i want...

one of these!


oh, and this too.

don't make me have to kill you...

i always tell people that i am not allowed to go into fry's electronics because i may be forced to kill someone. here's one example of why:

yesterday i popped over to the fry's on brokaw road, it's close to my office and i needed to get a couple of things. mainly a wireless signal repeater, but also a memory card and one or two other things.

so, i am standing in front of the customer service stand in the electrical components area because all the little service droids seem to be busy with other shoppers. i am standing there patiently awaiting my turn for service. a droid returns to the desk, turns to man that had walked up about two minutes after i had been there and says "can i help you?". what? oh no you di'nt. i pipe up with "um, am i invisible because i believe i was here first." the little droid looked up at me and i could see that he had to think twice before he said anything. then he turned to the man and said "sorry, i guess i have to help her." yeah, you do. because i was here first you little twit. that's how customer service works.

i am handed the boxed signal repeater (priced at $49.99) and then he gives me a print out for the two memory cards i wanted. wait, what? you are giving me a box of something that costs $50. but you won't let me carry those two little memory cards that are $4.99 each? whatever. i take the paperwork up to the cashier. she scans it and then goes to the cage to pick up my purchases. when she returns to the register she is holding two memory cards that aren't even packaged. they are in little pink anti-static bags. i look at her and say "what are those?" and she tells me they are my cards. "no they aren't. i don't want cards that are open. they are for gifts." so she informs me that those are the only ones of that type they have. "ok, well forget it then." i tell her. thinking to myself that the recipients will just have to get their own.

what the hell is that about? why didn't the little twit tell me that they were open to begin with. he could have saved us BOTH some trouble.

grrrrr. back a million years ago when i was the office manager for a start-up i would beg my boss... "please, please don't make me go to fry's" when we needed something electrical. this is precisely why.

oh my aching back...

yesterday our neighborhood christmas trees got delivered. at the freaking crack of dawn i might add. and i got a wild hare to clean up the front yard. we HAD this huge boganvilla bush that was growing up into the roof and was pretty much like something from the rain forest. i was going to just trim it back but once i started and saw how much it was growing into the shingles i got carried away.

below are several before and after pictures. if you look closely in the after pictures you can see moo kitty supervising the operation.

before

after

before

after

the pile for the composters

the pile for the composters

my company holiday party was also last night. today i chauffered roommate L around to do her christams shopping. i am beat.

true confessions...

i'm addicted to:
Holmes on Homes.

and i have a little bit of a crush on Mike Holmes. the man is hot. you should see him work a jack hammer. DAMN!

here's hoping...

that the metropolitan club in san francisco doesn't have any weeds in the hallways or lobby or anywhere else for that matter because if it does, i just might not get ERW down the aisle on time on saturday. because apparently i get side tracked by weeding. i mean, i am seriously obsessed. last week i went out to the laundry room to start a load of laundry and never made it back into the house before the washer ended it's cycle. tonight i went out to the storage behind roommate L's cottage to get a suit case so that i can pack for the weekend and it took me 90 minutes to get from the storage in to the computer.

i have done so much weeding lately that i have callouses on my fingers.

maybe i need more medication. ;)

because i couldn't make this stuff up if i tried...

i am seriously thinking that i just need to hire a video crew to follow me around 24 hours a day, because when i perform my best self sacrificing entertainment stunts there is never anyone around to witness them.

so last night it was still light out by the time i got home from my after work errands. i had just taken my evening meds meaning i had at least an hour to kill before i could eat my dinner. i figured i would get a head start on some of the work in the garden/moat by pruning back some of the water bushes we have in the planter box. i got the first one down and the clipping piled all nice and neat waiting to go out to the curb for recycling and moved around to the other side of the box. the side where the moat is. i was standing there with one foot on either side of the moat and some how i must have lifted my right foot as it ended up in the mud of the moat. as i shifted my left foot, the right leg sank down farther. the next thing i knew i was up to my mid thigh in the mud on the right side and knee deep on the left. i managed to get the left leg out and was using it to brace against the bricks to try and pull the right leg out.

picture me stretched out over the moat, lying down with my head in the planter box, and my left leg on the other side pulling and twisting and pulling and twisting.

i had visions of still being stuck in the mud when roommate L arrived home at 10:00 pm and this happened at about 7:30. and in all this, it is getting darker outside and the motion activated lights have come on and gone off again. i am waving my arms like a lunatic to get them to come back on. it took me almost half an hour to get my leg out of the hole. then i had to reach in with my arm to pull out the shoe because that had become firmly cemented by mud.

did i mention i was wearing my favorite keds mules? GRRRR! anyway, once i was free i went about my business and continued hacking at the bushes. mostly because i was pissed off about the whole stuck in the mud thing. by the time i reached a stopping point i was covered pretty much from head to toe in mud and sweat.

i remembered that i had put a load of laundry in the washing machine on monday night and had forgotten to put it in the dryer so i hosed myself off and went to the laundry room. i restarted the washer, added detergent and bleach (oh yeah... my keds, pants, and shirt were all white or beige) and then proceeded to strip and throw everything into the washer.

i ran through the backyard and then through the house naked and jumped straight into the shower.

the good news is that i could already see what a big difference removing those ugly plants is going to make back there.

hope springs...

a leak.

ok, well it isn't exactly hope. it's the shower stall in my bathroom at home. this morning i turned on the water so it could get warm while i took care of some "other" business and 30 seconds later the bathroom floor was flooded. YIKES!

and then Moo had to come in and check things out and he got all wet.

now tonight i have to tell my landlord that the shower is leaking. it might turn out to be a good thing though. i have been wishing for a new shower enclosure for a while now. i just hope he (the landlord) doesn't try to be his usual cheapskate self and try to fix it with a tube of caulk or something.

conquering the dirt...

down to the last wheelbarrow full!
please notice i am wearing my gardening crocs. :)

and this is what the driveway is supposed to look like.

what you get for the money...

this is what nearly $2,000,000 will get you in my neighborhood.

5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, 2 car garage, gourmet kitchen

and this teeny, tiny back yard.

if you have $1,999,999 i can hook you up with the realtor because she lives across the street from me and this house is around the corner from us.

got dirt?

this is what seven yards of free dirt looks like when it is delivered to your driveway.




see, we have this moat in our back yard. it used to be a really pretty pond-like thing with fish and water lily's and such. then the pump broke and never got fixed. and now it looks like this:

moat left side

moat right side

so, roommate L and i decided that we wanted that nasty scummy moat drained out and filled in with dirt so that we could plant some flowers or something. landlord R said we were welcome to do it but only if it was free for him. so, for months i scoured craigslist to find someone that had free dirt and would deliver it. the first three pictures are the result of my search.

so, saturday after i got home from meeting a new blog friend and her dog max at the park to get acquainted and see if max would be comfortable at my place while they are on vacation we got roommate D to help us drain the scum. landlord R gave me permission to remove the broken pump, housing and pipes and even provided me with the saw.

with the moat drained i went next door to landlord R's house to get the wheelbarrow he promised. we got it loaded with the first of about eleventy hundred loads of dirt and as i picked up the handles to roll it into the back yard to make that all important first dump i said to roommate L that it wouldn't roll. the wheelbarrow had a flat tire. so we jump into my truck and head off to home depot. $159 later we are back in the truck with shiny new steel wheelbarrow, a second shovel, some hedge clippers, some paving stones, a new carpet runner for roommate L's house and two starbucks latte's.

we must have made about 10 trips from that pile of dirt to the moat. and then it all went wrong. the load in the wheelbarrow shifted and it started to tip over. as i was trying to stop it from tipping over onto the grass i found myself going down too. i landed in the mud, knocked the wind out of myself and then broke into laughter which then triggered an asthma attack. when i recovered enough to get up off the wet grass and out of the mud we sat down and roommate L decided that she wanted to throw some money at it to make it go away so at 4:00 we headed over to OSH to see if we could hire some day laborers to finish up the job. unfortunately there weren't any left at OSH so we went to the home depot in Campbell and found two guys there.

they jumped in my truck before they even asked what kind of work they were going to be doing. they worked steadily for about 2 hours until it was too dark and raining to hard to continue. so we took them back to their cars near the home depot and paid them.

the moat is filled in and the planting boxes are nearly full. there are still about 2 yards of dirt on the driveway that we will have to get to when the rain stops and the dirt dries out because, DAMN! do you have any idea how much heavier dirt is when it is wet than when it is dry?