I tried

I tried to post the other day, but the site was down for maintenance.

This will be a busy weekend. I need to get my ass in gear on several craft projects and do some cooking tomorrow. Sunday we are carving pumpkins at my sister's in Janesville.

I am making homemade chicken noodle soup tomorrow with homemade chicken stock and noodles. I hope it turns out really well. I am also making butternut squash soup, but I have made that before.

I am already planning my Christmas light display. I got a new blowup item, to replace one from last year that sucked (it spelled out snow but would never stand up right). I also bought a gadget that is supposed to allow you to hang lights on your roofline or gutter without a ladder. This would make setting up my lighting a lot simpler.

My buyers have written a GOOD offer on a nice property. I found out today that there is another offer. We won't know till Monday if the offer is accepted or countered. My buyer has already stated that if they counter, they probably aren't interested. This is an awesome house for a good price, but they have a terrible take it or leave it attitude. It could mean a great commission for me as well.

I have a new buyer that is nice and agreeable. We are looking at two houses tonight, and I hope we find something he really likes.

I haven't had any activity on my listing that I know of, but I never did think it was going to be a quick sale.

I had a listing appointment this week with a friend of a friend. He isn't quite ready to list yet, but said he will definitely hire me for the job. Yeah! :)

The weather here sucks. Earlier this week yesterday and today were supposed to be sunny and 50's. Yesterday was rainy and cold and today is dreary and cold.

We had a new guy in the office that was a total woman hater. He has left for a new company! Hopefully I will never have to work with him. I don't know if a woman hater is better than an old perv, and we have quite a lot of those.

I am going to attempt to make a paper mache pumpkin this weekend using one of those blow up punch balls. I hope it works!

Pictures

I was trying to figure out flickr so I could post pictures. I will have to look at it some more to figure how to do something other than post individual pictures. I already know how to do that.

I still have the sniffles. Our weekend with our guests went well. It snowed (again).

I have been remiss

I haven't posted in forever and now Mr. Kitty is trying to sit on my lap while I type.

I think the resolution on the tv is still off but it would require making a service call.

My hair turned out ok, but rather on the safe side as far as color goes. The new salon was nice, but freezing!

We are still not having soda at home, but I am not drinking more water like I should. I have a weird thing about hot beverages (don't like them) so no coffee. I don't even really like hot chocolate.

We got our new couch and it is really nice. The color is great and it is very comfortable. Brisco has decided that we bought it for him.

We have guests this weekend. They are allergic to our pets, so I feel bad when they sniffle. They asked to stay with us though, so what can you do? They are here from AZ.

My crazy buyers seem to have settled into exactly what they are looking for and the market has started to change towards their expectations. Hopefully this all means that we can find a place for them. I have a listing in Portage on the WI river. It will either sell quickly or languish forever.

Duane is off playing poker tonight and our guests had their own plans. Me and the tv tonight!

Cable resolved

I checked the tv this morning and the interactive guide was there!! I just about did cartwheels. The resolution seems to be off, but I should be able to get that fixed without having the guy come back.

I am getting my hair cut and getting highlights tonight. I can't wait! (even though I have no idea what I am going to do). My hair hasn't been colored in quite awhile, and I think my natural color is kind of boring. It is going to be at the new location of the salon I go to, so hopefully it is swanky.

Veronica Mars tonight! We had to watch the season premiere on tape, so the experience wasn't so great. It was still awesome though.

I am 94 this month on the company list of 121. I won't be on the list next month if I don't get my crazy buyers to commit on something.

I am using a new wireless mouse with the laptop and I keep forgetting it is there. It works quite well though. Duane got a wireless keyboard and mouse for his office ($25 on clearance at Target) and the extra wireless mouse was a bonus.

I have a headache today. Duane and I are cutting down on soda (having no soda in the house) and I think the lack of caffeine is getting to me.

Weekend

Duane got home from LA on Friday. He was very tired as he had been up late the previous two nights (drinking and partying). He came home and took a nap and then ended up staying up late.

We went to Chicago on Saturday. We got a late start, as Duane did not want to get up early. We went to CB2 and got a couple of neat things. We were really going to Trader Joe's, but CB2 was right there! (Lincoln Park) We spent $100 at TJ's, which seems pretty cheap considering everything we got. We got a ton of snacks, cheese, 2 bottles of wine, a 6 pack of beer, an awesome frozen mac & cheese, green garbonzo beans, spaghetti sauce, red mole sauce, and did I mention cheese?

We then went to Duane's favorite liquor store of all time (Sam's). We got a bottle of wine and some interesting beers. Duane called a friend the recently moved from North Carolina to Chicago and he was free for dinner. His fiancee was busy, but it was Saturday night after all (and we called last minute). We saw their house (in Western Springs) and met their cute greyhound Gambler. We went to dinner at a local Irish pub (fake Irish anyway). Our waiter was a tool but the food was decent. We then had dessert at the Oberweis Dairy (yum!) He is an electrical engineer and had to go to work that night at the John Hancock building! They put in new emergency generators for the transmission towers and they were testing them.

We made it to Janesville pretty late. We needed to pick up a tap of tv and some Market Day food. We are trying BBQ Pork, Bagel Dogs, and pumpkin praline pie and stocked up on our favorites.

I painted our bedroom on Friday with some oops paint. It turned out really nicely! I can't wait to finish my other projects in that room.

Evil cable II

I spent all last week trying to get the dvr fixed. It finally turned into having a service appointment today anytime between 1 and 5pm. The service tech showed up at 3:30, not too bad. He was here for 2 hours. He was going back and forth with the service center. They would tell him it was fine, he would boot it up, it wouldn't be fine. He left with the service center saying it should be fine and that the dvr should download the guide at some point. Do I have a guide right now? (1.5 hours later) No.

If it still isn't working tomorrow, I can have someone come look at it again. I seem to have all the time in the world to dick around with this.

It was Fashion Day at QVC and I haven't bought anything ALL day.

Duane had some crisis at work at isn't home yet.

Vancouver part deux

On Monday we went to North Vancouver on the Seabus. It is a short ferry ride, but the ferry is totally enclosed. I guess they don't want people falling or jumping into the water.

We first walked around Lonsdale Quay. It was nice, but not anything special. We then caught a bus to Lynn Canyon Park. The park has a suspension bridge, similar to the Capilano Suspension bridge, but it doesn't cost $30 to walk across. The park is beautiful. There are many paths to walk, waterfalls, and swimming pools. We didn't see those things though because we didn't have much time there. We ate at a funny cafe at the park run by an Indian couple. I say it is funny because it seems strange to find a full blown nice restaurant in a park. We checked out the Nature Center at the park, which had tons of ecological information (although mostly geared towards kids).

We jumped back on the bus and had a nice chat with a Scottish lady who runs a B&B. We thought about going to Grouse Mountain (we probably should have gone). We ended up heading back to Vancouver on the Seabus (after looking for a bar listed in the guidebook for about 20 minutes!).

We got on the Sky Train (aboveground subway) and took a ride to Commerical Ave. We were heading to a Belgian Fries place. Duane had an unfortunate encounter with a woman who was on some kind of drugs (Vancouver has safe injection sites). Duane thought she was trying to tell him something, but she really wasn't. The Belgian Fries were awesome, although they did not have Storm beer as the guide said they did.

We were off to Dix BBQ & Brewery for some beer. There was hardly enough in the place, but the bartender was not interested in talking to us. We had Red Truck Ale and Red Truck Lager. Ok, but nothing special.

We walked down to Chinatown to see the skinniest building, the Sam Kee building. We then headed over to Gastown (walking through hobo land). We ended up at the Black Frog (I had to go to the bathroom). There was also no one in this place and the bartenders were more friendly. We ended up drinking way too much beer (4 each, but we had 2 each earlier). The beer was good, although I can't remember exactly what we had.

We stumbled out of the Black Frog to head up to a hotel with a revolving bar on top. It was on top of the Westin Bayshore and called Vistas. While we walked up Hastings, we encounter a crime scene. There were cops and news crews and we didn't know what had happened. We got to the revolving bar and ordered our beers (Stella as they didn't even have any good CA beer on tap!). We argued about whether or not the restaurant was really moving (Duane was being silly), but it really was. We contemplated ditching the tab when we found out it was $16 for 2 beers. We figured someone would catch us downstairs as we had to go down 42 to stories. We headed back down Hastings and ended up at a steak place for dinner. I had an awesome rare fliet mignon with a blue cheese crust. We were pretty loopy by this point. We made it back to the hotel where I found out about what had happened earlier that night. There was/is a person in Vancouver who had been attacking homeless people. That night was the fourth person that was attacked and they had had their throat slit (they didn't die though). Freaky.

We got up Tuesday and made it to the airport. We weren't feeling too bad either. The Vancouver airport is beautiful with lots of glass, waterfalls, and open spaces. When you have an international flight and go through security to your gate, they sequester you in this area with only a few restaurants and shops. You can see all the cool shops and restaurants, but you can't get to them!

I will get to posting some pictures soon.

Evil cable

We have been having troubles with our dvr lately. We had a tuner go out, so we traded it in for a new box. The new box had a terrible picture (which actually would have been fixed be a reset signal), so we traded that in for a different box. I got the picture issue resolved, but now I have no guide. The box has an interactive onscreen guide. No guide means no recording!

I almost missed Veronica Mars!! I set up the vcr to tape it, but I am afraid to go check it out. I think I can watch the episode online though.

We had a beautiful day yesterday and today is crappy (rainy and cold). I got some of my halloween decorations up, but not all.

Duane is in LA this week. He paid $30 for a cab ride to In and Out Burger to get an $8 meal!

I still have some work to do at that stupid rental house I closed on last week. I have to go in to the office and get my check as well. I decided that it isn't a good idea for me to go to the rental by myself tonight, so I will wait till Duane is back in town.

I am cleaning and organizing Duane's office this week. He has real walls now (instead of cube walls) so he can hang pictures.

So many projects, so little time.