it's the little things...

Here's to being whoever you want to be...

Yes, feeling torn. Here's the house update...maybe it could become a weekly thing so that y'all suffer less. Meanwhile, it will remain pretty much the only thing I think about. I have a realtor. She was referred by friends (thanks) and I really like her. We spoke on the phone on Friday (twice and for quite awhile). She's very helpful and explains lots of things that I never even would have known to ask about. When I asked her questions she either answered them or said she would have to do some research on that. She actually did do some research. When I sent her two other houses I was curious about she promptly gave feedback, both positive and negative and all practical and relevant. Since I'm still not sure about the house that you've all seen, I wanted her to go with me to see it. And I took the brother along. (As an aside, it's weird to be a fairly goal-oriented person who is now in the position of just wanting to be told what to do, what decision ...

So, yeah, I've been awake for 4 hours. I woke up during that last band of storms--the one that was followed by these gloriously lower temperatures--and I couldn't fall back asleep. After about an hour I figured if I was up already I might as well get some work done. Now, at not-quite-8:00, my workday is nearly halfway over. I really do need to start a list about why my job is great. This would be one of them. That if I can't sleep (which has never happened before), I can drag myself (PJs and all) the few feet to my office. If, for some reason, I do get tired later, I can nap without guilt because I know probably not many people were at work at 5am reading some boring crap and sending e-mails. That's actually why I started working this morning--the boring crap. I thought that if anything would make me want to go back to sleep that would be it. But it didn't. The upside is that, again, not many people are reading the boring crap at 5am and the program works ...

6:45 am - Wake up. 7:00 am - Get out of hotel bed. Look outside and realize it is very dark. Time change is coming, as is bad weather. Think that flights will probably be delayed today. 7:45 am - Look for Starbucks online. 8:00 am - Get stuck in traffic even though hotel to Starbucks to office should be very short trips. 8:15 am - Use Starbucks Drive-Thru because it is pouring. Think how annoying the car in front of me is because woman does not turn off wipers causing water pouring off Starbucks' roof to fling directly at barrista. 8:16 am - Turn off wipers. 8:30 am - Make it to office. Still raining. 11:30 am - Tired of snarky comments written in notes by employee here. Decide to be a b!+ch right back and point out every little thing she did wrong. 11:31 am - Annoyed at employee using ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME. Why do people not know this means they are yelling? Maybe she does know... 1:15 pm - Finished with work. Go talk to employee before heading to the airport...

A little more of a break before getting back to house stuff. Here's the post I've been delaying. I got this e-mail from a friend of mine who was around during these times. Thought I'd share. Walk with me down... Let's go back... Before the Internet or PC or the MAC. Before semi-automatics and crack. Before Playstation, SEGA, Super Nintendo, even before Atari. Before cell phones, CD's, DVD's, voicemail and e-mail... Way, way, way back... I'm talkin' bout - Hide and seek at dusk - Red light, Green light - Red Rover, Red Rover... - Playing kickball & dodgeball until the first...no...second...no...third street light came on - Ring around the Rosie - London Bridge - Hot potato - Hop Scotch - Jump rope - Duck...duck...GOOSE!!! - YOU'RE IT!! - Parents stood on the front porch and yelled (or whistled) for you to come home (no pagers or cell phones) - Mother May I? - Hula Hoops - Seeing shapes in the clouds - The sound of crickets - Running throu...

Ok, cheesy new poll to pass some time and give us all a little break from the house stuff. (Note--It's not my picture. Still can't post any of those as the personal computer is still dead.) No one was very interested in Hal. No one cared why I loved him. It was because of all those things... Enjoy the cool weather!

Ok, so I've decided I just really want the house. That the stand-in real estate agent just sucks. Why should I listen to one stranger's opinion when he doesn't even know the neighborhood I'm talking about or the geography of the area despite his 20 years of experience? And, after painting his grim little picture, doesn't even follow-up. Tomorrow I'm going to run up to my bank to see if they have a mortgage person there. If not, I'll call the woman in town who can help me get pre-approved. Then I'll shop around...just want to have that pre-approval. Thanks to some of my fabulous peeps (new and old), I now feel like I have some direction in which to move. I've never done this before, it's scary, it's not something I want to learn as I go along (because I've never been that kind of person), and all big events make me crazily emotional (because even the happy things are tinged with sadness because Mom isn't there). I'm not apol...

***WARNING: If you do not want to be subjected to sad whining, please read only the information in bold.*** That's what I'm supposed to be doing--regrouping. I'm supposed to say I didn't want that house anyway. That surely there were tons of things wrong with it. That it just wasn't meant to be. That all feels like bull$h!t right now. I love that house. I think it should be my house. I saw it and didn't want to look around for another one. I still don't really. I want to sit on the couch watching the Project Runway finale (finally!) and cry a little with them because their dreams are coming true. And maybe eat some sweets... It sucks. The woman who owns the house only bought it 2 1/2 years ago for probably more than she should have. That pretty much translates into cjh won't be able to afford it. Still. Can't afford it. The other houses like that around here--that could possibly go on the market if all the stars aligned--would go fo...

It's not going to be my house.

Tigger, this one's for you... I know you believe it is most important for me to visualize what I want but I could seriously use everyone's help. What we need to be visualizing is me in this house (even if you've never met me--I think you can visualize my spirit or something). We need to visualize me getting pre-approval for a loan. We need to visualize the inspector saying it looks great. We need to visualize the sellers coming down on the price so that I feel comfortable with it. We need to visualize it all going smoothly and positively. Honestly, I love the house. I could see myself living there and at the same time can't believe I could be so lucky as to own that house. It would make all the waiting and the sacrificing and the being responsible all worth it. It's so beautiful. And like all big steps in my life, I wish Mom were here. She'd be so proud that my brother and I are doing so well. And I think she would have loved the house, too. (Ok, I ...

Yesterday I forgot to mention what made me really nuts. I knew I needed to call the real estate agent to set up an appointment to see the house. It was like calling a blind date. I was nervous and had to psych myself up. How ridiculous is that? I'm going this evening at 6pm. First, I'll have to do my hair and change clothes nine times. Anyway, I've never purchased a home before. My credit is quite good. I have a bank and a credit union. I know nothing about home-buying--loans, paperwork, realtors, making offers. A friend told me yesterday that she figured I would know a lot from when my brother bought this house. I talked to him about it last night and he said all he could tell me was that after he signed the papers he felt like he needed to go outside and throw up. Unfortunately, that's the only part that I think will come pretty naturally to me, too. Any and all advice is welcome. Feel free to comment or e-mail me. (The upcoming post I mentioned this past...

Ok, it's tomorrow. I called the agent and am waiting for her to call me back to set up an appointment to look at that house. Seriously, this is already making me insane. I woke up early this morning because it is super windy here. Granted, it is always fairly windy but when the Weather Channel's little picture tells you it's going to be windy you know you're in trouble. The wind chimes were making me insane. I went outside to take them down and then couldn't fall back asleep. I was thinking about the house. Since it's been so long since my "stuff" has lived with me instead of in storage, I was thinking about my old apartment and what was where. Then I was thinking about where I would put things in the new place. And what colors I would paint things. And how much I could really afford to pay for a house. And if anyone else wanted "my" house. And how it would look decorated for different holidays. And on and on. I know if this is...

How beautiful is this house? I'm going to call the agent about it tomorrow. Not that that means anything but I guess the house hunting has begun... The other post will have to wait another day...

Just a quick little note... I really should keep a list of things regarding work. Things that make it cool to travel, things that are nifty about working from home, misconceptions, how it makes you weird. Here's a weird one. I never really traveled before this job. I grew up a poor, country kid. I never left Texas until a band trip the school raised money for when I was 17. It was Disney World, by the way. And I never flew until I was almost 21. That was to see a friend in Phoenix. I didn't feel left out then. It really was a simpler time even though it wasn't too terribly long ago. (My post for tomorrow will oddly relate to this. "Why are you not posting that today?" you ask. Because I still want comments on my last post--God love you and your motherly concern, Bubba's Mom--and poll responses.) So here's the weird part. As I was driving (off into the sunset) to the BBQ cook-off last night, I saw a plane coming in for a landing at the small ...

It's here. It's really here! At least for today... So even though I haven't been traveling out of town this week, it's been very busy. I've been trying to fit in all the social obligations, deal with some dilemmas, get all my work done. Last night I had a fun, progressive evening. Before-dinner drinks, dinner, dessert and coffee each at different places I've never actually been inside before. Good times... Somewhere along the way I mentioned "Hal," my recently developed crush. At the time, I could not think of his last name (don't you hate it when that happens?). It's Sparks. (I was going to just ask questions here but I'm totally making a slightly inappropriate poll. I apologize in advance to the people who think I'm still 8 years old and think boys are icky.) Here are some pictures. Tell me why you think I like him so much (you can vote for more than one choice). Oh, and people love The Breakfast Club most, then Ferris Buel...

Remember how I mentioned before that my personal computer broke? Apparently that was only the beginning. Yesterday my work computer crapped out at times. About the right third of the keyboard ended up taking control. And by that I mean it was like I was pushing the "control" key. That's fun. And I could only use the left shift key. I have realized that I almost solely use the right shift key when typing so this has thrown me off. And sometimes "shift" did not work at all. And some of the numbers just ignored me at times. I tried to restart. Still broken and I couldn't even log on because my password and ID each have a capital letter. Sweet. If I shut down, walked away, and started all over again it would work. For maybe an hour. Today it seems to be ok. During all of that I was listening to my iPod. It suddenly just stopped playing. Six seconds left in an REM song...froze. No button would work. It would do nothing. This sucked because I ha...

Usually it kind of gets on my nerves when people say that. However, when you've worked more than 40 hours by Wednesday, it pretty much captures your feeling by Friday. Despite that, it was a good week. I'm not sick (knock on wood), I didn't die in the broken plane, I had an interesting chat with a girl in the airport who told me she had a learning disability but neglected to mention she has auditory hallucinations as well, I dug myself out of the hole I was in at/with work... I got a piece of mail addressed to "the amazing (insert my real name here)." Let me just say that if you actually send fun mail to a person, you should always address it to "the amazing," "the fabulous," "the beautiful," etc. person. It is an even nicer way to get mail. I got to see and feel Fall for a good 4 hours. Did you know there are fall foliage hotlines as well as regional fall color maps ? And last night we had a little girls' night dinner. I...

Ok, so it wasn't 1,000 miles (more like 768) but it should have been. Since I've been so backed up with work lately (I'll interject here that this is kind of punny as I'm working on a constipation study), I felt thankful yesterday that I was smart enough to have booked myself a 5:30pm flight. I still had time to get some work done yesterday and attend a conference call. Made it easily to the big airport. All my tiny liquids and gels fit in their resealable, quart-size plastic bag. We were leaving from a B84 gate, which sucks. That's the gate that crams way too many people in way too small a place and then makes you take a teeny, tiny bus trip to the plane. They called for us to board the bus right on time. Things were looking good. As soon as I hauled my bags up the bus steps and got settled, some kind airport employee peaks her head into the bus and tells us we'll have to go back inside. Apparently there was some mechanical problem with our plane. Tha...

In an attempt to get caught up with work, I spent most of yesterday at "the office." In an attempt to not be too pathetic, I only did the mindless tasks and ones that may possibly be construed as fun (if, say, one were imprisoned or something). But I did get work done...work that I would never have had time for because of all the catching up I have to do. And, maybe, work that will help me do a better job in the future. Success? Only time will tell. Very sad that the Astros season is over. So close... But it was an incredible run at the end, and I'm still proud. I blame Doug, my former supervisor, who felt compelled to talk about the winning streak. What kind of male/sports fan is he? That's the quickest way to end a streak... Thanks for all the comments on the last post. Feel free to keep throwing out ideas whenever they come to you. And the new anonymous, welcome. I spent part of the weekend looking at houses online. My house isn't for sale yet. I ...