In this Episode: Life is the major suck but really what is new?

*we applied for a loan mod on our first mortgage when (if) it goes through should drop our monthly payments by $400ish dollars. Which is almost enough to pay for daycare. Of course we'll still be in the hole every month, but we'll be using less savings. Course as it takes 30-90 days for the mod paperwork to get all taken care of, we're still looking at 3 months of the same payments - we could fall behind in 3 months and then we wouldn't qualify - how fricken lame is that?

*On that note, of the 13 criteria they evaluate the ability to be modified instead of refinanced - we had 12. I believe we don't need all 13 - the one we didn't meet? Our credit scores are too fricken high. James' is in the 740s and mine is in 787. So because we didn't go out and spend more money then we had and paid our bills on time, it may come back to bite us in the ass, again.

*Thanx to the new credit regulations, even though we have excellent credit, never been late or missed a payment 5 of our credit cards are jacking up the interest to ungodly amounts. Granted we only have the one chase card with any sort of balance and that was the purchase last year of the roof on the fixed 3.99% apr (which they can not mess with thankfully!) We got a loan from James' dad to pay off the AMEX because that one did have about $2900 on it and they were going to jack the rates up to 17%+. So yeah, our cards will definitely be only for ERs - which is really nothing new but pisses me off. WE have to pay for other people's f-ups. I'm just so sick of it.

*Xandman crawls -fast but not in a coordinated locomotion way. He does one set of "crawl" and push/scoot. He can cross a floor in about a minute or so when properly motivated. Two teeth are all the way in. He is standing up (though wobbly and not for long) by himself. He is really smart and laughs and giggles and makes almost all the money worries disappear.

*I keep asking the universe to help us out with the money problem. I'm not asking for the lottery (though I would LOVE it), or some rich relative to die or anything greedy like that. I'm just asking it for get us enough to get us by. I don't want to lose our house.

*James is still part time on call and his ability to collect unemployment when he isn't actively working is soon over. He is also sick and not working today and tomorrow.

*I'll be out again tomorrow after work looking for part-time employment for weekends/nights. I'm so tired I don't know how I'll manage but we can't afford for me not to. This pisses me off to no end. I'm whiny, I know but damn it, I've worked since I was 13 doing all the right things, and taking care of myself and my finances. Now in a matter of one year I've gone from happy pregnant wife to stressed-out worry wort of a mother who has no energy to take care of her home or social life.

*The only positive is I have him, my babyman, my furkids and everyone is healthy (mostly), we have a roof over our heads (for now), we can all eat well, and our house is filled with love. I guess that should be enough to keep my happy, but with the worry it just isn't.

That was As the World Collapses brought to you by the Rabid One.

The other morning as Jamers was stepping out the door to leave for work we heard this loud bang noise coming from the direction of the garage. We ran in to the garage, but nothing looked amiss. Both cats were in the house as were the dogs. Jamers checked outside but he couldn't find anything out there either. He said he would go up in the attic over the garage when he got home.

By the end of the day we had both forgot the noise and I know I didn't think much of it. Nothing appeared to be wrong. This afternoon I went out to the garage and started a load of laundry. I had just remembered that I still needed to bring the mower in from the driveway. I unlock the garage door and begin to pull it up, only it doesn't move. My first thought is, oh, well it has been awhile since I opened the door, maybe I forgot to do something. I double check and no I do have the latching correctly. I try again. and again. and again. The door won't budge. It feels like it's being held down by a ton of bricks.

I call to Jamers and tell him that I can't get the door open. I then remember about the loud bang earlier in the week. He comes out, and tries the door but it won't move for him either. Than he looks up and it becomes far too clear that the noise we heard was the tension wire that holds the spring that pulls the door up was busted. The spring is no where to be immediately found and Jamers pulls the remaining mechanism off the track.

Eventually we find the spring. Jamers gets the door open with brute force. Apparently a garage door without the aide of tension to move it weighs down just like a ton of bricks. He got the door to work and moved the mower and garbage but now we're going to have to get new door hardware in order for me to be able to open it.

I think this is a sign that I need to play the lottery so I can win and we can fix all the little things around here, get the yard all landscaped, and I can stay home with the Xand man.

It is/has snowed. Yet again. As we were out at Home Depot when it started, I was very happy to be driving the 4 wheel drive vehicle. I know we didn't need the Exploder as Forlori would've handled it just fine, but it was an extra level of comfort knowing we had the better snow car.

Yesterday we had comic movie day/night over and noss and manicgiraffe's house. As Jamers and I don't go to the movies, all three, Dark Knight, Ironman, and Incredible Hulk were new to us. I enjoyed Dark Knight although I found Ironman to be more like a real long trailer for the next movie to come. It wasn't bad per se, but I didn't feel that there was enough character/dialog development to really get me into it. As soon as I was starting to get interested in the characters the movie was over. Incredible Hulk, well, I've always been a fan of the Hulk, I watched the TV show quite a bit as a child. This movie was definitely better the The Hulk, and not just because I don't really like Eric Bana, or the fact that the plot in The Hulk was absolutely ridiculous. I am quite fond of Edward Norton, though I can't stand Liv Tyler so that sorta balances out the actors as far as my favoring the movie or not. However, the plot was better and as was pointed out the physics were a little bit more realistic. I know, I know. The whole movie is not exactly realistic, but I never really picked up on the fact that in the first one, Hulk bounced around like a rubber ball - never really interacting much with his surroundings until he needed to do collateral damage. In the new version, he actually interacts in a more realistic way with the scenery, for example actually doing damage if he "jumps" from point A to point B. All in all the afternoon was well spent with friends and yummy dinner was provided.

As Noe has recently repainted several walls in her house, I was inspired to finally get around to changing the hideous downstairs colors myself. We went out to HD this afternoon, taking one of the shams from the downstairs bedroom with us. We scanned in the color we wanted to work with and let the computer help us pick a secondary color. We're going to primer one of the smaller walls and try it out to see how it looks. If we likes, we will paint all the downstairs (bedroom & Entertainment room) the same to create a better flow of energy. Right now the three colors are so different (plus I seriously can't stand the yellow) that it feels very choppy and doesn't flow right.

That will be a project for us to work on (like everything else) before Xander gets here. I'm actually looking forward to it.

Anyways I must toodle off for dinner and another round of Babylon 5. I think we are about halfway through season 2 at this point.

Life has gotten rather good lately. Friday Jamers and I found out that we could get a loan for almost twice of what we've been looking in the range of. It took such a huge weight off my shoulders knowing that I don't have to hold myself to X amount if we find a house that happens to cost X plus a little. We've also began narrowing our search of where we think we would like to buy which is good. I think we've decided that we would rather buy more acreage and live further out in the country than buy closer to town and have less property. Overall I think that we'll be pretty set on what we are looking for when we go to get a realtor. ebegrl (because you had offered :) ) or anybody with house buying knowledge: I have a question: Our mortgage broker told us we should go for a loan about two months before our lease here is up, which would be around March 17th or so. He also told us to start looking at houses now. When should we get set up with a realtor? After we already have the loan in two months or should we sit down and talk to someone know? That is the last worry I have for know and any info anybody out there could provide me would be appreciated in a super fantastic pickle way!

Work is going, well the same. My boss continues to have issues dealing with . . .people and appears to our department to be failing miserably at his job. None of us can figure out why he hasn't been let go yet. Everyday is a bag of mystery as to whether he is going to talk down to us, ask us to do yet another piece of his work, or if he is going to take us out to lunch. I've summed up his ability to deal with his department like this: he is the abusive boyfriend that after he beats the crap out of you is remorseful and buys you things to try to make up for it. After the last incident where he berated me (erroneously so even) he called me into his office a few days later and kissed my ass. I guess he overheard me telling the other ladies in my department that I didn't need this job, that Jamers makes enough money to support us and I don't need to be treated like that. Anyhoo, point is my boss is probably the only truly bad thing about my job :(

My mom sent the money that she is giving us to help with the down payment. We went ahead and put it in the bank on Saturday along with the money James has been saving. Looking at the little printout from the bank I somehow feel rich. I don't think I'll ever see this much money in any account we have ever again and I'm relishing the fact that I can feel semi rich even if only for a short while.

No news on the baby front. I've started using an online webpage that Xine had directed me towards. I haven't been using it very long so I don't think it really has "my" timing right yet. I'm hoping that in the next couple of months it will really help to pinpoint my optimal day for conception and we'll be able to do so. Course it doesn't help that I only see the man on the weekends, but we are making due. As I believe everything happens for a reason, I'm accepting the lack of babage as a good thing. I think that the stress of house buying and moving is enough at one time and I think that once we are all settled into our own home that things will look up on the baby front.

I'm counting my life in milestones right now. Next big one is our trip down to Disneyland at the end of Feb for Alisha & Ryan's wedding. After that we have loan processing, house hunting, house buying, packing, moving, and finally house setting up. I think that the next 6 months of my life are going to be pretty awesome, regardless of problems at work.

I've been working more on my fairie story. Well more in the sense that I'm working on the world, the races, and the history/background of the world. After that is all done I'll be able to begin the actual story. I still haven't decided what age group I'm going to gear it towards which is proving a little difficult. I have some great ideas and pictures in my head though and I'm very excited about it. As Jamers pointed out in the car the other night when I was describing the montage of Firefly clips I wanted to put together to Paper Flowers, I have a lot of creativity that I haven't tapped into yet. Guess the accounting life has pretty muched glass ceilinged it. Well I'm getting ready to shatter that thing and move on up. Oh, I won't even get started on all the things I want to do to my house!

Anyhoo, I've rambled on and on and I'm not quite sure if any of you out there read me since I hardly ever post. I'll be toodling off now onto less interactive things, like watching South Park or looking at homes online or something. I hope you are all faring well, though by briefly scanning your entries I see some of you have very hard times ahead. playmayt I just wanted to let you know I'm sending happy vibes your way lady. I know life is crappy and I can honestly say I understand what you are going though right now or pretty much so. Til next time Pickle's relished ones!

In light of the truck being on the friz, we haven't been able to get to storage to take the last pieces of furniture and boxes over there. It was actually nice for awhile because it pulled me off packing duty and freed up that time for apartment cleaning. Now the apartment is about as clean as I can get it until we leave and the truck is still not working right.

Last night we went to the grocery store and picked up batteries for the smoke detector. The thing hasn't had a battery for as long as I can remember. In fact, I'm not sure it ever had a battery since I've lived there. Anyhoo, we get home and I plunk the new battery in and the thing starts beeping and beeping and beeping and the cats are cringing, so I pull the battery out and say, "Obviously this thing is broken."

I give my aunt a call and let her know that they will need to get a new one. We speak about things going on and then she asks (as a double check) if they can paint the apartment when we are up in Portland. I had told them before that the majority of our stuff will be in storage by then, but that was before the truck broke. I relayed the information to her that there is still furniture in the apartment, she said that is okay, she isn't worried about the furniture. Thankfully!

A short while later, mom gives me a call. I hardly get to talk to her anymore since she started her job. She works the graveyard shift and her days off vary every week. It sucks though because even more rarely do I get to see her, and soon I won't have the ability to just drive 5 minutes down the highway and visit. I tell her about the few things I still want to get into storage and the truck situation. She offered up her car. She sleeps during the day anyhow, so it is of no loss to her if I borrow it in the afternoons and then bring it back later in the evening. I'm so stoked!

So tonight since the Star Wars game is not going to happen, I'll drive on over there, pick up her car and then run stuff over to storage. I'm so relieved. I'll be able to put most of the stuff in storage today and then I'll feel better when my aunt and uncle come over to paint. I don't want it to be an inconvience to them to have to move stuff. I think all that will be left is the cat tower, tv/tv stand, computer desk, couch, coffee table, and bookcase. intrepid_glory is gonna take the bookcase, couch and tv stand, I'm just not sure when.

Lisha, do you think you guys could take the bookcase sometime in the next week? If you could that would be awesome. That way when Mike and Sue come over to paint it would be that much easier. If not that is okay too, I'm sure they can pull it off the wall for a spell.

Anyhoo, that is what I have to look forward to tonight. Ohhhhh! I redid my resume last night and Jamers said it was gold, whatever that means. I checked Jobdango and found one job that I was excited about. After much reworking of my cover letter, I went ahead and emailed off my application for that job. I'll check again tonight and see if anything new and eye catching has landed on jobdango.

I hope you all have a great day.

To find out why, go to angille's entry from today.

In fact, I'm so angry (still) that I couldn't eat dinner last night, breakfast this morning, and I don't think I'll be eating at lunch today either. On top of that, add housing nightmares to last night and I'm a raving zombie of pain.

We now have an address and a place to live in Portland, Beaverton to be exact! I'm sooooooo happy! Sid here in the office said, yeah, but do you have a job? I laughed at him, I said, "I'm not worried about a job!" So yeah! I'm just bouncing here in my chair. I now have all this energy that I need to expend.

Jamers has handled the whole thing so well. I really counted on him to get it all worked out and he did. I'm so thankful to have such a loving sweet husband. And he has two interviews scheduled for our mid-May trip up there. Rock on.

So effective June 2006 the Pickle will be relishing life in Portland!

was fantabulous! Saturday night after all the V crap, James, Annie and I headed down to LaFondue for dinner. Annie enjoyed herself as did James and I. Dinner was yummy and fun and that was that.

Sunday I slept in and I just couldn't wake up. Not quite sure why, but it sucked. I had cleaning to do after all. Once I got up, around 10:30 or so, I ripped the sheets off the bed and started laundry. In all I got four loads done, and that was the smallest of what I did. I cleaned the window in the living room, the outside windows in the kitchen and living room, the four screens off the kitchen and living room windows, washed three of the four light fixtures in the house, cleaned spots off the ceiling in the bedroom, cleaned the closet doors in the bedroom, washed the mold off the closet in the bedroom, and finished off the kitchen ceiling and most of the kitchen walls. It may not sound too impressive, but I think I did a rather excellent job of cleaning up the house.

Jamers ran game whilst I was cleaning and whatnot. After they wrapped up, we jumped in the car and headed over to our friend Jim's house where he ran the Call of Cuthulu game. We ended that by 8:30 and were home by 9. I was soooo tired so we climbed into bed by 9:30. Around 10ish we turned out the light and James fell asleep and I lay there, awake. Awake cause even though I was exhausted, my belly was all out of whack. We had Vallarta for dinner, and I had been drinking water with lemon juice all day. Way too much acid for Pickle's belly. Velvet had climbed onto the bed as did Bazzy. I had all three of my loves laying there sleeping while I tossed and turned. Eventually, Baz got sick of me moving and he got up, and wouldn't come back to sleep.

Hours passed and my stomache would not let me rest. I did get to sleep, around 2:30. I got up at 6:30, just like I'm supposed to. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I guess I can get by on either four hours of sleep or I need eight in order to be okay, in where in the middle and I just can't do it.

Tonight I plan on finishing off the initial kitchen cleaning, only one little area around the sink/water heater/stove left to clean and the floor! W00ty woo Batman! That will probably be all I clean tonight, unless I get adventurous with the other walls/ceilings.

That was that. Toodlie oodles

1) My lj friend of yesterday, the one with the angry comments, he has gone friends only. Which would be cool and all, but he removed me as well and I can't figure out why. Makes me feel pooplins.

2) We have one of those fax/printer/scanner/copier machines here at work. It was in the middle of printing my check batch, 35 or so checks. About 2/3 of the way in, it receives a fax, and instead of storing it into memory until the check batch is done, it printed the fax on one of the checks. The remaining 1/3 were one check off. I've never seen this happen. The check batch gets sent to the printer in one lump sum, so how the hey could that have happened? That too makes me feel pooplins, although Christine didn't care and told me to just keep the checks as is.

3) Tweed should be getting our application fee any time now. I'm so excited. Looking at the pics of the house, it looks like it is a little more dark than I would've liked, but I'm not complaining. It is quite large and for a year or so we can put up with it. This makes me happy!

4) I've decided based on the pics that we saw and the fact that brand new carpet is getting laid down as I type this, we need to get area rugs. I want one under the dinning room table (we have one now) and one under the couch/coffee table area. That way we can eat without my anal retentiveness rearing it's ugly head. I think our house will also be no shoes inside. That way the carpets stay cleaner, and well, I've watched way too much Fruits Basket. They have "house" shoes, "school" shoes, and outside shoes. I still find that odd, but I'm sure it helps to keep the house nice. So money will need to be spent on rugs, once we get there, but I'll get cool rugs and they will add flare to the house. This makes me happy.

5) Mr. Sunshine is out again today and the office is rather quite. I really want to be out on a walk right now, but it isn't going to happen. However, last night we did get some walking around town in with Lila. It was such a loverly night. I went outide around 9:30 and I didn't get cold. We slept with some of the windows opened. I can't even remember the last time that happened. This made me happy.

6) The house is getting a walk through from the real estate agent in about 15 minutes. It brings the house one step closer to leaving our family. I was thinking about granny again last night and couldn't help but be sad. It would've been so much easier to let the house go if she were still alive. That and I was also thinking, that at least will be in a completely different state and out of town when the new person/people move in. At least that was a comfort, but overall feelings of the pooplins.

7) I love Korn. They are playing on the radio and I just had to put that out there.

Toodles everyone. Hope this day finds you happy and healthy.

BTW, does anyone like my new icon? Jamers made it for me last night after I made him watch the utter WTF that is David Hasselhoff singing Hooked on a Feeling.

not related to assholes, good news on the house hunt. Tweed told angille yesterday to go ahead and send up the application fee. Apparently, he liked what he saw on the app, and is moving forward with doing credit and rental checks. I went ahead and fedEx the payment, along with a rental reference from our current landlords to him. He should get it tomorrow. Hopefully, we'll know within the next week or so if we get the awesomeness that is our potential new rental.

Assuming we do get it, we've now got a weekend to spend when we go visit that won't be for house hunting. I would say, "let's fit in more interviews." but somehow I don't see most job interviews happening on a weekend.

My sister is going to be going up with us to pop's house on Saturday. I've invited her to dinner with us, but I don't yet know if we'll be able to get a reservation or not. I've got to call after 3 to see.

Oh, last night in our "shopping" our way to see Ryan and intrepid_glory we stopped at the mall to see if Bablyon 5, Season 2 was in yet, it wasn't. However, Sam Goody across the way was having a going out of business sale. A sale to the tune of all DVDs $5.99 or less. Whoopee! So there wasn't a great selection left, but who could resist such classics as Julius Ceasar starring Charlton Heston? Or White Zombie with Bela Legosi? Anyhow, we ended up with 9 DVDs for $35. Not that big a deal you say? Howsa bout the fact that one of those nine boxes has like 12 cheesey horror movies, another four, etc. I figure we got close to 25 or so movies last night! noss, we're going to have quite the cheese fest once we get up there chicky!

Anyhow, now that I'm back to calm and not hating, I hope all you great peeps have a loverly day.

Did I mention that we have a beautiful, glorious, warm sunny day today? I could get used to this, just in time to move up to the rain.

It was beautiful this morning, and now the fog-like clouds have returned. No sun to be seen. I'm so very bored here at work. Christine couldn't come in today, and I've done all the work I can conceive of to do. Right now I'm shredding piles o'paper, but that too will come to an end.

Jamers faxed over the rental application today. So far I haven't heard anything, I'm thinking that is a bad sign. Jamers will probably say that not hearing isn't necessarily bad, but I would think that if he wanted to go the next step, he would call us and tell us to send the application fee. My credit is outstanding and the only thing I can think of that would be a detereant is the fact that we don't yet have jobs. I really hope that won't count against us.

My aunt and uncle went to our house today to walk the termite guy through. They are also having a gent look at the bathroom problem to see how much/what can be done about it. Last night I went through and cleaned the walls and the ceiling. It looked so much better than it had, but it still needs work. I'm finding that I do better cleaning the apartment right now when I do different parts of different rooms instead of one sweeping "bathroom" or "kitchen" cleaning. Not sure why this is other than the fact that if I target a specific thing, windows for example, I can see after a light cleaning just how much work I'll have to put into it. I think I'll just keep doing bits and pieces up until the last week or so. Then I'll tear through the serious cleaning, one room at a time. That way when we move the stuff into the Uhaul, I'll only have to do light cleaning and I'll be done.

I still have to call the credit cards, banks, and other miscell bill type peeps to set up forwarding. I don't trust the USPS to do anything correctly. I still receive mail for someone who has never even lived in my apartment. I'm hoping that if . . . er, when...when we get the house I'll be able to start calling those places by the end of this month.

Furkids go in for the leukimea booster shot on the 29th. We're going to go see my dad on Saturday. It'll be nice to visit briefly, and we'll go to Verizon and get my cell phone off my dad's plan. That way I'll be able to switch the number to a Portland number and be on my way. Sadly, as of late, Alamahombre (my cellphone) has been acting up. His banner says "Verizon" instead of his name. I've checked the settings, and it is there to use his name, but the phone won't display it. This last weekend I kept getting distortion when using the phone. Sounded like I was underwater, which didn't help when we were calling people to come pick us up when the truck broke down.

I dropped off the drapes yesterday at the dry cleaners. They'll take a week to clean. Am I cleaning them too early? I can't imagine that they will be all cacka by the end of May.

I don't have to worry about the carpets, they're getting replaced thankfully.

That is about all I can think of to take care of when leaving the apartment. Does anybody who is still reading this have any tips or hints or can you think of anything I've missed? I would like to leave the apartment in spectacular shape. It is what I would've done for granny afterall.

Well I babble on and the shredding calls. Toodles all!

Things on my mind:

Why does it have to be so fricken sunny and nice on days when I have to work? We're supposed to see Lila tonight, so maybe we can walk down on the beach this evening. That would be loverly.

I really, really want us to get this place we're filling out the app for. It is a nice 1600 sq ft, 3 bed, 2bath(+)? in a nicer more secluded part of Beaverton. The rent is a little higher than we were looking for, but the area, yardage, and fact that it has a 25 ft long walk in closet make it well worth it. This makes me happy.

I'm bored here at work. There is nothing else for me to do. I'm sure in a few months when I've got a job up in Portland, I'll be longing for these days of slowness. That thought actually makes me happy.

One of the last emails I received prior to pulling my resume off the internet was from a placement agency. When I emailed the lady to let her know that I wouldn't be looking to begin working until the second week in June, she replied to let her know if she could help in the future. I'm thinking I'm gonna call her and schedule a generic interview for the 15th of May. I can't hurt can it? I'm sure that she'll be able to line something up for me starting that second week in June. Maybe I'll call her in a little bit. That thought makes me happy as well.

In speaking with my mom yesterday, she is really gung-ho about moving to Portland. She said the only thing is my sister has to want to go. My plan was already to get my sister to see as much and experience as much of Portland as possible when she rides up with me for the move. She'll be staying with us the first week. She keeps thinking that when she is there, we'll be hanging out with our friends, or working, or doing something that will force us to leave her at the house by herself. I keep trying to get it through to her that I want her to spend time with me. That is why I invited her up there. I've wanted to get her up there all along, and now that my mom has given me the "secret" talk to get my sis interested enough that she wants to move too, I'm all jazzled up about it. I may get them up there yet!

My cousin Jeff who I saw yesterday at Easter dinner, is thinking about moving up to Portland as well. He has had a couple of friends move up there. That is so fricken cool! I would love to have him up there as well. We have completely different lifestyles, but I love him so much. I told him, should he want to come up and scope it out, once we have a house to live in, he is more than welcome to come and stay with us.

We got our fed tax money already. It is really going to help for the next couple of months until we're both employed.

The truck is dead at Jamers work. His dad thinks it is the distributor cap. I think we could afford to drop up to a couple hundred on it to keep it alive. Anything more than that and it probably wouldn't be worth it. James looked up the blue book for it, $600, so yeah, a couple hundred is about the limit to fix it.

Anyhoo, I'll toodle off now. I hope this loverly day finds all of you well.

That has been our day. It started last night with going down to the Boardwalk to turn in the 3000+ tickets I've been hording for the last decade and get some craptastic prizes. The little dude behind the counter took our tickets for a movie (Bridget Jones' Diary - I had it before, lent it to someone and it never came home. I don't know who I lent it to and it has been gone many years.) Now there is a sign up on the case where the movie was that said that you must make arrangements in advance to obtain any of the wonderous items behind the glass. I asked the little dude about the sign, and he said, "Oh. I'll just call my supervisor and they can come down and get it for you." So he takes the majority of our tickets, pages a manager, and shreds our tickets. We puruse the rest of the items to use up the rest of the tickets. While we pace back and forth, lil dudelin pages a supervisor several times. We finally decide on something for my sister and a couple little rubber duckies. Finally dude tells us that we should come back in the morning. I'm like, well, you already took and shredded our tickets. How are we to get the movie tomorrow? After about ten minutes of Jamers and I conviencing both dude and his coworker that we need something signed, they sign a paper and we head on home.

This morning we walked back down there (we got two nice walks in in two days!) and little dude was working. He instantly remembered us and called a super, who came down and gave us our movie! W00t! We head home and shortly thereafter, momma Donna shows up. We had a loverly time with her and went to Hindquarter for lunch. (One less restaurant off my list) She left around four I think, and James and I walked downtown to get some cleaning supplies.

*Insert "Meanwhile . . ." We have quite a few houses for our Portland peeps to scout out for us. Bryan and Noe were nice enough to take time out of their home buying search this weekend, to rental house search for us. They took their digital and took pics for us of the two places they saw today. They emailed them to us, rather promptly:), and we instantly agreed that the second house they looked at is the one we want.

When we got back from Longs, Jamers gave the guy who we are talking to about the house a call. He told the guy, who I shall call Tweed, for no apparent reason, that we were extremely interested in the house and would like to fill out a rental application. Tweed and Jamers talked about things and Tweed said he would go to the office to fax a rental application to Jamer's work. After I had had enough cleaning for one day, we decided to head out to New Leaf to spend the remaining gift card I got for work for Xmas and to head to his work to pick up the rental app. I suggest we take the truck instead of Forlori. It is nice to not drive all the time. We were both soooooo jazzed. I'm excited that we may get a house we both really like and at the same time, worried that the Tweed won't want to rent to us for whatever reason.

We take off and after the first stop at New Leaf on Mission, we head towards James' work. He goes in and checks, no fax. Otay, so we decide to head on over to New Leaf in Capitola to get what we were looking for. We get not but three blocks away and the truck starts going all wonky, again. James pulls over and after playing around for 30 seconds, decides to continue on. We round the corner after stopping and then the truck goes . . . dead. No noise, nothing. He pulls it over to the side of the road in front of somebody's house.

He does the normal "fix" when the truck goes plop, but it doesn't work. He calls his dad and tries again, but no use . . .the truck is dead. I call AAA and the give us a thirty minute window for the tow truck guy. We both then start trying to call people we know, with cars, that could give us a lift home from James' work. Do you know how difficult it is to reach people, even on cell phones on a Saturday night? Nigh near impossible. Finally I got ahold of one of my uncles, Uncle Rich, and he came over and picked us up when the tow guy was done towing the truck. He gave us a lift home and here we are.

The funny thing is, since we had the truck towed to Jamers work, we were in the parking lot and Tweed called. He said he was faxing over the app. James went in and grabbed it and I was trying to fill it out 20 mintues ago, but it is so blurry from faxing, that I can't read what it is asking for half the time. We'll have to call Tweed tomorrow and see if the is a better way to fill this out for him.

That was our day. It wrapped up rather nicely, almost like a tv show really. Now I'm sitting here drinking alcohol concoctions to use up what alcohol we have here before we move. Tomorrow I'll be heading over to my aunt's house for Easter whilst the Jamers stays here and runs game. It will probably be my last Easter dinner with my family and that is sad. Oh well, hopefully I'll get some more of them up our way soon enough.

So toodles all! Here's to wishing that tomorrow goes a little bit smoother than the last two days.

With nary a cloud in the sky! What a wonderful day indeed! It looks like we may have an in for the house we want unless the one couple that got a chance to look at it wants it. They took it off craigslist, as the house was not in the shape they feel comfortable showing it in. The owner told James that they are going to wait until the other couple moves out and they've fixed it back into good shape before they rent it out. They are looking to push back the rent date. Originally they were looking to get it rented by May 5, now they've pushed it to May 15th. We are flying up there May 12th in the evening, and flying back May 15th in the afternoon. Of course, we haven't bothered to check with our Portland Peeps yet about crashing at houses, but we're hoping it will be cool with them.

The plan is to go up, check out rentals on the weekend, and schedule interviews for that Monday, the 15th. The only snafu is it falls on Mother's day weekend, but my mom is okay with it and I'm sure Momma Donna will understand. In any case that gives me a month to step back from my resume and cover letters and revamp them so that I can get interviews on that Monday. Keeping my fingers crossed . . . .

That is all. I wish we didn't have gaming today. I want to to outside and soak up the sun. Who knows? Maybe Duane will cancel? Toodles, all.

I've removed my resume from Monster, hotjobs, and careerbuilder. They haven't produced anything remotely viable in the last, what, 2 or 3 months? I think I have to accept the fact that I'm just not that interesting on paper to warrant calls for interviews.

The house thing is all wacky now, so I don't know what is happening there either.

The boys are taking a gent out to lunch today that Matt wants to have do my job. This is making me even more depressed. I don't have a new job. I don't even have people (other than temp agencies) interested in me. Now I have to watch somebody else get this most amazing job and sit here and be all happy lala when there is nothing up ahead for me.

I guess I'll go eat my salad now.

rentals not to buy, at least not yet. I looked on craigslist again this morning/afternoon. Geez louise there sure are a lot of houses for rent up in Portland as well as apartments. I'm feeling pretty confident that even if we get stuck living somewhere that isn't our ideal, things will still be okay. I've sent some initial emails out and tonight I plan on going through and doing the dreaded calling. Why dreaded you ask? Well, quite simply put, I've never done this before, like ever! I'm so out of my element, out of my comfort zone. I mean, give me a vendor to call and tell we aren't paying them this week, I can handle it no problem. Give me an employee who needs me to call the insurance administrators to find out why some one has been dropped, I've got it covered. Ask me to call someone in another state about a house I can't even look at, and I don't even know where to begin. What do I ask? Most of the questions I would have are in the ads, other than physically looking at the place. I'm mostly concerned with number of bedrooms, square footage, is it okay to have cats? Those are the questions I have. Let me play the part of damsel in distress, hmmm (clears throat), "Oh won't somebody out there tell me what I should ask about when I call these people? I'm so naive and innocent(hahahaha) I need help!"

Can anybody heed this call?