I Feel Busy, Oh So Busy

Posted on November 6, 2004 by Frog

We found a new house and should close on it December 1st which means our house is going on the market on Wednesday or Thursday of this week. Are we putting the cart before the horse? Maybe. What we’re definitely doing is killing ourselves to get the basement finished in time for the marketing of our house. Currently, the official square footage of our house doesn’t include the basement which is really ridiculous. We’re taxed on our screened porch but not on our basement. Whatever. So, the basement needs to be finished so that prospective buyers can ooh and aah over all the space.

We’re done with the largest pieces of sheetrock and just need to put some smaller pieces in. If you’ve ever had to replace ceiling sheetrock then you know what kind of language we’ve used over the past few days. In addition to the blue language regarding the lifting and holding of sheetrock over our heads, we’ve also cursed the former owners of this house.

Cursing the former owners of this house is quite a pastime for us. They were some of the dumbest and laziest folks on the planet. Rather than do any project right, they did the cheapest and lamest work. For instance, a piece of particleboard made up part of the ceiling in the basement…hence the need for new sheetrock. If using a piece of particleboard wasn’t bad enough, the board didn’t fit the space and it had the word REJECT written across it. Yeah, my crowbar rejected it pretty easily. Then there were all the hammer holes in the surrounding pieces of sheetrock. After they totally ruined the ceiling they hung a suspended ceiling and didn’t do all of the space. Whack jobs each and every one of them.

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About Voting

Posted on November 4, 2004 by Frog

I’m from Virginia. I don’t know the last time a national democrat carried the state and I’m too tired to go figure it out. Trust me when I say it’s been a long time. As the better-half and I pulled up to our polling place (a church–so much for keeping church and state separate) we noticed there wasn’t one Kerry sign. The entire road in front of the church was blanketed in republican signs. An older man in a wheelchair (cynic alert: oh for crying out loud an old guy in a wheelchair handing out sample republican ballots–I kindly accepted the sheet and then rolled my eyes. The sheet went on the table inside) and lots of other republicans roamed the parking lot. When the better-half and I cast our votes for John Kerry we knew those votes wouldn’t stand up for more than a second before being cancelled out twenty-fold by all the people in line behind us.

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It Was Going To Be About The Cheese

Posted on November 3, 2004 by Frog

I had planned on making this entry all about the wonderful cheese we had for dessert last night but it seems kind of silly to talk about the cheese when we could be facing 4 more years of fear, intimidation, lying, having the rest of the world dislike us, etc. Please, please, Ohio make your electoral votes swing the election to Kerry.

Anyway, about the cheese. We cut up a Granny Smith apple and ate slices of reblochon. The apple slices made the “smelliness” of the cheese even more pronounced. We drank the last of a bottle of Trinity Hill (merlot, cabernets, syrah blend) with the cheese and although a Beaujolais is usually recommended as an accompaniment to reblochon the Trinity Hill did well.

Since the better-half had purchased the cheese as special treat for me, I thanked him profusely for bringing it home and spreading the love with a quarter round of cheese.

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There’s no such thing as a winnable war

Posted on November 2, 2004 by Frog

The polls are open on the East Coast. Make a difference in the world today.

The titles of the posts for the past week have been lyrics from anti-war/peace songs. Some of them you may have recognized. Here’s a list of the songs/songwriters/performers and the dates of the posts:

Peace Train-Cat Stevens (10/25)
End of the World-REM (10/25)
Self Evident-Ani Difranco (10/27)
Ship of Fools-World Party (10/28)
I Like Chinese-Monty Python (10/29)
War-Barret Strong (songwriter) (10/31)
Russians-Sting (today)

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What is it good for absolutely nothing

Posted on October 31, 2004 by Frog

Happy Halloween! The pumpkins are turning into ooze so I’m very glad today is Halloween because those pumpkins need a one-way trip to somewhere other than our porch.

I’ve been pretty productive already today so I’m not too broken up by the time change. I’m sure I’ll feel it on Monday morning but this morning I’m feeling very satisfied with everything that I’ve gotten done before 8 am (laundry, bill paying, reconciled the checkbook, dish washing, reading).

Yesterday included the following: installation of a garage door (and the frustration that goes with that), a sighting of a snake in the backyard (the first time we’ve seen one back there in forever), dinner on the porch since it was so warm, drinking some mead with dinner and going to bed early (since I didn’t sleep the night before—I got back into bed at 5:45 am to catch a nap).

Today will include: finishing the last bit on the first garage door and starting and completing the second door, and a visit with friends tonight for some Halloween pizza.

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The world today seems absolutely crackers

Posted on October 29, 2004 by Frog

After work today my sister and I are going shopping for household goods. We’re in the market for rugs, lamps, candles…anything that will make my house warm and inviting. Because normally what makes it warm and inviting is my stunning personality but since I’ll be absent when realtors bring prospective buyers over, we must resort to props.

One store we’re going to is Garden Ridge. This is good news, actually, since I’ve been in Garden Ridge’s parking lot a lot lately but haven’t set foot in there in a while. Garden Ridge is not too far from the airport and is a convenient place for me to meet people I work with. I was joking with one of those people on Thursday that my sister and I were finally going to go in there. My co-worker commented that it is a wonder we’ve never been stopped since it looks like we’re doing a drug drop. What makes it worse is that the last time I met that co-worker I did hand her money and she handed me an envelope. I was forking over some cash for Boss’s Day and she was getting me to sign the card for the Boss. To anyone else it probably did look a little shady.

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Oh, you’ve got to save me, save me from tomorrow

Posted on October 28, 2004 by Frog

I had three weird trips in the elevator today while at the contracting gig.

On the way up to my floor, I was in the elevator with two other people. One person got off on the first floor (you get in on the street level, ride past several parking levels and then get to the first floor). The other person rode to the third floor and although I took a step away from her she never moved once and she hummed for the two floors we were alone. Not a hum that had a tune just a hum. She got off and I said out loud “that was weird”. I get the irony of this.

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in some prep school punk’s plan to perpetuate retribution

Posted on October 27, 2004 by Frog

And, so I spent the morning using the lawn sweeper and the rake and managed to rid the yard of all the leaves. I made a pretty amazing discovery that in addition to all the spider webs all over the house we also have a serious number of spiders living all over our yard. Which I know could be a “duh” moment but I was stunned by the number of spiders roaming about the yard.

The real reason for staying at home this morning was to wait for the B-Dry sales guy to come by and write up the job to finish the 12ft of our basement we didn’t get done in March. How silly it seems now that we didn’t get that section done back in the spring, but we really thought we were staying put. He didn’t get to the house until 12:30 so instead of having to knock off with the leaf raking I was forced to finish the entire yard. I had really hoped he would roll up in the driveway and give me a reason to stop.

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Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn

Posted on October 25, 2004 by Frog

The poor boo-boo kitty is all stressed out and has taken to ripping out his hair. He occasionally does this because he is psychotic. Seriously he is touched. Or as they say around here “he’s a little teched”. I took off out of the office early today to head over to the pet store. When I got home, I gave him a squirt of some anti-itch (which he just loved–actually after getting over his fear of the squirt bottle he enjoyed the cool rubdown). Then he had to lick some of that hairball malt stuff off his paw. Because where there’s this much hair all over hither and yon there will be the ritual hacking up of hairballs.

He also got half a pack of Whiskas moist tuna which he hoovered down and then he lolled around on his new catnip bag. Life is good for our non-stop itching-scratching freaky cat. At least until he remembers to scratch, scratch, scratch and lick, lick, lick again.

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Oh peace train take this country, come take me home again

Posted on October 25, 2004 by Frog

Weekend Recap-hooray!

The Niece and her mama came over for dinner on Friday night. We made stuffed shells on Thursday night, let them soak up the sauce and flavors overnight in the refrigerator and heated them up for dinner on Friday. When asked if she liked the shells, the Niece replied, “They’re not my favorite”. So it goes.

Saturday we replaced the kitchen faucet. It took all day. Our hats are off to plumbers everywhere. What a pain in the arse.

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