…and I’m stuck inside all day. It figures.
Saturday was almost what I’d hoped for: a nice, lazy day around the house. takaza got us motivated around 2 PM, though, and we went out looking for ceramic tile stores for possibilities for the kitchen backsplash. The two places I knew of turned out to be closed, of course, but we did walk through Lowe’s and a carpet/tile place where the salesman ignored us completely (he had to be gay – what straight man would ever wear a black turtleneck?) I’ve got a line on some other places, though. I’m looking for someplace that has lots of sample boards set up so we can evaluate some different design possibilities, then we’ll buy a couple of sample tiles and see how the colors work in the kitchen.
Anyway, after that we stopped by Target, CompUSA (bleah – high prices), and K Mart, where I was reminded of why K Mart is in Chapter 11 – dirty parking lot, dingy store, surly help, and lousy products. We did buy a crosscut paper shredder, though, since I’ve been getting paranoid about all the credit card solicitations and such that we receive getting fished out of the trash, even though I tear them up before disposing of them. Naturally, after we bought it at K Mart, Dan saw an ad in a Target circular on Sunday witht he same thing for $10 cheaper.
Anyway, Donald and Janelle invited us over for dinner, and we spent the rest of the evening with them and Thomas, chatting and noshing. Whee!
Sunday was just fabulous. A group of nine of us took a three-mile hike out at Jordan Lake. It was a gorgeous day – blue skies, temps near 70. Dan was in shorts, but then he figures anything above 50 degrees is shorts weather. He’s weird, but I love him 🙂 Anyway, the walk was mainly through conifer forests with a small scattering of what appeared to be oak and tulip trees. The combination of a heavy coating of pine needles and leaves and the fact that the trail isn’t apparently heavily-used made navigating a bit more interesting than usual; after a bit of losing the trail, I wound up taking the lead (lead dog and all that…) and keeping an eye out for the trail blazes. And as a bonus, we got to hang out with Cliff, the spastic husky!
Afterwards, we hung out over at Donald and Janelle’s house and made grillables and things that are bad for us (mmm, mushrooms sauteed in garlic and butter…). I sauteed up some peppers and onions to go with some grilled Italian sausage, and life was good. The usual Sunday night gaming session was to follow (there’s a group of about eight of us who have a weekly Mage game running) and I announced I was dropping out. It’s unfortunate, but I’ve missed a lot of games since last September due to commitment ceremony and convention planning, and in the time away I found I didn’t much care what was going on with the game or my character. Rob put it best: he’d rather have people either in or out, not halfway in, dragging down the group. Everyone took it well, so it’s cool. I’ll probably still show up on Sunday nights since there’s a couple folks who don’t game but just hang out, chat, and play other games like Fluxx and stuff. Plus, that gives Dan some time alone at home every week, which is also good – I love being with him, but there’s also times that it’s good to be apart.
There’s more to ramble about, but for now I’m off to get some work done…
You know…there’s something just wrong about this winter…no snow in this area yet…only a brief flurry..it’s suppose to be 70 here today and tomorrow.
I WANT SNOW. 🙂
BTW…I love that setup in the living room with the fire place like that. 🙂 I looked through the pictures of the place. Very nice digs you have. 🙂 Did you guys have any hand in planning the place or did you buy the house used?
Heh. We had 11″ of snow here three weeks ago. Not that you can tell now, though…
As for the house, we really sort of lucked into it. We had wandered through it in a half-finished state (before even the sheetrock was up) while we were looking around at different houses and found ourselves in the embarassing situation of walking through someone’s house while the owner is present. The owner was a woman who was having the house built to spec, with lots of upgrades (like the fireplace) and the bookshelves in the master bedroom. She gave us a tour of the whole place and described all the nice things about it.
Two months later, we had just missed out on a bid on a house down the block. Takaza was looking around at different possibilities and decided to stop by again. He found out that the woman had been unable to sell her old house and thus couldn’t buy the spiffy new house she’d shown us through, and that the house was now available. We snapped it up – I don’t think it even technically hit the market before we put in a bid on it 🙂
The placement of the fireplace in the living room is neat, but I don’t much like the alcove over it, which is wired specifically for a television. In combination with the flames below, it makes me think of an altar to the TV God. We put the TV to the left of the fireplace and filled the alcove with silk plants.
Credit Card Solicitations
As someone who works in the evil credit industry, I’ll let you know this:
1-888-5-OPT-OUT
This will place a “promotional block” on your credit bureau, with all three (CBI/Equifax, TRW/Experian, and TransUnion), which will reduce the amount of pesky credit card offers you receive. You can choose an opt out period of either 2 years, or entirely. There’s also the ability to opt back in at any time.