Did it!

Done! I actually managed to get my garage completely cleaned out. Now I just have to put the remaining bags of trash out on the curb tomorrow for the trash collectors and I'll be officially done. I'm still amazed by all the junk I had in there.

I've started letting the cats come and go in there. I've always kept them out because of all the chemicals, like fertilizer, fire ant killers, rose sprays, etc, etc, etc. Now I've got those all cleaned up and the ones I'm keeping are put away on high shelves. Addy and Zoe have both checked out everything that's easily investigated. I want them to get used to the garage before I have to leave them in there while work is done on the house.

The house stuff is also progressing, so I should probably be starting to pack my life away in preparation for moving it all into the garage. The house has been measured and on Tuesday I meet with the folks at the store to confirm the specific carpet and tile and mortgage my soul.. ahem.. I mean find out how much and for how long this is going to put me in debt. And hopefully also find out some dates that it's going to occur. In the mean time I will start packing everything and moving smaller pieces of furniture into the garage. That should keep me out of trouble for the foreseeable future.

It's gorgeous and sunny this morning and cool, but everything is very wet from the rain for the last couple of days. Probably I won't be able to mow today so I'll do it next weekend over the long Thanksgiving weekend.

Also next weekend I'm going to do something I haven't done before. I have an appointment at Glamour Shots. I've been needing professional pictures for some time now. I could go to a professional photographer I suppose, but these guys should be able to not only get the photos for me, but also make me look fairly good. They asked me when the last time was that I had pictures made, and the answer to that is probably that I've never had professional photos made. I guess it's time. I need the photos because I plan to run for an office in my professional association and need a current picture to go with the bio. Also, I need one because I was selected as a Mentor of the Month by a group. Plus I'll be doing a professional blog starting in January and will need one for that. So my wanting to have a professional picture that looks decent has gone from just my own desire to a pretty serious need in the near future. I decided to go for it.

That will be on Saturday. Thursday and Friday I'll be in east Texas eating myself sick at my folks place. I love Thanksgiving dinner with the family. Luckily for me, my parents are willing to cook every year, so I'm seriously looking forward to spending some fat and happy time with them. I imagine this year it will just be me and the folks and my sister and brother-in-law who live out there near them. At Christmas time we may all be out there except maybe the Colorado gang. I have a married brother and he and his wife have four grown kids (one married). I also have three sisters, one in this area with a grown son, the one in east Texas with her husband, and the one in Colorado with her husband. Her son, his wife and their daughter are my relatives in Denver whose pictures you've seen in this blog.

Now that I've listed the family, you can see how long my Christmas shopping list is. I'm almost half way through it though. On-line shopping is great.

Guess I'd better get to my Sunday housework and turn robo vac loose.

Home again

My last post was pretty short, but I got side-tracked and then busy with some short trips.

I'm so glad to be home from my traveling. As much as I like to travel, it's always nice to be back. I've had two meeting trips in the last two weeks, the first to New Orleans and the second to Salt Lake City. Both meetings were really good, and the travel gods were looking out for me. No delays, cancellations, or other travel-related issues. In fact, I caught an earlier flight coming back from Salt Lake City on Friday night and got in earlier than I expected to. So all in all, routine travels with excellent, worthwhile meetings.

I'm glad not to be traveling for awhile for a couple of reasons, though. Besides just being glad to be home for awhile, I've been really pushing it to keep up with work and travel too, so it's nice to have only work facing me now. I have some deadlines to make, although I've managed to make a couple of them while traveling.

Besides work right now, I need to remember that Christmas is soon, and Christmas shopping shouldn't be put off. Especially because a lot of gifts will need to be shipped this year. I'll be going to east Texas rather than Colorado, so I need to get shopping done and stuff mailed to Colorado in time to arrive there during the holidays. Which makes the time between now and Christmas entirely too short.

Up-date on the house stuff: I chose a carpet color. Believe it or not. Someone is going to call me and arrange to come out and measure the house. And ever since I got home from the store, I've been looking at all my stuff that I will need to pack up and move. Can you say "despair"? It's going to take me months just to pack all this stuff and put it in the garage for the duration. I suppose I should start now, but I'm not going to start until I have a date that the work will start. Plus I didn't choose a counter top, and I'm told I should have those done before the floor. Plus I do need to finish cleaning out space in the garage. I worked on that yesterday again. Two more bags of trash. It really is getting close to being done, but I've got one serious area that I have to tackle. And I'll need to get used to parking outside so all my stuff and cats can have the garage. It's all becoming more real now that I've actually chosen a carpet color.

The color is darker than my current carpet, but not a dark color. My current carpet is some off-white shade, or was when the house was new. Now it's mostly 'stained and dingy', if I had to give it a color name. The new color is more of a light taupe. I did my best to see how it looks with a little carpet square in the house. Hopefully I'll like it when it's installed. *laughing* No. I WILL like it when it's installed. I would tell the name of the color but I've forgotten. They have too many colors with too many names.

I bought a robot vacuum cleaner about a month ago. A Roomba iRobot. It's the most amazing thing. The little thing just wanders around the house, and cleans like crazy. It seems to clean better than my big upright vacuum, plus it goes under the bed. Of course, my cats are less than thrilled, especially about the fact that it goes under the beds. Addy stalked it all over the house the first couple of times I used it, while Zoe ran from it hissing and spitting as it seemed to follow her around the house. Now days, Addy stays up on the furniture and ignores it, and Zoe sits in the kitchen until it's done. The cat-kids are not exactly good about making adjustments to their routine. I got them one of those fountains that's always running because Addy especially likes to drink from running water. It took them about a week to come into the master bath again (where I'd put it), and about three weeks for both of them to drink from it. They like it now though. They just don't deal with changes well.

So why'd I buy the robot vacuum? No reason. It seemed like fun, and besides laughing at the cats, it's been really nice to just turn it on and go do whatever I was doing. My house is staying a lot more vacuumed, I can tell you. Now if they'd just invent a robot duster, I'd be set.

Repairs and Fall cleaning

I wrote this almost two weeks ago, but forgot to post it, so it's a little out-dated. Maa. I'll post it anyway.

This has been a fairly productive week. After last week's leak repair, I did manage to call someone about my foundation this week. And to my delight, I have a "remarkably level house". I don't need any foundation work! I wanted to get that checked because I have some cracks in my interior walls, but he said just to watch them. They're not caused by foundation problems. So I dodged that bullet. Now I feel comfortable spending money on making the house better without worrying about whether I'll need that money for repairs.


Then Saturday I took my car in for basic maintenance, oil and filter change, and did not dodge a bullet there. Around $800.00 worth of un-dodged bullet. Besides the oil and filter and tire rotation, I needed two drive belts and front brakes as well as basic maintenance that was due around 40,000 miles. I don't mind spending money on my car actually. I depend heavily on it and need it to be running perfectly. It's been making a random whistling sound. Really random. So much so that I can't pin it down to any specific driving or outside conditions. So maybe all that work they did Saturday will have fixed whatever was making the noise. [Apparently it did. I haven't heard it since they worked on the car.]


I went back to Lowe's on Saturday also and spent more time looking at carpet and tile. I brought more carpet pieces home, but I think I found the ceramic tile I want, both for the kitchen and the bathrooms. And I started looking at counter tops for the kitchen. And I think I want to paint the master bathroom. Slowly but surely I'm getting ready to have this work done on this house. I also worked some more on cleaning out the garage again. Three more bags of trash and I'm getting there. It won't be too much longer and I'll have it looking good.


So all in all a fairly productive week and it's also been a beautiful weekend. So I'm in a pretty good mood. It's sunny! Finally! I thought it would never stop raining, but we've had a almost a week of sun.