Wow, it's been awhile since I've updated. That's what moving will do to ya!
Last week we bribed our friends with pizza and beer to help us move our furniture to our house. Funny, the week before it was cold, the week after there's a cold front so it was cold, but on our moving day weekend, it had to be swelteringly hot with tons of humidity.... I felt really bad for the guys doing the heavy lifting. The promise of beer was helping to motivate!
Well, today, Whateley and I grabbed the last of the stuff from the apartment, cleaned the best we could, and turned in all our keys. Well, actually, since it was late, we put them in an envelope and dropped them in the night slot. I hope that'll be okay enough for them.
Anyway, with that, that is the last remnant of our apartment life, and we are fully moved in to our beautiful house. There soooo much work ahead of us, though. We've been unpacking slowly, getting things organized. It's weird having an entire house to fill with our stuff. Before our last apartment (when I had two rooms, the bedroom and living room), I've only had one room for all my crap. But now... storage galore!!! And yes, there will be pictures coming, I swear!
Our #1 concern finally got settled today. We hooked up the TiVO and updated it with the new cable company info, and it's all settled and happily recording away. Last night we took care of the #2 concern, and got the cable modem all set up. We can play WoW at home now!
It's been exhausting the past few weeks, and after we're all settled, we need a vacation. And as we head in to the wettest month of the year for Texas, it's approaching our one-year-anniversary of our move to Austin. Amazing, innit?
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Okay, something in the universe is preventing us from using our dryer. I swear it must be the fates conspiring to keep that dryer from ever being turned on, and possible destroying two-thirds of the universe.
After we got our new dryer delivered, the delivery guy said, ooh, looks like the socket's wrong, we can't plug the dryer in. But he suggested going to Home Depot and just getting the correct socket and replacing it ourselves.
So we went and got the socket and the next day, Whateley tried to install it. He made sure to turn off all the circuits that said "Washer" and "Dryer" though oddly enough, there was no "Main" breaker for us to flip. But we figured, that was enough. We even bought a gadget to measure volts or amps or whatever the heck it was, and Whateley poked those prong everywhere on that socket and the wiring and there was no juice... or so we thought.
Cut to ten minutes later, I see a bright flash and loud bang... and then Whateley saying in a alarmed tone, "Whoa."
Apparently, as he was trying to pry the plug off its wires, his screwdriver came into contact with one wire and then the other. There was still some juice in those wires, it seems, and when the circuit connected... and let's just say it left a burn mark... on the frickin' screwdriver! It burned in between where the two wires touched the screwdriver shaft. That's metal, we're talking about here.
Anyway, since we didn't want Whateley accidentally dying by having 220 volts (and however many amps) shot through his body, we decided to call an electrician to handle replacing the plug.
... Ay ya ya ya yaaaaa....
How hard is it to get an electrician to come to your house? Apparently pretty difficult.
Since this happened Tuesday night, we stayed up until Wednesday morning to call electricians to see if they can come that day. Many were not available, but I got one that was fairly close by, who, when asked if he could come by at 4 pm, said he would. Now, maybe I should've gotten the clue when he didn't ask for my name or a phone number he could reach me by. But 4 pm came and went, and by the time 6:30 rolled around, we figured he was not going to show. I left at least two messages on his machine, and I haven't heard from him since. Yeah, never gonna call him again.
So I then called a rather big company to schedule an electrician, even if it was the next day. Which I did. I even called out sick at work so I could be there.
The window was from 5 to 8 pm. I was dead tired and fell asleep at our house, expecting my cell phone to ring to wake me up. Come 7:30, I'm awake and no calls, and I'm paranoid thinking they came, knocked on the door, I didn't wake up, and they left. So I called the company to see what was going on.
The lady on the phone was very nice, told me I was still on the list, and put me on hold while we found out where the guy was. Ten minutes later, she come back on, apologizes profusely, and says they had me under "air conditioning" instead of "electrical" work, and they didn't have anyone qualified to come do our work that day.
Let me just say... I was not happy.
She re-scheduled me for tomorrow morning, but I don't think she realizes what a hassle that's going to be. For three days now, we've had to stay up at least two hours past bedtime and/or wake up three hours early to handle getting people to our house to work on it. I specifically took the day off so I could meet this electrician for what would most likely be a five-minute job.
And yet... we couldn't get this done and over with, we're going to have to get up four-and-a-half-hours earlier than usual, just to meet up with an electrician for a five-minute job.
This world hates shift-workers. Especially those that work swing or nights. I know that company didn't do it on purpose, and mistakes happen, but their little mistake is going to make an already sleep-deprived, stressful week even worse. And they can offer to make it as easy on us as possible but the only way they're going to do that is if they can send someone at 4 o'clock in the morning, and no company would ever do that.
And I'm absolutely sick of people thinking we're lazy because we sleep during the day due to our work schedule. We haven't been able to sleep more than five hours straight every night for the past three days! Let's see if you can function on that kind of sleep! What, you think we should conform to your "non-lazy" schedule and sleep only three hours each night so we can be up by 8 am?
After we got our new dryer delivered, the delivery guy said, ooh, looks like the socket's wrong, we can't plug the dryer in. But he suggested going to Home Depot and just getting the correct socket and replacing it ourselves.
So we went and got the socket and the next day, Whateley tried to install it. He made sure to turn off all the circuits that said "Washer" and "Dryer" though oddly enough, there was no "Main" breaker for us to flip. But we figured, that was enough. We even bought a gadget to measure volts or amps or whatever the heck it was, and Whateley poked those prong everywhere on that socket and the wiring and there was no juice... or so we thought.
Cut to ten minutes later, I see a bright flash and loud bang... and then Whateley saying in a alarmed tone, "Whoa."
Apparently, as he was trying to pry the plug off its wires, his screwdriver came into contact with one wire and then the other. There was still some juice in those wires, it seems, and when the circuit connected... and let's just say it left a burn mark... on the frickin' screwdriver! It burned in between where the two wires touched the screwdriver shaft. That's metal, we're talking about here.
Anyway, since we didn't want Whateley accidentally dying by having 220 volts (and however many amps) shot through his body, we decided to call an electrician to handle replacing the plug.
... Ay ya ya ya yaaaaa....
How hard is it to get an electrician to come to your house? Apparently pretty difficult.
Since this happened Tuesday night, we stayed up until Wednesday morning to call electricians to see if they can come that day. Many were not available, but I got one that was fairly close by, who, when asked if he could come by at 4 pm, said he would. Now, maybe I should've gotten the clue when he didn't ask for my name or a phone number he could reach me by. But 4 pm came and went, and by the time 6:30 rolled around, we figured he was not going to show. I left at least two messages on his machine, and I haven't heard from him since. Yeah, never gonna call him again.
So I then called a rather big company to schedule an electrician, even if it was the next day. Which I did. I even called out sick at work so I could be there.
The window was from 5 to 8 pm. I was dead tired and fell asleep at our house, expecting my cell phone to ring to wake me up. Come 7:30, I'm awake and no calls, and I'm paranoid thinking they came, knocked on the door, I didn't wake up, and they left. So I called the company to see what was going on.
The lady on the phone was very nice, told me I was still on the list, and put me on hold while we found out where the guy was. Ten minutes later, she come back on, apologizes profusely, and says they had me under "air conditioning" instead of "electrical" work, and they didn't have anyone qualified to come do our work that day.
Let me just say... I was not happy.
She re-scheduled me for tomorrow morning, but I don't think she realizes what a hassle that's going to be. For three days now, we've had to stay up at least two hours past bedtime and/or wake up three hours early to handle getting people to our house to work on it. I specifically took the day off so I could meet this electrician for what would most likely be a five-minute job.
And yet... we couldn't get this done and over with, we're going to have to get up four-and-a-half-hours earlier than usual, just to meet up with an electrician for a five-minute job.
This world hates shift-workers. Especially those that work swing or nights. I know that company didn't do it on purpose, and mistakes happen, but their little mistake is going to make an already sleep-deprived, stressful week even worse. And they can offer to make it as easy on us as possible but the only way they're going to do that is if they can send someone at 4 o'clock in the morning, and no company would ever do that.
And I'm absolutely sick of people thinking we're lazy because we sleep during the day due to our work schedule. We haven't been able to sleep more than five hours straight every night for the past three days! Let's see if you can function on that kind of sleep! What, you think we should conform to your "non-lazy" schedule and sleep only three hours each night so we can be up by 8 am?
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Boy, owning a house is a lot more work than you figure. The seller left a fancy vacuum cleaner behind, and we thought, ka-ching, free vacuum! Well, it turns out, everything he left behind, he did for a reason. Mainly, the vacuum was broken.
Basically, the seller must have bumped the vacuum against something hard and broke one of the sides. That dislodged the brush enough so that it wouldn't turn. So essentially, it became a glorified dust buster since only the attachments work. But I was able to use it to clean the floor moldings and suck up all the cobwebs and dead bugs. But those darn floor moldings.... How often should you vacuum them anyway? There are a lot of moldings in that house. It would take hours out of the week if I have to do it every week. There's a reason why I like to enforce the no-shoes-in-the-house rule. Well, besides me being Asian, I'm also lazy and it keeps dirt and dust from being tracked in the house and requires less frequent vacuuming.
The TV the seller left... well, it's not in perfect condition, either. It's got a built-in DVD player, but that is broken. He did, however, leave a regular DVD player which does work, so we hooked that up to the TV to watch some movies while we worked.
Anyway, it's making us realize that all the stuff he left behind... he did it on purpose and he didn't really "forget" anything. Which is making us wonder... why are we going to give any of it back if or when he contacts us about it?
Basically, the seller must have bumped the vacuum against something hard and broke one of the sides. That dislodged the brush enough so that it wouldn't turn. So essentially, it became a glorified dust buster since only the attachments work. But I was able to use it to clean the floor moldings and suck up all the cobwebs and dead bugs. But those darn floor moldings.... How often should you vacuum them anyway? There are a lot of moldings in that house. It would take hours out of the week if I have to do it every week. There's a reason why I like to enforce the no-shoes-in-the-house rule. Well, besides me being Asian, I'm also lazy and it keeps dirt and dust from being tracked in the house and requires less frequent vacuuming.
The TV the seller left... well, it's not in perfect condition, either. It's got a built-in DVD player, but that is broken. He did, however, leave a regular DVD player which does work, so we hooked that up to the TV to watch some movies while we worked.
Anyway, it's making us realize that all the stuff he left behind... he did it on purpose and he didn't really "forget" anything. Which is making us wonder... why are we going to give any of it back if or when he contacts us about it?
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
It seems like there's a never-ending list of things to do when moving into a house of your very own. We've been taking boxes over there, but we're realizing that we've got less than month left to completely move out of our apartment. The thing that's been holding us up is partly due to my OCD. (I don't really have OCD, just obsessive tendencies. I don't want to offend anyone with actual OCD.)
Anyway, I don't want to move furniture in until we've got the carpet thoroughly vacuumed and shampooed. But I don't want to shampoo the carpet until the tile has already been laid. And we're just getting our rooms measured in about 6 hours (so I better go to bed!), and it might take another week or two to schedule the workers to come and lay the tile. Meanwhile, I really want to clean up the pantry/laundry room, but things have been rather slow-going.
Meanwhile, we're trying to do all this without taking any time off work. And we're still trying to hold game night once a week. We might have to put game nights on hold in a couple of weeks if we keep going at the pace we're going.
Argh. If you're of the prayerly-persuasion, please throw some heavenly prayers our way. Thanks.
Anyway, I don't want to move furniture in until we've got the carpet thoroughly vacuumed and shampooed. But I don't want to shampoo the carpet until the tile has already been laid. And we're just getting our rooms measured in about 6 hours (so I better go to bed!), and it might take another week or two to schedule the workers to come and lay the tile. Meanwhile, I really want to clean up the pantry/laundry room, but things have been rather slow-going.
Meanwhile, we're trying to do all this without taking any time off work. And we're still trying to hold game night once a week. We might have to put game nights on hold in a couple of weeks if we keep going at the pace we're going.
Argh. If you're of the prayerly-persuasion, please throw some heavenly prayers our way. Thanks.
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