Custom Made

My mom made Aaron a couple of dress shirts. It's so nice for him to have clothes that fit WELL.

Sleepyhead

couldn't resist.

Home Sweet Home

Aaron and I have been busy little bees trying to get our house situated. Last night we threw together the office so that I could have some semblance of control over paying our bills, etc. Tonight I'm going to go start the cleaning process at the apartment, and thankfully Amy is coming over to help. It always goes faster with more hands working on it.

Sadly, I don't have anything more interesting to say than that.

And now, the first of many:

 

Before:

After:

It’s a little blurry, but you get the idea. I’m just excited to start being able to roll my sleeves up and start doing something to fix and clean our house! It still needs a lot of parts, and since that cooktop is a Thermador, they’re not going to be cheap. But I think it will still be less than getting a new cooktop and it will be worth it to have the fancy-shmancy stuff that we NEVER would have bought ourselves. :)

Anywhere

My "new" phone makes it easy to blog wherever I'm at, which really makes the drive thru line at Starbucks more fun. :)

Before and After

I'm thinking a lot lately about before and after. Maybe that has a lot to do with the fact that we've just bought a home and I spent a good portion of last night scrubbing my new cooktop trying to get it clean.

They had to have cooked bacon on the thing without a pan to get it that dirty. I don't know what these people did, but there was grease and burnt on food just caked around all of the burners. Sadly, I spent most of my cleaning time thinking about whether or not these people did this on purpose or if that was just the way they lived... was it malicious because they were losing the house?

So, last night I conquered the stove while Aaron defeated the bathroom scum, and then Aaron cleaned up the hood while I cleaned out cabinets and drawers. I was also victorious over a questionable blob of gunked on goop in the pantry. It was gross, but I showed it who was boss.

In other good news, I found out we're getting a nice chunk of change back from what we put up for closing costs, and I finally got to see the appraisal report - our house is actually worth more than what we paid for it. Now let's just hope it stays that way in this shaky market...

Anyway, I'll post a good before and after pic once I can get back over to the house and snap one. Today our cable, phone, and internet are being installed, tomorrow the tile and carpets are being cleaned, and Saturday we move in! Yay!

Our band

Ha ha, Chris brought Rock Band. Currently our Russian friend, Igor, is singing Black Hole Sun. lol, good times.

NYC, what is it about you?

Ever since last week's adventures in NYC I've found myself daydreaming about living there... becoming one of those girls who rides the subway with earbuds in and eyes closed, strolling through central park with Aaron and the mutt, just being in the big city.

It's weird, because living in LA doesn't have nearly the same appeal.

I'm sitting here, outside of Tio's in the Henry's shopping center, and noticing how boring and normal it seems. Which normally wouldn't be a bad thing, and I guess it still isn't... but right now normal is at least different. I am still coming down from a week of feeling like I was being rocketed from stop to stop on the subway, wondering whether or not the crowds in Times Square were always like that, and not wanting to see the place on New Year's Eve.

So when people ask me about my trip to New York, I still can't quite give coherent descriptions. I feel like the people on Lost who are caught between two times. Part of me is still sitting on a subway, waiting for my stop.