Frog and Goat

With a pound and half of teeth-gnashing, hair-pulling and clothes-rending, we’ve decided to sell our house. The whole renovate the kitchen and basement has had us frozen, indecisive and hand-wringy. It would be really expensive to do and, frankly, we’re just not the ones to do it.

Today at noon we’re meeting with the realtor who helped us through the home-buying process years ago. We’re actually going to look at a house in the Hanover Courthouse area and then our realtor is going to come to our house and see what’s happened in the last 9 years. Hopefully, we’ll be able to put the house on the market in the next month. We need to get B-Dry to do the last stretch of basement wall. We left that small piece out of the original project because we thought that piece was going to be part of the renovation. I really can’t leave the house only 90% dry. It will be interesting to see what else the realtor thinks we should do to make our house sell, sell, sell.

I have successfully passed my cold funk to the better-half. That means I’ll soon be well, right? Neither one of us slept a wink last night. The good news is when I turned the light off at 4:22 am, I was finished with The Book of Salt. I am so glad I read it and only wish I had read it sooner.

Some items that are either amusing me or jerking my chain:
I’m not really bothered that we still don’t have local channels when there is TWP to read. Seriously, why should I waste my time watching ER when the break-down on TWP is dead-on? That show has seriously jumped the shark. Die, already.

Geico, your new commercials are just as bad as your old commercials. I heard that the Geico lizard is/was appearing at the VA State Fair. Perhaps, it is a really good thing that I haven’t been to the fair because I’d walk out of there with lizard goo on my shoe.

Is it Axe that has mannequins in their ads and women are about to throw down with the mannequins? That’s just stupid.

Your personality may not get you fired, but poor grammar and bad spelling are clearly the way to a pink slip.

Ok, so I’m sick. I hate that stuffy head, scratchy throat feeling, don’t you? And, to top it off, I couldn’t sleep last night. I have problems sleeping during a full moon (it isn’t the light shining in since we practically have blackout curtains) so last night when I should have been sleeping to heal myself, I was on the couch reading The Book of Salt. Which is quite excellent so far.

And, since I’m blaming my allergies and insane weather for my sickness, this next paragraph didn’t just come from nowhere. I realize that hurricane season doesn’t officially end until the end of November, but if it is okay with everyone let’s just pretend it is over and not have any more this year. I know Floridians are tired of them and believe you me those of us who live farther up the coast are sick of them too.

I think I’m getting a cold. My throat is a little sore and my head feels like it may explode at a moment’s notice. It is either a cold or this crazy weather. Either way, I’m leaving work early to take a nap.

As if the possibility of a cold looming isn’t enough, I’m totally frustrated by a web page that is supposed to work like all other web pages on this earth. Did you know that on a certain web page if you use the BACK button, you get “Cannot Find Server” instead of the list of items you painstakingly picked to view? Yeah, pisses me off. Why have a web page if you aren’t going to build it correctly?

The UPS man was just here dropping off a box from Amazon. I did a little dance because here’s what the nice man in brown brought me:
The Finn Brothers-Everyone is Here
Gary Jules-Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets
Wil Wheaton-Just a Geek and Dancing Barefoot
Rickford Grant-Linux for Non-Geeks
The 3rd LOTR

The better-half also got some goodies. He’s busy loading up the CD player in his office cursing those scoundrels who decided that all the security tape on CDs was a good idea.

Saturday morning I was walking down the driveway to the mailbox when an unfamiliar car pulled into the driveway. I’m not especially thrilled when I find unfamiliar cars in my driveway. When the driver stepped out of the car, he made his first error in judgment. And that was making small talk with me instead of explaining why he was in my driveway. He pointed to all of the trees that are laying near the driveway. Anyone with any kind of intelligence wouldn’t ask me about those trees. But, this is what he said “Those come down in the storm?” The storm of just a few weeks ago. I deadpanned, “the one last year”. Because as embarrassing as it is that we still have tons of trees laying in our WOODS, it is even more embarrassing that he couldn’t tell old dead trees from 3 week-old dead trees. Please, why waste my time? Turns out he was a Jehovah’s Witness. I sent him packing in about 3 seconds and then continued walking down the driveway.

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I thought I could keep this story to myself, but, as it turns out, I can’t. While we were at the memorial service this week, I was asked if I was a child’s father. The child in question was standing next to his actual father. I think the kid and I were the only ones who heard the question. The kid looked at me funny. I tried to keep a straight face. Normally, I’d be all “I am woman hear me roar” but the stupid person who asked was an old lady and she was at the memorial service of a friend of hers. She corrected herself almost immediately. I should hope so. I was wearing a black suit (no way was I going to spend upwards of 8 hours in the car wearing hose and a dress), modest heels, jewelry, some makeup (not a lot–mostly just around the eyes, but lipstick was part of the package) and carrying a purse. Episcopalians are very welcoming of all God’s children, but I’m pretty sure the deceased wasn’t friends with any cross-dressers.

Every since my friend A. saw Jim on CNN last week, I’ve been in a “where are they now” groove. I admit that I haven’t kept up with any of these guys since graduation, but I knew all of them “when”.

Jim
Sean
Jay

Yesterday, we went to PA to attend the memorial service for our friend’s father. For those of you unfamiliar with roads in Virginia, the most direct route for us to take to the town in PA was north on I-95 and then cut over on I-495 (the Capital Beltway) and then pick up some other roads to get to PA. This area of I-95 and I-495 is known as the “mixing bowl” and is currently undergoing an 8-year project to make it better. It is scheduled to be finished in 2007. Personally, it seems like this project has been going on my whole adult life…kind of like the Big Dig for those people in the Boston area. Seriously, there’s a whole population of teens in the Boston area who never knew life before the Big Dig. Scary, isn’t it? I digress.

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