doubletake

House ours: YES
Stuff moved: YES
Apartment cleaned and vacated: YES
Mail forwarded: YES
Pastry classes enrolled in and paid for: YES
Super-cool REAL CHEF uniforms ordered: NOT YET
Exciting temporary 4-day CATERING job set up for December: YES YES YES

Totally exhausted: YES
Totally sore: YES
Social life deader than a doornail: YES
Schoolwork/job search backlog: Argh, Yes...

Internet in the house: NO
Likelihood of things slowing down any time soon: LOW

Well, we did it. We are officially living in our new house as of today. Our stuff is all there (in two very large piles) and we're completely out of the apartment. We are truly Embarking on our Next Great Adventure: Operation Homeowner. Already it has proved itself to be an Adventure worthy of the capital A. Every project we've attempted has taken twice as long as we thought it would:

( Examples! )

So far, every setback has been taken in stride (if 'in stride' includes staring at each other over the disaster-du-jour and laughing until we're blue in the face over the ridiculousness that is Can-we-really-not-manage-to-change-a-toilet-seat-without-something-going-awry?) and I really hope we can continue along that path. Or at least hold off killing each other until we figure out which box has the first aid supplies in it.

I can't believe we bought a house!

...is the day! We've already done the escrow paperwork (with a 'mobile' escrow officer, on our dining room table, amid the towers of boxes) and given them (escrow) the cashier's check for the balance of our down payment. The sellers (bank) just need to sign and we'll get our keys! And by we, I mean David--due to crazy work/school/packing/Greg-leaving/cleaning needs, I probably won't get to go to the house today. DOH!

Instead, we have a homeowner's insurance meeting with our State Farm agent this morning, and I'll spend the rest of the morning packing here. I have some school in the late afternoon/evening, which I'll bus down for. David will get off work at 5(ish), and drop off the first carload of stuff at the house, make sure the utilities are turned on, take up the trim in the master bedroom, and hopefully remove the ghastly iridescent textured wallpaper...all by himself. Then he'll pick me up downtown at 8:30 and we'll drive back up to the apartment, so we can fill the car again, feed the cat, and say goodbye to Greg Tuesday morning.

Tomorrow, I get to sign up for my pastry courses and have a full day of school to attend. Poor David will once again go to the house by himself after work, empty the car, and continue to work on the house--installing GFCI outlets in the bathroom and kitchen, ripping up the master bedroom's icky carpet, and prepping for us to paint the walls and ceiling. Then he'll pick me up at school and we'll go back down to the house, work until bedtime, and crash in our sleeping bag.

Wednesday morning, he'll drop me off downtown and I'll bus back up to Lynnwood, feed the cat, be here for the 'manager walk-through' and continue packing until the afternoon. Then I'll bus BACK downtown so we can spend another evening/night at the house. Repeat Tuesday and Wednesday for Thursday and Friday.

We're most likely hiring movers to move the apartment stuff down to the house, and then I'll spend Monday cleaning the apartment and we're officially out of here Tuesday. I'd say that's where the real fun begins but I'm pretty sure it's going to feel mighty real somewhere around Wednesday night.

This is the biggest project/adventure David and I have taken on (including getting married, which was awesome but not really 'scary'). I'm really excited. Which is good, because if I wasn't looking forward to this so much, I'm pretty sure I'd be running screaming for the hills right about now.

We close in ONE WEEK. Or it might even happen this Friday, if the escrow people are okay with having 1 less business day. There is a ridiculous amount of money in our bank account, that's about to NOT be in our bank account. And the terror is setting in. This means there are about 2 weeks to finish packing.

PACKED (for the most part)
our bedroom
our closet
our bathroom

HALF PACKED
dining room
kitchen
pantry
living room
coat closet

NOT PACKED
our office (it is BURIED)
patio stuff (bike, camping, grilling, tools)
storage unit

I have a 4-page essay rough draft due Tuesday, and we're starting a reduction (suicide) plate in Printmaking then as well.

On top of this, I just found out I got into the pastry program!!! for Winter quarter! YAY! So I need to sign up for classes and start begging for Worker Retraining status.

The house situation looks very promising. The inspection went well and now we're hashing out the final details (trying to get the bank to replace an unsafe electrical panel) and if all goes well we'll be closing mid November...about a week before we need to get out of the apartment if we don't want to be renting another month.

So there is more packing. And thus we come to the pantry. Again. This is the 4th visit to this particular problem THIS YEAR ALONE. Only now it's exacerbated by the move.

I like to cook, but mostly I like to feed people. I love carefully crafting the perfect menu (even though I always end up going overboard). I love trying new recipes and making weekly menu plans and buying groceries. Unfortunately...I'm still not so good at the following through part. Or the guessing-how-much-I'll-actually-need part. Or the part where you check to see if you HAVE refried beans before you go to the supermarket. Which explains why we still have a FULL pantry (and fridge/freezer/chest freezer, + emergency food), even after two boxes went to the mail carrier's food drive. There's a lot of really random ingredients in there that I don't want to pack and don't want to have to move. For the next few weeks, I'm planning on cooking from the pantry.

Which is why tonight we're having bell pepper rissotto (using up the last 4 miserable shallots, a half bag of arborio rice that fell behind the dried fruit an indeterminate length of time ago, the last 2 glugs out of a Costco bottle of olive oil, and 4 Oriental ramen-noodle flavor packets) with 7 gluten-free vanilla cupcakes (2/3 of a box of mix, left over from an experiment) topped with key lime mousse (mix has been around at least 3 years).

Earlier in the week I made a sort of Indian stew, with a jar of Masala sauce, a can of chickpeas, a handful of ancient lentils, and a cup of stale split peas. We had it over brown rice, with chicken for him and tofu for me. It actually wasn't bad, although the lentils took forever to cook. I've been eating s'mores for snacks (with stale marshmallows and chocolate chips) and cold cereal twice a day.

I have a box of gluten free pie crust mix that makes 4 crusts, so I think tomorrow will be quiche and (canned) blueberry pie. We also need to have something (or many somethings) involving canned salmon. And saurkraut. And tomatoes. And pumpkin puree. And lots and lots and lots of cornbread and polenta and corn mush and possibly also corn fritters and corn pancakes and cornmeal cookies.

(I thought this might save us some money but really I don't think it will, since there aren't very many full meals in there--cooking still requires butter and milk and eggs and vegetables...)

1. Back from watching Master Seaners for ~week. Pretty wiped, sleep schedule is shot, but we had a good time together and I got a lot of thinking done and a lot of exercise in.

2. First day of school was yesterday. I'm excited and a little nervous...and have a nice long list of materials to obtain/unbury. And homework. Eee!

3. ACCEPTED OFFER ON HOUSE! GAAHHHHH! Not the most fabulous place in the world, not like the Wisteria...but let us finally lay that dream to rest and let bygones be bygones, and look forward to the inspection of the New Guy On The Radar, which is kind of boring from the street (it really is just a big grey box sitting in a big greenish-brown square) but has a good backyard and 2 stories and more than enough bedrooms (5!) (they're small). The kitchen is a short 'hall' and somewhat depressing, but not as bad as the Stripper and much more 'fixable', as it is on the back wall on the ground floor and could be amazing with an addition. I sure hope it works out!

And now there are chores to catch up on and errands to run (and homework to do...) and a phone call to make, since I didn't even tell my parents about the latest 2 batches we've looked at because I didn't want to disappoint them again.

Ups:
Me. I'm up.
Still don't feel sick. Starting to think this may have truly passed me by.

Downs:
We did not get the house, back to looking.
New MLS list from our agent. Make that a LOT of looking. Urgh.

David either has the regular flu, or the piggy variety. We were at PAX, and there were confirmed cases there, but there were also 75,000 people so I imagine there was probably a hefty dose of the regular kind as well. He spent all Saturday in bed, and I ended up spending all Sunday lying around in bed with him too, once I figured out that was the only real way to keep him in it (stir-crazy? just a little!).

We watched the first season of Avatar, the Last Airbender (GLEE!) streamed from Netflix, and I am now completely convinced that those are the next DVDs I want. I also watched the Read Or Die OVA, which I was pleasantly surprised by. Of course, 16 hours of lying around, playing video games, reading, and watching TV takes a bit of a toll...my muscles are screaming! I've been taking vitamins, Airborne, echinacea, and olive leaf extract, pushing fluids, etc...and checking my temperature regularly...nothing. Hopefully, that little 'cold' I had last week was my body kicking the flu's butt.

Still no word on the diaper pail house. LE SIGH. I don't know if I want it or not, but I DO want to know if we're going to have a crack at getting it!

David is sick, most likely something we both picked up at PAX. I got a bit of an itchy nose/throat, a low fever, and a minor headache Wednesday, slept an extra 2 hours, pushed vitamins and liquids, and feel pretty much normal today. David has had a headache, an awful cough, a very sore throat, and a medium fever (although he's been taking DayQuil so I don't know what it would be) for a couple of days now. I feel bad that he's feeling yuckky, and also guilty that I didn't get as sick. Ah, teacher's kid immune system. You rock so hard. :D

Unluckily, this has struck on a a pretty full weekend. We were supposed to go to Colleen and Josh's hometown reception in Issaquah, and then to his old coworker Jennifer's wedding downtown today. Tomorrow I was going to suggest a trip to the Pullyalup fair, and perhaps a group get-together to see Ponyo in the evening...and we still need to drop off a couple of carloads of things at the Goodwill.

I promised Colleen that I would bring cupcakes for the reception, so I'll be baking/frosting those and then taking them on an epic 2 hour bus ride (SO glad I didn't decide to do mini-cheesecakes this round--I don't think they'd do very well out of the fridge that long). I'll shave my legs beforehand and pull out wedding-appropriate clothes in case David feels better before this evening. The bus back is another 2 hour trip (you should really learn to drive, Emily...) but I can meet David downtown and change in a bathroom if necessary. Just cover all the possibilities and we'll be fine. Ha ha.

Went to a worker retraining meeting at the community college. Hey guess what, all their funds are exhausted. And I might have royally screwed myself on unemployment by marking 'yes' on the 'are you planning to go to school' form. Head, meet desk. Next week will be financial aid week for me.

Cleaning the apartment top-to-bottom is my current big goal. Once again, I'm going through looking for anything we don't use/love to cut down on the amount of STUFF we have...this time through I'm also looking for things we aren't likely to need in the next 2 months, so I can pack them.

This morning, my thoughts were on a couple of recent deaths (not people I knew, but people who people I know knew) and the thought of learning who a person really is through their belongings and nothing else. What would people think of us if we suddenly disappeared and all they had to learn from was our junk? Where would the clues come from?

So here I am cleaning and looking around, amusing myself by trying to see our things through a strangers eyes. And I think one of the most interesting (communicative) items we have is the basket of reading material we have in our bathroom. It feels a bit like a snapshot into our current selves.
( Why yes, it is a little ridiculous. )
I wonder what we'll have in there next year...

(I'm also totally going to start checking out what other people have in their bathrooms!)

Wednesday night, as we were getting ready to bed, I was talking to David about my childhood fascination with/repulsion of Russian fairy tales. As a child, I fell in love with the classic Russian illustration style--the thick outlines, almost like cartoons...the complicated patterns of the clothing... the painstakingly detailed borders... the doll-like faces of the tsareviches and tsarevinas... perfection:

http://www.nocloo.com/gallery2/v/boris-zvorykin-firebird-russian-fairy-tales/

I own 4 books of this sort; 3 paperbacks that were imported from the USSR (Maria Morevna, The Frog Princess, and Alexander Pushkin), which have the stories translated into English but not the illustrators' names (frustrating!), and one hardcover Viking Press translation/reproduction of an illustrated manuscript by Boris Zvorykin, which contains 4 traditional fairy tales: The Firebird, Maria Morevna, The Snow Maiden, and Vassilissa the Fair (illustrations in the link above). This is my favorite, and also a source of childhood grief. Because Russian fairy tales aren't like the saccharin fairy tales you get elsewhere, and as a kid, that bothered me a lot.

But David hadn't heard any of these stories, so in order to make my point, I told him the story of the Firebird (the worst offender).

( Gigantic block of storytelling! )

So let's recap:
The Prince: chooses to take a path that he knows will get his horse killed, steals, doesn't listen to advice, steals again, still doesn't listen to advice even though that worked out SO WELL THE FIRST TIME, kidnaps a princess, rips off the two people that he previously tried to steal from, forgets about the guy who's helping him, gets killed, gets revived by the guy that he forgot about, AND THEN LEAVES THE GUY THAT BROUGHT HIM BACK TO LIFE on the doorstep while he goes off to live happily ever after.

Not exactly Disney material. As a child, this made me terribly upset, and I would read the story over and over, hoping that I had missed some crucial redeeming bit somewhere (Nope! It really is a story about a stupid, selfish prick that lives happily ever after). But David was fascinated, and so yesterday I memorized Maria Morevna so I could recite it for him at bedtime, and today I'm going to try to learn Vassilissa the Fair. It's kind of fun. :)

And then this morning I found an link to a Newsweek article about a Russian photographer, Prokudin-Gorskii, who's 100-year-old COLOR photographs of Russia have finally been digitally 'developed' (his homemade camera's 'pictures' had to be viewed as a projection, like slides) for the world to see.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/214585
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/

Amazing. I've been pour over them for hours and I REALLY WANT TO DRAW right now (I also really want to go to Russia, but I sort of doubt that's gonna happen any time soon). I'm going to give my wrist a big long ice bath and see if I can get away with half an hour of sketching yet.

Trying to avoid anything exacerbating (wrist wise) for the next 2 weeks--so I need to keep this short (typing is one of the worst offenders).

Another house offer in--not on a dream home this time, sigh...this one is on a (comparitively) cheap 190k (asking) bank owned 3bed, 1 bath in Burien. A definite fixer-upper. I am still mourning the Wisteria, and praying that it'll come back on the market before we get locked into something else--even if we don't end up getting it, I just want the whole thing to be Actually Over instead of Forever In Potentia.( Thoughts about that. )

Apartment is...livable. Still packing. Did this lovely little mental exercise where I went around a few of the rooms and estimated how many boxes it would take to pack. TOO MANY. Now I'm on another pare-down kick.

Unemployment is...BORING! ARGH! HUMAN CONTACT! I am very much looking forward to school. Colleen has school every morning so I might get to see her 2x/week YAY!

We have returned! (Were back on Monday evening, but came back to a time-draining combination of an apartment in shambles and a pressingly full social calendar.)

The trip was busy but fantastic, an excellent melange of relaxation, camping, stargazing, old friends, new books, family, fun parties, time alone, and lots and lots of FOOD. Glorious food!

But now there is unemployment to file for, and unpacking to do, and a house-hunt to resume and a LOT of housework waiting for me. Also, I need to mail out a rent check because (while I LOVE our apartment!) the website that bills us is Stupid.

Laid off again. (no biggie, we knew it was coming, sucks a bit but not too badly)

Tomorrow we leave for our Road Trip! To California! With anniversary camping AND Colleen's wedding (and shower).

I maaaaayyyyy still not be completely packed....eheheheh...

Off to do that now.

I missed my weekly (usually semi-weekly) call home this weekend, which is pretty unusual. More unusual that I didn't notice I had done so until my mom dropped me a lovely little email (I adore my mother's letters. I have kept every single one she has ever written me) asking how my week was going.

I wrote her back, starting with the phrase "Well, not much "news" but lots of happenin' ", and then listed out the various tasks I have going. I have been on a bit of a ToDo List Diet, because they were taking over my life...but I think maybe this was one of those times when I should have been tracking my commitments. Because I started listing and then...it kept going. And going. And going. 

Oops. The next week is gonna be FULL.

( Really full... )

Saturday was Colleen's bachelorette party. We went to Chopstix "Dueling Piano Bar" and had a pretty darn good time. I did not drink and nobody pressured me to do so, which I appreciated. Pretty much everyone else was a bit soppy by the end of the night (some more than others), except for the one pregnant girl.

The night was bookended by adventure: I took the 511 downtown with no issues, then got on the 1 (which goes around the North side of Seattle Center) but the driver made a mistake and took the 4 route (which goes around the South side of the SC)...poor guy, everyone was a good sport about it--I guess he had been doing the 4 route all morning and then they swapped him to the 1--but the downtown busses are all hooked into the electrical grid above so he couldn't easily correct it. So I got off at Denny and walked through the Center and down Roy until I found the bar.

I actually showed up earlier than anyone else, which was good because the premade menu we got as part of our package deal had no vegetarian options. Lo, I did not panic or pretend that I wasn't hungry, but instead talked to the lovely waitress who had no problem substituting (HAHA, crippling social shyness BEATEN!! Mark off one success for 2009!) SO...I had some fabulous mac n cheese for dinner -- with white truffle oil! YOM. And penis cake. Which was surprisingly tasty (the penis part itself...an extension, if you will, off a normal round cake, was solid marzipan and therefore did not appeal to me).

Chopstix was pretty fun in general--there are two pianos and 3 piano players that rotate, and they play requests all night. There isn't a set list at all, only requests, and they play rock, country, pop... even the Brady Bunch theme song for one extremely drunk blonde. They seemed to trend toward audience participation songs (Sweet Caroline, Brown Eyed Girl and the like) and since it's all requests it was mostly stuff I had at least heard before. For a $20 tip, you can 'stop the show' and have them 'do anything', so all of the bachelorettes (there were 3 or 4 other bachelorette parties there, plus 2 birthdays and two co bachelor/ette parties--I guess we found a popular place!) were dragged up on the stage at different points during the night and serenaded with silly (raunchy) joke songs.

I felt a little out of place because I didn't drink and don't know her other friends, but I still had a good time. I sang along and clapped, even. It was a lot of fun! I'd like to go back sometime, maybe with David. I think he'd probably get a kick out of it.

Then came the adventure getting home: since I hadn't ridden the bus all the way to the bar, I couldn't find the stop to get back to central downtown. Soooo...I walked. Which wasn't bad. I saw only one creepy guy (who warned me about a "Chinaman rapist" around the corner, augh) and was asked for a hug by an old, OLD man (street performer? I think I've seen him before) with a boom box (playing "Unforgettable"). And I did. I gave him a nice big hug, which I suppose could have been dangerously stupid, but oh well. At the end of the day, I'd rather be someone who can trust. And there were other people around. BUT I missed the last 511. And oh yeah, my phone was dead. So I took the 358 up to Aurora Village and called David (at about 1:30 AM) to let him know where I was. I was going to take a cab the rest of the way, but he was awake so he just came down and picked me up. Mmm, I love my husband.

Yesterday was all work--I cleaned and worked on menus and did a little bit of packing. And David and I went grocery shopping.

This week promises to be busy.

Dentist appt. yesterday morning went smoothly, it was just a cleaning and it didnt even hurt...I flinched prematurely when she got to a lot of the teeth because I forgot that they were filled and not as sensitive anymore. Flouride again. Another appt set up for Feb.

Helped AJ and Liz move last night.  Got home pretty late and had a hard time falling asleep (how important is sticking to that sleep schedule? VERY , apparently. Damn.) I'm going to miss hanging out with Liz...probably AJ too since he uses(d) her to get around--he won't have a chauffer while he's at Chris's. DOH. Packing/moving their massive amounts of Stuff has strengthened my resolve to keep paring back. I wonder...if I asked for help moving at work, if anybody would come...

Wore a skirt yesterday and it wasn't totally awful. Actually pretty comfortable, really. Which is good becauase I now own 3. :D I need to get some sandals or flip flops, though...it probably looked pretty funny with my clunky sneakers and socks.

Wrist is NOT doing well this week. It may be the heat or the part where it didn't get a break last weekend...not sure. 

It is so, soooooo hot. I don't like heat. I don't do well in heat. I don't just wilt, I melt away, cursing and screaming at the (brilliantly blue, unclouded) sky. It kind of makes me into a whiney bitch.

One plus to the heat is that icing my arm has become a lot more pleasant. After I'm done with my wrist or elbow, I'll plop the still-cool-but-not-painfully-cold ice pack on the back of my neck or over my forehead. Yum.

Still plugging away at menus, programs, and shower planning. Colleen's bachelorette party is this weekend so I want to have a big chunk of it DONE to show her/give to her so she can pack it up.

Really getting into packing for the trip down to California. It's gonna be the best trip we've ever taken (at least in terms of finding what we need in an appropriate time period after discovering we need it).

Greg is out of town helping Ray & the girls move back to Indiana. David and I have the apartment all to ourselves for a week. We can have people over in the evening! We can watch movies in the living room after 7:00 PM! We can vacuum the carpets after work! We can...oh, wait. I'm crunching this week. Never mind...

Saturday was spent hanging out with phinnia , and I went to Northgate Mall by myself and did some 'girly' clothes shopping: 2 shirts, 2 skirts (!), 2 dresses (!!), and a pair of jeans that had been on clearance so long that they only cost $5.50. My total was just over $180, which I thought was pretty good (girly clothes always cost so much...) especially considering that I REALLY like one of the shirts and one of the dresses. She also showed me a cute little fabric store and I bought a yard and a half of pretty yellow-and-black oilcloth to make a picnic tablecloth for the anniversary camping trip. Eee! Also, I finally got to try Molly Moon's ice cream. Mmm, very addictive. This could be a very bad thing.

Sunday, Adam and Kelsey came over and we played Dominion, which is a very simple card-based game that only takes ~30 minutes. David and I both really liked it...maybe not as much as Munchkin, but it was still pretty cool. I forsee us having to buy a copy in the future. We might play again tonight (if my Beta delivery goes smoothly. Why yes, Alpha for this project was JUST LAST WEEK. Why yes, that is an INCREDIBLY SHORT schedule. Why yes, that IS my right eyelid twitching madly. Why do you ask?)

Playing catchup at work. Having a hard time learning the proprietary tool I need to use for it. Will most likely get a chewing out today over lack of progress (of which honestly there is very little, this tends to happen when you break things and have to quit without saving 40 times/day).

Plugging away at Colleen's menus; they're all printed and now I'm cutting/assembling. I can finish one in a couple of minutes, but there are 120 of them... Just got the basic wording for the programs, so I can start those over the weekend.

I may go downtown tomorrow. I may go to work on Sunday. David's friend Dan may come over for dinner on Sunday.

Real estate agent has started sending us new listings, but neither of us have been super pumped to get back into the search.

Packed a few more boxes (anime DVDs, some of our  board games). Obviously, our move date is going to be much farther out...like in September or October...not sure whether I should keep packing or if it's going to negatively impact our quality of life for too long. *shrug* It's not like we watch them all the time?

Last night, I didn't stay that late at work because David came home and made us dinner: tri-tip for him and couscous for me, roasted corn and broccoli sauteed in shallots and garlic. And deliciously pungent imported triple-cream Brie, which he refuses to disclose how much he spent on. It was very nice.

Last night I called my parents for commiseration, and I remarked to my Dad that the most amusing (and gratifying) thing about this turn of events is that I think both David and I are way more worried about how upset the other person is than ourselves. It sure is hard to mope about how horrible the world is when someone is doing everything in their power to make you happier. :D

Gonna go into work an hour early today and 2 hours early Thursday and Friday--probably all of next week, too. I could crunch in the evenings but that cuts into my time with David. Crunching in the morning is better for me--I'm more productive because there are no distractions, and I have more energy in the AM, too.