Oooh...two posts in one night...

A list of some of my favorite kitchen things, in no particular order

1. My hot chocolate mixer. Especially after Sean and I bought 5 boxes of Swiss Miss on sale the other day.
2. The dishwasher. Whoever invented it deserves a nobel prize.
3. The griddle. Because it's so nice to make 4 pancakes and heat up pre-cooked sausage all at once.
4. The crock-pot. It's just amazing.
5. The knife-block. Because of course I use knives regularly.
6. The microwave. Do I really need to explain?

What happens when...

the door knob turns but the door won't open?

Well, I presume that most people would go buy a new door knob. Easy, $10 fix, right? Sure. But not for us. It was the back door. The ugly, white with yellow trim around the glass back door. The one part of our house that really looked like it was from a trailer.

But no more. No, now we have a nice white fiber-glass door with a new door knob. In bronze (color, not metal!!). Now we just have to sand down the wooden door to the deck, and replace the front (red, rusting, paint chipping) door. Lovely, right?


And in other news, I think a mouse has taken up residence in the bedroom wall. At least I'm hoping it was a mouse. It sure was making a ton of noise. Maybe I need to borrow John's BB gun. But that's a story for another time!

A month later...

Things have been a little crazy since my last post. Where should I start?

1. Got water installed in the house.
2. I got the cats fixed.
3. Started work.
4. Moved in to the new house.
5. Replaced the starter in my car.
6. Unpacked.
7. Entertained two weekends in a row.
8. Ran a bad 5k.
9. Took one cat back to the vet for a booster shot.
10. Started doing work on the house.
11. Contracted a virus on my laptop. It's pretty much dead.

Needless to say, I've been busy. Too busy to do a lot of things. I leave home around 6:45 every morning, and get home around 6:15 at night. By the time I fix supper and straighten up, it's time for bed! But I'm doing my best to get back into a schedule of running, and relaxing, and spending some time watching tv and vegging.

And here's my funny story for the day. I get home, get changed, and step onto the treadmill. All well and good, right? I'm going to run. Except that Sam, the cuddle monster, decides that he wants to get on with me and wrap himself around my ankles. And then lay down. On the treadmill. I got off, thinking he would follow me. Nope. So what else could I do? I programmed it for the time I wanted, and turned it on. (Note: when it starts, it's only going .5 miles/hour.) He slid right off the back and stood there until I got it up to speed and started running. And then Alice, Little Miss Spastic, wedges herself in between the treadmill and some boxes and proceeds to chase my shadow for 20 minutes. But it wasn't going very far, so she spent a lot of time jumping back and forth onto it. And such is my life. Cats who get in my way when I want to run. (Another note: when I got done, they both fell asleep. Go figure!)

Answered prayers!

I've been job searching since last September. It's been a long, grueling process, and I've been pretty down about it. But the search has come to an end!

Last Friday, I interviewed for a social research assistant position at Western. Today, I got the call offering me the position, with the formal offer to come in a few days. I start on October 1! Needless to say, I'm pretty excited, and it just makes it even more imperative that we get moved in soon to the new house!

And...problem resolved!

Our water issue is being taken care of. After dealing with our realtor, she pretty much told us to go ahead and start paying for our tap and meter to be installed, and she would have to see if the agency would reimburse us. Uh, no way. (There was a tap and meter in our front yard already, but it seems it belonged to the house behind us, and not to us. Go figure.)

So, Sean called her manager and explained that we had a copy of the listing showing that it was listed as having public water, and that we would be calling the state real estate commission to complain. A manager called back and told us that the issue was being taken care of, and the first fees had already been paid.

Sean called them back this morning, and was told that the agency will be paying for everything, INCLUDING having the meter plumbed to the house. This means, of course, that my pretty front yard will have a trench dug in it, but I'm ok with that. Oh, and their expediating the process so we can get into the house soon.

All in all, all that is left before we can move in is patching a couple more sheet rock holes (I'm good at mudding!), and picking up some windows from the glass place. It's looking like we'll be moving soon! Finally!

Where we are with the house right now

We've got over half of our repairs done that have to be completed for it to be certified "livable" by the city of Asheville. Great, right? Yep!

But there's still an issue. We've got a "temporary water for construction purposes" permit. This was necessary to test the plumbing. The city has cashed my check. So, what's the problem? This was all done 2 weeks ago. And we STILL don't have water.

They told Sean one day that it was never verified. I took care of that, and then called the next day. They told us to set up an account. So Sean called them to take care of that. This time she told him that we didn't have a tap and meter, so it will cost us $2500 to get one installed. Problem? We DO have a tap and meter.

The guy that owned the house before us told the realtor that he had water through Grandma next door. (Her house is for sell too). The realtor called the city and they told him that no, the house had water. Sean checked the yard tonight for Grandma's house, and there's no tap on that land. The realtor had a plumber come out and check, since they sold us the house after telling us it had water. The plumber couldn't figure it out either.

So, all that to say, we can't move in until we figure all this mess out. Thank goodness for a real estate company that is dealing with it. We're just hoping they get it taken care of soon, so we can get in.

We bought a house!!

What a topic for my 100th post, right? Sean and I have been looking for places in Asheville since he got a job at Mission (the hospital, and largest employer in WNC). We knew we needed to move, because he's been driving an hour and fifteen minutes each way to get to work from Spruce Pine, and he has to be there at 6:30am several days a week. It makes for long days and not much time together, since he goes to bed an hour after he gets home.

Anyway, our aunt emailed us about a house that she passed every day on her way to work. We called the real estate place, and checked it out a couple times. We even had it inspected to make sure it was alright, since it was a foreclosure that obviously needed some work.

After a couple weeks of haggling and getting everything worked out, we closed on it yesterday. It's so nice to have a place that we'll be able to do with as we please, versus not really being able to make changes in a rental. Plus, we got a good deal on it for the area. It'll definitely be a work of love though. It's got some crazy stuff going on, like lots of bead board. And deer and eagle wallpaper! (Seriously, who does that??) But our plan is to just take it room by room, and make it our own.

So we know have a nearly 1700 square foot house with a half acre of land, and hope to get it ready to pass the Asheville city inspection as soon as this weekend. It has a few things that need to be fixed, such as putting in a hot water heater and replacing some sheetrock and deck railings. Our game plan is to get this stuff done, get the master bedroom fixed up, and then start moving in the beginning of September. I'm being slightly neurotic and insisting we move in September, so that we'll have only lived in 2 houses since we got married in February, instead of 3 houses in 6 months. For my sanity, I need that.