Posts tagged house
Absentee Blogger
Jul 17th
I am a bad blogger. I promised an update during the long weekend and didn’t deliver. I apologize. Lots. I even had a fun post about shoes drafted that I never bothered to post. Some day soon. Promises.
It has been super hot here the last few weeks. We haven’t hardly had a chance to enjoy our kickass patio set we bought because the heat and humidity has been so oppressive. Such is life in Maryland. Our in ground garden has been pretty productive now that we’ve fended off the deer and weeded it. Our container garden has not done as well. Note to other container gardeners: ceramic pots create too much heat and cook the roots of your plants. Next year we’re going to fork over the cash and go with some whiskey barrel pots instead.
The most exciting thing was the earthquake yesterday. It woke Trey and I both up at 5am when it happened. I remember my cat growling waking me up. Apparently, Trey woke up and asked why the headboard was shaking. I told him the whole house was shaking and that it was an earthquake and to go back to sleep (I do not remember saying this, but he swears I did). He told me it wasn’t an earthquake, this is Maryland, it was just a low-flying plane. When he got up and checked the Internet, my earthquake claims were confirmed.
It is a little known fact that there is a very large, dangerous fault line underneath the Eastern seaboard. It is often forgotten because it is not very active at all. We’ve been hearing a few more reports of other earthquakes steadily moving west. Like dominoes.
Next week, we head to San Diego for our honeymoon. This includes two days at the San Diego Comic-Con. We are very excited. Trey gleefully enjoys telling people where we’re going for our honeymoon. Then, even more gleefully, he enjoys telling people that it was MY idea to go to Comic-Con for a honeymoon. I am the nerd girl. It is true.
So, that’s really all I’ve got going on. Work has been picking up in busy-ness rather steadily the last few weeks. Planning for the honeymoon has consumed a lot of my leisure Internet time. Sitting down and writing has not been foremost on my mind, sadly. I hope I’ll have more to say post Comic-Con.
Wedding Day Recap
Jun 14th
Goal #1: At the end of the day, be married to the person you love most in the world.
ACHIEVED
Things did not all go as planned, which if anyone will recall, was planned. And everyone loved it anyway which was so much more important to me.
Comcast Update – FIXT!
May 11th
As anyone knows, when you have a problem with your cable, phone, or Internet and it’s a really weird, erratic, hard-to-pinpoint problem, when a tech comes by to fix it, the problem is no longer there. This was my problem. My voip modem would just stop working of its own volition. I have called Comcast 3 times to fix this mystery problem.
The first call, the tech told me there was a short in my phone line and that was probably causing the modem to short out and that’s why it was being a bastard. He was only half right. There was a short in the phone line and he did fix that, but that wasn’t what was disconnecting me.
The second call went not quite as well. Got on a call with a really super excellent tech chick who was so empathetic and awesome, but she couldn’t get me an appointment earlier than nearly a week later. She tried transferring me to a different area to possibly get me more expedited service and an earlier time. That guy was a dick. Total douchebag dickweed. Those Comcast commercials where they say “If the customer’s not happy, Comcast isn’t happy”? Yeah, he didn’t get that memo. I understand that they contract out their service calls and there’s always service calls, but there needs to be a better system to help customers who aren’t receiving service. It is not cool to have to wait 4 days for my problem to be resolved. Fix it the next day. So, I scheduled the service call for a day I wasn’t going to be home and let them dangle in the wind. It was petty, but it made me feel better.
The third call almost went the same way as the second, but I was channeling something oddly zen that day. The earliest available appointment was great if the tech came at the back half of the service window. I asked if there could be a note telling the tech to do that. And there must be some sort of asshole clause, because the dude I talked to got cold as ice as soon as I made mention of that stating that was not possible because it is a window and they show up within that window. Achtung, Herr Scheiße Burger. Slow your fucking roll. So, I said fuck it, that won’t work for me, gimme the following Monday. A week+ from the time of the phone call. Fiance was confused. He was pretty convinced I was going to give them hell. Honestly? Not worth it. The problem was inconvenient as hell, but manageable overall.
Dude-guy who did my original install was who came by on Monday. He was all set to head into the basement where he’d originally put it. I told him, “Yeah, I moved it. That wasn’t really working for me.” So, he did all the usual things plugging in his meters and yadda yadda yadda. And then it happened. The most wonderful thing that could ever happen on a service call. The impossible to predict and reproduce random problem happened. That little bit of vindication, “See! I’m not crazy! It does do what I said!!!”
Water + Cable things = Bad News. Apparently. Dude-guy replaced the stuff on the outside of my house, came back in, tested it and not only was it working, the signal was better! Kick. Ass!
Only one downside, tho. I was this > < close to getting a new modem out of the deal. No trouble found with the modem = no new modem 
Squirrel Tales: An Introduction
Apr 15th
Soooo, yeah. How to start explaining this one? Well, I’m already outed as a big nerd in the fact that I am over 30 and have an entire room in my house dedicated to my and HTB’s comic book collection and the fact that I’ve been playing World of Warcraft for 4 1/2 years. How can this admission possibly be nerdier?
I also used to LARP. That stands for Live Action Role Playing. Whenever questioned in public as a group what we were up to, we’d say “Impromptu Theater” which was technically true. It is all improvised and vaguely theatrical when people aren’t being dumbasses. I shouldn’t dig on it too bad. It’s how I made all my friends and significant others. Who I all adore. But it’s still somewhat embarrassing.
What does any of this have to do with squirrels? In one game I played a kind of magical creature who was part animal. That animal? Squirrel. No fur suits were worn. Ever. Ew. Not that kind of squirrel “roleplay”. Really it was an excuse to be loud, obnoxious, immature, and occasionally adorable. So. . . . I was myself with a character sheet 
basically. I wasn’t ever a very good LARPer. I do find squirrels incredibly cute.
Yes, I know they are vermin. Yes, I know they are a nuisance. And yes, I recently discovered, they are really aggressive in my neighborhood. So, squirrels subject to the natural selection of neighborhood Volkswagons is a blessing not a sadness. I still think squirrels are awesome.
One day, while browsing around Modcloth a few months failing to find a dress to wear to my rehearsal dinner, I started looking at the house stuff section of the website. That is when I came upon the glory of the Nuts About Snacks Dish.
But it was OUT OF STOCK! NOOO!!! So, I did what any reasonable person would do. I put in my informations in the little box that begged, pathetically, for them to tell me when this epitome of squirrelly glory would be available again. And then I promptly forgot about it. How often does something out of stock come back in stock again? Really?
Oh, me of little faith. For shame. I got the e-mail yesterday that my beloved (and utterly forgotten about) squirrel candy dish was back in stock waiting for me to purchase hims. And purchase hims I did. He has shipped and soon will be here for me to store snackable noms within and serve to guests and woodland creatures.
Thank you, Modcloth. You are <3
Adventures In Homeownership part 1
Mar 13th
(Well, not technically part 1 but certainly part 1 for this blog.)
Since moving in to the new house I have moved the modem 3 times. (Did I mention we’ve only been here a month?) Already, I am making evil plans to move it again. This time though involves super fun construction! Obviously this 4th reconfiguration gives me more pause because it involves drilling holes in walls. I think I have a really good plan for making this work. I have lofty goals.
Updates In Progress
Mar 7th
Another day done and more updates and polishing done to the old home domain name: viciousgrin.com. Most of the work was done on the Writings section and a lot of removing broken links and other fun stuff of that nature. I think the next polishing steps are going to be adding the links from the boring home page into pages on the blog design. Or! Adding all that lovely and glorious content into the wonderfully-not-designed-by-me WordPress site. Very exciting for me.
I haven’t done any real, solid, good site design work in at least 2 years since I stopped working for VetInsite (now VetStreet). And even then, those were your average static websites. /shrug. I enjoy appreciating the more than excellent talent of more gifted folks than me.
Tomorrow’s blog post should hopefully detail the new desks, various furniture purchased this weekend, status of the home unpacking and various other actually exciting things that have happened over the last few days. Yay!
