5.25.2006

It's Thur-Fri-sday!

Today is my Friday. Leah will be on her way to Ann Arbor late tonight then tomorrow we are getting up before the sun, packing ourselves and her two dogs into my little car and heading south to visit Shannon in Asheville. One more time before she moves north again. It's going to be a short trip. We will spend one day in the car, two days in Asheville and one more day in the car. Totally worth it.

But tonight, before all that happens, Ryan and I are meeting with our realtor to write an offer on a house. We could not be more excited about this house. It is just perfect, we both loved it immediately and only saw it for the first time yesterday. I won't say anything more about the house because I am SOOOOOO afraid that I am getting too excited about it before we even write an offer. Don't want to jinx myself.

There will pictures and stories when I return.

5.15.2006

Moebius... felted

Mark this day on your calendar folks. Today is Monday May 15th, 2006. I am 26 years, one month and four days old, and I plucked my first grey hair this morning. No, I did not take a picture. It's sitting on my bathroom counter. If it's still there when I get home today I'm going to drop it in a lit candle or maybe put it in the garbage disposal.

I felted the moebius basket yesterday and it looks great!!! I am definitely going to use the extra ball to make a second one. Mom wants to learn to make it, so I'll wait and start it when I teach her. Hopefully some time this week. I finished one sock on Saturday and started the 2nd one Sunday morning before heading out for the "tour of mothers". We went to my parents house first and had lunch and talked about the houses we saw on Thursday and Saturday (5 total). We stuffed ourselves with steamed cauliflower and carrots, green bean and asparagus bundles (wrapped with bacon of course!), mozzerela cheese sticks and weenie-tots (pigs in a blanket... sausages wrapped in crescent rolls. So bad, but sooooooo good). We ended up eating later than expected and had to leave before the brownie cheesecake happened.

Then we drove to Ryan's sister's house to watch her two kids while she cooked dinner. I was so stuffed already from a late lunch that I only ate half of an enchilada for dinner. I just couldn't fit anything else in there. So we sat and chatted and played with the kids and I got to knit for a while. It was a fun Sunday.

The past two or three weeks have been stuffed full of house hunting and meetings and driving around looking for For Sale signs and checking out new neighborhoods that I have hardly had time to do anything else. I went right from being busy with school to buying a house. I'm not complaining, it's one of the most exciting things I've ever done (so far), but tonight I am taking the night off. I HAVE to go to the grocery store. I really should have gone Friday. I am down to frozen dinners, canned soup and peanut butter. I had the last two pieces of bread this morning, I have no milk, no eggs, no CHOCOLATE.

I have a new favorite house. Of all the houses we've looked at, this is the first one that I can picture all our stuff in and I can close my eyes and picture where a christmas tree will go, I can see me cooking dinner in the huge kitchen, I can really picture myself hanging out in the 2 person jacuzzi tub, but that's a given. This is the first house we've seen that needs absolutely no work, we could move right in and not touch a thing until we have a kid or two and need to add on another bedroom. It does need a new garage for Ryan, but what is already there is usable for a while. Unfortunately though, we think it might be too small for us. So we are going to go look at it again on Tuesday and also going to see two more in the same town. One of those is a similar style and age, but a lot bigger. Previous owners have already added on a few times. It has five bedrooms and 2 baths and it will need a new garage also. I so so so hope that this is the perfect house for us. I love going to look at houses, but I am so anxious to finally have one and start packing and moving stuff over!

5.10.2006

knitting goes quicker when you're not feeling guilty about what you're not doing

All I did tonight was knit. hahahahahahahaha, I love it! no responsibilites other than just entertaining myself. ahh... the life of a college graduate.

I Finished Moebius basket (except for felting) and only used one skein of yarn. I bought two for the project, so maybe I'll make another one and have a pair.
Maybe it isn't a basket...



Screw renting, let's BUY!

It's the ultimate shopping trip. The most expensive thing we'll ever buy in our lives, but the most exciting. After only viewing one house to rent, but many many calls on others we have decided that renting sucks. We have a realtor, and are shopping for a lender. We looked at 3 houses last weekend and are looking at 4 tomorrow. We only have 2 months to look and one month to do the money, paperwork, closing and inspections. So we are spending all of our free time on this.

Saturday we met with our realtor and saw three houses. We were done at about 4:30 and had planned on going to my parent's house for dinner. So I asked Ryan if he just wanted to go straight to my mom's or if he wanted to drive around. He said he wanted to go drive around Dexter, because he has never been there and if we are considering buying a house there, he wants to go see it. I said, "you've been to dexter, that's where we went to look at that house that didn't have any appliances in it, and that's where we went to the Dairy Queen and walked to the park with the river." and Ryan said, "yeah, but I never paid attention". So we drove to Dexter, I showed him the downtown area, where the hardware store is, grocery, pizza place, you know, all the important stuff. Then we drove up and down the blocks looking at houses and then he said, "are there any roads that just go out into the country?" So I showed him what roads lead out of town to other places he knows and we drove around a subdivision with $500,000-$600,000+ homes and that took us out to a road that would lead us the really long way back to my mom's. So at 5:30 I called my mom to tell her we were going out to drive by one more house and would be there for dinner in about a half hour. She said that she'd fire up the grill because we were having the best hot dogs on the face of the planet. So we drove out the long dirt road to drive by the house on 4 acres that would need way too much work and is just too far away from, well, everything. So we ruled that one out and headed back to my mom's. We pulled into the driveway, I grabbed my sheets out of the back seat that I had brought to wash while we were there, and went into the house. Dakota ran at us, always so excited to see anyone walk through our door. I walked into the dining room and saw my dad standing there with the video camera and heard, "SURPRISE!!!!!!!!" My mom had been planning this surprise graduation party for a week. Shannon came home for it, Leah was there, my grandma and an aunt and uncle, a cousin, my friend Bekkah and her son Kahner (who I was knitting a hat for, but his head grew faster than the hat did) and Ryan's parents were all there. Ryan was in on it. I was telling Shannon later that night, "wow, Ryan sure can lie well... I don't think I like that." Leah was giving me hints up and down and all over the place and I didn't put it all together. I really was completely surprised and had absolutely no idea anything was going on. it was great!

Leah stayed with me Saturday night and she taught me the Moebius cast on. When I was visiting her in Grand Rapids in April, we went on a mad knitting shop dash. We found the best yarn shop and walked in about 5 minutes before they closed. We just needed to buy some needles, so we were going to run in and run out because we saw that they were actually open on SUNDAY, so we planned on just coming back the next day to really do some damage. On our way over to the corner with all the needles, there was the cutest little felted basket sitting there. We oogled it and fondled it and ooo'ed and aaaaa'ed. The lady told us the pattern is from that book there, so leah snatched it up, asked how much yarn you need for the basket and we ran around the store looking for wool. We each each got enough yarn to make a basket, leah grabbed the book and headed to the counter to pay. We got home and read over the pattern and found that we needed a 60" circular for the cast on. We were SOOOOOOO disappointed because we had wanted to get started on it right away and it looked like a quick project that we could do in one night and even felt them before I left on Sunday.

So while Leah stayed with me this weekend, she taught me the cast on that we've been waiting to learn since that weekend. I've been bugging her to take the book in to her yarn shop and ask them to help her cast on. When she knew she was coming to my surprise party she went around to the different yarn shops to get help on it so we could do it together while she was here!

What a great weekend!!!

5.04.2006

Final Grades

Final grades have been posted for my LAST semester. I got an A on my final test in physics. Pretty amazing considering how the semester started out, with the crying and all.

5.02.2006

it's great to slow down and breathe

**sigh** I have just been so busy lately that I have not had time to blog... Just kidding, I've been so busy NOT going to school and NOT doing homework and NOT studying and NOT working on projects under a deadline. It's great!!!

I've been knitting and watching tv and hanging out with family. I gave my apartment a real good once-over and cleaned the hell out of it. I had been accumulating all kinds of papers and piles of stuff everywhere, stacks of junk mail to deal with later, huge piles of wunder-under release paper, tiny scraps of fabric that got thrown on the floor and then tracked into other rooms. Pay stubs and deposit receipts from months ago, all kinds of rental ads, and drawings of things I want to sew or knit. The only thing I've really kept up with is the laundry. Which is amazing because I have to leave the house and drive 20 minutes to do it.

I had my physics final on Friday and I think I did really well. I definitely passed and I think I at least got a B on it. Which means I'll still get an A or a high B+ for a final grade. Wahooooooo!!! I guess all that crying and frustrtion in the beginning was worth it. As for my textiles grade, who freakin' knows. I'll let you know when I find out though. I'm guessing it'll be another week before grades are posted online.

Ryan and I have been apartment hunting, and we looked at our first one on Friday. It was a little house on the back half of an old couple's property, out in the country. It was a beautiful lot, with a view of the lake and lots of trees and flowers (and mosquitos). The old couple took us out and opened it up, it must have been closed up all winter, and possibly even longer, because it was pretty musty and stale in there. I would guess the place was about 800 or so square feet on the main level with two bedrooms, bath, kitchen, small dining room and a living room with a screened porch. Plus it had a full basement with a half bath, laundry hook-ups, a garage that can't be used as a garage becuase they caulked the door shut (wha...?). and the upper 1/2 story was mostly finished attic space that was large enough to be a bedroom if you don't care that the walls were made of cardboard stapled to the beams to hold the insulation in. (which really, I was just glad the place was insulated). So, the old crotchety lady showed us around the place, showing us every detail of the house and where she keeps extra 50's style drapes and storm windows and extra screws and instructions for appliances and who knows what else. All the while her sweet old husband was busying himself in the kitchen, smiling. He was a cool old guy, reminded me of my grandpa on my dad's side. So, she showed us everything and we were standing in the empty living room and she said that she didn't know what else to tell us about the place and "I would expect you would want to know what YOUR responsibilites are." She gave us about half a second to respond before she said, "well, I don't see wedding bands..." That's when I said, "no" and giggled, because in my experience, people say that and are just egging us on, ya know. It's something old people say, but don't care about the answer, just to get a rise out of us. So, she leaned up against the wall, crossed her arms and said, "well, that will be a problem, I am an old fashioned woman..." Ryan didn't give her a chance to finish her sentence, he looked at me, pointed to the door and said, "ok, you ready to go?" I said yes and we politely thanked them for their time. We walked back to the car with our arms around each other and said mean things about them. heh heh.

Now we are calling ourselves "new fashioned".