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Sunday, October 29, 2006

Halloween on Ice

Thanks to a tip from our friend Amy, Steph recorded the very end of Halloween on Ice last night -- the finale was Nancy Kerrigan skating to "Defying Gravity." Even though Nancy isn't my favorite skater, I have to say that I was impressed. Her program was different from mine (because she's a much better skater than I am, so she has more elements to choose from and also a longer cut to work with), but there was one spot (the "close my eyes and leap" part) where we do the exact same thing, and that was fun to see. It's not very often that I get to see an elite skater do a program to the same music I skate to.

Halloween on Ice will be rebroadcast on Tuesday morning on the Style network.

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Friday, October 27, 2006

Gilmore Girls quote

"If I wanted to play ping-pong, I would kill myself." --Emily Gilmore

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

50 Things...

Today I found the list I made of 50 things I could do when my roommates moved out. I made this list in early August of 2002.

1. I can park in the garage.
2. I can reach my coffeemaker (without having to move all the crap in front of it).
3. No more cat pee in inappropriate places!
4. [Roommate #2]'s brothers won't be around (really, I do like them, just in small doses, and they have hardly been here at all this summer)
5. No more playing musical cars to rearrange the driveway order so everyone can leave in the morning.
6. Guest room!
7. I can have people over for dinner and have parties.
8. I can always replace the bags in the trash cans so that no one else throws the trash directly in the trash can (and then if it's something messy it gets all over the trash can and is yucky to clean up). Besides, I spill it more often than not when pouring it from the trash can into a bag.
9. I don't have to buy expensive toilet paper because [Roommate #2] has a sensitive butt!
10. I can leave fun and cool soap and stuff in the shower and no one else will use it up. Corollary: I won't run out of shaving cream because [Roommate #1] forgets to buy herself some and uses mine... for six months at a time.
11. I can shower whenever I want.
12. I can talk on the phone whenever I want.
13. I can use the Internet whenever I want.
14. I can cook whenever I want.
15. Fridge space.
16. Freezer space.
17. I can put my fish teapot (really, it's quite cute) on the shelf in the kitchen and no one will decide that it should go in the basement because they don't like looking at it or something.
18. I can use my grandmother's dishes without worrying that someone else will break them.
19. I can have clean counters -- no clutter! Corollary: No sticky spills on the counters from other people not cleaning up stuff that spills.
20. Kitchen cabinet space.
21. I can eat at my kitchen table again without having to move piles of stuff that isn't mine. (I may have my own pile of stuff on the table, but it will be my stuff and I can put it away when it annoys me.)
22. I will always be able to find a pencil or pen when I want one. I can put one on a table or in a drawer and it will still be there when I look for it the next time. Same for a pad of paper.
23. I can do laundry whenever I want.
24. I don't have to fold other people's laundry in order to use the dryer.
25. I can do dishes as often as I want! No more stacks of dirty dishes in the sink!
26. No more icky sponges that smell like mildew because they weren't squeezed out when other people were done using them.
27. No dirty dish towels and laundry at the bottom (or worse, only halfway to the bottom) of the basement steps.
28. I can watch whatever I want on TV.
29. No wet dish towels in the sink. I really don't understand why that happens. They get all gross and yucky. What is so hard about hanging them up?
30. I can talk on the phone anywhere in the house without disturbing anyone or being disturbed.
31. I can watch skating videos in the living room.
32. No one else will reorganize my mail. I *still* haven't found last year's November property tax form.
33. I can buy soap and/or candles without having to hear about it when I get home. (I admit that I have too much soap and too many candles, but I am not five years old and I don't need a lecture on how much soap I have!)
34. No old Band-Aids in the shower. Yuck.
35. I can turn the A/C up so it's not as cold.
36. I will always be able to find a blanket. I leave blankets in the living room when it's cold and they disappear. There are a couple that I haven't seen for
*years.*
37. The futon will be folded up into a couch most of the time. I hate having it folded down for days at a time, but I do like being able to fold it down so that guests can sleep on it.
38. I will be able to see the top of the coffee table because there won't be a lot of clutter on it. I can put a candle there, and books I'm reading, and I will still be able to find them the next day.
39. I can use my new glass coasters without someone else dropping or otherwise breaking them.
40. I can hang stuff I like on the walls.
41. I can put plants in places other than my room. (Olivia [one of the roommates' cats] eats plants.)
42. I can bake stuff whenever I want.
43. My food won't disappear.
44. I can put up my own Christmas tree.
45. (When I find one) I can have my girlfriend over whenever I want.
46. I don't have to be quiet when I get up in the morning.
47. My scrunchies won't disappear (when I want a certain one because it matches the skating dress I'm testing or competing in).
48. I won't forget to shut the downstairs windows when I leave nearly as often as they do.
49. I can park next to the porch when I want to. (If I do that now, I'm in Roommate #2's way somehow.)
50. I can leave the outside lights on when I want to without being griped at.

Friday, October 20, 2006

And now for the furnace...

The furnace isn't working. The igniter seems to be the problem, and I'm currently waiting on a repair person. It's only 62 in the house, but when I got home, the dog was shivering, so I wrapped him up in a down domforter and held him on my lap until he stopped shaking. Poor little guy.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

No renter after all

My renter backed out, so I'm back to square one. (However, I'd rather she do it now than three months from now.) This evening I had three appointments to show the house and only one of them showed up.

Overall, I have had an unbelievable number of no-shows during this process. It's more than a little inconvenient to drive over there, make arrangements for someone else to be there with me (my realtor doesn't want me to show the house alone because I might get hacked up and buried in the basement or something), and wait in a nearly empty house. If I were waiting at home, I'd have stuff to do, but my old house is pretty darn boring these days. I don't mind when someone has to call to reschedule, but it's really inconsiderate to just not show up. I never would have done that when looking for a place to rent.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

I have a cold

I think it's time to admit that I have a cold. I don't wanna be sick. I have lots to do -- work, house stuff, fun stuff.

Stuff I can get done with a cold: Read e-mail, watch stuff on the DVR, finish reading my book club book, sleep.

Stuff I may not be able to get done with a cold: Work, skating lesson, put a bunch of stuff away.

What the cats said

Huckleberry and Annabelle were lurking near the top of the stairs looking suspicious as I was going into the bathroom to feed Lucy.

So of course I said to them, "Are you two in cahoots?"

Steph, speaking for the cats, chimed in, "We would tell you, but we don't know what a cahoot is."

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Trees and branches

Our neighborhood association is paying for the rental of a wood chipper this weekend. Steph offered to help transport tree limbs and branches for people who don't own a truck, and we drove up and down several streets and alleys and picked up about eight truckloads of them. We may do more tomorrow.

A possible renter!

It looks like I might have a renter. She's coming by Monday to sign the lease, and I hope it all goes well. I'm quite relieved and very tired. Today I caulked several windows and doors and also the boards at the bottom of the posts on the porch.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

National Coming Out Day

We celebrated National Coming Out Day by eating dinner at English Ivy's, a gay-owned restaurant/pub downtown.

I'm a lesbian, in case you hadn't figured it out by now.

Monday, October 02, 2006

Weekend update

We had a busy but productive weekend. On Saturday, Steph worked on installing edgers around the flowerbeds while I puttered around inside, and we went to my house to show it. On the way, we discovered that the Steak & Shake near my old house was being torn down. (Lisa, it's okay -- the last time I was in there, I overheard some of the employees talking about plans to knock it down and rebuild it. Besides, there's one downtown not too far from our new house.) The prospective tenant didn't show up, so we packed some garage stuff into the Honda and went back home, stopping to take pictures of the destruction of the Steak & Shake. It was supposed to rain, but the weather seemed to be holding, so we decided to go to the Fishers Renaissance Faire, which was great fun. Among other things, we watched a performer juggle knives and then sticks on fire, and we shopped a little and had a good time people-watching. (We also found my wedding dress, which I wrote about earlier.)

Then on Sunday, we showed my house in the afternoon and planted some bulbs in the front flowerbeds. The Steak & Shake was just a pile of rubble when we drove by. It was kind of sad.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

eBay

I just listed my first eBay auction. Snow Moon is a BPAL scent that didn't work for me, so I'm selling it. I've been watching other Snow Moon auctions for a while, and this morning I noticed two others that went pretty high, so I decided the time was right. (It's getting colder out, and people don't usually buy winter-themed scents in the middle of summer.) Realisically, I'm just hoping to recoup my costs and maybe end up with enough to buy a bottle of Kindly Moon when it starts showing up on eBay. I missed it when it was up this month, and it sounds great.