A New Look

I've made some template changes to my blog, for what I think is a cleaner look...Let me know what you think...

All Wet

This has nothing to do with anything, but I think this picture of Maybe is really cute:

Ok, so today Justin and I were going to take a quick trip to Lubbock to see The 300. (If you get to the movies before 5pm, it's only $5.) So we stopped for gas as we got into town, and when Justin got back in the car, the battery was dead. (This is after a long string of battery deaths and restarts that we've had over the past few months. Yes, we knew that we should probably buy a new battery, but we haven't wanted to spend the money on it because, as it turns out, they are quite expensive.) Sooo, Justin asks the guy driving the Best Buy Geek Squad VW beetle for a jump so that we can get to an auto parts store and sell our souls for a battery. He agrees to boost us, but it doesn't work (I say it's because his car had a weird battery, but Justin says that his battery just wasn't strong enough for the boost...whatever.) Justin then asks him if he would mind taking him to the auto parts store down the street about a mile so he can buy a battery, and just drop him off there. He doesn't want him to wait or anything, just a drop off...the guy says "nope, good luck," and takes off. Did I mention that it's POURING DOWN RAIN? Oh, and FREEZING.

Justin takes off walking for the auto parts store, and I sit in the car crying because I'm afraid he's going to get run over on the highway, and about 10 minutes later he comes back, soaked and without a battery because it has started raining harder and he can't make it to the store because the road is all flooded and there is no sidewalk, and he keeps getting tidal waved by the cars, which just keep on speeding by. THEN we decide to call the roadside assistance number that is in our phone. Hey, we pay for that, why not use it? So I call them, and they tell me that we do not in fact, have roadside assistance, in spite of the fact that we remember specifically asking for it when we signed up for this phone plan. THEN the cell phone battery died. (My curling iron was also dead this morning...I think we're developing a pattern.)

The rain started to let up and Justin headed out again for the auto parts store. This time someone stopped and picked him up. (Never mind the fact that the guy was drunk and almost got them run over by a Humvee. We are still very grateful for his help.) He took Justin to the store, and then brought him back. They tried to jump our existing battery again, just for giggles and it started. (see I told you it was that damn Bug.) We high-tailed it to the auto parts store, as they had told Justin that they would install it for free, but once they got our old battery out it turned out that the ($100!!) battery we had purchased was in fact, not the correct kind. They didn't have the right one, but someone at the other store did and they could bring it right over...Might as well have a 10 minute oil change while we wait, since we're well over the limit on that particular maintenance chore.

ONE HOUR LATER...

The guy arrives with our fresh new battery, we shell out some more cash for it, (apparently they just keep getting more expensive the longer you wait) and we are on our merry way. By this time we were waaaay too drained to see the movie, so we came home to warm up, (dry off in Justin's case) and get taken out for free dinner by my dad. Yay Dad! We managed to spend four hours and nearly $200 in Lubbock today and not get off 19th street. That takes some serious talent.

So, that was our day, how was yours?

Aww and Oww

Look at this adorable picture of our niece Nikaia:

In other news, I think I have swimmers ear. Don't ask me how it's not like I've been swimming and I try to get all the water out of my ears when I shower, but my ears hurt, and feel hot, and super pressurized, and just popping them isn't working to solve the problem, and the pain gets worse if I tug gently on my earlobes. (Why, you ask, is she tugging on her earlobes? Well usually it feels nice and helps me go to sleep, but not at the moment.) Ok, so does anyone know anything I can do to help this? Being a modern girl I did some research online, but everything says to go to the doctor and my $300 deductible says otherwise. Home remedies anyone??

Wow

Looking at old emails...Four years ago today is the first time I told Justin that I was falling in love with him. It's amazing remembering how far we've come since then...everything we've been through and where we are now. I could not be happier.

This is the most recent picture of us together. I think it was about a month ago.

Found!

Justin found his wallet. It was on top of the lockers at work. We think someone there found it and instead of turning it into a supervisor they stuck it up there thinking it would be safe and that he was one of the few people tall enough to see up there. Which he did. Everything is untouched which is great, but even greater, the bank issued us a new debit card no questions asked. Rah!

In weight loss news, I haven't been on the scale during a well...during an accurate time of the month so I'm not sure if I've lost any more (it says 1 pound so maybe), however I have these new big dents in the tops of my thighs which make my legs look skinny but my hips look bigger by comparison. I don't like this random spot weight loss....Oh well at least something is happening.

Lost

Ok so the blog isn't going to go incognito. I'm just too lazy.

Justin seems to have lost his wallet. The last place he remembers putting it was on the visor of the car, but it's not there or anywhere else in the car, or the house as far as we can tell. Our best bet now is that he left it at work, but no one there has turned it in yet. What a giant pain.

We've already canceled the bank card, which is a huge huge pain, as we don't usually carry much cash, and the bank is in Lubbock, so we'll have to go all the way over there to pick up some cash. Also, we don't think they'll give us a new card. The thing is, when we opened the account, we got a savings account, and we thought it was really snazzy because our bank is the only one I've ever been to that gives a visa debit card for savings accounts. Usually you have to have a checking account for that sort of magic. Then in January they decided that they didn't like the policy of giving out cards to savings account holders, and they wanted everyone to either open a checking account or turn in their cards. However, they can't legally just take the cards away from savings account customers. So they wait until you screw up the account somehow or have to cancel the card and then haha! You don't have a card anymore. Ugh.

We don't want a checking account. They always get overdrawn even when we try really hard and then we have to pay a bunch of money and get a new account. Blah. Oh well it'll work out. We're pretty sure the wallet isn't stolen, so I'm sure it will turn up somewhere stupid. If (and this is unlikely) any of you see it lying around please mail it to the address on the drivers license.

Disregard the bad picture of me.

Are You on the List?

Justin would like for me to make my blog private so that not just anyone can read it. This sounds like a whole bunch of trouble to me, but I'm thinking of trying it out. If you read my blog, and you want to continue to read my blog if it goes under the radar please email me your email address, and I will send you an invite so that you have to work for admittance.


It'll be like Studio54, without the drugs.

Again, I might not actually go this route because I like hearing from strangers. Thanks to Teronni for the comment by the way. I see you have an under the radar blog. (I assume, because I couldn't see it.) How's that workin' for ya?

Any thoughts are, as always, appreciated

Crisis Averted

OK, so as it turns out we aren't going to have to move by the end of April, unless we want to. Les (my ex-brother-in-law, as you remember) said that he didn't intend to cause trouble by letting me know about the house being switched over, and that D'Liesa had told him that we were planning to move, so April was just an arbitrary date. We can stay as long as we want to, and we will re-sign a new lease with him at some point to pay $176 for rent. (That will save us $130/month which is quite exciting.) He also told me exactly how this came to pass, which is really really interesting but I'm not going to go into it now. It's just too much to type.

It's spring break now, and Justin got his XBox back from the Microsoft repair center just in time, so he's happy. It came back really quickly, and initially we thought that it was still broken because the drawer was stuck the first time, but it seems to be working fine now, so yay for Justin!

Maybe got fixed last week and I took her yesterday to get her stitches out. Her belly is all floppy from where she was swollen and it's funny, but we're trying not to make fun of her. I'd hate for her to develop a complex or point out all of my floppy places...

Speaking of floppy places, I seem to be losing and gaining the same 3 pounds over and over. Since mid-January I've managed to lose, and keep off 6 pounds, but my birth control seems to make that pesky 3 come and go every week so I can't add it to the total yet. I've boosted my exercise though so maybe in a couple of weeks I can say "Yes! 9!" We'll see. I'm hoping to have lost enough by the end of May that we can go see my mom sometime around our anniversary. I don't want to go if I'm just going to get called fat again.

I started tanning on Thursday so I feel really happy. The extra melanin that it produces in me makes me feel soooo good. And even though I know that tanning is really NOT GOOD for my skin, it is really quite good for my depression, and I figure that if I only tan for a couple of months a year that the trade off is worth it. I don't spend any time in the actual sun anyway so I'm probably only getting the amount of exposure that a normal person gets in a day anyway.

I guess that's all for now. I feel excellent. Maybe I'll go for a walk...

Well La Di Da

I know, I know it's been like a freakin' month since I posted last. I promise promise I'll try to do better. So we got some exciting news yesterday...we're moving! How could this be news, you ask, don't people normally plan for a move weeks or months in advance, you ask. Well, we've never been much for tradition I suppose...BAH!

I'll get to that. First here's an update on something else: As you know, Justin's sister, Ashlie, got married a little while before us and now has a lovely little girl, Nikaia. His mom called us a couple of weeks ago and told us that her husband, (Ashlies, not Justin's mom's husband anyway) we'll call him Jerkface, was being emotionally abusive and controlling and that she (Ash) didn't know what to do. Some time after that Justin talked to Ashlie and she confirmed this, but told him that she had decided to leave him and just didn't know how or when. Something like a week after that HE LEFT HER! I cannot believe that he thinks he's the one that's been wronged here. I guess though, that he saved her the trouble. But it still sucks. She is now living with her parents (and Nikaia), and seems to be pretty happy about the whole thing, but I know that it's hard and I'm sure that she's scared and hurting, even though she's putting on a totally brave face. Anyway Ashlie is a strong, smart, hot girl and I know that she's gonna make it through this. Besides she's about to be finished with dental hygiene school, which totally blows whatever Jerkface's stupid job was out of the water anyway.
So here's the real deal about our surprise move: Yesterday I checked my myspace email...I don't know why I bother, I rarely have messages there, but I digress. I had an email from my ex-brother-in-law (Les) telling me that my stepsister (D'Liesa), who we rent this house from, signed over the deed and all rights to the property to him on FEBRUARY 6, and he hopes she told us that we need to be out by the end of April!!!

Ok so here are the facts:

* It's been a full month since this dirty deal was made and until yesterday we hadn't heard a whisper about it.

*During that time we saw D'Liesa, in person at least once and I talked to her on the phone twice.

*Since Les is now in charge, our rent has gone from $300 to $176 (the cost of the actual mortgage for him, this is the one positive fact in the case).

*The rent change was effective on February 6, however we didn't know this, so we paid D'Liesa the full $300 on February 14.

*I think that means she owes us $124, but she's not even acknowledging that. She also isn't acknowledging that she might be a little bit in the wrong here. All she keeps saying is that she called multiple times and left messages for me to call her so she could tell me and I never called her back. Ok people, I have a cell phone. It tells me every call that comes in and it's not in the habit of hiding messages from me. She did not call. Not once. Which is beside the point, as I mentioned We saw her in person 2 weeks after the change!! She also could have sent an email, a comment on myspace, a letter or a freakin' carrier pigeon!! There is no excuse for this.

Did I mention that we saw her in person?

I know that we have almost two full months to get it together and find a place and move, and I also suspect that if we ask nicely, Les would let us stay 'til May when school is out and there will be more available living space, but that is not even the point. The point is that we could have had a whole extra month to plan and save look at options. It's really hard to find somewhere decent (and affordable) to live in this college town. Plus, we've been working and working to save money so that we have some cash in savings and maybe some to take a little vacation for our anniversary, and now, I'm sure we're going to have to spend a whole big bunch of it on deposits and transfers and general moving crap and then we'll be back to doing the paycheck to paycheck thing. Plus, I'm quite sure that we'll never see the cash that D'Liesa swindled from us for last months rent again. (And I KNOW that's why she didn't tell us about the change, she wanted that cash. Cow.)

Anyway, we're not opposed to moving to the Canyon area so y'all in that region keep an eye out for us....

I cannot believe I got through this whole post without cursing.