Jeans and Sneakers

I hope anyone reading this is having a safe, warm, and happy holiday.  :]  (and everyone else too!)

What a busy weekend.

The house closing is scheduled for the 31st.  Word.

I had a couple of cars I was supposed to see this weekend, but one of them got sold before I could look at it.  That’s ok though, because I ended up with a SWEET deal on a NICE Audi.  I bought an A4 Quattro.  It’s nifty.  I pick it up and register it tomorrow.

Yesterday my two cousins and sister came out and we hung out and bought my mom a xmas tree.  Then we brought it over to her and Wyn decorated it.  My mom made us loads and loads of cookies.  They were soooo good.

I’m totally crazy and bought yarn and the Elijah pattern from Ysolda and plan on knitting him up this week for a coworker’s kid, who’s turning 1 next weekend.  Hopefully I can pull it off.  But I think that considering how small it is, and that I get out of work early tomorrow and I don’t have work on Tuesday at all, I should be able to get it done.  :]

Today was a looooooong day.  We woke up early to go look at a car, which ended up being a waste of time, as the lady who posted it up for sale neglected to mention or show that the car clear coat was peeling and in one spot there was body rot.  Nice.

I got to work and after a while my boss asked me to come in and she offered me a counter to my resignation letter.  A very good counter.  I told Rob about it and decided to call the new job guy at lunch to see if he could give me any kind of idea of the growth opportunity with his company.  To make a long story short, he gave me a very different impression of him from the first one I got, and I’m not taking the new job.  He told me today that the pay would be less than he told me on Saturday, and that’s just not going to fly.  So tomorrow, I tell my boss I’m staying, and start learning my new position.  From the sounds of it, my boss has plans for me, and they’re not too shabby.  Though not entirely art related, but they’re trying to get some graphic art stuff in there, so we’ll see.  Worst comes to worst, I’ll keep looking for a different job.

I skipped the part where the banker got back to Rob and said that the mortgage approval came through this morning, and they’re hoping to close by the end of next week.  :]  January will be our last month in this stupid house, and then we’ll be in the new one.  We couldn’t be happier or more excited.

And I think I’m going to buy a small xmas tree tomorrow.  :]

But still, it feels like a lot has happened since the last time I wrote.

I finished my hand dyed jaywalkers.  I suck at taking pictures of them though.  Maybe I’ll take some later and edit the post.  I’m being pretty lazy right now.  Haha.

No word yet about the house.  Though one of our friend’s gf’s did let it slip to our old roomate Chris, who we were going to surprise with it, since we’d be so much closer to him, and hardly ever get to see him now.

Nothing else has changed at work.  They sent out a memo saying there’s going to be a sales meeting in January, that everyone is required to attend– even those not in sales.  That mandatory crap is really starting to get to me.  You can’t tell people they HAVE to be there when you’re not paying them for it and it’s outside of work hours.

Ok, now I’m a believer in bad news first, so here it is.  I have to sell my car.  I’m so so so very sad about it.  I love that car.  I’ve only had it since May, but I’ve become so very attached to it.   We found out where it’s leaking oil from, and while it can be fixed, probably, the real question is, is it worth dumping that much money into the car (especially when we’re buying a house), considering it’ll never be worth more than a few grand, no matter what I do to it.  Plus, there’s some serious rust on the bottom of the car, and much body work would have to be done to save it, or I could just get another chassis in better condition and switch all of my stuff over since the interior is in pretty good shape (but so much work!!)  I talked it over with Rob and we both agreed that the best thing for me to do right now would be to sell my car, and then either try to find another 7 for a good price, or pick up a decent interim car.  I’m pretty devastated about it, but I’ve already found at least one car that might be a suitable interim car.  We’ll see how that goes. :[

Good news. . .The job I went to check out yesterday morning is AWESOME.   Totally awesome, and the only down side for the moment is that the training period has some seriously low pay, but the owner said depending on how quickly I pick things up (which is really fast, especially when I'm learning things that I'm doing on a daily basis), the training period could be really short.  I went in yesterday and was seriously wowed.  The work that they do is amazing, and they're expanding by a lot.  I'll tell more about it if I actually get the job. . .I'm going to call the owner tomorrow and tell him I want in, and hopefully that'll seal the deal.  It's closer to the new house, and would be me doing artful stuff every day.  I'm so excited.

I haven't had a chance all weekend to pick up my sweater and work on it at all, maybe I'll do that today.  Friday night we went to see The Mist which was pretty good for a SK book-turned-movie, and yesterday I was all over the place, going to the interview, picking up my secret santa present, looking at my car with Rob, and then Chris came over to have Rob look at his car and play some video games, so I didn't really have a chance to whip it out and try it on to see if it's long enough.

Oh!  And I successfully managed to find a xmas present for Rob..  :]

I’m failing again at writing more often.  Lets see, where to begin. . .

It’s already Dec. 11th, and I’m still not in the holiday spirit yet.  I’ve been listening to xmas music in my car, but to no avail.  I’m even thinking I might not get a tree this year.  I can’t justify spending the money on something I’m just going to throw out, when we need to be saving for the house, and plus, it’ll just make this house that much messier. . .not to mention I won’t have any presents to put under it.   I’m just not in the mood this year.

The bank has been teasing Rob and I in regards to when closing will happen.  Last week they told him we could close as early as the 19th.  Yes, of this month.  I don’t see it happening, though it would be nice.  We can’t wait to be out of this house and into that one.

My car is leaking oil, and I don’t know where it’s coming from.  It’s not an extreme amount, but it’s enough to have to refill it about every week and a half.  We’re going to try and pinpoint the leak this weekend.

At work, we’ve got a new controller.  She’s young, and ambitious, and rumor is she’s going to be reviewing all of our salaries and the work we’re doing.  Yep, kind of like the Bob’s in Office Space, only much less amusing, considering it’s my job that’s possibly in peril.  I was just getting really comfortable here. . .I thought no one cared that I was knitting at my desk at the end of the day (I’m a receptionist.  Sometimes there’s nothing to do), and I got picked for Employee of the Month for November, after only working there for 4 months.  Now there’s this.  I know she’s only doing her job, but the prospect of something I’ve become comfortable with, changing, is enough to have my nerves firing.

I sent my resume out to some places in the city last week or the week before, some insanely cushy jobs that I don’t really have the qualifications for, so I wasn’t so disappointed when they didn’t call me back.  But now there’s this business at work, and I started browsing again.  I actually got a bite today at a company involved in art that’s near to the new house.  I’m going to talk to the owner on Saturday, so we’ll see if that goes anywhere, I don’t want to jinx it by talking about any details in advance.

Not everything is bad or scary though.  My sister Wyn came out this past Saturday, and we danced around my kitchen singing xmas songs and baked and cooked and went to the supermarket twice.  It was a good time.

Told my dad about the house and he was really happy and excited for us.

And, of course, I have Rob and I love him lots. :]

I woke up this morning with a humongous headache.  I’m talking HUGE.  I called in to work because the slightest movement made it worse.  I’ve never really been hung over, so I can’t compare it to that.  Come to find out I was dehydrated.  No idea how, I didn’t drink any less fluid than I usually do.  My head still hurts a little bit, but I’m drinking water, and taking it easy.

I had planned on doing stuff this weekend, like getting further in EQ2 since I haven’t had the chance to play all that much, and getting some knitting done, but what happened instead was pretty spontaneous on my part, and took up the entire weekend.  We installed a program to partition off a section of my hard drive to install Linux.  Rob’s teaching me stuff, and it’s better to have a working environment to learn in.  So I’m running Debian with KDE as my desktop interface.  It’s pretty interesting, if not frustrating sometimes.  But it’s taken up my entire weekend, getting things installed, getting everything working properly (which  gets tricky only because I’m working inside of windows, so some things bug out a little bit), and getting things looking the way I want them to.  I’m blogging  right now from Linux!!

I was going to put up a screen shot of my setup, but I’m lazy.  Other than that, not much is going on, we’re still waiting for the mortgage to come through, and trying to save as much money as possible in the process. That’s about it.