Of moving.

So, I won’t pretend it hasn’t been like 3 million years since my last post...bc it has, but who’s counting? Stop counting.  Anyhow! The big news is…….we are moving!! The Chris’ are moving from one coast to the other...Seattle here we come!!  I know what you are thinking, really like the west coast needs more gays, well consider us another drop in the bucket.  This whole process has been moving so quickly that we have hardly had time to think.  We have been going through all of the nooks, crannies, and nether regions of our house looking to see what we can get rid of.  So far we have taken at least three truck loads of random things to Goodwill.  

While we are on the topic of Goodwill, I have to say that they have gotten quite picky in what they accept.  We took a couple older TV’s that were the older CRT style and they were all like yeah, no we don’t accept those anymore.  They only take flat screen...well hell!  Sorry I am not giving you something that you can charge people to buy to make profit.  It is not like they are obsolete!  They still work just fine with that receiver from the cable company; not to mention if you plug in a dvd player to them they also function perfectly.  In fact when we were waiting to drop stuff off the lady behind us overheard and as we were fuming and moving the TV’s back into our car she asked us if she could buy them from us.  Of course we just wanted to be rid of them so we gladly loaded them into her car for her and thanked her for taking them off our hands.  I gave the guy from Goodwill a lovely “if you took that TV it could have paid for your salary for a couple hours” look - with a sassy grin of course...I stopped myself from doing a z-snap.

Phew, anyhow so things back at the house are moving along well, we have a plan to clean this thing or move that thing to that place in a couple days when a bomb is dropped right on top of us.  

Our realtor calls us and the conversation pretty much goes like this:

Monday ~4pm

::Phone rings::

Us: Hey girl, hey!  (just kidding, but since we are The Gay it fits right?)

Realtor: So you know how we talked about having the photographer come by around Friday to take pictures of your house to post?

Us: ….Yes...

Realtor: What do you guys think about having him come by tomorrow at 9am?

Us: ……………………………………………...

Realtor: ………………………………………...

Us: Like in tomorrow morning?

Realtor: YEAH!

Us: .....so like, you want us to clean the house and move pretty much everything to make it looks like the house is sparkly?

Realtor: YEAH, YEAH! ::sinister laugh::

Us: We would LOVE to do that!!!!!!!

Realtor: K, thx, bye.

After we regained consciousness and picked ourselves up off the floor we finished our work day, came home, looked around at all that had to be done, reached for a bottle of alcohol, thought that might not be the best plan, changed into old clothes, tied bandanas around our heads, and got to work.

When we spoke to the realtor days before this she talked to us about the best way to stage your house for sale.  It should basically look like no one lives there...you know...bc that is how people live...with absolutely nothing on the counters and no personality at all.  

So we began.  

All of the magnets off the fridge - you don’t want it to look like you have fun or go to cool places right?  

Those dogs? Nope.  No one likes dogs, make it look like they do not exist here bc people that are moving into a house that has a large backyard that is fenced in will not want to bring their dog with them.  Put them in the garage, and remove their food, water bowl, toys, crates, and pretty much any other trace of canine DNA throughout the house...you should be lucky I let you keep a picture of them on the wall.

Your kitchen, it should be a blank slate...nothing organizing your mail...WHO GETS MAIL ANYWAYS?!  The new owners won’t get mail, idiot!  The counters should be empty!  DID YOU REALLY LEAVE A BOTTLE OF DAWN DISH SOAP OUT?!?1 How could you?!  The new owner won’t wash dishes!!

And so on throughout the house.  We were so manic at one point we were shoving things in any place we could find.  I had to put the Pottery Barn ceramic jar I keep sugar in for my coffee in the fridge bc the new owners likely won’t eat or drink anything.  In fact, the dish towel, paper towels, and anything else that was within arms reach got to chill out for the day in the fridge.

Liquor, you mean that stuff that people get addicted to and then have to go to rehab?  Yeah, you can’t have that out.  Box it up, make it look like you aren’t fun.

Remember what you did to the kitchen counters?  Do the same for like every other surface, bc really, do you think people leave stuff out?  No, people don’t have things, or they keep everything put away in drawers all tidy like.  Duh.

Bathrooms should be for showering and toilet business.  Nothing on the counters either.  Toothbrushes?  No one uses those, put them away.  

So many other things that made us clean until our fingers ached up until 11:30 pm. Stressed, tired, and defeated we lay down in our bed and contemplate every decision made in the last 6 hours.

The next day we get to fight nature.  We keep our house cold.  It is hot as satan's taint outside.  They were coming to take pictures at 9 am.  Cold inside and 358821 armpits outside means that lots of condensation forms on the outside of every window in the house.  Not good for pictures to sell your house.  The solution?!  Wake up, turn off the air conditioning in the house, open all windows to let all the frosty amazing air outside and let in the feeling of being seated between two Frenchmen wearing tank tops on a plane with no air conditioning.  The dogs are in the garage with two fans on them as they were deemed not worthy.  One more lap around the house to make sure nothing else is out of place...aaaaaaaaand action!

The rest goes off without a hitch, the realtor complements how much we did around the house...which enables her to live another day...and I get to drive home on my lunch break and bring the dogs inside and turn the air conditioning back on.  I also stopped at Chick-fil-A on my way back to work to replace my sorrow with a large amount of grease comfort.

So now comes the fun part, the house will be listed and shown all weekend.  We get to go look at houses to rent in Seattle.  Meet with the movers and decide what we can/cannot move.  Deal with our last days at work.  Plan our 4 DAY DRIVE TO THE OTHER COAST OF THE UNITED STATES.  Move in and try to find a job for me.  So really, we don’t have all that much to do.  Basically home stretch.  I see the light at the end of the tunnel……………………

I know this is a very rambling post and I really do seem quite salty about everything but I couldn’t be more excited!  I am truly looking forward to this move and I can’t wait to get there and really start to explore the city and it’s surroundings!!  More to come, and yes yes, I will try to blog more.  Sheesh, nosy.

Of expected guests.

We had some annual visitors last night on the eve of our fantastic beach trip. We had a wonderful time playing/drinking with our guests...assign whichever label you would like with aforementioned guests. We then took all the pillows accessible and ran laps around the house while jumping into that pile...again, choose whichever guests you prefer to think about jumping in pillow pits...I was one for sure.

Britches was also a star of course.

Fun times, cosmos and pillow jumps.

Of new technology.

I have recently aquired a new mobile device, the Samsung galaxy S4. There has definitely been a learning curve as I have used HTC phones for the past 4 years. So far, I think this phone is freaking awesome!! The keyboard is a challenge,  but I am slowly learning to use it more efficiently.  Everything runs so much faster and the little things that is does blow me away. For instance, if I open a browser in Chrome on my phone is recognizes all of the tabs that I currently have open on my desktop at home...it's like magic! The one thing that bothers me is that the comma is not its own key on the keyboard...do people really not care about proper sentence structure?! Anyhow, I still like the phone a lot and it is very interactive so maybe this will mean I will blog more!

 

of a new found hatred.

Chemistry.

F-you dude.  Seriously.

of news of doom/joy?

I went to a Chinese buffet with some friends the other day and got a very strange fortune cookie...

I am not sure what it means really.  Ever since I got it I have been questioning my existence and thinking of becoming a Monk...such a life altering thing, fortune cookies.

of wishes for a day of birth.

Hurray for Terry!!  Today is the day he came out of his mother!!!  Happy birthday to you!!!!!!

I'll put on my biker headgear just for you!!

of a point for humanity.

So it doesn't happen often, but yesterday I gained a small about of hope for humanity.  Chris and I were performing our normal weekend ritual of going to a movie (we saw Oblivion, it was really good actually) and while we were sitting in the theater waiting for the movie to start, that is when it happened.  We were chowing down on our 7 million calorie popcorn when a family of color walked in...not trying to stereotype here...there was a mother and about 4-5 kids, most of them were older, but there was a boy that was young.  Anyhow, as they are walking in, the mother equipped with an apple bottom and huge hoop ear rings turns to the young boy and says in a very audible tone: "Now, it doesn't look like there are any other kids in here, so you need to act right and keep your mouth shut." Chris and I almost applauded her!!!  She wasn't forceful or anything, and the kid was extremely well behaved also, there was a troop of young 20-somethings in the back of the theater that were quite annoying.  It was just a breath of fresh air to see someone actually control their child, especially in an environment were most people do not care what their children do.  Kudos to you lady!

of new eye-extensions.

I am in the market for new glasses and I heard about this website and figured I would check them out.  The site is Warby Parker and their whole thing is that they cut out the middle-man, so every regular pair of glasses is $95 and that is for the cost of the frames and lenses!  If you do not have glasses, that is a huge savings...like I could have more money for underwear!!  I know what you are thinking, they may not be well made, etc.  Well for that cost I am going to try a pair and see what happens, they also do sunglasses for around $200 which is a steal also.  They have a thing where you pick out 5 frames you like and they send them to your house for you to try on for 5 days.  I have done that, and so now you all will need to do some work.  I am posting the five that I chose, there are a couple that I do not like, and one or two that I like a lot...I am keeping my opinion to myself to see what types of responses I get.  Click on "LINK TO SITE" to go to the url for the same glasses on the site.  The lighting isn't great for the pics I took...I tried in a couple of rooms.....there must have been more that 19% light behind me, what do you think Catherine?

These are my current glasses - for comparison 

My glasses -side view

This is the bow they came in.

YAY!

Preston blue maple - LINK TO THE SITE

Preston blue maple - side

Arthur green - LINK TO THE SITE

Arthur green - side

Catalina blue - LINK TO THE SITE

Catalina blue - side

Holt blue - LINK TO THE SITE

Holt blue - side

Whiskey Tortoise - LINK TO THE SITE

Whiskey tortoise - side

Well that was fun wasn't it?  Now please let me know what you think!!!

of a new title.

So I guess my work with my degree has finally started to pay off as last night I was inducted into the Sigma Gamma Epsilon national honors society for earth science and geology.  Total nerd, but hey, I am happy about it.  The best thing is that I can now put that on my resume.  Watch out world, here I come!!!

of an updated number.

If you know me, then you will know what this means, the new number is:

209 pairs.

Deal with it.

of my worst fear almost.

I often have a fear at the gym...that I will be listening to something super embarrassing on my headphones and somehow someone will will see or hear said song.  Well today that almost happened.  I have bluetooth headphones and I listen to pandora via my phone while I workout.  Today while I was just about done with my workout, I got a message and somehow my phone got weird and turned bluetooth off, which it never does.  I'm not sure if it was just my quick reflexes, or if I was so panicked that I would be found out, that I was able to silence my phone very quickly.  If I had not done so, the whole cardio deck would have had a very loud rendition of the Rupaul remix of 'It's raining men' and they would have had no question as to why I was dance-jogging on the treadmill right before that....luckily survival mode kicked in.

of the dead and dying.

We have had a number of trees in our backyard that have past their prime/have fallen over/were an embarrassment to the title of tree.  We got a number of quotes from people but they were all very high, or doubled when they actually came to do the work.  Finally, Chris found a group from a friend of ours that used this company to dispatch trees at their house.  That being said, the tree reapers came and did their work, it was pretty cool to watch them do it actually.  They cut down 10 trees total , most of which were huge, difficult, and very much dead.  The cost was just about right....if you call paying hundreds of dollars to cut down things right.  Here is the aftermath:

Your time here is done trees, rest in peace pieces.

of a loss of ho, ho, ho.

This time of year really makes me lose my Christmas spirit...for those of you that have not worked in retail, I doubt you understand my lack of joy.  There are people constantly angry, stressed, annoyed, etc. and they tend to take it out on the workers at the store.  "You don't have the right color dog bed." "This toy in a half inch too big."  "I only want one of these and it comes in a pack of three."  On and on, these people are driving me crazy!  I get it, it is stressful buying things for people, but if you get like this then buy your stuff earlier, or go online and stop all of the hassle!

My personal favorite is when someone is buying their child an animal for Christmas.  They are all like, I want to buy this hamster/guinea pig/lizard and I want you guys to keep it here at the store until Christmas eve when I will come pick it up....uh, no.  When I tell them we do not do that, they are shocked!  What do you mean you don't hold animals here?!  Well bit** honey, if we did that, we wouldn't have room to walk in the store, so take your freaking hamster and go hide it in your closet next to your $5000 Neiman Marcus coat.  People are crazy!

I was having this discussion the other day while having dinner at a friends house that respect and general kindness are really disappearing.  This is a whole long topic for another day, I just felt like venting a little about how much I love working retail during the holiday season.

of FL pride.

So I am thinking of getting a new tattoo, what do you guys think?

Let me know so I can make an appointment.

Of the power of my opinion.

I will admit that I have not always been a voter, and it has only been recently that I have really taken the matter seriously.  Nonetheless, I prepared myself for the cold (high of 48 degrees today comrades) I also brought my flashcards for paleontology as I am figuring there will be a huge line, mentally prepare myself and take off.  My voting place is at a middle school, I park, and start walking up.  Of course there are the nut jobs that try to convince you to change your mind at the last second, so I football dodge (sorry Terry, I don't know the appropriate terminology) the political pantywaste, and make it inside.  So far, so good! No line out to my car...sorry flashcards.  I now football weave (still don't know it) around little kids and make it to the polling place.......no line at all!! I literally walked right up and cast my vote! Ah, my opinion matters.  Now I will not go into detail as to who I voted for, let's just say I picked the candidate that best reflected my people, the homo-gays that is. I still cannot get into picking all the random judges and crap, I mean there were 5 pages of people to sort through...I will admit, I ended up picking people who's names sounded the coolest to me...go ahead, start your criticism. I just can't keep up with all that other stuff.

Anyhow, my decision had been made, so off I went. I do feel very proud to vote, and am glad that I went when I did.  Now, the actual events of walking up and dodging people and what may be a little on the exaggerated side, but we are talking about politics here, and what is politics if not exaggerated?