in talking with Adam and Jay yesterday, the idea was floated of working for a group in MSN. Adam and I talked more about it today, and it seemed like something I'd get some satisfaction from. So, he sent email off to the group leader, and he wanted to see my resume.

It has occured to me that I have been getting a full 8 hours of sleep a night here. That is absolutely amazing given the past several years of less than 6 hours a night, and rarely in one stretch. I think it's a combination of less stress, less phone interruptions (no calls about maintenances), and cooler temperatures. Hrm, we also no longer have the deadly east facing windows in the bedroom -- that helps quite a bit.

Today we went to Costco with Leslie and got Richard's eyes examined and new contacts for him. Leslie picked up some cheap Sudafed, and I got lots more water and some turkey and bread for hot turkey sandwiches later this week.

Then we went over to Leslie's and watched some tivo stuff that she'd saved while we were driving out here. We met the much hailed Duvall Jay and had a pleasant afternoon :)

It was 51 degrees when I got up at 6am with the dog. In August. God I love this place! The day was beautiful and sunny and much warmer, but still comfortable.

In other news, I think I may have finally grown into my glasses -- 5 years after getting them. They seem to help when I get tired and have been staring at a monitor for hours. I'll keep them in my desk for just such an occasion.

We made the move, and we're finally out here. Despite the hell of packing, the complete fucked-up-ness of ABF and their fucking truckpacks (thanks, Rob.), and the 5 ft living room, life in the pacific northwest is lovely.

Still trying to tie up loose ends in VA, and get settled in WA, but I think this will be a great move for us.