Getting Closer

It was another night of packing. That was, of course, after we watched the Lost recap show (ABC's sneaky attempt to hook even more viewers before the final 4 episodes of the season). If you haven't been watching Lost then you are missing out and that's all I'm sayin!

I successfully cleared out the miscellaneous crap out of my closet and divided it between boxes and trash bags. The night ended with me crumpled in the bottom of my empty closet. Lucky for me, Ally was there and convinced me to come out of the closet. Ha! My project for tonight is dragging all the boxes out of the side attic that I never got around to unpacking since it was kitchen stuff and figuring out how I am going to move my shoes and clothes. I will be the first one to admit that I have too many pairs of shoes. I mean, not like Ally's shoe problem, but I have a lot. Maybe I'll take this opportunity to get rid of some....nahh!

The Move

Well this weekend is the big move. Al and I started packing boxes last night and man do I have a lot of junk. I did my best to cull it out and only take the essentials, but it was hard to leave behind some of it. We spent the weekend shopping for furniture which ended up being quite the beating. Fortunaltely for everyone involved it had a happy ending and I made a furniture purchase late Sunday night. In fact, they were closing the store when I was signing the papers and paying. Nothing like dropping serious coin on furniture to make you feel like an adult. Ally and I were discussing the fact that this is the first time I have actually paid for furniture. In my previous apartments and dormrooms the furniture was aquired by other means (hand-me-downs, parent's friend's old furniture, and even the curbside special on one occation). I actually really miss that curbside chair. I was a brown pleather recliner with black electrical tape on the seat and arms (done very nice of course). I was driving through my old neighborhood back when I lived in Houston and saw it sitting out on the curb for the trash pick up. I pulled up, popped the hatch and tossed it in the back of the old Explorer. The hilarous part was when I got home with it and lifted it over my head to put it in the garage like 4 dollars in change rained down on me. A bonus on a truly spectacular home furnishing find. It graced the living room of my first tiny apartment and was always covered with a blanket when I had people over (he didn't like to talk about his scars in front of company).

But enough about my old furniture! I am actually pretty excited about the new stuff I bought. I got a brown (real)leather couch, chair and ottoman. I also purchased quite possibly the coolest piece of furniture ever made. It is a coffee table that has a lift top which lifts and swings towards the couch. HOW COOL IS THAT?! Very cool indeed! After I saw it in the showroom it was only a matter of finding a couch to match it. The only catch to the whole furniture purchase was the wait for delivery. It is coming from "factory direct" for a far off place and wouldn't be delivered from three weeks. DOH! So for the first couple of weeks I will be sitting on the floor watching TV in the living room. I agree with Alisa that watching the boobtoob just isn't as much fun if you don't have some sort of sofa to drape your lifeless body across.

I try to keep you guys posted on the latest move news. I know everyone is glued to their monitors.

Jack Squat

...that's exactly what I did when I got home yesterday. I walked in the door, sat down in my living room and played Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory for almost 3 hours. I only paused for dinner, the telephone ringing a hundred times and of course bathroom breaks. Why did my phone ring a hundred times you ask? Let's just say that Al had some problems with her smoke alarm in her apartment and she thought I might be able to remedy the fact that she is too short to reach it over the phone. It was beeping because the backup battery was low and it was driving her bonkers. I had a good chuckle picturing her trying to stand on a chair and it being juuuuuuust out of her reach, then swinging at it with a stick like a pinata until it came crashing down. She ended up tearing the thing out of the ceiling, but she got battery out and by all things holy IT WAS SILENCED! So much for a peaceful resolution. As Al said, that's what they get when they refuse to dispatch a maintanence man out to fix it.

Moving On

So I put down my deposit for an apartment on Friday. I went over after work and filled out the beating of an application and then wrote them a check. I sat there for 20 minutes filling out this application only to give it to the leasing agent, Jack, and hear "Ohh, I just needed this top information here." "ARGH! I thought it was a little much, but I had just convinced myself that sperm count and shoe size were important pieces of information when leasing an apartment!" So that is all taken care of. My move in date is the 30th of this month, but Jack asked me to come back around the 20th and pick out my parking spot in the garage and iron out the last details before move in. The coolest thing about my new place is the location with respect to work and Ally. I am literally less than 5 minutes from work and could probably make it there faster if I hit all the lights right. It is going to be GREAT for my sanity to not have to fight horrendous traffic everyday back and forth to work. As for Al, I am just a quick run up the tollway and I'm there. It shall be the shiz!

I'm stoked to have my own place once again. It's been waaaaaay to long! The challenge for the next couple of weeks is to find furniture to decently fill up the place. Somehow I think I will be sitting on the floor watching TV at first. I'm also almost totally convinced that I won't have local phone service. I figure with my cell phone there is not really a need. I have a good enough plan with enough minutes that I don't need to pay an additional 20+ bucks a month to have another phone I never use. Especially since I plan on getting cable broadband. If I really see a need for a home phone then I might pony up for Vonage or a similar VOIP carrier. I've wanted to give it a spin for a while and this would be a good chance.

I've also been looking into satellite options since the complex is pre-wired with dishes. I figured out for 45 bucks a month I can get all the channels I regularly watch. I'm really gungho to get The Military Channel. A channel of nothing, but flexing the military muscle of the United States! HOW COOL IS THAT?!

Hello Again

You know you haven't blogged in a long time when you start to type your own blog address in the address bar and it doesn't autocomplete it for you. I am surprised blogger.com didn't axe my blog. Looking at my last post it's will be a month ago tomorrow since I've posted. I figured since my blog pal Alisa started blogging again, I should probably get back on the horse too. Regardless of the fact I have now lost my whole blog audience.

My first month of work was great. Actually, I started back on Feb. 28th so its more than a month now. I really like my job and the people I work with. For the most part I stay busy with work, but there is also a good balance of downtime. I think that is the main difference from my previous job. Here when I have a break and don't have any pressing work I am able to relax, BS with coworkers, and surf a bit. At my previous job, if we had downtime and gave the slightest hint that we were not busy they would start to pile on extra crap that wasn't our job and certainly not enjoyable. That kept everyone from talking to each other or socializing which, in my opinion, fostered a very hostile environment. Another huge difference is the contrast between my bosses. At my previous job my boss was a totally ass. He was the type of boss that would put his name on your work and prance around like it was his. He was the typical stuffed shirt BS artist that would tell anyone anything to make himself look better. He thought he had everyone fooled, but the more people worked with him the more they figured out that he was full of it. The client would sidestep him and call me directly for answers which irked him to no end and gave me a constant laugh. He was the perfect example of how not to be in a managerial role. At my new job I have a great boss. He is in his 30s and hasn't forgot where he came from. He's an excellent, patient mentor that goes the distance to make sure I'm comfortable in my job. We go to lunch almost everyday with a group of two other guys and we have developed a friendship in addition to our good working relationship. We have a lot of the same interests which makes for a lot of good conversation. Our skill sets seem to compliment each other and it seems we are frequently teaching each other new things about hardware, software, life, etc. He is very well read and is constantly dropping the knowledge on me from all areas of study. I don't think I could ask for a cooler boss!

The other happenings in my life have been mostly focused around finding an apartment. Alison and I are both looking forward to me having my own place so we spent last weekend running around town looking at apartments and condos with a locator. In the past I've done all the legwork in finding my own apartments and had no problems, but I decided to branch out and give a locator a shot. She was able to narrow down the search in the particular area I was looking. The funniest thing about the whole search was the fact that the apartment I have all but decided on wasn't one she had suggested. It was actually an apartment I had seen on the internet which just happened to be right next to an apartment she took me to. I even fired up a little craigslist.com for the apartment search which is great if you are looking for no-strings-attached sex or cheap apartments in a bad part of town. Fortunately I am not interested in either at this point in my life. So I will probably end up making a decision this weekend, if not tomorrow, on a place. I will try to make a post once I make a move on something. I am hoping to be in a new place by the first part of May. We'll see how that goes.