Funny Christmas tree story

I love Christmas! Even though last year was technically our first Christmas together as a married couple, we spent it at my parents' house as usual so we didn't have something that was really "ours" (though it was still a really nice holiday, of course). With the new house this year and all, this really feels like our "first" Christmas together.

On Thursday we went out and bought our first Christmas tree together. So exciting! The only problem was, the store ran out of tree stands but they didn't tell us that until AFTER they tied the tree up and everything. So the guy told us to just leave the tree outside in a bucket of water until the stands came in tomorrow and we could get one then. No problem.

Well, the water froze!

It's been unseasonably warm here for most of November and into December (60s) so we had no idea it was supposed to be so cold overnight and into Friday morning. I took a half day on Friday and when I got home in the afternoon and checked on it, sure enough all 10 gallons or so of water were completely frozen and the bucket was attached to the tree!

We brought it back inside the house and I was soooooo afraid we killed our first tree together! That would have made me sad. But I'm happy to report that since thawing out it's been sucking up water faster than we can replace it so I guess that means it's still living :) Here's a pic of it back in the house but still tied up and still frozen to the bucket:

55 inches

Whoa, a 55" TV is really, really big (you're welcome, E.). Here's our new toy. W. hasn't had a chance to fully set up his components and his new sound system (which he's much more excited about than the TV), but "The Incredibles" looked, well, pretty incredible on that big screen. We also got a PS2 for cheap so we'll be hooking that up and playing on the big screen. Fun, fun!

And, hey, Mr. Tiger Balm, thanks for letting me know someone out there is reading this!

First Snowfall!

I don't want to sound like I'm justifying anything about moving back East from the balmy West Coast, but dang, everything really does look beautiful this morning with the first snowfall of the season! The light dusting of snow on the bare branches of the trees and the still-green lawns was just Christmas-card perfect this morning as I drove on by. It even made me less mad that I had to take my car into the shop AGAIN this morning.

The snow won't last for long though. Already it's sunny and brighter out. On Friday it was about 70 degrees; yep, I'm definitely back in New England where the saying is "if you don't like the weather, just wait a minute" since it changes at the drop of a hat :)

W. took some pics of the back yard area this morning. I'll post one later when I get my hands on it. We're going to get our Christmas tree sometimes this week too (the weekend got too busy) and I picked up a bunch of ornaments on loan from my family last night. I helped them decorate their tree then took what was left over. My cheap self is going to buy our own ornaments after Christmas when they're 50-70% off :P Hey, when you just bought a house (and now, it looks like, maybe I do need to buy the new car after all) every little bit you can save counts! OK, maybe that part was a little bit of justification for my spendthrift habits....

Lovely Day

There's light behind that bad-luck cloud!

It's in the high 60's today and bright and sunny. Tomorrow is December 1. Crazy. But I'll take it!


The house is starting to come together. Got a bunch of stuff in over the last few weeks, but it's still all a bit of a mess so no pictures yet. FINALLY found a rug that we like; initially we bought it for the dining room but it's a little too big for in there so we decided to put it in the living room instead. I'll take a pic once everything is set up but here's the rug for now anyway.

W.'s been wheeling and dealing on stuff for the house since Thanksgiving weekend. We got a 55" LCD TV from Best Buy for less than the lowest online price because he developed this great relationship with the sales guy. On top of that he got a sweet deal on his new stereo speakers and other components. Got new speakers for the refurb'ed price PLUS 10% off, as well as a subwoofer for about $150 that originally cost over $700. I think I'm taking a backseat as the financial leader of the family! We also picked up a PS2 during the post-Thanksgiving sales so we can play some of our old favorite games.

The money is flowing out like water.... At least we decided against replacing my Civic for now!

Blah, blah, blah

Been too tired and too busy to give much of an update lately. Besides, I don't think anyone's reading this thing :P

First, an update on the car. I picked it up yet again after they replaced what turned out to be a faulty speed sensor in the transmission. Yes, a faulty speed sensor in my brand-new transmission. Fine, I get it, the check engine light stays off, and I'm good to go.

Until the next morning when I manage to back it out of the garage but can't get it to move forward once I put it in drive. This is the worst it's ever been; I've always been able to get the car to hobble around at 25 or 30mph at least. We're talking dead stop here and I was blocking the private drive that my other neighbors need to use to get to the street. Finally, after revving the car to 6500rpms (dangerously close to the red part of the tachometer at 7000rpms) I finally manage to get the car back into the driveway. Had to have it towed back to Honda AGAIN.

When I walked in I told the service guy, "No offense, but I'm really sick of seeing you guys." I mean, c'mon, I'd been there 3 or 4 times already in a matter of days. Got back into the same stupid Chevy Cobalt rental and drove away. Turns out they hadn't tightened a bolt enough and the transmission fluid had leaked out. It's really lucky that I made it all the way home with that problem and it didn't manifest itself until the morning when I was safely in my driveway. I miss my Honda service people out in Menlo Park; they were great, none of this shoddy work crap.

Nonetheless, we did decide to put off the new car purchase for now. The Civic seems to be driving OK again (finally) and the prices weren't as good as we expected them to be this time of year. I pretty much decided I wanted an A4 but they weren't budging much on their new or certified used prices so I said forget it. Incidentally, car shopping isn't much fun. Thank goodness for W's gearhead brain to protect me from doing something stupid out of a sheer desire to just get the buying process over with. So, hopefully the little Civic will hang in there for a bit.

On the bright side until very recently the temps here have been in the 60s. Definitely atypical for New England in November. It's dipped into the 40s during the day in the last couple of days, but it's supposed to go back up a bit I think. I'm glad the area weather gods are taking it easy on me for my first winter back on the East Coast.

Did you all have a nice Thanksgiving? It was great to be with my family again for the holiday since I haven't celebrated Turkey Day with them in six years. I made two pies: pumpkin and chocolate cheesecake. Both went over pretty well. I also made 44 sweet potato and bean burritos...yum! We all ate a ton on Thursday only to get together again for more food on Saturday to celebrate little cousin J.'s fourth birthday. He's a little monster--way too much energy, short-tempered, and willful, but with a dimple that never fails to charm.

Blah, more bad luck

I left work early on Friday to go pick up my car with brand new transmission #2 in it. I was pleasantly surprised that it was ready after only 1.5 days of work on it. When I get there after a not-so-scenic detour up the Mass Pike (stupid blocked roadsigns), I finally get back into my Civic, drive it around the rotary, only to have the check engine light come on. OK, not ideal, but I figured maybe they just forgot to reset it after working on the car and it should be a quick fix. I hadn't gotten very far yet either so I just circled back around to the dealership. Then they tell me that they're closed and no one can look at the car until Monday. What?! You don't work on weekends?! Apparently they only staff a couple of people to do oil changes on weekends. $@#*#!!! So annoying!

So now I'm back in the stupid little Chevy Cobalt rental. At least Honda is paying for that since they didn't have any loaners left.

Rewind to Thursday...we finally got a bunch of furniture delivered. Dining room table, 8 dining room chairs, kitchen table, 4 kitchen chairs, and a coffee table with ottomans that tuck under the table. Yay, furniture! Boo, defects! Literally 50% of the stuff we got had problems with it. Major scratches on the kitchen table leg, 3 out of 4 kitchen chairs are pretty uneven and tip back and forth, 4 out of 8 kitchen chairs have dings and scratches on the legs, imperfections on the surface of the coffee table, and threads unwinding on one of the ottomans. All the pieces are from Jordan's Furniture. Hmm, might have to revisit the wisdom of shopping there. The delivery people should have taken all the defective stuff away but they insisted we deal with customer service instead. Fan-freakin'-tastic.

Fast forward to this weekend. Saw some friends at the Harvard-Yale game (Yale kicked our butt, apparently, but as long as the tailgating is good who cares?). Most of them were old co-workers from my first job out of school--good people, good memories. Then we spent all day today test driving cars. Subaru Impreza (they didn't have an automatic WRX--yeah yeah, hush all you stick drivers), Saab 9-3, Infiniti G35, Mazda 3 hatchback, and Audi A4. We were supposed to go check out the Acura TL and TSX too but they closed at 4pm and we missed it (who closes at 4pm just cuz it's a Sunday?). So far, the A4 wins hands down. So I'd be following in the footsteps of D., D., and M. back in SF/LA. We'll have to see how I like the Acuras though; off to test those tomorrow after work I guess.

OK, everyone out there send out some good luck vibes to me so this black cloud goes away!

A run of bad luck

I wonder if a black cat crossed my path on Halloween, cuz the last few days have felt like there's a rain cloud just hanging over me.

The other night as I left my office and was just starting to merge onto the freeway for the short drive home, the transmission on my Civic started slipping. This means that I was able to go about 25 mph while revving at 4000-4500 rpm's. Not fun. The sad part is, this has already happened to this car once before. When I first bought it (used) I drove it about 2000 for a total of about 25,000 on the then 5-year-old car. Luckily I had a great service advisor at Honda back in California who advised me to call Honda of America since the mileage was so low and the corporate office actually agreed to cover the entire cost of replacing the transmission. I was actually really impressed with how they were standing behind their product. They footed what would have been a $4000 bill to me (and I had only paid about $10,750 for the car). I thought I was done with that nightmare. Now here it is, back again.

I called Honda of America again and this time they'll only cover the part and I have to cover the labor, which means I'm out about $700. Grrrrrr...what happened to Hondas being bullet proof?! I mean, this car is supposed to keep running until the wheels rust off. That was kind of the whole point when I decided to buy it over a luxury car in the first place. Everyone at Honda--the corporate guy, the service advisor, the service manager, and the salesman we talked to about trading it in--all commented about how unusual it was for a Honda to have such a serious problem, never mind having it happen TWICE. My only solace is knowing that it's through no fault of my own as an operator--the car is an automatic so there's no way I messed it up. *sigh* We decided to go ahead with the repair because I'm handing the car over to my sisters so they can learn how to drive and finally have a car to beat around. But, seriously, what are the chances of this happening to a Honda once never mind twice?! Grrrrr......

Then today was supposed to be furniture delivery day #1. The dining room table did arrive, but sans the hardware to put it together! So now we have a disassembled table sitting on our dining room floor, waiting for the hardware to hopefully arrive via overnight mail tomorrow. The dining room chairs and the kitchen table are supposed to come tomorrow--let's hope the cloud over my head goes away by then.

S.F. trip recap

Brrr...it's starting to get pretty chilly around here, but mostly early in the morning and at night. During the day it's still been hitting the 60s for the most part, which is pretty great for New England. It's too bad I didn't get any pictures of the fall leaves before the season passed; they were gorgeous and it was great to see it all in person for the first time in years.

The weather was surprisingly gorgeous in S.F. this weekend. I was expecting rain, fog, and chills since it's November, but instead temps were in the 70s and R. & J. could have had their wedding outdoors!

The weekend pretty much revolved around food, and lots of it. As soon as I arrived in San Jose, W. and I headed over to meet our friends for dinner at our favorite bay area Korean restaurant, Korea House in Santa Clara. There were nearly 30 of us at dinner and the waitstaff were real troopers about dealing with our huge group. They even gave us several free beers since we ordered so much food. When I saw the spread on the table I thought we'd spent a small fortune, but somehow the bill worked out to only $20/person. Go figure, guess the boys weren't pulling their weight that night! Mmmm...kalbi....

After getting some much-needed sleep and grabbing a dim sum brunch with some other friends, we hit R. & J.'s wedding. They chose a really unique venue, Broadway Studios, which is a performance space with a stage and a big dance floor. You can rent it out for events, but I don't think they usually do weddings there. It's right over one of our favorite clubs from our partying days, Velvet Lounge :) R. did a great job decorating it and other than being a little crowded during the cocktail hour, it was a great space. We had a ton of fun catching up with old friends over dinner (except for the part when M. almost made me cry by saying how much our friends miss us and telling us to move back). Thanks for a great party, R. & J., and congrats again!

On Sunday we got a chance to see S. & R.'s new house in San Mateo. We're so excited for them and their purchase together. It's a fixer-upper, but he's got the technical/mechanical skills and she's got the creative talent to turn it into a great home. I can't wait to visit it again the next time we're out ther, which should be in July for L. and R.'s wedding (good thing we have all these weddings as an excuse to go back to the bay area!). Actually, I take that back; while we were out there W. already planned his Tahoe time for two weekends in March so I guess we'll be back then :)

I closed out my trip with, yes, another big meal. We hit the Sunday all-you-can-eat sushi buffet at Satsuma and it was even better than I remember it. R. liked it so much he started crying--heehee! Gotta lay off that wasabi a bit. W. dropped me off at the airport afterwards and then went on to play volleyball with some more friends before getting on his separate flight home the next day.

The red eye home was as painful as ever, but well worth it for a fun weekend catching up with friends. I can't wait to do it again.

I'm goin' goin' back back to Cali Cali...

Yay, I'm off to S.F. this afternoon to attend a friend's wedding on Saturday. W. left yesterday and he's staying a day later than me so he gets a little more time there. We miss our friends out there so it'll be really good to see everyone. Because we're going to be up in the city mostly, it's actually going to be kinda chilly, which is always a bummer when you're going out to California but we'll live.

Had a nice conversation with W's cousin S. last night. She gave me a bunch of links for furniture/design/rug places to take a look at for inspiration and she might even be able to get us a trade discount for some of the remaining items we need. I think looking at new ideas will be good for me as I need to get re-inspired so I'm not so frustrated with waiting for furniture to arrive and going out to look for more.

Wanna know how many furniture stores we've been to since we moved here? Probably not, but let's see if I can remember most of them anyway:
1) IKEA
2) Macy's (where the couch is from)
3) Bloomingdale's
4) Mattress Discounters
5) Brookstone (not a furniture store, but it's where we got our Tempur-Pedic mattress)
6) random discount furniture place #1
7) random discount furniture place #2
8) random little store recommended by someone online that turned out to be tiny
9) Jordan's Furniture (local chain store with HUGE locations--one has a trapeze school in it, two others have IMAX theaters. Got our kitchen table there and will probably get our coffee and end tables there too)
10) City Schemes
11) Jennifer Convertibles
12) Bassett
13) La-Z-Boy Furniture
14) Arhaus (where the dining table came from)
15) Domain
16) in Home Furnishings
17) Roche Bobois (uber modern, uber expensive)
18) Mitchell Gold
19) Circle Furniture
20) Design Within Reach
21) Crate & Barrel
22) West Elm
23) Italian Design
24) Boston Interiors
25) Restoration Hardware
26) Ethan Allen
27) Thomasville
28) Leather Creations
29) Zeba Rugs
30) Dover Rugs

And there are one or two more odd ones in there I think that I forget the names of. And there are only more to come since we're still on the hunt. How fun :P

Warm fall days

Woo-hoo, according to the weather info on MSN.com it's actually warmer in Boston today than it is in Palo Alto; 69 degrees vs. 64. Gotta enjoy it while I can before the winter hits here and I start freezing my butt off!

We're going back to S.F. this weekend to attend a friend's wedding. Can't wait for the mini-vacation and to see all our friends again, even though I'm only going to be there for about two days. W. is staying a couple of days longer than me since his office is out there anyway. At the very least we know we'll be seeing a few of these friends again in February for our Vail, CO snowboarding trip. Fun!

Happy Birthday to Me! :)

Man, I'm getting old. I still love birthdays though; I just think they're so much fun :) W. is taking me out for dinner in a little bit. My co-workers got a cake for me and even sang happy birthday (they sang pretty well too--that's a surprisingly tough song to sing). All in all, a good day so far, albeit MUCH tamer than the last few birthdays in S.F. Happy Birthday from afar to my October Babies crew!

Our first furniture delivery and our second Cali visitor

We finally got our first piece of new furniture delivered. Boo for delays; hooray for the couch finally being here, and in one piece. It looks pretty good in the room, and we're really happy with the decision to go with the brown leather. Now I need some accent pillows and a throw blanket to dress it up a bit. A rug, couple of arm chairs, coffee table, end tables, lamps, TV, and entertainment unit would help too :P We're working on it....

The kitchen table and chairs are due to arrive either this week or next. I won't be too sad to see the green folding table go (though we're really grateful for the loaner, mom!). Then it's the super cool dining room table that arrives next in mid-November or so. It's much cooler looking in real life than in this pic. It's 55" square with a butterfly leaf that folds into the table so no storing an extra leaf under the bed (my parents have a traditional table like that and it's a pain to store and protect that extra leaf for the one or two times a year you actually use it). And we didn't get those chairs. They had cool ones at the store but they were something like $450 a piece so we went somewhere else and got chairs for about $110 each instead.

We also had our second visitor from California here for a visit this past weekend. Well, P. actually came up from Philly where he's currently at business school, but he's part of the Cali crew. W. filled in on Wharton's B team and P. wasn't kidding when he said it was b-school B...not the highest quality v-ball we've ever played, but W. enjoyed just being on the court again. I played one game, got a few good digs in, was happy. The Wharton team kicked Harvard's butt, which made P. happy. Why are people always out to get Harvard??? :) Then, in a dramatic and yet anti-climatic ending to the tournament, as Wharton met up with Kellogg in a heated game 2 in a best-of-three match with Wharton trailing by one game but up nine points in game 2, all the lights in the gym went out and a couple dozen of us were left in complete pitch blackness. Turns out we were way behind schedule and the gym was ready to close, so that was that. They couldn't get more than one measly light back on so they decided to call it a tie. What kind of project management skills do these HBS students have anyway? They also had forgotten to schedule refs for the playoffs and were begging some of us to stay.

There's a lot more of you S.F. folks (and even some of you more local people) that haven't come out yet...we're waiting with open arms, a porch light on, spare beds, and good times!

Office casual

There hasn't been much that's post-worthy going on lately, hence no updates to the blog. Yesterday, though, I learned something cool about my office that got me so excited W. was laughing at me all night. The big news is......I can wear jeans to work! You have no idea how happy this makes me. At least I haven't really had to wear a monkey suit much in the last few years but I have never, ever had a job where I can wear jeans to the office! Not even when I worked at a startup in S.F. This is a big plus; the new job is looking better and better :)

We were also supposed to get our first furniture delivery yesterday, a couch from Macy's. At 8:30am though they call me to tell me it's not coming because the couch is damaged and now it won't be here 'til next week. Kind of a bummer, would have been nice to have our first real piece of new furniture in the house. Luckily though since W. works from home no one had taken time off yesterday to wait for the delivery. Having someone at home for stuff like this is pretty cool. W's been able to meet with contractors, repairmen, etc. during the day when otherwise we'd have to wait forever to get a weekend appointment.

Oh, and P. is coming to visit from Philly this weekend. I just saw him last week when I was in Philly for a conference, but it'll be great to have another visitor here in Boston. He also asked us to play in the volleyball tournament he's in town for. The Wharton "B" team is short a couple of folks so we're filling in. Should be fun, since we haven't played since we moved to Boston. But then again, P. said, "Well, it's b-school 'B' level" and W. said, "So more like rec?" P: "Uh, yeah." OK...we'll see how it goes.

More friendly neighbors

I think I need to go buy some thank you notes. Another one of our neighbors stopped by just before I got home tonight and they brought the most amazing looking homemade apple pie. Good thing I didn't pick enough apples to bake my own pie a couple of weeks ago! Haven't had a chance to actually try the pie yet since Willy cooked a very yummy dinner and I'm full.

Had my first day in the office today. It wasn't bad, went by pretty fast actually. I had a bad case of food coma after lunch, right as my boss was giving me some database training (maybe that's what was putting me to sleep...hmmm). It's a small office, but cool people so far so I'm happy.

Hey, S & R, by the way, CONGRATS again! We are so so so so so so very happy for you two!

Back to work

I started the new job yesterday and jumped right into a two-day conference in Philadelphia. Got to see P. while I was there, so that was a lot of fun. Tomorrow is my first day in the office, I should really get some sleep. No more mid-day furniture shopping and errands for me :( But, on the up side, now we'll have more money to spend on said furniture and errands :)

The furniture is on its way!

Yay, we finally ordered more furniture today! A couch and dining table are both going to be on their way soon. The Macy's couch is coming quickly; it'll be here next Tuesday (ignore the ugly blue pillows in the picture). The dining table will be here just a little bit before Thanksgiving. We're not hosting Thanksgiving at our house this year anyway, but it's still nice that we'll have a table before the holidays.

We didn't however, buy any chairs for the dining room table because the ones at the store were like $450/chair and we've seen ones we like for closer to $110/chair or so--big difference! Thank goodness for all those gift cards from the wedding because they really helped out with some of the big purchases today.

After spending several thousand dollars in the morning, we spent the rest of the day at a BBQ at my aunt and uncle's house. Saw my two little cousins (my cousin's kids, actually) and they've gotten SO BIG. Time flies when you're living in California I guess.

Stupid, crappy service people

Wanna know what we did all day today? Sat around waiting for the Whirlpool technician to come and fix our washing machine. AND HE NEVER SHOWED UP!!! In case you can't tell, I'm still a litte pissed off. I hate it when people waste my time and this guy wasted about 9 hours of it--not cool.

Not to mention that the machine is brand new and supposedly top of the line. Grrr...argh.... Now we have to wait another week for the parts we need to show up before the technician will even come to the house. Stupid service people.

On the positive side, I found a furniture store that I liked today and we both saw a couch that we kinda like. So hopefully this weekend we can start to make a dent in the furniture list. We're packed with family and friend activities this weekend too though so we'll see how far we get.

Our first visitor from Cali!

We've been in the house for two weeks now (wow, is that it? seems like longer) and we had our first visitor from California. We were so excited to have a guest! The visit was too short, but otherwise we all had a great time. Note: if you come to Boston, keep in mind that a day and a half does not allow you enough meals to try all the food you really need to try out here.


Since D wasn't here very long we did just a few things on Saturday. We did a short Harvard tour in the afternoon, but in the morning we went apple picking. Well, to be more accurate, we really went Asian pear picking because 95% of our bags were filled with Asian pears with just a few peaches and apples thrown in. What a cool farm to have so many different fruits in one place. They also have nectarines, strawberries, grapes, and pumpkins at varying times of year.


It was a gorgeous day on Saturday, which was lucky because it rained all day today. Fresh-picked fruit tastes even better on a day like that. Which is good, because it softened the blow of how much it all cost--$1.50/lb. x 40 lbs = $60 (that bag in the picture is only the first of two that we had). I'm a piggy. It was totally my fault because I couldn't stop picking all those Asian pears! In my defense, I was planning on giving a bunch away to my grandparents and my aunt and uncle. Really, that's why I did it. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it! When we were kids they used to charge you by the bag and you could just fill it up regardless of how much it weighed. Nowadays even though we had a "fifteen pound" bag they weigh it at checkout and you pay whatever the actual weight is. Too bad they didn't have Asian pears to pick back in the day!

We can't wait for the rest of you to visit! Hope you had a good time, D!

Professional Help

Today we met with the interior designers who originally helped the previous owner of our house set everything up. They do great work and I'd love the help, but man they're pricey. $150/hour for two designers plus a 10% markup on whatever furniture they help us get. Yikes. So no designers for us, I guess.

D. arrives in about half an hour. Our first visitor from S.F. (or, rather, L.A. now I guess since he relocated)--yay! Better go make sure the house is somewhat presentable.

Electricity good

Had our first problem with the house today--power outage. The electric company had to do some emergency work on a transformer that took out our entire block. W. went to go play with the circuit breaker in the basement and when he tried to turn the main switch back on, it refused to stay in the "on" position. Some guy at Home Depot told us that some circuit breakers require electricity to be running through it before it will go back on. So we wait...and we wait...and we wait...and lo and behold, all our neighbors seem to have power now, but our circuit still refuses to turn back on.

NStar (power company) guy comes out, tells us it's our problem because the circuit breaker is broken and that's not their responsibility. Stupid power guy, we never would have touched the circuit breaker if you idiots hadn't broken fudged up the power in the first place.

Luckily, I had talked W. into getting a homeowner's insurance policy when we bought the house. He and the realtor (who actually bought the policy for us as a closing gift) thought I was crazy for wanting a warranty on a house that's only three years old, but ha! Now we only have to pay an electrician $50 to come and put in a new circuit breaker instead of something like $200-300.

The electrician that stopped by tonight was really nice. He managed to get the circuit breaker to the "on" position again--or else I wouldn't be here blogging about it--but he's going to come back tomorrow when we can get ahold of the right part to replace. As he said, since we're not paying for it anyway might as well replace it so it won't happen again. So, after 10 hours or so without power we finally have lights again. Hallelujah!

The other exciting thing I did today was finally go to the Social Security office to start the whole name-change process. In about three weeks I will have a brand spankin' new card with my new identity on it. Exciting and a little sad all at the same time, but since I waited a year and a half before I did anything I've had more time to get used to the idea of a new name. New home, new name, same old me.

Our stuff is here!

Yay, our stuff is finally here! The moving truck arrived on Friday morning, promptly at 10:30am. They had called the night before to say they would be here between 10:30 and 11:00am, which is the smallest window I've ever been given by any sort of delivery or service person. Luckily the truck was able to park OK in front of our house (we're situated at kind of a funny intersection and regular access to the house is via a private driveway in the back), and in two hours the guys had all our stuff in the house and the futon and W's bike reassembled. Nice work!


They really pack those trucks in when they're driving cross country. Our stuff was stacked up to the roof, but amazingly there was no serious crushing of any boxes. The guy used a ladder to get to the things up top and take 'em down.

So now the house is a big mess with boxes and general stuff everywhere. Oh well, we'll get there a little bit at a time. We did finally make our first furniture purchase today too, a very cool counter-height table for the kitchen. The picture I took of it isn't very good so you all will just have to come visit us to appreciate it in person :) It'll be nice to have at least one piece of real "grown-up" furniture in the house. Bad news is that it's out of stock right now and we have to wait until late October or so to get it.

Oh, W. mowed our lawn for the first time today too. My parents gave us a manual mower that they didn't want anymore. Our lawn area is relatively small so we thought a manual machine would be more economical for us. It worked fine, but takes a little more effort--Willy definitely got a good workout. If we don't let it get quite so long in the future though, hopefully the mowing will be easier. The leaves are starting to change colors and fall here too, so more yard work but we're looking forward to enjoying a real Autumn for the first time in years.

Neighbors

We met our first neighbor today, the one who lives right next door in a house built by the same builder who did ours. I was just thinking yesterday about how it'd be nice to meet our neighbors soon. I didn't know if people still greeted new neighbors with welcome baskets and such in this day and age, but apparently they do! She rang our doorbell this afternoon, said hello, and gave us a very nice loaf of homemade bread (I'm assuming it's homemade since it was all wrapped up in tinfoil and had a nice card attached with some ribbon). We haven't tried the bread yet, but that might be tonight's midnight snack :)

So it's a married couple with two kids next door. They're also in the process of adopting a third child--how cool is that? They've got two cute little dogs too, both white, a Maltese and a Shih Tzu. They're really yippy though, which detracts from the cute factor. Anyway, looking forward to getting to know these neighbors since we're off to such a friendly start.

The big errands for today were to pick up my car and a run to Home Depot. My car arrived unexpectedly this morning, a full 3 days early. It was a nice surprise cuz I was getting sick of not having my own wheels. W. just says that I need to learn how to drive his stick-shift car; I maintain there's a reason God made automatics. As for Home Depot...how do you spend $300 on just random odds and ends? It's not like we need to do major renovations or even paint anything in the house, yet somehow we managed to put a good dent tonight into the gift cards we collected as wedding gifts (thanks all!).

Oh, and our brand new washer and dryer got delivered today too! The things you get excited about when you own a home. They're front-loading, energy star machines so that we can be environmentally friendly. Apparently we got top-of-the-line Whirlpool models--this is what happens when you let the hubby make the buying decisions on new toys :) Just kidding, babe, great job! The plumber comes tomorrow so hopefully we can finally get some laundry done.

We also learned a new house fact today: the front doorbell chimes twice (ding-dong!) while the back doorbell only chimes once (ding!). Ah, yes, we're really settling in now! :)

We love having our own house!

So it's been five days since we closed on the house and even though we have next to no furniture, have a to-do list a mile long, and have been busy every minute of every day since we've moved back to Boston, we're still SO HAPPY with the house! It was obviously the right decision for us since we've had absolutely zero regrets so far. That might change once the credit card bills start rolling in though :P

I gotta say that furniture shopping really sucks. We've only been doing it for a few days and we're alreaady tired of it. Everyone says it's supposed to be fun, but I'm not enjoying it so far. Maybe that's because we're so desperate just to have something to sit on that it's hard to be patient to find the right couch/kitchen table/dining table/etc. Did I mention that we really have almost no furniture? Check it out:



Yesterday we bought two desks at IKEA though so W. can start working again. I get a desk too this time unlike our old apartment so now it's really "our" study. We've vowed to keep the clutter to a minimum, but only time will tell how that works out. The two folding chairs we borrowed from my family are too short for the desks though, so here was W's solution:

Yes, that's a phone book he's sitting on.


Other than that, the only other furniture we have is more stuff we borrowed from my parents. We have my old bed that we're tossing as soon as our new Tempur-Pedic bed shows up, and there's a folding table and two more chairs. At least we have something to sleep and eat on!