Back Soon...

Moving & no access to The Internets have kept me away. :(

Before pictures of kitchen and bath will be up soon. :)

New Year's Day Skywriting

I was walking Lola on Jan 1 and noticed some (foreign) CalTech students talking pictures of, well, the sky. I looked up & saw some skywriting in progress:

"WHO WILL S "

I was really hoping it would say:

"WHO WILL SAVE THE CHEERLEADER?"

Instead, it said:
"WHO WILL SHE CHOOSE?"

I had no idea what it was about...till later that afternoon when I heard a radio ad about some stupid reality show.

Catching up...

Hi, all.
I was without internet service for 5 days (stupid cable company!) And sick with a cold for the last 4. [Add packing, having folks work on the house and prepping stuff for work next week & I hope you understand why I haven't posted.]

Lola & I celebrated our first Christmas together. I cooked & she cleaned...well, her bowl at least. ;) We both ate a lot of turkey, rice and dessert. :) I never really get to use my fancy China, but I decided that Christmas was worth the hand washing. Here's the spread:




and dessert:




[Click on the pictures for more details. oops...the pie is out of focus...I will blame my full belly.]

And, yes, it was a lot of food. I'm my mother's daughter. :) There were plenty of leftovers.
Christmas Day was nice - calls to family in the morning and SoCal came over for lunch (leftovers) & movie(Casino Royale). Overall, it was very nice & relaxing.

J- I posted the pics to show I can actually cook & to show off my fancy China. :)
I will try to remember to put some of that seasoning in TheBox.

DK - you are always welcome to come. You'd have to leave the fluffies behind, though...unless you wanted Lola to chase them. ;)

As for the house, I got my new fridge & washer & dryer delivered! Yay! I got them on super-sale Thanksgiving weekend & had been anxiously awaiting them ever since. No more apt fridges! No more crappy apt washers & dryers! Yay! They are not even unwrapped though, because they are still working on the floor in the kitchen & painting & such. :( How sad is it that I hope to be doing laundry next weekend?

New Year's in Pasadena was interesting. There was this vibe in the air - from the bowl game & the parade, I think. People were already camping out at 1pm New Year's Eve for the parade the next morning. Kuh-razy.

Note to self: keep away from from Fair Oaks AVE & do not go to South Pasadena on New Year's Eve. I decided to run to the supermarket New Year's Eve & I got stuck in Parade traffic - half an hour on the way to the supermarket and another hour on the way back. That's right, Parade traffic. No, not people going to the parade...the parade itself. They were moving floats to the staging area. On the plus side, I saw 12 floats up close & personal. They really are pretty!

I know! Pictures! Soon, I promise.

Internal Work

Heh. I just made a physics reference. Anyway, all the work being done on the house so far is internal (electrical is being upgraded & termite damage in the bathroom subflooring has been repaired). The bathroom should be finished soon & I will have pictures then. I've begun moving stuff into the shed (aka, the kidnap room) - nothing is going into the house until the floors are refinished. When you see pictures of the inside of the shed, you will understand why it's called the kidnap room...

Blame Canada

Brrr.

It's been pretty cold this past week here in SoCal - overnight lows in the 40's; daytime highs in 60's - all due to a cold front from Canada.

Thanks, Canada!

Brrr.

Potential Curb Appeal of Casa Lola

It's a little curb apalling now, but I hope y'all see the same potential that I do. :)

Some pics of the exterior - these are the ones I have handy. The first is a scan of the picture from the realtor flyer and the other two are lo-res pics also from the realtor...I,um, forgot to take pics of the outside. oops! There will be interior pics in the next few days as I begin to paint.

Click on this one for some notes:

My first purchase!

I don't have a major home improvement center close to me, but I do have an OSH. I went to get paint supplies and to check out what they had in a general sense. I know I need some lighting for the outdoors and when I saw this guy, I couldn't leave it:


Is it weird to name an outdoor lighting fixture? I think I'll call him Malibu.

Also, I only had a dinky, 6ft "apartment" tape measure and my utility knife never appeared after my move to Cali so I got those too:



My utility knife has flowers. I think I love OSH.
:)

Damn Internet Explorer

I use Firefox exclusively at home (b/c I hate Microsoft products). At work, we are forced to use IE and only IE. The blog looks funny, nay, ugly on IE here at work (at least on these computers). I'm not sure why, since it looked just fine on Firefox at home, and I'm not going to even try to figure it out. So for best viewing, use Firefox. Or Opera. (which you should be using anyway).

Starter Home

Yes, I've bought a house! It's a 1915 Craftsman in Pasadena. It's small, with a small yard. It needs a bunch of work (which is how I could afford a house in this crazy California housing market). So it's a starter home (welcome to the world of equity!). Pictures will be posted later this week. It's exciting & scary.

aw, crap, I gotta pack & move again.

Still, yay! It's worth it.