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June 25th, 2009
four years, one blog

Today marked four years since I started this blog, and my first day as a homeowner.

In those four years, I’ve:

moved four times.
graduated college.
quit one job and started another.
started my own business.
fallen in love.
gotten engaged.
become part-owner of a crazy dog.
been dangerously ill.
gone through 2 1/2 laptops.
bought a house.

It’s nice to look back and have a record of at least a portion of my life. I’m planning to blog more regularly now that the stress of this year is mellowing into only wedding stress, but we’ll see how that goes.

Thanks for being along for the ride. 🙂

June 22nd, 2009
new house, new state

On Wednesday the Chop and I close on our new house in MA. I’ve lived in RI since I moved to the east coast six years ago.. in fact, I’ve lived within the same 20 miles the entire time.. and it’s starting to hit me how weird it’s going to be. We’re moving over an hour north, closer to work for both of us, right on the commuter line into Boston and in a great town near good friends, so we’re happy.. but it’s still an adjustment.

We’ve been hitting all our favorite restaurants for the past couple of weeks, and packing like fiends. My mom is coming out (yay, mom) on Thursday to help us move/clean/etc. and we hope to be totally out of here by Sunday morning.

The house is gorgeous and we were incredibly lucky to find it, as a contractor owned it before us and he did loads of updates (three bathrooms, refrigerator and freezer drawers, landscaping, etc.). If it wasn’t for the recession (boo, recession), we wouldn’t have been able to afford it for five more years (or anything in the town for that matter). I’ve attached some photos below from the listing sheet, and hopefully by this time next week I’ll have some we took ourselves.

And for something totally random… my four-year blog anniversary is the 25th, the day we close on the house. Interesting… 🙂

picture-101picture-12picture-171

posted in: awesome,porkchop,randomness — @ 1:32 pm

April 20th, 2009
is blogging about making an offer on a house bad luck?

The Chop and I put an offer on a house today. It’s weird, I’m excited and completely terrified all at the same time. Plus I’m stuck going to Vegas tomorrow to give two (freaking A) seminars in two days (I come home Thursday.. I hate trips like this), so overall my stress level is really high.

The house is awesome—virtually everything we were looking for in a house, sans a fence for the dog (which we’ll install). Three season porch (with gas stove), two bathrooms, renovated kitchen, big yard… and the best part, right in a town. The walkscore is 83 out of 100, which means we can walk everywhere—and it’s only 10 minutes from the Chop’s work. Sidewalks, loads of restaurants and a five minute walk to a commuter station that drops us in Boston in under an hour—perfecto.

The sellers are thinking over our offer and we’ll find out tomorrow. Crazy, I’m almost a homeowner.

posted in: awesome,hilarity — @ 10:11 pm

April 12th, 2009
susan boyle, britain really does got talent

Remember Paul Potts? This is why I love Britain’s Got Talent… they have this unexpected cache of great talent in people you wouldn’t expect.

posted in: awesome — @ 11:51 am

April 6th, 2009
i love david sedaris, i hate that woman behind me

David Sedaris is one of my favorite authors, so when I heard his lecture series was coming to town I was very excited. Chop got tickets and after a tasty dinner of sushi (and macaroni and cheese, lol), we headed to see him.

When we got there and sat down, we noticed an usher was moving people up and he eventually came over to us and said, “We can move you up to row 13, if you’d like to come with me.”

We weren’t that far back, but 13 moved us up about 20 rows, and who’s going to turn that down? Not us.

Unfortunately, it turns out that greed like that comes with a price. And our price was the most annoying couple on the face of this earth (I SWEAR TO GOD). It wasn’t the oft repeating of his final phrases in his monologues… no, instead it was the piercing, shrieking laughter that made me contemplate homicide. The man, in Chop’s opinion was worse, but the woman was hitting such high notes that now, two hours, vodka and two Tylenol later, I still have a headache.

I finally decided I couldn’t take it anymore and so we decided to move back to our original seats (or any seat far, far away from them). We waited for a break (one story to the next), but unfortunately moving meant saying excuse me to five college students who didn’t get up or move. No, instead they tried to scrunch up their legs.

And alright, the girls were waif-like and so that wasn’t an issue, but the guys were probably Chop’s size and “scrunching” up their knees allotted MAYBE one extra inch of space to move by them. So we both proceeded to say excuse me, step all over them (I almost fell over as I do not have the leg span of Chop) and finally struggle into the aisle.

At this point now I was considering mass homicide. (You go to jail either way, might as well make it count.)

His talk ended about 30 minutes later, and sitting at the far back of the theatre, I realized that proximity to someone reading is not that important, as long as the microphone is turned up high.

posted in: awesome,crapola,hilarity — @ 11:51 pm

January 28th, 2009
awesome apartment: one big space, 24 different rooms

From the NYTimes.com: Gary Chang, a Hong Kong architect, lives in a tiny apartment, but thanks to accordion-like wall units, he can create at least 24 different room configurations. Check it out.

This apartment is incredibly awesome and very futuristic (reminds me of The Fifth Element). If I had to live in small space, I would definitely want this guy building it for me. Chop and the dog would have to get their own next door. 😀

posted in: awesome — @ 4:26 pm
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