It is freezing in my cave of an office

The finale of Gossip Girl was pretty good. The swing has not been put together yet (no sign yet if the improptu pumpkin patch will return). The phlegminess did develop into a cold. I still have no new tops and I haven't returned the water bottle yet.

But we ARE going to Maryland this weekend to visit our good friends the Bird Man and the Hot Librarian!! We are excited and the weather is going to be awesome. I think this cold will be all the way gone before we fly out on Saturday (it better be).

Tonight is my niece's bday dinner. She loves Webkinz. For those of you out there who may not have heard of Webkinz, they are stuffed animals that have lives on the internet. You log your Webkin into the site and then you can create rooms, feed it, etc. I think it is a cute idea. It becomes depressing though, when she told me that one her friends had 20 of them. No kid needs 20 of anything.

I did finally complete some onesies that my sister asked me to make for her to give as gifts. It only took me forever (and a day).

I did look at Boston Store yesterday for some new tops, but I didn't have much patience for it since my nose was running like a faucet. I have been on the look-out for a new purse, and I found a good candidate there. I will get Duane's opinion though. He has a weird thing about purses!

Did I mention that Duane and I have been carpooling lately? Gas (regular) hit $3.85 today. We are definitely considering moving closer to Duane's job. The kitchen needs to be finished before we can sell though and I don't know if that will happen this summer.

My house is not all the way clean yet. I think I will die of embarassment if someone had to stop and use the bathroom. It is pretty gross. It will have to wait until next week though!

This post is so not interesting.

Ha, I forgot to give this post a title!

Well the weekend was pretty nice. The potential (not) client finally emailed me to say she was working with someone else. I think she was working with someone else all along, but thought I might drive her around without making her sign a contract (not happening). Way to go and waste my time.

I have picked up some phlegminess, which I am not sure if it is allergies or an actual cold. It certianly isn't any fun.

I bought a new water bottle to help me drink more water (it has a flip top straw) and the f'in thing leaks! You take a sip, set it down, and it leaks all over the place. Now I have to return it, such a pain.

I have been trying to find some new short-sleeve tops for work and I am having no luck. There is an abundance of those tops that look good on tall people, but make the rest of look like we are pregnant. I do have some cute new bottoms, but no tops.

We got all caught up with our season finales from last week (Smallville, Supernatural, CSI, ER, and Ghost Whisperer). Tonight is the season finale of Gossip Girl (Duane loves this show). Hopefully it will be good!

We bought a 3 person swing to put in the backyard yesterday. We haven't put it together yet though, which should be fun!

Whitney won America's Next Top Model!

Holy cow, couldn't believe this. I thought Anya had it in the bag. Whitney is a "full figured" model. I think she is a size 10. I guess they figured it was about time. Also, Parvati won the million dollars on Survivor. I guess Amanda didn't figure out that crying in the end causes you to lose the money (she did that on Survivor:China and lost too). The next Survivor is going to be in Africa, but it looks like it will be on water. The other Survivor in Africa was pretty dull because they were not near water (no cute guys either) and had to eat canned food (boring).

I think there are a couple more season finales tonight (ER, Smallville, Supernatural, CSI). We have volleyball tonight though, so we will have to catch up on those.

I met with a possible new client, but she hasn't responded to my emails. She acted like she was all excited to see properties on Saturday. Maybe she will email me tomorrow.

My other buyer still believes that she should get a property for whatever price she wants to pay for it. Darn it, why won't those banks just accept the offer? What dummies. At this point I will be making no money on this, but maybe I will get the award for the most patient agent?

Duane had a walking up the stairs incident last night, and gave himself the project of putting up a new railing on the basement stairs. Who knew it would snap so easily (or that you should pay attention when you are walking up the stairs)?

We are switching to a new kitty litter system (put out by Tidy Cats) which seems like it will be much cleaner. It uses pellets on top, and the pee filters to the bottom to a pad. The kitties seem to like it already. Regular kitty litter sticks to their feet and gets all over the place (gross).

We went to a restaurant tasting on Monday for Duane's favorite beer place. We both tried fois gras (nasty) and I tried a chicken liver (also nasty). The chicken liver had a good flavor, but I couldn't get over the creaminess. There were a couple of winners on the new menu and they will still have the frites. We had fun, even though the douche factor was very high. The people we sat across from were halfway decent (the wife was a little snoooty, but she was pregnant).

My rhubarb looks like it has gone to seed already (3 flowering stalks have popped up). I haven't been able to get out there and pick it, but I will this weekend. I am thinking of some rhubarb muffins with a crunchy sugar topping.

Nothing else too exciting here. We will be traveling to Maryland to visit some friends over Memorial Day weekend, so I am really looking foward to that. I am also looking forward to having a clean house some day in the future, maybe this weekend?

3 weeks and no post

I stink at blogging lately. It seems that things may finally get back to normal. Normal is actually having time at night to sit on the couch. I haven't been using the computer at home much, because I am busy or Duane is using it. He comes home from Denver late tonight. He called me this afternoon to tell me that he could work at this HMO in Denver (where he has been the past couple of days). Apparently they have less stress there in Denver.

I got caught up on my laundry, I super cleaned all the dog beds, I vacuumed my bedroom and the guest bedroom, and I only have a super messy office and dining room left! I thought I was going to have Saturday all to myself, but a friend of ours will be staying at our house. And he says we should do something fun! Yes, my idea of fun this Saturday was to mow the lawn (desperately needs it) and work around the yard. Oh well, maybe on Sunday!

Sunny but windy

Life is still chaotic around here. Friday night we stayed up late (around 4:30-5 am) just talking with friends, not even drinking! Saturday was the IKEA trip, which we got back late from since we went to bed late and we got up late. Duane spent $140 on beer, seems like I should spend $140 on something doesn't it? Sunday was working at the friend's house all day.

Duane's customers were in town Monday and Tuesday for a thing at his work. I went out to eat with them on Monday. It was a very nice dinner that I didn't have to pay for, but it meant being out late again (who knew we would talk for 2 hours after dinner?). Yesterday was a blur at work and then I was at the friend's house working. His brother helped, so that was nice. We had dinner afterwards (Duane was "resting" at home).

Next Thursday-Sunday I will be on my own. Duane is going to PA to.........drink beer with a friend. He bought his ticket with ff miles, so I guess I can't complain about the money.

Tonight is working at the friend's house again. We were supposed to finish the crown molding on Sunday but we ended up being a little short (guess someone didn't measure quite right). The open house is going to be this Sunday. TV is gangbusters next week, so I am looking forward to being home at a reasonable time and vegging on the couch.

It is really nice out today, but very windy. Luckily rain is predicted for the next three days. We wouldn't want to get too happy with all this sun.

Bug 2.0

I gave Duane the bug, but I think that was inevitable. He was sick Saturday night and you know a lot of guys are big babies when they are sick. My niece was having her first communion at 8:15 mass on Sunday (45 minutes away in Janesville). Sick boy got to stay home, but barely awake girl got to go to Janesville. I did get to spend some quality time though.

Saturday was a party at my brother's house for his father-in-law's 75th birthday. We played Rock Band most of the time and didn't get home until late.

We are currently immersed in getting a friend's house ready to list. He wants to have the open house this weekend, but I don't see that happening. I know it doesn't have to be perfect, but it does need to be finished. Duane and I are going to IKEA on Saturday (and a beer store), so that will be fun (although we are going to IKEA to get things for the house). Why is this house taking so much effort? Well the friend lives out of town, so can't be here all the time. He lived in it during grad school and then rented it, so the condition was pretty bad. Our market is getting better (450+ showings on our listings the past two weeks!), but if your house is crap it won't sell.

We had beautiful weather this weekend, but we are back to crap weather this week. Low forties, heavy rain/snow possible. Yuk.

I got nothing except for this intestinal bug

It sucks let me tell you. I was out sick one day this week, and probably should have been out 2 other days. This weekend isn't a calm one either.

The person who invented Immodium should be praised.

That is all.

Texas

My cold cleared up pretty quickly after we got back. I was using Zicam, so I think that helped.

We flew to Texas on Friday, which was the start of spring break here. Our flight was oversold, so we volunteered to take a bump. We ended up getting to Houston earlier, and we each earned $300 towards a future flight. We had a weird experience when we picked up our rental car where we were told to pick any car we wanted (huh?). Unfortunately Duane was a deer in the headlights, so we ended up with a stinky Nissan (it was ok).

We thought we would try to eat at a bbq place near the airport. As we drove there, a huge cloud of fire burst into the air. We determined that it may have been a transformer blowing up, but we didn't see anything in the news. The traffic was nuts. We found the restaurant (shack), but it wasn't open. The area surrounding downtown Houston seemed to be a giant strip mall with a lot of traffic. We left Houston and went from the strip mall to the middle of nowhere.

We got to our hotel in College Station (Courtyard Marriot). It is definitely on the low end of the Marriot chain. It was also overrun with tweens in town for a state basketball tournament. The in-room wireless did not work, but the tv had a lot of channels! We looked on Chowhound to find a place to eat. We went to the Chicken Oil Company. It was food anyway. It was also spring break in College Station which means everyone who can leave, does.

The next day we went to the Bush Museum and Library. It was interesting. The weather was nice (80s) and we were in shorts. We had a friend that was coming in from Tucson for the wedding and picked a different hotel to stay at. He called us from the motel and asked if he could stay with us (his motel was a nasty, filthy place). The wedding turned out to be pretty nice. We didn't know anyone though so we didn't stay too long. It was kind of disappointing to travel that far and spend 10 minutes talking to a friend you haven't seen in 3 years.

We were on another oversold flight on the way back and took another voluntary bump. We thought we were going to have to stay overnight in Minneapolis, but we ended up making our connection. We earned another $300 each. Duane is already thinking of places to fly to.

The weather has been ok, but there is a chance of snow in the forecast. No more snow please!!

End of the trip

Ok, so the ibuprofen wasn't in the car. I guess it would have been nice to figure that out beforehand, because we could have bought some earlier.

Bruges was very nice, probably our favorite city in Brussels. I think the countryside wins overall location though. There was this one restaurant that we had to go to 3 times in Bruges so Duane could sample the last beer on his list. The first time we went was at dinner (32 euros/per person, no thanks!), then next day we tried to go at lunch (closed on Thursdays), and the finally successful time was just before we left Bruges. Duane was super happy to have that last beer though and it was unique.

Luxembourg City is nothing to write home about unfortunately. The coolest thing is that the city center is wired for wireless internet, so you can sit in the park and check your email (for free!). Our hotel was nice (the Novotel), despite its proximity to the strip club part of town. It had the hugest breakfast buffet! We actually ate at Pizza Hut there, but the Pizza Hut there had about 15 different kinds of pizza.

Next and last stop was Dusseldorf. It was rainy, but we walked around a bit. We had a great (and cheap) dinner of goulash, frankfurters, and cheese. The flight back was fine, although my nose had started running. I ended up with a migraine when we got home because the ibuprofen got misplaced. There was a little snafu where I told a friend to pick us up on Tuesday (but we really got in on Monday). She had forgotten about a show she was going to, so I got my sister to pick us up. We would have been waiting until Tuesday otherwise.

The rest of the week was a blur. We had dinner in Janesville with my parents to celebrate our birthdays, we had dinner with another friend, and a haircut appointment.

Spring Snow

So much to say....

I have a lot to report on. The end of our trip (in which I got sicker), our trip to Texas for a wedding, and the supposed snow that is coming tonight and tomorrow.

We get to enjoy the first day of spring before one last winter storm warning. A possible 1-2 inches tonight, 4-6 inches during the day tomorrow, and 1-2 more inches tomorrow night. Good thing one of the windows in my car won't roll all the way up. I taped a garbage bag over it (classy!). No, I won't be driving it with the garbage bag taped to it.

The UW Badgers are playing their first March Madness game and winning at this point. We have a friend over that wanted to watch the game. He fell asleep right about when the game started.

We are watching my little sister's kitties while they are away for Spring Break. They are cute, but kind of drive you nutty. One of them has white fur on his paws, but he has gray fur growing in between his toes! One of them was nibbling my ear this morning in an attempt to get me out of bed.

I will probably have time to catch up after the weekend. Duane has to go to South Dakota for work for a few days.