I think I can imagine...

...what a form of hell could be like.
It would be like constantly packing and packing your stuff and never running out of stuff.
It would be like taking 100 trips to and from the same 2 houses and never significantly diminishing the amount of stuff at the first house, while creating nothing but mass confusion at the second house.

We have lift-off!

We have a fridge! We are almost packed! This is a good thing since the movers are coming between 8 AM and 9 AM tomorrow morning! The new house was pretty clean up until things started getting dragged around. The old house is pretty much a pig sty. We are so excited about the move!!

Free food

All I have left to pack now is the bathroom and the kitchen, which I am dreading, but we are very close! However, the main snafu is that we cannot get in touch with our landlord and the refrigerator currently in the house was pulled in from the garage and is covered in rust and mold. When I say covered, I mean COVERED. As in, it is not white anymore, it is dappled with grey/green (the mold) and orange (the rust). It smells, drips, and makes weird noises constantly. We cannot use it. But we also cannot contact our landlord. None of the numbers he left are good and he did not answer the email we sent. I am beginning to move to Plan B, which is to assume we will be without a refrigerator for an unknown period of time starting on Sunday when we no longer have access to the old apartment. I will be giving away and throwing away all our refrigerated foods, and begging friends for room in their fridges for the things that can't be given or thrown away. This does not make me happy, but at the moment there isn't an alternative.

Packing, moving

I know, I have been MIA because we are packing up stuff and doing all the usual stuff in addition to that.
Right now, I am slightly obsessessed with:

~ the "Free" section of Craigslist. I am getting boxes from there and possibly also some free bamboo for the new back yard!! I was sad that we don't have Freecycle here in Dallas, but Craigslist "Free" rocks!!
~ boxes. BOXES. I am constantly on the lookout for boxes.
~ Blik and Flor for decorating the new place!

We signed a lease today!

We signed the lease today on our second choice. In the end, I think this place is much better. We don't have to share a parking area or a yard - we don't share anything except one wall, and that is the kitchen which is on the other side of the house from any bedrooms. The kitchen is open to the dining and living area, it has a gas stove, and we have 1 more room than we have now! We have 2 full bathrooms, AND it is right off of White Rock Lake. So, we are excited!

Also, we got an estimate from CarMax on how much they'll give us for the VW. It has started breaking down randomly in addition to the $500+ worth of work it needed even before it started doing that. The estimate is good for 7 days, I hope it can make it out to CarMax this weekend for its final journey without breaking down.

And, don't forget

Happy Birthday to Christian!!

(September 14)

Update...moving forward

We are moving forward with the other house we liked, our second choice. Because of this, we have not revoked our 30 day notice to the apartment. If our second choice works out, we should be moving the weekend of Sept. 28-30!

Maybe not.

Well we did call the guy and tell him we wanted the house - we did have a verbal agreement with that representative based on what he told us. However, after hearing from the actual owner today it turns out that some of our non-negotiable requirements are not able to be met with this house (specifically, the garage...we can have either the garage or our privacy, and we really wanted to have both if we were going to sign a 2 year lease).

So, the deal is a no-go, which is also an answer to prayer in a way - even though not the one we wanted.

However, we did turn in the 30 day notice to our current apartments on Saturday. Since we do not have another option of where to live, we might need to go ahead and try to get that back from them on Monday.

Things are up in the air again, I guess. More weeks of leaving work early and/or trying to look at rental houses during our lunch hours. I am getting really sick of it.

Cigarette Count: Number of cigarettes my upstairs neighbors threw into my back yard today, which I had to pick up and throw away: 1

Maybe?

We have looked at 2 rental houses in the last 24 hours that we really, really liked and were affordable. The drive to Christian's office would increase, but we are willing to accept that. If you're reading this on Friday, feel free to pray for us as we decide which one to move forward on. We will probably need to call on one of them no later than Saturday morning.

Cigarette Count: Number of cigarettes my upstairs neighbors threw into my back yard today, which I had to pick up and throw away: 1

I was grinding my teeth, I was wasting my youth

Climbing The Walls
By: They Might Be Giants
Copyright: 2007

I can't talk, I got to go
Don't call me back, I won't get the door
Got to focus on the job
'Cause I got a new job climbing the walls

I was grinding my teeth, I was wasting my youth
And using up my teeth
Now I'm done chewing my nails
Hanging my head, chasing my tail
It got so bad I quit my job
Then I got a new job climbing the walls...

******
Last time I went to the dentist, they told me (once again) that I grind my teeth and suggested a night guard. Now, I know I don't grind my teeth at night and I don't need a $500 night guard.
But last week it turns out they were right - I am grinding my teeth.

Just not at night.

During the day.

While I am work.

From the stress.

Hooray!

******
In other news, we are scheduled to look at 2 rental houses Thursday evening, so pray that at least one of these is not fully falling apart, maybe even enough to actually live in....

More of Christian's pictures

Christian posted more San Francisco pictures last night, he is adding them all to the "San Francisco Collection" on Flickr in different sets. This posting includes better pictures of the Hotel Beresford and the Fisherman's Wharf Hostel than mine were, and Grace Cathedral (which was very beautiful!).


I also want to point out that each one of these pictures is geomapped on Flickr. You can see where they all are on a Map. Christian spent hours doing this!