Thinking Travel

Usually, I’d rather be traveling than working, cleaning the house, cooking, you know, all that day-to-day living stuff. So I used to think that owning a house would be boring. And suffocating. And make me feel like a boring suffocated OMG-I’ve-got-a-mortgage adult.

Well, tonight Aaron and I discovered a fabulous advantage to to living in a house. A house with a large lot and numerous sound-dampening trees.

While waiting for our eggplant parmesan to bake (we actually cooked tonight), Aaron turned on the iPod that’s connected to the sterio he bought for my birthday a few years ago.

“You know, we’ve never really USED this stereo…” Aaron said as he turned the volume up. Way up.

The walls began to vibrate. And we rocked out.

Score one for the house. We could never have done that in a townhouse.

Please take a moment to remember one of the sweetest, cleverest cats ever. October was our foster-cat while my brother-in-law was in India over the summer. At the end of September she flew home to Chicago.

Last weekend October passed away. She was about 16 years old.

We still find tufts of her fur around the house and expect her to greet us at the door when we come home.

October isn’t the same without October.

At lunch today I went to Panera for Creamy Chicken and Rice soup and to write in my journal. I always feel centered and more focused after scribbling a few pages. I should do that more often.

It’s officially fall now, yet the temp’s back in the 90′s. Last night we turned on the a/c.

October is going home on Sunday. I’m excited to see my brother-in-law and hear about his summer in India, but I’m really sad to see the cat go home. We’ve grown quite fond of her (even despite her hairball issues).

Speaking of India, I had Chicken Tikka Masala and a Mango Lassi at Spice and Curry in Durham with my SIETAR-NC group. We had a native Indian join us so we had some
Q & A over dinner.

Our carpet has arrived and will be installed on Monday afternoon.

Just random bits of the average week…

Recently we ordered new Berber carpet for the guest room because the existing carpet smelled like dog. Tonight we found out that we actually only ordered a carpet measurement, which was taken a couple weeks ago.

Arg.

So now we have to wait for the carpet to be ordered and then schedule a time for installation, which they only do between 8am-5pm.

In preparation for the new carpet Aaron and I (mostly Aaron) pulled up the existing carpet and applied sealer to the floor (that’s potent stuff – make sure to have plenty of ventilation if you use it). Sounds easy enough but it took several hours. Aaron also sanded and painted the window frames.

Over the weekend we bought curtains and curtain rods for the guest room, living/dining room, and Aaron’s den. Speaking of Aaron’s den, I think he’s chosen a desk and filing cabinets.  And we’re thinking about painting the currently Carolina blue walls a nice sage green.

Dryer update: Still broken. Aaron ordered a new door switch and a new element but neither one fixed the problem. We were about to submit a work-order to our home warrenty…but then we discovered that dryers aren’t covered. Ugh. We’d like to overhaul the laundry closet so maybe we’ll replace the washer/dryer a bit sooner than we’d planned.

October (the cat) escaped the deck area on Saturday and went on an expedition to our new neighbor’s yard. First she relaxed on their back deck. Then, when she saw Aaron walking towards her, she bolted around the corner of the house and down the driveway. When Aaron found her, October was sprawled out on the neighbor’s front stoop. So, Aaron took the opportunity to met the new neighbors as he retrieved the cat.

When I got home Saturday evening the sun was setting, the humidity decreased dramatically, and it just seemed like fall. The previous weekend it was still high summer – hot, sticky, and sunny. But Saturday seemed to be the unofficial start of fall. The past two nights the temps have dipped into the 50s, maybe even lower. For the first time in at least two months we turned off the fans, shut the windows, and pulled the covers up to our chins.

Good thing the a/c guy came out last week and fixed the heat pump so we once again a/c. Ha.

Updates from our Labor Day Weekend Home Improvement-o-Rama…In three days we:

• Painted the trim and closet doors in the guest room and re-painted portions of the ceiling. The trim was easy enough to paint but the paneled doors turned out to be a royal pain. I initially had this grandiose notion that I’d repaint all 16 of our paneled doors (both sides). Now I’m think I’ll wash them down and be done with it.

• Pulled up the smells-like-cat/dog carpet and pad in preparation for painting the floor to seal it before the new carpet arrives (who knows when that will be). The old carpet is now on our deck and we’re really hoping we don’t have a late-summer storm because it’s hard enough as it is to carry the 12ft long carpet cigar.

• Unpacked a bunch more boxes in the den (Aaron’s office). We love the wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves!

• Made our weekly visit to Home Depot/Lowes/Target.
• Spent too much money.

OK, we worked for like three days straight but now it seems like we accomplished very little.

Well, what else did we do?

• Watched the German movie “The Lives of Others” about East Germany and the Stasi. Great movie. Loved hearing German, since I so rarely hear it anymore.

  (Random memory: When I taught in Magdeburg I supposedly lived across from a former Stasi office.)

• Ate a lot of take-out because we never seem to have time to go grocery shopping.

• Sucked down lattes at Open Eye Cafe Sunday morning (thanks for the coffee date, Momo!).

• Did 5 baskets of laundry at a local laundromat/bar (our dryer is still broken and it’s too humid to dry our laundry at home since our a/c is still broken).

  (Random memory: When I taught in Magdeburg there were no laundry facilities in our dorm so we scrubbed our clothes in our giant East German claw foot bathtub with scalding hot water and then hung jeans, shirts, socks, sweaters and the like from every chair, desk corner, and any other object that was sturdy enough to hold a dripping mass of wool. We cranked the heat so the clothes would dry faster but with three people’s soggy clothes covering every inch of the room, it got a tad muggy. So we opened the giant window to let in the -30 degree very non-muggy “chunky breeze” (i.e. wind/snow). *Sigh* Good times.)

• Cleaned, vacuumed, did dishes. (For like the umpteenth time. What’s up with this? I’ve been doing this cleaning thing for several years…and I’m still not finished. ; ) Ha. Lame joke, I know.

• Attended the final installment of a summer festival. Unfortunately, we were the only ones to attend because we were a week too late.

• Scribbled in my big fat red journal.

• Since Aaron gets up way before I do on weekend mornings, I know he accomplished some things while I was still comatose.

• Uploaded photos to Flickr (click on the banner in the right sidebar).
• Escorted a grasshopper from our bedroom ceiling to the backyard.
  Three times.

And what did October do all weekend?

Want to see what replaced this old hideous door knob?

Check our Flickr to find out!

So I mentioned earlier that we pretty much stopped working on the house right after our 4th of July extravaganza of home improvement, right? (Reasons: Record high heat/humidity; busy season at work; realization that our projects will take more time/energy than anticipated.)

Well, I think our house got lonely and jealous because we stopped giving it our undivided attention. The house then acted out in several ways in an attempt to regain our focus.

First, the a/c broke.

Then a stove burner stopped working.

Then our hair dryer wouldn’t turn on.

Then our car a/c broke (the car and the house are in cahoots, you know).

Then several other very expensive things broke on the car.

Then, last Sunday evening, Aaron pulled out a load of whites from the dryer, put in a load of darks, set the dial to “more dry”, and pushed the start button. And then pushed it again. And then I pushed the start button. And then I pushed it again.

But nothing happened.

Yes, the dryer broke, too.

Surprisingly, we’ve been able to laugh at all this.

It’s been hot and sticky but that has lead to fun trips to Maple View Farm for ice cream.

We don’t use the stove or oven because we don’t want to make the kitchen even hotter, so we’ve discovered new restaurants (like the little locally-owned North Carolina BBQ place we ate at last night).

And since it’s been too humid to comfortably do anything but lay on our new couch, we’ve been forced to relax during a time when we’ve both logged many over-time hours at work.

And fortunately, these problems will soon be resolved:

Last night we bought a hair dryer.

Tomorrow I’m taking the car to the dealership to be fixed. And Honda is picking up the majority of the tab (which was many thousands of dollars) because a 4-year-old Honda shouldn’t have the problems it has.

Our home warranty company sent someone out last week to diagnose the problem with the a/c. So that should be fixed within the next couple weeks.

With some over-the-phone tech support from my parents, we think we know what’s wrong with the stove and dryer. So we’ll get them fixed this week.

And yesterday we spent the whole day working on the house:

1. We ordered new carpet for the guest bedroom (we like the current carpet but it smells like dog).

2. We changed the outlets and light switches in the guest room and dining room. Note: We did NOT just change the face plates. Nope, we installed brand new switches, which meant connecting red, green, black, and white wires. One of them was even a fancy dimmer. And all but one work!

3. We bought enough door knobs, light switches, and electrical outlets to finish the entire house. My goal for today is to change the rest of the door knobs. If it’s still light outside, I’ll get started on the switches and outlets.

Time to get to work!

These past few weeks it’s been hot. Sticky. Steamy. Oppressive.

Sweating-in-places-you-didn’t-know-could-sweat-hot.

Summers in North Carolina are just fine if you spend your time moving from your air-conditioned house to your air-conditioned car to you air-conditioned workplace to an air-conditioned restaurant.

By this time of year I’m usually tired of a/c air and I drive with the windows down rather than turn on the a/c. But we’ve been without a/c at home for the past few weeks and it’s been downright miserable the past few days. Our thermostat has registered a consistent 91.5 degrees.

It’s been so hot that blinking makes me sweat.

Anyway, the good news is that it cooled a bit last night and we’ll hopefully have someone look at and maybe even fix our heat pump next week.

The bad news…the a/c in our car just went out.

Other blog-title-related news:

Aaron and I are going to the Cure concert in Charlotte in September!

I’ll spare you the ticket ordeal with the stupid pre-sale and getting locked out of ticketmonster’s website and their phone system not working…What counts is that we have two tickets that are next to each other. So right now we’re pretty darn happy, even though we didn’t score front row (or even close-enough-to-see-the-stage) seats.

The last Cure concert I went to was in ’92. Not only was it the best concert I’ve ever experienced, it included a pretty fun road trip. Here’s the trip in a bulleted nutshell:

• Five of us got tickets for the Seattle concert, a five-hour drive from Eugene
• My boyfriend-at-the-time (BATT), his friend and I decided to roadtrip together
• Problem #1: My BATT rode his bike everywhere and didn’t drive.
• Problem #2: My BATT’s friend had a license but didn’t have a car.
• Problem #3: I could drive and I had a car and it was big enough for the three of us and all of our stuff but it was an elderly car that I didn’t dare take past the city limits.
• So we decided to rent a car.
• Problem # 1: I was under 21 and couldn’t rent the car.
• Problem # 2: My BATT was over 21 but didn’t have a license, so he couldn’t rent the car.
• Problem # 3: My BATT’s friend was over 21, had a license, but didn’t have the credit card that was needed to the rent the car. And he lived in Seaside — 3 1/2 hours away on the other side of a mountain range.
• So we used my credit card and my BATT’s friend’s driver’s license to rent the car.
• Then my BATT’s friend took the Greyhound to Eugene to sign the rental car paperwork because the rental company that offered us the best price didn’t rent from Seaside.
• The three of us then drove 3 1/2 hours back to Seaside (can’t remember why we had to do this but I remember that we had to do this). Seaside isn’t exactly on the way to Seattle.
• After spending the night in Seaside we drove to Seattle for the BEST. CONCERT. EVER.
• Then we stayed at the SCARIEST. MOTEL. EVER.
• Wearing our over-priced and over-sized Cure concert t-shirts (remember, it was 1992) we drove the rental car back to Eugene via Seaside, all the while basking in the glow that comes from seeing the band you’re completely in love with while in the company of friends.

This time things will be a little different, and by different I mean easier. We’ll hop in the CRV, drive two hours to Charlotte, sleep in a nice hotel, and eat at whichever restaurant we want. I’ll buy a Cure concert t-shirt (we’ll see if they’re still over-sized) and won’t fret about forking over a day’s pay for it.

But there is one question that’s keeping us up at night…

What do we wear to a Cure concert in 2007??!!

After a running start on home projects, we’ve slowed to the pace of mold, which I’m sure is growing somewhere in our over-heated house. (Last night I discovered a half-full sack of potatoes that I’d stashed in a rarely-accessed cupboard. Not the most pleasant discovery.)

Right around the 4th of July we stopped doing much to the house. There are two good reasons for this:

1. Who wants to work on a house when it’s over 100 degrees in said house?

2. Who wants to work on a house when you’re not finishing the work-that’s-paying-for-the-home-improvement until it’s late enough that you don’t want to do anything but try to sleep in a 100 degree house?

So it’s been hot and we’ve both been working many extra hours at work.

So this means that our guest bedroom has newly painted walls but still needs new carpet, new trim, the closet organizer installed, and curtains. And furniture.

And the hallway needs cicada-sized holes patched so it can be painted. (A cicada flew into the kitchen last night so I now know what size they are. I don’t think they have those things where I’m from.)

And the den needs the boxes covering the floor to be unpacked and the Carolina blue walls need to be painted…

And, and, and.

I could go on because our “we really should finish this before we start another project” list is growing.

But we made a little progress yesterday. In a fit of home-improvement-productivity I changed the bathroom and den door handles and I soaked the guest room carpet in pet-oder-remover spray.

Motivated to more, Aaron and I shut the power off in the kitchen and dining room so we could install the new dimmer and light switch we bought.

Then, as we were lighting a candle and looking for the flashlight, we re-thought our decision to change light switches for the first time at 8:30 pm. (Hey, we didn’t realize how dark it was outside until we turned out all the lights.)

Now that we’ve lived here for three months (!!!) and have a much better sense of the scope and cost of our intended projects we’re re-evaluating some of our original intentions…for example…

May 15th:

Let’s put in a whole new bathroom!

August 15:

The bathtub works, the toilet works, the sink works, the floor works. Pass.
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