Time to say goodbye

Well, I have been thinking about it for a while and I think it is time to close down the Blogger version of my blog.

I was hoping to move over to Blogger from LiveJournal, mostly so non-members could leave a private email address & might feel more comfortable about commenting. But months later, most of the Blogger entries remain comment-less while LiveJournal is still active. (Also, there are many older entries, all categorized there)

I hope that I do not loose any of the new readers I have found here. I will still be posting on LiveJournal, and as I've mentioned before, the Google Feed Reader is great for keeping track of blogs (as well as the other RSS readers out there).

The entries will remain up for a little while as I switch over my "Blogged here" links on Flickr, but I will not be adding new ones. I hope to see you at LJ!

Almost there...

I'm back!

Ok, so we dropped by the old place with the laptop a few times to check email (& look things up on-line), so a few of you heard from me then. But I'm *very* excited to have the internet & tv hooked up. These apartments can't get DSL, so we were scrambling around on-line to compare prices & figure out the best alternative (dial-up is not an option!), and it took a few days longer than expected. The phones will also be switched over today finally (we called over a week ago & this was the earliest they would do it?).

Speaking of the laptop, I guess it is feeling homesick. When we take it to the old place, we can go on-line & everything works fine. Anywhere else, it gets the Blue Screen of Death. Lovely.

Goodbye old townhouse! I can't say I'm too sad about leaving, after the whole debacle.

(That is what a drought will do to your lawn)


Are you as sick of the move as I am?

I was hoping we would have most everything put away in a week, about the same amount of time it took to box & move everything, but that is tomorrow & there is stuff everywhere! See this picture of my workroom from earlier in the week? Even now that I've loaded up nearly the whole giant closet, I still seem to have this much on the tables to be put away.



I was also hoping to pack & pack last week & have everything ready to move at once while we had helpers on Saturday. But we quickly realized we just didn't have enough boxes for that, so we kept unloading the boxes & bringing them back to re-pack. We took over about 10 carloads of stuff by ourselves (1 or sometimes 2 a day), and ended each night pretty exhausted.

The constant stirring up of dust has aggravated my allergies & left me sniffling & sneezing for days. Wednesday I guess my body had enough hard labor. I was quite nauseous, & most likely feverish, but luckily that passed by the end of the day.

But enough of that!
I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel. A little more work and this place will be great, much better than the old place. No more talk of packing & un-packing, only pictures of new furniture and finished rooms!

And the winner is...

The winner of the frog tape is kungfu1037!

Jackie, I already have your address, so I'll get that in the mail for you today.
Thank you, everyone, for entering the drawing! I'll have more for you soon.

New Apartment!

It is official ;) We got our new place on Monday (our top choice, with the nicer view, yay!) and have already brought over a few carloads of boxes. Tonight we will do the same, Thursday & Friday Justin will be gone for a field trip (I might take a carload or two myself), and Saturday is the big move.

I don't think I mentioned what happened with the 'extension' on the moving date (otherwise today would be our last day!) ~ the lawyer at Justin's school called the other lawyers, and they said they weren't even planning on doing anything until Feb. 3rd because they were not expecting the eviction to be served so soon. So, it looks like we could have had an extra week, but we wanted to get it done as quickly as possible, and I'm sure we'll be dropping by the old place next week for random things.

But more importantly ~ I have lots of pictures!!
I don't know how great they will be, taken at night,
indoors, and of empty rooms, but you get the idea.

Ok ~ when you walk in the front door there is a coat closet to the left and another door in front of you. This door opens to a bathroom door on the left and my workroom door straight ahead (the 2nd bedroom). Here we are at the workroom.


Turned around, you can see the large closet on the left, and the doorways I was talking about to the right (with the front door in the back there).


Leaving the workroom, here is the front bathroom. There is a bath/shower off to the right and a linen closet behind the door.


Now we are back at the front door, turned to the right. The kitchen is off to the right (see the counter?), the living room to the left, and the dining area straight ahead, under the track lighting. (That is the back door, leading to a small patio, backyard, and an outdoor storage closet)


Gigantic kitchen! I am so pleased.
To the right there is another large room for the laundry machines, hot water heater, and lots of shelving. (We will have plenty of room in the kitchen for our food, so that will probably be our game/whatever closet.)


Turned around, you can still see the counter, here is the living room. Pretty boring for now, but large. (To the right is the dining area you saw before, and further to the right is the bedroom door)


Just past the kitchen, here you can see into the bedroom (most of the room is to the left, but I didn't bother taking a picture of another empty wall). Those double doors lead to the bathroom & closet.


And here we are now. The doors open to a sink and lots of drawers, with a door to the bath/shower and toilet to the left (behind you in this shot), and door to the large closet on the right.


I hope you enjoyed the tour!

Ambigram Drop

Wow, I didn't realize how many ambigrams I've created in the last week! I still have four more to post, but those will wait until another day.

"Trent" & "Derica" Ambigram



"Jung" Ambigram



"Howell" Ambigram


This ambigram was designed to be stencilled on a fireman's helmet. I told him I would make him the stencil if he promised to send me pictures ;)



"Kennedy" Ambigram



"Kennedy" Ambigram

Give-a-way!

The second rental house ended up being one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen, but I will wait to tell that story because it really needs some pictures to go along with it. So that made our decision easy!

We went back to our first choice (apartment #1), hoping we could still get the discounted $700/month that was supposed to be over on Friday (originally $825!). Another lady was working that day, and she opened up the notebook to reveal a post-it marked $750/month. She called the first woman to confirm, we got the lower rate and made our deposit ~ yay!.

A minor concern ~
The second woman told us there were actually two available for that floorplan, and assumed that we wanted the get a certain one because the other one was right beside a playground. We walked over to check it out and that was not the apartment we had been shown ~ it was even better! Where it was located it had a better view, a secluded back yard, and closer parking. I am a little worried that the first lady only offered us an even lower rate because she was trying to get rid of the other apartment, and that she'll tell us we will have to take that one. Either way, it is a great place!


But onto the important stuff ~ my first Give-a-way!


A nice large 2" wide roll of Cram Cream deco tape, covered in colorful frogs and "Kero Kero" (ribbit in Japanese). I bought this roll new & used it a few times but prefer some of my other prints, so it needs a loving home. You can see the roll on the bottom here ~



Just leave a comment below and I will choose the winner Wednesday with a random number generator. I will be using the comments from LJ and Blogger. (Feel free to comment even if you are not interested in the tape! Just let me know you don't want to be in the drawing.)

7 days

I just realized I never did post this entry over here at Blogger.
It was kind of an important bit if you were trying to follow the story!
January 16, 2008~


A cop just came by, asking for the landlord, gave me some paperwork and said we have '7 days'. I have tried to stay optimistic about the whole thing, but that set me over the edge.

I read through the papers, and did find this ~
"To:[landlord's name] & all occupants
Pursuant to law, you are hereby notified to be in the MAGISTRATE COURT of Bartow County, WITHIN SEVEN (7) DAYS after the service thereof, to answer in writing or orally at said time, and to set forth whatever legal or equitable defense or counterclaim you may have to this dispossessory proceeding. If you do not answer within SEVEN (7) DAYS, a writ of possession will be issued against you." (The last possible date to file an answer is Jan. 23rd.)

So I guess that means that we have to go to court and explain what is going on? I hope that is 7 days to contact them and set reasonable moving goals, not 7 days to get out (regardless of contacting them or not). And I really hope Justin is able to go after work (with me), and I do not have to borrow the car for the day & try to figure this all out myself. I am a pushover.

The papers also say "Failed to vacate after the 1/2/08 foreclosure." I still don't understand why this is the first we are hearing about this. Sure, they see his name on the records & assumes he lives here. But every letter we've recieved has been addressed to him, (illegal for us to open), nothing addressed to him '& all occupants' as these papers were.

I'm off to do some research.