Of mice and memories

Over the past few days I've been reorganizing the basement, trying to finish unpacking boxes, and clean the house. I'm about one quarter into each project. Unpacking is hard because I've been going through boxes that haven't been touched in 5-6 years and have uncovered numerous old photos and various other sentimental items (ie it's taking me a long time). Some things I've uncovered: the old funny quotes sheet from ISR, large framed photo of my championship high school football (soccer) team, photos that used to hang on my vet school locker, pre-Euro european money (francs, lire, deutchmarks, etc), keys to locks that no longer exist, and various other trinkets.

Also, some of the boxes are very dusty, and being cardboard in a humid basement, slightly musty as well, so I'm feeling a little wheezy.

Phoenix is thrilled with all the unpacking and reorganizing. I finally uncovered a bag of cat toys filled with approximately 20 play mice, and now I'm finding them all over the house. Phoenix has been waking me up the past two nights to play fetch around 3-4am (it's hard to sleep when the mouse drops on my face and the cat's batting at it). This morning I woke up and found I was laying on 3 mice that were carried into bed by the cat.

Maybe it's time I hide the remaining mice and finish the projects.

Estimates

Why is it so hard to get estimates for things to be done around the house? We have been trying for at least 3 weeks now to get estimates on concrete edging around the house (to no avail). Oh, well we actually got one estimate, but now the phone number to use for contacting the person is no longer in service. Hmmm......

Tomorrow I will attempt to get people to come out for estimates on fencing. I really don't want to take the dogs on walks after dark when it's cold outside. Hopefully fence estimates will go better.

Red Sauce

Although the carpet in the new house is a shade or two darker than the old house, for all intents and purposes it is still rather white. The number of times the dogs have gotten into the garbage and gotten items out of the trash in the new house can no longer be counted on two hands. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are not content to chew on the disposed items on the tile, but instead drag all the garbage (piece by piece) to the living room to chew on. And for some odd reason, the only things the dogs really go after are those covered in tomato sauce.

Luckily, my steam vac has been able to get the red sauce out of the carpet every time. Thank God for steam vacs.

Ponderings

Ever wonder why, when you have a ton of things to do in a morning, you sleep through your alarm clock?

Hello? Anybody there?

Our phone system at work is broken right now-not a good thing for a national hotline that people rely on. Over the past few weeks (actually since the beginning of summer), the powers that be have been trying new things and we little people suffer the consequences. Lately we have been operating on emergency mode at least once every few days. Basically what this means is instead of the calls going to each person in an order determined by the person that has been free to take a call the longest, ALL phones in the call center ring every time a caller comes in. Imagine, if you will, appproximately 30-40 phones ringing at once, while even while you are on the phone. Also, when in emergency mode, there can only be 3 incoming calls (which then need to be transferred away asap), so during busy times, lots of calls are missed or dropped.

Tonight the ultimate happened. The phones stopped ringing entirely for almost 30 minutes. During the busiest time of night. We had nothing to do but sit and wait. The phones came back up, but the system was only limping along at partial strength.

Makes you wonder where the callers (owners and vets) go/who they contact if we're not available....

Presents

It's always good to get presents. Seems like I'm getting an abundance of them this week. Since moving into our new house, we've been doing some upgrades around the house. It's not that our old stuff is bad, I just want to finally have matching furniture (like a grown-up), and stuff that isn't made out of particle board with a fake wood coating. The old things served their purpose, but now that we have a nice house, I want nice things to go in the house. And slowly but surely I'm acquiring my nice things.

It started with the fridge: we were content to take our fridge from the old house, but the people that purchased our old house wanted it left behind. So we decided to get a new fridge, and not just an equivalent one, but a better one - french doors, bottom freezer, automatic filtered water (those are the biggest upgrades). Oh and it's a little more energy efficient than our old one as well.

Next we ordered new office furniture. The desks from the old office were perfectly functional, but completely mismatched (Chuck's was an ash, and mine was particle board oak colored). We also have a very nice solid oak bookshelf, and a cheap black filing cabinet in the room. In our old house, the office was at the back of the house, and rarely seen or ventured into by guests. In the new house, however, it's right next to the front door, and practically the first room seen by guests. Hence the upgrade.

Since our new house is....well...new, we had to buy blinds too. For all the rooms. So the next thing we ordered was the blinds.

Our new house has a few more rooms than the old one, so that required us to get more bedroom furniture. Luckily we didn't have to pay for new furniture-my parents had a spare set for me in storage, and Chuck's parents gave him a beautifully restored set as well. Of course, the restored set doesn't have a mattress, so we're going to upgrade our bed from a queen size to a king - which means getting a brand new bedroom set (and sheets and comforters, etc) for it (ok, so maybe we didn't need to get new master bedroom furniture, however the current stuff is slightly beat up from the dog chewing the wood as a puppy, and the set is old, as in it was my grandparent's wedding set, then my parents, then handed to me. I'd like to be able to pick out my own furniture rather than get hand-me-downs at this point in my life). Our current mattress is going on the restored set.

Next on the list is a new sofa and loveseat. Our old ones are very broken down, not comfortable, and ugly-so much so that I have to keep slipcovers on them. I haven't yet figured out what to get, so that's going to stay on the list for a while.

This week has been especially good - the restored bedroom furniture and a few extra gifts (all our crystal wine glasses) were delivered by Chuck's parents Wednesday. Thursday the first of the blinds was delivered. Today the remainder of the blinds came in, and the new office furniture is due to arrive at any minute. Since these are the only things we've ordered so far (The fridge was put in 1.5 months ago, and the new bedroom and living room stuff hasn't been purchased yet), I'd say that's pretty good to have it all arrive at once.

Finally

So, all the hard work finally paid off. The old house is done (it's sad to not be able to walk through it or let the dogs run in the back any more). We got our new fridge (which is huge, but I haven't figured out the placement of the shelves yet). The grass at the new house is starting to take root and turn green (what water drought?). I have my cats back again, and the adjustment went well. Now I just need to finish unpacking all the boxes and putting stuff away.

Sold!

Woot!
So now the question is....what do we do for a fridge?