he said. she said. a married couple's blog.

Thursday, July 28

At least it's cooled off around here today. Brendan is going to the football match today: DC United vs Chelsea FC. He's meeting my dad and little brother Steven there. Since I have to teach tonight and can't go, David* is going to go with him. It should be fun. The seats aren't the best -- they are behind the goal -- but they are right near the Screaming Eagles and Barra Brava. I'm a little disappointed that I don't get to go. Tonight is, however, my last night of teaching. Bittersweet.

______
* I know how much you like getting your name in print here, David.

Wednesday, July 27

express zen

Back in March I wrote about a crazy insect guy whose show was on one of the HD channels, but I didn't know the name of neither him nor the show.

Well, now I know. His name is Ruud Klienpaste and I mistakenly called him Australian. He's from New Zealand. He's got a new show on Animal Planet called "Buggin' with Ruud." The Post Express even called him "a sort of entomological version of...Steve Irwin" (which is what I called him, too).

At first I wasn't sure if it was the same person but honestly, how many crazy bug guys with an Aussie/New Zealand accent are there? (Probably more that I'd think, though, huh?)

Monday, July 25

so much

There's a lot going on at the moment.

We just moved; I'm still teaching (but only for this week); I have a big meeting next Thursday and so on...

Not only do we not have a satellite (or cable) at the new house, we also don't have an internet connection just yet. I'm so out of touch. I was catching up on deleting the spam I get at my hotmail account, when I saw I had an email announcing that R. had sent me a message at Classmates. R, my high school boyfriend who I didn't really like all that much but was still upset when he went off and slept with someone else (presumably because I wouldn't). Whatever. He was a jerk. So he sends me this, hi we haven't talked since your senior year (he was a year older) :( send me an email, message. I'm sitting here thinking, yeah, damn right we haven't talked, you were an asshole. The plan is just to ignore him. I've got nothing to say, really.

Brendan thinks it's all so funny because he's still friends with all his ex-girlfriends. I think it's weird, but whatever. Apparently we talked at some length (with Vince) about this very subject on Saturday. I say apparently, because I also apparently had a lot of wine on Saturday, too.

[Note: Maybe I think about it more than I thought]

cruelty

Perhaps I shouldn't have blasphemed so much in the "Jesus House" before it was ours. The DirecTV guy came out on Saturday to hook us up and we can't get a signal. There are too many tall trees in our backyard.

Yeah, Brendan isn't happy at all about that. Can't watch the Steelers every week without the dish.

We might be able to put it in the very back corner of the yard, but were not getting our hopes up just yet.

I'm just trying to make it through today without losing it/crying/screaming/throwing things.

Monday, July 18

primed

Our new phone number is a prime number. I Googled it to see if there was any info left over from the last "owner" (there was, but just a little), and it came up with a link to prime numbers as well. It's further proof of my dorkiness that this fact excites me. You can check your phone number, or any other number for that matter, here.

things i learned this weekend

The older gentleman who lives across the street from the new house cuts his grass in a t-shirt with ripped off sleeves (nothing wrong with that) and while smoking a pipe.

Painting a ceiling is not fun -- even without the popcorn texture that we've been used to.

Painting over a dark blue stencil can be a lot of work -- two coats of primer and two coats of paint -- but it's worth it not to have those teapots there anymore.

Our new neighbors might be a little loud.

This move is going to be harder work than I had originally thought.

Friday, July 15

it's official

We just finished buying our new house. Now all we have to do is pack, and paint, and clean, and unpack, and furnish, and decorate....

Saturday, July 9

next week

This time next week, we will be renting back our current house, and official owners of our new home. We just started packing today. Fortunately, someone at Brendan's office just moved, and she had all her boxes ready to pass along to some needy person. Woo hoo! I think we'll need more though.

I've been telling Brendan that we have more stuff than he thinks. I just packed up our bookshelves, and I've already used at least ten boxes.

I've never really moved with anything that I really care about. In college, my stuff was pretty disposable, and it only furnished one room. Now we have a whole house full of stuff to pack. And now we have some nice stuff. It will be alright, though. We've got 10 days to get our stuff together here and move it down there. Did I mention that I also want to paint the downstairs of the new house?

Yeah, we'll be busy. But it will be so worth it.

Friday, July 8

inexpensive

Everytime we go to the Lake, I'm struck at how inexpensive things are. Take for instance our visit to the Swiss Chalet in Geneva-on-the-Lake (photo of part of the "strip" above).

Originally, I set out for an afternoon coffee and Brendan was going to tag along. The little coffee shop/bookstore across the road from the cottage was closed, so it was into Geneva. Then we decided that we should go someplace that Brendan had never been before -- which left bars. Annie's (aka the biker hangout) was his first choice, but unfortunately it's no more and the new bar in its place seemed to be a college/frat boy bar. So we skipped it and went to the Swiss Chalet instead. The place is really large. One long bar along the side made of dark wood, with chrome and red vinyl barstools. The clientele averaged at about 50 years old. I ordered a Jack & Ginger and Brendan a Miller Lite in the bottle. The total? Five dollars. Beautiful. Here, my drink alone would cost about that!

After a few minutes an older (natch) gentleman sat down next to Brendan and ordered a Bud (draft). His bill came to $1.35. Not a Happy Hour special or anything, that was just the price. He then went on to tell us this story about the time Benny Goodman played the Chalet. It was humorous, he started out trying to put Benny Goodman into context for us. He started out with Elvis as a cultural reference, then looked at us again and was searching for another, more recent, one when we assured him we knew who Benny Goodman (and Elvis) was.

There was a band coming on in about an hour after we arrived, but we didn't stick around for very long. We could have gotten into a lot of trouble with the $40.00 we probably had in cash at the time.

post post

Let me just get it out of the way, what happened yesterday in London was tragic. I hope for everyone who knows anyone there that their friends, family and selves are alright. Everyone seems to have a I went to London once and loved it story so, I'll leave the rest to the experts and persons who actually experienced it.

Tuesday, July 5

home jeeves

We're home. All in one piece, too. There are a few photos up on flickr of our side trip to the Spillway at Lake Pymatuning in Pennsylvania. So many carp. Brendan had told me that there were going to be a lot of them, fighting over food, but never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined so many fish. It was gross. But I couldn't not look and take photos. The pictures don't really do it justice. It's definitely something to see.