KirstenL4W

Another bank is under.  Living in Las Vegas, the results of the banking/mortgage crisis are everywhere.  There are lots of homes for sale and not enough buyers.  A lot of these homes are foreclosures.  When Mister and I were looking to buy a home, we looked at some foreclosures but ended up buying new.  We figured that the lower price on a foreclosure wasn’t low enough to make up for all the repairs we’d have to do.  A lot of the homes were nowhere near move-in ready.  We have a newly built home, and while there is some work we want to do to make it ours, everything’s in good working order and we didn’t have to fix anything to move in.  As time goes on and the economic situation in this country plays out, Mister and I are more and more convinced that we bought at just the right time.

We were able to get down payment assistance from the Nehemiah program, which is a federally funded down payment program.  We didn’t even know about it, but the seller’s agent told us about it and it was a great thing for us.  Sadly, it will cease to exist at the end of this month.  That I don’t understand - there are thousands upon thousands of houses sitting vacant, and the federal goverment is taking away the tools to help people become homeowners.  While sale prices have dropped a bit in our community, we’re still happy with our purchase.  We couldn’t have timed it better.

Back to the banking.  I used to have my accounts with WaMu.  I was planning on changing after Mister and I got married, and started hearing about all the losses that WaMu was posting.  Mister banks with a much higher rated bank - one that’s more stable because it’s more conservative in its lending.  I closed all my old accounts about a month ago.  Due to FDIC insurance, I wouldn’t have had anything to worry about, but the involuntary changeover of all sorts of things - direct debits, direct deposits, getting new bankcards and checks, etc - is a huge hassle.  It’s one thing when, like me, you choose to change banks for other reasons, but despite the “seamless” transition that the FDIC mandates, these people will still be inconvenienced in some way.

As everyone is reading in the news, this isn’t over.  I could go on and on about it, but I’d only be another voice in the sea of people who have something to say about it.  I’ve only written about it as it applies to my life.  Mister and I have secure jobs, a home that we didn’t pay too much for, and we’re happy.   No matter what happens, we still have each other, and that’s all that matters to me.

There are just over 90 shopping days left until Christmas.  I really hope that I have been a very good girl this year, and I am only asking for one thing:

I keep trying to tell myself that.  Yesterday was a day that made me regret my decision to go to work.  I should have stayed home in bed.  But I was responsible, and ended up at my wit’s end.

While Mister was away I got to work on some of my ambitious plans.  We never seem to do all the things that need doing when we’re both home, so I thought I’d use the time alone to keep busy and be productive.  I decided to organize the garage.  This is the same 2-car garage that became a dumping ground for all our stuff when we moved in.  It held many, many boxes that still needed to be unpacked, along with lots of other stuff like man-toys (aka tools) instead of the 2 cars it was designed to hold.  My goal was to get at least 1 car in there.

I started by picking up the tools.  A few weeks back, Mister was working on his truck and there were tools everywhere.  It’s not his fault, really.  We just lack the adequate storage units for these things.  I did the best I could, and though most of them ended up in a box labeled “Misc Tools” I gained a decent amount of floor space.  The next task was to move the boxes yet to be unpacked in the house.  At first I thought I’d put them in their appropriate rooms, but then I realized that there was still sorting to be done once these boxes were opened, so I put them in a staging area in the living room.  This cleared out a LOT of space in the garage.

Then I moved nearly everything to one side of the garage.  I reorganized as I went, so as to keep like items together.  I also found a cubby thing that goes on top of a short cabinet that we already use as storage in the garage, so I put that together and put some tools and other things in there.  Then, sometime around 7pm, my body came to a screeching halt.  I was done, and I couldn’t work any longer.  I took a shower, ran out for a bite to eat, and came home, planting my ass on the sofa.

On Sunday, I went out to run some errands and do some grocery shopping in preparation for Mister’s return later that evening.  When I got home, I put together a few salads for easy side dishes during the week and set about unpacking the boxes.  I got through quite a few of them, and was able to put aside some things for donation.  The work seemed to go a lot slower than the garage work did, but again, I got quite a bit done.  My body ached from all the physical labor over the weekend.  I sat down to rest, eagerly awaiting the time when I could go to the airport and pick up Mister, who I missed terribly.  His flight came in at 10:30, so we didn’t get home until late, which for me was a bit too late since I get up at 5am for work.  I decided that I’d make a decision on work when my alarm went off Monday.

My alarm went off on schedule Monday morning.  I didn’t have any trouble waking up, but getting out of bed was another matter entirely.  I hurt.  Every muscle between my knees and my neck was aching, and there was also the strong lure of spending time with Mister since he had just come home (remember, he left on business the day after I got home from my Grandma’s funeral).  I decided that I’d stay home from work.  I went into our home office, turned on the computer, and started composing the email.  As I started putting in names of people to send to, I had second thoughts.  There are 4 of us on the A/P team, not including the team lead.  One is on vacation until Wednesday.  One is overseas on a business trip.  If I called out, that would leave just 1 very hard worker there to do it all.  I like the people I work with too much to do that to them.  Also, the thought crossed my mind that I would be very tempted to tackle more boxes if I stayed home, and my body just couldn’t handle it.  I canceled the email and got ready for work.  At least there I could sit my butt down and rest my body.

I spent a large portion of my day fixing problems.  Not big problems, but problems I shouldn’t have at all, and rarely, if ever, have.  It took an inordinate amount of time to do this.  A phone call from Mister, who was frustrated with his GPS leading him on a wild goose chase in the wrong direction, had me teetering on the edge of my breaking point.  I was stressed enough from work, and though I love hearing his voice, his situation simply send me to the precipice of my breaking point.  I fought back tears as I finished up my last hour of work and headed to my doctor’s office to fix another issue.

Over a month ago my doctor had changed my acid reflux medicine to the purple pill, which is working much, much better.  They seem intent on clearing out the sample closet, so I ended up with over a month’s worth of samples.  I also had a script for it, which I dropped off at the pharmacy so that I wouldn’t lose it.  Since I wasn’t picking it up right away, the pharmacy put it on hold.  I ran out of sample meds over the weekend, and on Sunday when I tried to get it filled they informed me that they’d need the doctor to authorize it, which meant waiting until Monday.  Sometime during my Monday I called the doctor’s office, and the front office lady with no people skills informed me that the doctor signs those after 5pm.  That is the dumbest thing I heard, especially for requests that come in over the weekend!  I thanked the woman for allowing my stomach to continue burning and hung up.  When I got the the doctor’s office after work, the medical assistant, who is way cool and has enough personality for 2 people, looked through the pile of pharmacy requests and didn’t see one for me.  Ok, no problem.  I called the pharmacy and they faxed it over again while I waited at the doctor’s office to be sure it arrived.  It did, and it went into the pile to be signed.  The med asst also gave me 3 more weeks of samples (awesome!) and I got in the car to go home.

I tried to call Mister but he didn’t answer the phone.  No biggie, I just assumed he was on another call for work or something.  Then he called me back, and though I could hear him just fine, he couldn’t hear me no matter how loud I was yelling.  We called each other a few times with the same results, and I was ready to throw my cell phone out the window.  That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  I burst into tears and just couldn’t get home fast enough.  Mister called on his work phone, which wasn’t having any problems, and started to calm me down.  When I got home and into the house I started feeling better, but it wasn’t until Mister came home that I really started to calm down. 

With the door locked on the outside world, I finally was able to stop crying, though Mister made me cry again when he gave me a really sweet gift to make me feel better.  We spent the rest of the evening watching Top Gear and then we put on a movie, and by the time I went to bed I was much calmer and relaxed.  I don’t know what it is about little things that make a day completely unbearable, but thank goodness I have Mister to make me feel better.  Today, so far, is better, and after work I’m getting my haircut at my wonderful salon that has massage chairs at the sinks.  Woohoo! 

I’m back.  I experienced unseasonably warm weather while I was in New England, due to some tropical weather systems they had move through there.  I stayed in NJ with Uncle N Period and Aunt Bird, and on Monday morning when Uncle N Period was driving me to the airport (at 5:30am), it was 80°F.  And humid, let’s not forget.  But it was good to see my family and attend Grandma’s memorial service.  I also saw my nephew Bubba, who is now 15, taller than me and as skinny as a rail.  I’ll see everyone again next month, when Mister and I finally take our honeymoon to visit the family and New England in the fall.

I was so excited to see Mister when he picked me up at the airport Monday afternoon.  I miss him so much when we’re apart.  Like now.  Oh yes, now.  He’s in Houston for work, cuz he works in insurance so he needs to be there.  I dropped him off at the airport last night and won’t see him until Sunday at the earliest.  I’m hoping to get some stuff done around the house while he’s gone, but I always say that when he’s away.  Tonight, to kick off my lofty plans of getting stuff done, I went shopping at Target, came home and made myself a dinner of macaroni and cheese.  Not even the good kind - it was the store brand boxed kind.  Then I watched HGTV and *gasp* 90210.  I’ll tell you what, though - I won’t be watching 90210 again.  They say you can’t go home again, and that goes for the TV shows of your youth.  Reruns, fine, but a new generation?  No thanks.

I’m glad I took an extra day off when I came home.  I took Tuesday off as well, which worked out just fine because I got to spend some time with Mister before he had to go.  I did laundry for him and spent some of the day setting up my new computer.  My old computer just doesn’t have the capacity to do what I want it to, and rather than upgrading it we decided to get me a new one.  At first I was just going to use the laptop as my main machine, but after spending last week before I left transferring all my stuff from the old computer to the laptop, Mister wanted to take the laptop with him to Houston to have something to do when stuck in a hotel room without BBC America.  He said it wasn’t fair for me to be without a computer when he’s away, so we got me a new one.  It has a CD compartment on top a cupholder and everything!  We also got me some new speakers because the ones I bought in 1999, while they do technically emit sound that resembles what I want to listen to, they had this nauseating, AM-radio effect on my music.  So new comptuer, new speakers, and no Mister is where I’m at this very moment.

I’m finally getting around to reading the Harry Potter books, thanks to Mister’s influence.  I finished Goblet of Fire on the airplane back here, and started Order of the Phoenix yesterday.  With the delay on the latest movie, I’ll be done the series and will know what I’m looking forward to by the time the next movie comes out.  Speaking of which, I think I’ll hit the hay, read a bit and fall asleep with the book open on my chest.  Only Mister isn’t here to put it away for me and turn off the light. 

Tomorrow I leave to go back east for my Grandma’s memorial service.  Instead of flying into New Hampshire or Boston, MA, I found a much better deal flying into JFK.  This works well for me because Uncle N Period lives in the NYC Metro area and can pick me up.  I’ll stay with him and Aunt Bird and drive up with them, and we’ll all stay at my mom’s for 1 night.  Being with family but not in the thick of it will be more relaxing for me, and goodness knows I need to relax a bit.  I’ve been very busy this week, at work as usual, and I’ve been cleaning up my computer because I am going to try to bring it with me for Uncle Caboose.  He’s using my mom’s old dinosaur that crashes when he wants to play Mah-Johng.  I also had to transfer all my stuff to the laptop (the Vista laptop that I have a love-hate relationship with - I love it because it’s a laptop, and I hate it because it’s Vista.  I’m coming around on the Vista part, though.)  The easy part was all my pictures and other documents, but I was a bit worried about my music collection.  Luckily, I found some really good instructions online, so after I used the Belkin Easy Transfer to move the files, I then followed the directions to move the music to an external hard drive.  I’ve been wanting to do that anyway, because I can fill up lots of storage space with music.  I only have about a quarter of my collection ripped, but now I have the space to do the rest.

Anyway.  Doing all that, I feel like I haven’t had a moment to rest, so I’m looking forward to having 5 straight hours to read while hurdling through the atmostphere in a metal tube.  I have a few hours to people watch.  I don’t have to work, do laundry or make dinner for 4 days, and I don’t have to be anywhere except at the airport and at church.  Despite the heavy emotional toll this weekend will have, I’m looking forward to the lack of obligation.

Since I’ll be travelling, I may not get a chance to check on things online, so comments will sit for awhile, and I may not be in the blogosphere reading up on everyone else.  I’ll catch up on that later, but I will be back early next week.

My grandmother died today.  Grandma was sick in the hospital this past week, so it wasn’t totally unexpected.  Grandma would have been 88 at the end of this month, so she lived a long life.

Enjoy some pictures.

Grandma’s Birthplace in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

Grandma (right) with her sister Helen and brother Vince

Grandma reading some Scandinavian humor

Grandma holding her great-grand daughter, Messy J

Grandma with her kids. From L-R, Uncle Ricky, my Mom (when she was brand new), Uncle Caboose and Uncle N Period

I used to be known as an extremely organized person.  Heck, I even looked into being a professional organizer at one time.  But lately I’ve been losing my touch.  Or motivation.  Or something.  For well over a year now, since not long before I met Mister and packed up everything to move in with him, I have not been organized.  I have all sorts of excuses, the biggest one being that a large portion of my stuff has been in boxes for well over a year while Mister and I lived together in a small, 1-bedroom apartment.  There’s still a lot of stuff that’s in boxes in our garage now.  I know that organizers with a real minimalist streak would just tell me to chuck it all.  But I was still fairly organized when I boxed it all up, so there’s a lot that I know I need and want in there.  For example, all the software from my computer is still there, in its own box that should sit by my desk should I ever need to reinstall something.  And my Swedish knick-knacks (a lot of which I bought in Sweden) are carefully packed away.  One reason I hesitate to unpack it is because I have nowhere to put it.

I do want to get organized, but I’m afraid I’ve become one of those people on tv.  The ones who let things get so out of hand that they don’t know where to begin.  That’s me, not knowing where to start.  I have ideas on how to get organized, but it’s all so inter-related in my mind that I feel like I’m missing a critical piece of the puzzle to be able to put all the steps together to make it flow and get the job done.  Maybe that’s just the perfectionist in me.  I do have lots of books on organizing, but they’re still in boxes in the garage.  A lot of good they do me there, eh?

I did do a little bit of organizing last night.  Since we bought our house and new desks for the office, I started unpacking some of my office boxes and ended up with a pile of papers that I didn’t know what to do with.  Some were for filing, which I couldn’t do at the time because my files weren’t unpacked yet (seeing the inter-relational thing yet?).  Others were things that I hadn’t made a decision on yet.  The rest of it was the result of breeding.  The pile grew over the past few months to include wedding papers and such.  Since I am going to be tranferring all my stuff over to the newer laptop and passing my desktop on to Uncle Caboose, who is currently using my mom’s old dinosaur, I needed somewhere to put the laptop for the file transfers.  The pile had to go.  I was able to file, toss, or relocate most of it, but there are a couple of things that I’m gonna try my best to find a home for. 

Now I just need to try and keep up so that I can get back on that organizing wagon and let Mister see all the skills that I know are in me somewhere.

Today I go back to work after a 4-day weekend.  Yep, I got 4 days in a row off - a mini vacation!  Friday was supposed to be a regular workday, but our VP decided to close the department so yay! an extra day off.  Mister had work in Phoenix, so we drove down there Thursday night.  Did anyone hear about the big storms that came through?  We saw the lightening from it all the way in Kingman and got to watch the awesome lightening show all the way down.  By the time we got to Phoenix, there were some road closures and power outages, but we made it to our hotel just fine.  Friday Mister worked, and Saturday we took a scenic route back to Vegas, getting home around 6:30pm.

Then Sunday.  We both woke up sweating our butts off, and Mister made the grim discovery that our air conditioning went out.  On a holiday weekend.  This is not fun.  We went out to run some errands and came home to it being… still out.  We just bought a new home in April, and everything is supposed to have a 1-year warranty, so we called the service company, who came out within a couple hours and fixed it for free, since it was under warranty.  Apparently when developers throw these houses together they do it fairly cheaply, so the a/c guy put in filters that weren’t there to begin with, and replaced some tube with a better quality one.  Now Mister swears that it is running more efficiently than before.  We’ll see what the power bill looks like - the true test of how well the a/c works.

Yesterday was more out and about to run some errands.  The few things we wanted to get weren’t in stock at the stores we looked at, so we decided to give up and go home.  Some days, when you need to get things, you just strike out, so we said to heck with the grocery shopping and had ice cream for dinner.

Now I’m sitting here, as is my normal weekday routine, catching up on a few things online as I wake up.  I’ll be off to work in a bit and back to the daily grind fun.