Turn and Face the Strange

I'm taking a break from the packing and sorting to talk to you fine folks today. It's been a few weeks since we've chatted and I'm feeling reflective.

We're moving. We're leaving the house and moving into an apartment. I am so flipping excited because we are moving out of the hot and smoggy valley into a lovely place that is approximately 2 blocks from the ocean. We'll be within walking distance from the beach and from lots of theatres, restraunts, bars and lots of other things to do. It's exactly where we want to live, in the middle of lots of stuff!

While packing up our life, I can't help but take stock of what I'll be happy to be rid of and what I'll miss. I already miss the BBQ grill that we sold at the Yard Sale 2 weeks ago. I'll miss the hot tub when the nice lady comes to pick it up on Monday. I will completely miss having a washer/dryer in my pantry. I know the cats will miss the show constantly on in our backyard. Just last night an adorable little posseum tight-walked the back fence when Seen and I were in the hot tub only 4 feet away. I'll miss sitting in the hammock with my hubby, drinking a beer at sunset while the crickets and the finches sing to us.

To the next owners of this house I gladly leave the giant, weed-filled yard. I am thrilled to walk away from the blowtorch oven that runs about twice as hot as it should. Good-riddance to the roots growing in the plumbing and the poor patch job that the roofers did to the one panel on the carport.

For the first 14 years of my relationship with Seen (just about my whole adult life) I've moved every single year. Then we bought this house, a purchase we stepped into earlier than we had planned to accomodate his mother moving in with us. We have lived here for 4 years. His mother moved away, we did some renovations, planted a few failed gardens, had a TV show do more renovations. We gained our Ling Ling when the neighbors tossed her into the yard and lost our beloved Weasel in the back room last year.

I have wanted to move, out of this neighborhood, out of this house for nearly 2 years. While I'm excited to get started in a new place, with fresher air and a busier neighborhood, we've built memories here. Memories travel well, but a part of me always stay in our little ranch house in the Valley.

Here I am now, entertain me.

Hello over by you,

I have sour belly from riding about in the car all day today. Urp.

I just wanted to alert you to my new blog (Seriously, how many blogs should one person have?? )
Apparently, I'm very fascinated by me.

Don't you judge me, just check out my blog about learning things from Ling Ling. It's entertaining to Seen, and honestly, that's all that really matters.

Ole Narcissus

Expired

Hi! I know it's been awhile and today will be a shortish post.

Today is my 3rd unemployed day, but really the first day I haven't been entirely stressed out. I'm starting to think straight! I will never post about work-stuff, just not my style. I will tell you what I did today that made me ponder 3 different odd things.

We keep some supplies on hand in case of earthquake or other emergencies. I decided to take a quick look at our stash, see if anything needed to be used or updated. Here are the 3 weird things:

1. The 2.5 gallon water jug was empty. The cabinet wasn't wet and the nozzle wasn't open. There was a small hole on the top of the jug. Could 2.5 gallons have evaporated? Weird.

2. Did you know that rice has an expiration date? Why exactly does rice have an expiration date?

3. Today is Wednesday, March 11, 2009. The peanut butter in our stash has an expiration date of March 11, 2009. That is a weird coincidence. I think I'm gonna make P-nut butter cookies!

Okay folkies, I've gotta get this house in order. (and make it smell like cookies...) In case you missed my FierceAndNerdy post about Watchmen, go here and make a comment, but DON'T tell me what happens, for the luva...

BURGLED! (The Musical)

Or - Things We Lost in the Break-In. (There is no music available, as my iTunes library was on my stolen laptop)

For those of you who hadn't guessed from my not-very-cryptic status posts on Facebook, our house was broken into on Friday the 13th. Seen came home early, he had a bad reaction to some nuts (tee hee) and wasn't feeling very well at work. At 2:23 pm, he called me and said "I have some really bad news..." The blood left my face, I feared that our old lady Munchy, 17 yr old tabby, who is in moderate health, had passed-on while we were at work.

"Somebody broke into the house, ransacked the place and stole a bunch of stuff...They got your laptop." He sounded stressed, I flipped out and said "I'll be right home" and proceeded to run about the office telling everyone I had to leave. I'm certain that I was moderately insane in my goodbyes.

The 45 minutes it took me to get home in the rain made for the longest commute in history. I got home, and was relieved to find Seen and all the cats in good shape. In the 5 hours we waited for the cops to show up and photograph the place and take our statements, we called our banks, credit cards and did an inventory of what had been taken. Of course the Wii that was all of 2 weeks old was gone, the PS3 we'd splurged on for our Xmas present was gone, Seen's birthday iPod Nano - gone, as was my 4 yr old iPod, all the cables to the old XBox were gone, but the XBox was still in residence. The biggest loss was my Mac Powerbook laptop.

Now, this laptop needed replacing, in the 4 years we've had it I'd knocked it on the floor one too many times. The power source was bent and needed seriously finagling to charge properly (which was probably a fire-hazard) The case was cracked slightly, so the CD/DVD drive no longer works. It was on it's last legs and we'd discussed getting a new laptop once we get out of our mortgage. It wasn't the loss of the physical laptop that is hard to bear, it's the loss of all the pictures and music and writing on the thing. And, of course, it hadn't been backed up for 6 months. Every couple of hours, it hits me again that I've lost captured memories.

Gone are the last pictures we ever took of Weasel, the day before she died. I managed to video her with my phone (we didn't have a video camera) 3 days before she passed. I had transferred all that info to the laptop when we changed phones and carriers over the holidays. Those videos are gone. So many pictures were in iPhoto, deemed unworthy for Flickr, but now completely lost to some punk-ass kids.

All my writing over the last 4 years was on there, luckily, I usually write long-hand before transferring over to the computer, so all that is lost is revisions and a few family stories that I can try to re-create.

The last thing we've lost is the iTunes library, on the laptop AND the iPod. We can rebuild that, but where am I going to find the Paul Moyers v. Ann Martin meltdown byte??

The thing that incensed me the most was seeing Weasels ashes, still in the bag, tossed onto the bed and her little clay footprint thrown down on the floor because they thought something valuable was in her cedar resting box. Douchebags.

Aside from the memories and the things, we've lost a sense of security. It's weird to see your dresser drawers all open and all your underpants pushed to one side. Somebody, other than me & Seen, was in our house, pushing through all our personal stuff, scaring out cats. But we're all safe now. After the fingerprint cop left Sat morning, we set the trauma aside and had a good weekend of tennis and a run in the park.

I refuse to let a couple of idiot kids have power over me (other than just irritating me because I have to listen to crappy sound system music at the gym now.) Bite my hiney burglars. You suck.


UPDATE!!! Just got off the phone with insurance company. Our losses total $2200 and we have a $2,500 deductible, which was chosen by our escrow company. So the theives f'd us in the A. We have to get out of this house...

Redundancy

Nowadays, life seems like an endless treadmill. I keep running but I'm not actually getting anywhere. So imagine my joy when I actually had a destination the last time I ran! Check out me letting the Sunshine in on my FierceAndNerdy blog this week. It's all about the Firecracker 5k.

Thanks to Elissa M. and her advice to run intervals, ie. run 3 minutes, walk 1, repeat (lather, rinse, etc...) my time was greatly improved. So after 4-5 weeks of hating running every day in the gym, after having a long discussion about not running anymore but cross training, hiking and playing tennis, after the super adrenaline rush of finishing a leetle race, Seen turned to me on the ride home and said "I think I am addicted to running 5k's".

This might be the start of something fun.

You Should Be Running

That title is not instructions for you, it's my favorite line from Hellboy, that I repeat, a lot

I'm sitting here in front of the nations football game, which is just super (Jennifer Hudson owns the National Anthem) and thought I'd update y'all on the progress of:

a. My TV rationing

2. My fatness

As for the TV rationing, it's going fairly well (aside from today - stupid football...) Seen had Rachel on when I got home Monday, but I worked on checking blogs, writing, brushing cats and other things. Tuesday, I was out at a networking event but still watched Fringe when I got home late. Weds, we played Wii for about an hour. Okay, that's kind of wasting time in front of the TV, but me and the hubby are interacting and moving around instead of couch potatoeing. Thursday I hit the hay at 8:30, read for like 10 minutes and passed out, jury duty is exhausting. Friday was Tivo of The Soup, Burn Notice (which is a modern day, one man A-team + Bruce Campbell) and then more Wii. On Saturday, exhausted from 90 min of tennis in the sun, we watched a movie and then surfed the channels for about 20 minutes before I was just bored with TV altogether. So, after my history of 3 hours of mind-numbing every night for 30+ years, this week I was ok at rationing the media input (about 5 hours for the week), therefore not a complete loser, just a mild one.

On the health front:
Me and Seen are in training for the Firecracker 5k, which is next Sunday. Yup, we are so outta shape that we are training for a 5k (that's 3.1 miles for those of you who, like me, don't convert the metrics so well.) I have been running at the gym 2-3x's a week since Jan 1 and upped it to 4x's this week. Even though I was on boring ole jury duty this week, I've managed to lose 2.5 lbs and am up to 2.77 miles in 1/2 hour. Today we ran around the park on the 5k route and managed a 35 min time. I find running kind of boring and my knees hurt a little. Did I mention the run is next week and it's uphill for the first mile? I'm a little anxious... After this 5k, I think we're going to cross train during the week and then on the weekends focus on hiking TO THE EXTREME!!!

I'm also eating healthier. Even enjoyed some brussel sprouts from the broiler the other night. We are going back to our cheat day one day a week plan. It's logic we learned back when we originally got health on Body For Life. Basically, you take all your cravings through out the week and shove all the indulgence into one day. If you eat healthy the rest of the week, it really doesn't mess with your system too much (other than the tummy ache). I think the promise of cheat day kept me from going on the ice cream run at work on the stressful Friday. We had Hots chicken nachos, beers and a 2/3 of a lemon bar from corner bakery. My body is so used to correct portions now, Seen and I could only finish 1/2 the nachos and I couldn't finish my lemon bar. Plus, apparently nachos are a kind of sleeping pill, cause we were knocked OUT!

So it was a week of 3 minor victories. I'm looking forward to focusing my free-will and discipline on TV, running and eating right next week!

Happy Super Day!

Superfreak

I gotta get outta here and do my civic duty (I was selected to be on a jury, try to disguise your envy.)

First though, today is the sharing between the Munchys. I've mentioned our Munchela before, but there is another Munchy in the world, same age, 17 yrs old and similar markings. The differences are; the other Munchy is a boy and has fluffy long fur. Oh and the boy Munchy doesn't live with an evil calico who has a tendency towards kitty leap-frog.

So, by request, here are some pix of our old lady Munch. She is a weirdo who yells alot, even when she's happy, so we have a LOT of pictures of her mouth open and eyes all squinty. She's been with us a long time and experienced many of life's changes. She's always been awesome. Always.