8:44 Mid Saturday Morning (23 May 2009)   WTF, May? How on earth did May go by so quickly? sheeeeiit what do i have to show for it? a dress that's 80% complete but still needs major minor tweakages (ugh do i REALLY have to pull the zipper out AGAIN?!) A time card with 4 hours on it (haha, work, who needs to work...only people who like money) a fiance who's sleeping the heck in (come on it's almost 9) a sore throat (no more fever though, yay!) new bottle of old shampoo (i don't like change, Obama can suck it. haha I voted for Obama, joke's on me) a hair cut ($3 from the beauty college. heck yes. even though the girl cutting my hair was kind of mean...the cut is nice) a list of 10 houses I've looked at (of which one is buyable with one fall-back, and one is beautiful but out of my league...maybe if I was committed to staying in Cache Valley but HELL NO) a list of 4 houses I've yet to look at (maybe one has potential to sweep us off our feet) a messy room (not as messy as in april though! it's a start!) so...nothing of value really. Thursday i woke up with a scratchy throat and plugged up left nostril/sinus. Attributed it to allergy-related sinus drainage because that's how it feels when I have allergy-related sinus drainage. Went about my day feeling worse and worse as the evening dragged on, headaches and blahness, but still felt pretty allergic rather than SICK. Caleb's lab mates invited us out for tea at Black Pearl where I once again ordered something bordering on inedible (everyone else has good experiences there but me. Why, world, WHY?!). Dinner convo was fun though, I like Katza and James and Daniel. We then went to see Angels and Demons which was pretty intense (but then I cried and freaked out during snakes on a plane, too) but contrived and forgettable. Daniel agreed. Caleb hadn't even read the books so he didn't care either way. Though mind you it's been 5 years since I read the Da Vinci Code and 4 years since I vaguely listened to Angels and Demons on CD on a long and boring road trip that I mostly slept through, so I really have little say as to how it compares to the book. If the DVCode is anything to go by, however, A&D book was very contrived as well so it's not like the movie had a great base to jump off of. Either way I have an old man celebrity crush on Tom Hanks so I don't mind so much. This is what you get for going out to see movies with a bunch of chemistry PhD students though "HAHAHAHA, That movie was so funny!" "Yeah, when the antimatter touches the bottom of the canister, they said it would be a COMBUSTION reaction! HAHAHAHAHAHA" um ok guys... It's fun to hang out with people who are beyond me. I get to be the cute dumb one. They must think I'm Caleb's trophy wife or something. The weirdest thing is that Katza was my gen chem I lab TA for both of our first semesters - her first semester as PhD, my first semester bachelors. hah! crazy! and also James was my gen chem II lab TA for my second semester and possibly also his first semester (am not sure on this though). weeiiird. but not awful - I got As in those classes and liked them both as TAs. Caleb was all worried about his student evaluations being bad but compared to what James was saying about his first semester's student evaluations I think Caleb did amazingly. :) I know he doesn't particularly like teaching (well the grading part at least), but I think that it is good for him because he will really get to know the basic material and get experience at being less shy in front of groups and whatnot. anyway so despite the scratchy throat and heavy head with an ibuprofen to take care of the headache, Thursday was alright. the food was meh and the movie was bleh but the company was good and it was VERY nice to hang out with people that know Caleb better than they know me for once. Friday I woke up just after half past 5 (in the god dang AM) all shivery and cold and achy and have to pee, and then the toilet pulled one of those 'i'm gonna flush forever hahahahhaa' things on me so i had to take the damn cover off and tweak with the toilet's innards to get it to stop filling the bowl with water... and then I was tossing and turning and feeling awful for an hour and a half and finally got to sleep again...only to be woken up 20 minutes later by the alarm. shit fuck damn. I got up, showered, ate food, felt terrible, drove to uni, had tea, told Helen I'd meet up with her at 3 to walk to Em's tea party, got ice cream with Em and the soil testing lab (it's Em's birthday), went to Tandoori for lunch with Peg and Dad, and then went home to work on invitations. I took my temperature when I got home. It was a full 4 degrees above my normal temp, so no wonder I felt like a walking pile of crap, took some paracetamol and dayquil, and sat on the couch for the next four hours, texting Helen and Em about why I wasn't coming to the tea party and how sad I was and how I felt like I'm a terrible friend because I'm always ditching out on them, even for things like fevers and shit. I really am a terrible friend who ditches out though, there's no denying it. even without fevers. anyway, didn't really get any invitation stuff done (Though I DID get some well-needed addresses!) and Dad called some mortgage people he knew to ask about qualifications and stuff for Caleb and me. We need to go down to a mortgage office next week and find out what kind of home loan we can get. First, though, we need to make sure all of the required money is in US bank accounts, preferably all in ONE bank account so that it can easily be withdrawn for a down payment. maybe if Caleb ever wakes up today that's what we'll set about doing. at 5:30 I went to go pick Caleb and my mom up from uni to go look at five houses with our friendly neighbourhood Realtor. It was nice. None of them were really feasible, the first house was WAY too small. the yard was big but freaking narrow, all you can really do with it is install a bowling alley. not worth a hundred grand I'll tell you what. the second house we went to was in a village of rentals, was packed with renters. Renters are generally awful people to have lived in houses just before someone wants to buy them because they have no real incentive to keep the place nice - the house was a mess, there were at least 10 people living there, the electricity had probably been shut off to the top house (it was a sort of grandfathered in duplex), the carpets were filthy...it was not a good house. maybe back in the day or with some serious work, but I'm not in the mood for serious work. I wrote "SHIT NO" on my notes for that house and moved on. The next house we saw was this BIG and BEAUTIFUL 1918 house with freakin' narrow stairs, a butler's pantry, three floors, two solariums, three small bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, a huge finished basement playroom, a beautiful dining room, a massive living area, half an acre of yard and trees and flowers...oh i could go on and on. perfect for a family of...four. not of two. maybe if we had huge parties? Also there were some structural questions, the unfinished part of the basement showed some signs of serious upper floor saggage and all the windows were single pane which would be a major pain in the ass to heat during the winter. If we had time and money it would be a great place to fix up and raise a family in but I have no intentions of being here long enough to fix it up let alone raise a family. Though if I fixed it up I could probably sell it for several thousand more than what i'd have paid for it. ..nah not interested. the fourth house we saw was a great location and an ugly ass house. also kind of too big weighing in at over 2000 square feet. It was built in the 50s and occupied by the 70s. The basement rooms had shag carpet and smelled like pot. It was structurally sound and had serious resale value but was still too big and too smelly, and i hated the layout. the fifth house was a condo with a nice interior (but the master bed/bath had a jetted tub within site of the bedroom door? wtf). Still, it was a condo, and I have no desire to pay HOA fees every month on top of a mortgage, the location isn't good and it's just really a big sack of no. so...not a bust i guess because we found a bunch of houses that just aren't right for us but still kind of disappointing. On wednesday we looked at two houses which were both nice. the nicer house was in the worse location and the less nice house was way better street wise, so it's sort of a toss up. they were both big enough but not too big, higher side of what we wanted to pay for but not over it, and definitely had potential. room for compost heaps and gardens. And then a few weeks ago we saw three houses for $100 k, and they were all shit holes except one that had already had an offer put on it. but it was not in an ideal location so what do you do. house hunting stories for the win! anyway after house hunting yesterday I was pretty tuckered out. got home and watched the daily show/colbert report and then tried to take some paracetamol followed by 30 mL of Nyquil. I popped two paracetamol and almost choked, hacked one of 'em up and took the nyquil. Good thing I didn't take both paracetamol because I looked at the Nyquil ingredients and it already had paracetamol in it. oops. The dose distance between effective and dangerous is not a big one so paracetamol is not something that you want to take too much of. should have read the nyquil before i took the damn tylenol. I woke up this morning around 6:30 because of wind and light and rain, tried to go back to sleep but couldn't. at 7 dad was grinding coffee so I got up. I am fever free, and feeling amazing (throat is still sore and nose is still clogged, but that's nothing because i don't hurt all over my skin anymore woohoo!). don't eat pineapple when you have a sore throat because it hurts. anyway maybe i'll crawl into bed and snuggle my snoring caleb. man am I boring. I love it. ----------------- 9:41 a.m. This entry is freaking long and took me an hour to write, haha.