dianaschnuth

4651 Ventura Drive. Three-bedroom, one-bath, tri-level single-family dwelling. Now with a clean bill of health, apart from a few ungrounded electrical sockets and a mishmash of other minor (and easily fixable) flaws. (Photo above taken by Aaron at the home inspection today, with our new-to-us digital camera.)

Now, we have to wait until the appraiser and surveyor do their job, and get all our silly busywork to the mortgage lender… and wait. Closing is on or before March 5th, and as I’ve said multiple times before, I hope it’s before rather than on. I still need to call the Smiths and let them know we won’t be renewing our lease, but I’d rather do that once we have at least a closing date, and preferably a solid date of possession.

Moving on to things-not-house-related… I’ve decided to track the things I should be doing on a daily basis, mainly just to remind me to do them. Thorough tooth-maintenance (brushing, flossing, Stimudent-ing, mouthwashing, gargling, and rinsing), exercise, mellophone practice, and… well… showering.

Yes, everyone, surprize of surprizes, I don’t bathe daily. I bathe every other day or every third day (a.k.a. “European standard”). I’m guessing you all knew that years ago. Especially Amy. 🙂 However, with my excuse of “my hair gets too dry to wash it every day” about to be thrown out the window by—gasp!—actually conditioning my hair, I’m going to make a concerted effort to shower more frequently. I know, you all had that figured out in Junior High. So I’m a late bloomer. Shoot me.

I feel empowered by having admitted my most embarrassing downfall in public. Aaron just found out my second-most embarrassing one a couple months ago, and I’m not sharing that one. It’s just too gross.

Aaron took a buncha pictures of the house during the home inspection today. If I feel saucy, maybe I’ll post them on my main page this weekend. I love our digital camera. 🙂

BTW, my PC is still down for the count. I haven’t really made any sort of effort to resurrect it yet, since I haven’t really wanted anything I have stored on it in the past couple of weeks. Aaron’s Dell and my Mac are doing a fine fill-in job for now… and I don’t have to put up with the damn thing being continually unstable. I think I mucked it up at some point. If I thought it would help, I’d consider installing XP on it… but I’m afraid it would muck it up even more.

Hmm… anything else? Oh, yeah, yay for dead presidents. I get the day off Monday.

Over the weekend, I bought one of those videos of beginners Pilates (read: pill-AH-teez, not like who drives a plane). Did the workout this evening before dinner; my arms are sore like I worked out with weights, and my lungs and windpipe feel like I’ve been really breathing again for the first time in a long time. I wonder what this is going to feel like in the morning…

I’m also very proud of myself for making “real” food this weekend, too. Aaron cooked some chicken on the Foreman, and I made a curry cream sauce (with Atkins ThickenThin not-starch thickener instead of flour, of course). Mmm… curry… reminds me of my Memaw’s yellow curry rice. But, yeah, I made something that wasn’t alfredo sauce, tuna salad, or any number of pasta dishes I can no longer indulge in… and it was so, SO good.

Another weekend accomplishment: I scored what I believe to be a platter made of real silver. From Goodwill. For a dollar. Spent four bucks on silver cream, and probably an hour buffing and cleaning the sucker. Looks like silver to me, and nowhere on the bottom does it say it’s only silver-plated, like the other platter I found at the thrift (and didn’t purchase). Its only mark says “Oneida Silversmiths,” and, unfortunately, there’s no mark indicating it’s Sterling. 🙂 Anyway, even if it’s not pure silver of some sort, it still looks nice, and isn’t too gaudy.

Oh, and one last thing. I, like Beth, am not upset that I didn’t watch the StupidBowl, even though it means I missed Janet’s insanely nipple-pierced boobie. Yeah.

My stack of scrap paper with scribbled blog ideas is piling up, so I need to unload some random thoughts today.

Someone at work said last week that she’d heard from someone that gas prices would hit three dollars a gallon by summer. She was indignant and said, "Do you think the people of this country will stand for that?" Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not precisely sure how I’m supposed to not stand for it. I can’t exactly stick it to the oil companies by not buying gas for my car. I’ll show you, big oil tycoons! I’ll ride my scooter to work! Ri-i-i-ight.

Are you ever disconcerted by your pee after you take some wicked strong vitamins? Swear to God, it comes out looking radioactive or some shit. This is not a color that normally occurs in nature. Of this I am certain. It looks like those ugly bright neon piss yellow School Crossing signs they’ve started putting up. Yikes.

And on the subject of health… it was bad enough when they came up with caffeinated water, but NicoWater?! I’ve got your NicoWater right here: just let my step-Gary ash his cigarette into the bottom of your Dixie cup. WTF?!

I’m suddenly kind of lethargic and blech, so I’m going to wrap this up for now. Have you noticed, o loyal readership, that I’ve been trying to update on a daily basis for the past couple of weeks? Even if I have nothing of daily merit to report? All six of you that check out my little page are getting the royal treatment. And, from referrers and ISP details, I’ve successfully identified Eric as a regular visitor and Dan and Garza as sometimes visitors. Somebody’s got Sprint that checks the site daily, Ameritech is Garza, WCNet is Eric, Comcast is Dan, someone’s checking from Elder-Beerman… and I don’t really feel like comparing logs to figure out anybody else tonight. Blah.

Have a good one, y’all. I’ll shout out again tomorrow.

Husband: How about we swap positions tonight, honey?
Wife: That’s a good idea. You stand by the ironing board,
           and I’ll sit on the couch and fart.

Later: I know only about six of you visit regularly (and I know this for sure now because of my happy SiteMeter), but I’ll post this anyway. Spread the word.

I was reading the news portion of Something Positive, and found this link to a friend of a friend of the artist. This woman, Rebecca, and her family and pets escaped their burning house this week, but lost all their personal belongings. There’s pictures and everything, and multiple people have cross-references from their pages, so I’m confident it’s not a hoax. I went ahead and donated ten bucks, and am planning to donate a few extra Sci-Fi/Fantasy books I had been going to trade up at Grounds. If you’d like to donate, I’m sure she and her daughters would appreciate any little bit.

Curious about the rest of my personality quiz? Here ya go:

Enneagram Test Results Type 1 Perfectionism |||||||||||||||| 64% Type 2 Helpfulness |||||||||||||||| 62% Type 3 Image Awareness |||||||||||| 46% Type 4 Sensitivity |||||||||||| 44% Type 5 Detachment |||||||||||||||| 70% Type 6 Anxiety |||||||||||| 45% Type 7 Adventurousness |||||| 21% Type 8 Aggressiveness |||||| 26% Type 9 Calmness |||||||||||||| 58% Your Conscious-Surface type is 5w6 Your Unconscious-Overall type is 3w2

Take Free Enneagram Personality Test

Curious about how my fan mail to Bob Mould was received? (Hell, most of you probably don’t even know who Bob Mould is.) Anyway, here ya go:

Diana,

Thanks for the kind words. The next record will more than satisfy the older fans – it’s a guitar record.

I hope to be back in Detroit later this year. New album will probably be in August, with a Fall ’04 tour to follow.

Regards,
Bob Mould

*keeping my ear to the ground*