Archive for September, 2007

I simply couldn’t take it anymore, our beautiful house was a complete sty! We had been neglecting our daily chores, making for one huge mess of a home. So, I made a long list of things to accomplish this weekend. Side note: I love making lists (ask Andy), and the satisfaction of getting to highlight/cross the item off when I’m done. Anyhow, I’m very proud to announce that we finished 17 out of the 20 items. (The last three were, mow the lawn, fertilize the lawn, and weed the lawn…and turns out the lawn looks pretty good, so we skipped over those tasks) Here are the things that we completed this weekend…

1. Vacuum – carpet, baseboards, couch cushions, and window sills

2. Swiffer all tile surfaces

3. Water plants – I tend to forget, making for sad droopy plants

4. Wash all the guest room items (i.e. sheets, pillow cases, duvet, towels…etc)

5. Put up the office drapes with newly screwed into the wall hooks (We tried putting them up with just Command Strip hooks. Who knew drapes were heavy enough to take down even Command Strips?)

6. Put up the new ceiling fan we bought for the guest room. And let’s face it, by “we put up the new ceiling fan”, I mean Andy put up the new ceiling fan while I stood on the ground and handed him parts. But isn’t it installed just beautifully? For a ceiling fan?

7. Wipe down the kitchen counters and table

8. Clean the stove, oven, and microwave (which also turned out to include the fridge and the dishwasher)

9. Dust all imaginable surfaces

10. Clean the air vents and filters (very important as the fall allergy season kicks off)
11. Clean bathrooms, toilets and all

12. Wash all the bathroom rugs

13. Unpack the suitcase from last weekend that was still sitting on the floor of our bedroom. I’m very ashamed of our laziness when it comes to unpacking.

14. Hang the new pictures we bought for the bedroom…pictures we bought a month ago.

15. Go to the gym

16. Send out Aunt Susan’s birthday card. By the by…Happy Birthday Aunt Susan!!

17. Take Jabber out on a nice long walk, after all, she deserves it!

All in all, we had a very productive weekend. I’m once again proud and comfortable in my home. I’m also very happy that I no longer have to worry about spiders lurking in the corners! This was another huge motivating factor to have a cleaning weekend, too many spiders lurking. Blech! I’ve noticed that every once in awhile, I’ll get really irritated by our mess and clean everything in sight. This weekend just happened to be one of those moments. I suppose I didn’t actually have too much to write about, just wanted to brag a little bit about our housekeeping feats. Yay us!

Though it seems to be a difficult concept for most people to understand, Andy and I celebrated our fifth year together last weekend. No, we have not been married for five years. September 13th is merely the day that Andy and I started dating. It seems like such a shame to start the counter all over, just because we went and got married! We haven’t even been married for one measly year! But it sounds so significant when I can say we’ve been together for five years! Not to mention, I enjoy a nice weekend off to relax and not worry about which room needs to be vacuumed, and whether or not we need to buy toilet paper next week.

Andy surprised me by making reservations at the very fancy, very elegant W hotel in downtown Dallas. It turns out they were having a special summer package, which we totally took advantage of. It included free valet parking (yay to not having to worry about parking downtown), two free drinks at the pool/lounge bar, two free passes to the famous Ghostbar, and two free breakfasts at Craft (the expensive restaurant in the lobby). In addition to all that, they found out that we were celebrating an anniversary and put complimentary champagne and chocolate covered berries (ever seen a yellow raspberry?) in our room! How fun is that! Andy and I had a very tasty meal of truffled mac and cheese (I’ve never had truffles before, and now understand what people mean by their earthiness), roasted veggies, risotto balls rolled in panko bread crumbs, and of course, Andy had to have their filet mignon with pureed potatoes. Yum!

After a little bit of relaxing time, we got all spiffed up for a night on the town. We stopped by the lobby (or as the W likes to call it, the “living room”) for our free drinks, sat on their squashy couches, and people watched. There are a LOT of old men sitting around the lounge looking for lonely women to buy drinks for. It was creepy and so entertaining at the same time. Then around 10:30 or 11, we zipped up to the Ghostbar. It was terrific! Because of our special room package, we got special treatment, skipped right past the suckers in line! Not to mention, it’s a $15 cover charge to get in regularly! People must love their alcohol nice and fancy! The bar is on the 33rd floor, and they have an amazing balcony with an even more amazing view of the city. Of course, the view was ruined slightly by the smoke and the crazy drunk people.

One of the aforementioned old men decided it was appropriate to talk to me with his hand just barely above my behind. I was rather annoyed and glared rather effectively, he quickly went back to his MUCH younger date, poor gal must have been quite intoxicated. Then we asked a nice, also very drunk, lady to take our picture with the pretty city lights in the background. That turned into a long conversation about which of the buildings she had worked in previously, how accounting jobs just weren’t the same as they used to be, how she was trying to get her friend hooked up that night because her friend was going through a terrible divorce, how she herself had been divorced for 5 years after being married for 20, and after finding out we were celebrating an anniversary, she quickly assured us that we looked like we were going to make it, and that we were absolutely going to have to come back and tell her how we were doing in 20 years or so. We quickly smiled, nodded, and quickly ran away for the safety of the indoor part of the bar. Turns out, the picture she took was just a GIANT picture of our heads…and very little of the buildings she worked at. Sigh…

Once inside, we found a nice comfy couch in a corner of the bar. We listened to very loud, very odd remixes of old music, and continued people watching. We saw a lot of drunken white men trying their best to dance, girls with skirts that were just too short for my comfort, one girl was wearing skin tight plastic sparkly purple pants with red platform heels and a zebra halter top (oi!), and just enjoyed being out and about. After a while, we got tired of yelling at each other over the loud music, so headed back to our room. As soon as I stepped into the room, I started sneezing like a bloodhound in a pepper mill (I don’t know! What sneezes a lot?). Andy slept like a log, but I only managed a few hours of sleep. My allergies were acting up like you wouldn’t believe! So, I woke up and got ready for breakfast WAY earlier than normal.

I pulled a very sleepy Andy out of bed with promises of coffee and Craft potatoes. As soon as we got downstairs, my allergies disappeared! It was strange, but I was certainly not going to argue. We had a lovely breakfast with entertainment from the Heart Disease marathon runners running right past our table. We cheered on the runners, and mocked the protesters that inevitably showed up as well. The protesters were protesting what appeared to be heart disease research, or more directly heart disease research on animals. They had signs of monkeys with their bloody brains protruding looking sad (looked kinda fake and photo shopped, and why would heart disease research mean dissecting a monkey’s brain?), signs that said “Your Walk, Their Death March”, and they were handing out brochures like you wouldn’t believe. Now, don’t get me wrong…I hope to never do any animal research. I’m just not strong or brave enough, but I believe that some animal research is inevitable. There are all sorts of methods for preliminary research that eliminates animals from getting hurt (cell culture work, computer simulations…etc), but in the end…safety can only be tested with living subjects. Are you willing to start taking medication that has only been tested on computers? Lots of things should work in theory, doesn’t mean they actually will.

With that rant and our breakfast over, we headed up to take a gander at the pool on the 16th floor. It was all open air and gorgeous! The pool was a breath taking infinity pool that looked like it just dropped off the edge of the building (I guess that’s the definition of an infinity pool…) and there were all sorts of cushy lounge chairs dotting the area. Here’s a picture of me on one of the said lounging areas. Pretty view huh?

And we asked one of the maintenance workers to take our picture in front of the infinity pool. He sure did frame that authentic and very rare construction crane nicely. Not our weekend for pictures I’m afraid.

After our adventures, we headed back to the hotel room, where I promptly started sneezing violently. Turns out, I think I’m allergic to down! The entire room is filled with down blankets, down mattress topper, and numerous down pillows! I never knew! Too bad though, they’re so gosh darn comfy. All in all, it was a terrific weekend, and we’re happily refreshed for another week.

5 years of us!

Originally uploaded by achao83

Right after midnight on our fifth year together. Yay us!

Poor andy foot!

Originally uploaded by achao83

Andy accidentally dropped a hammer on his foot. What a nice bruise, eh?

Andy and I started painting…FINALLY…on labor day weekend. We have been planning paint colors and ideas since before we even had a house…and by we, I think I mean me. So, over fourth of July weekend, we carefully picked out our paint cards and bought gallons upon gallons of paint. Alas, as you Texans might remember, we had a massive amount of rain in June/July. So, we were strongly advised against painting our walls for fear of humidity and paint not setting correctly. Who knew paint could be so finicky?

As I was saying before, we discovered a couple of weekends ago, that we had a little down time. Why not get started with our painting project in the easiest room, right? We have been planning on only painting one room in the office red, as an accent. A room with only one wall versus a room with four walls…we were quickly sold. We told ourselves that it was an easy test run of our painting skills. Neither of us had painted anything beyond an occasional set piece for a high school musical. Ahhh…BVNW high school backstage life, how I miss it! Unbeknownst to us, red is one of the most difficult colors to manage. Thank goodness we were smart enough to get a color matched primer (though why it had to be pink, I’m not entirely sure), but even then the red paint was a pain! It’s really very hard to get an even layer of paint, and it took us about three coats of red paint on top of the primer to get the color we wanted. But in the end, we’re very happy with the results. Pictures below!

Me posing with my roller before attacking the salmon pink wall with red paint. Yes, I did suggest to Andy that we leave the wall salmon pink, that idea was quickly rejected.

The finished room in Ruby Red, doesn’t it look pretty?

Now we only have…the rest of the house to paint. Sigh…we might feel motivated enough to start the guest room this coming weekend, we’ll see. And yes, I did refrain from singing the Gilmore Girls painting song. Though I did hum it to myself when Andy was not in the room (for fear of paint fume asphyxiation). What? You’ve never heard of the Gilmore Girls painting song?

Ahem…

“Grab your paint and grab your rollers, all you kids and all you bowlers, cause we’re going painting tonight….”

Yes, it’s silly, but it makes me happy, isn’t that all that really matters?

I got lucky with my work schedule for the Labor Day holiday and didn’t have to work any of the three days. We were originally going to travel to Austin, but instead, Andy’s parents decided to come visit us! We spent much of our free time last week vacuuming, dusting, and cleaning. By Friday night, we were pretty much done. Just so happens that Andy’s friend, Erin, was driving through our area on her way to Manhattan, KS. So, she stopped for the night and kept us company. Jabber made a new friend in Erin’s puppy dog, Isis. The two played together, licked each other’s noses, and cuddled up to sleep while we talked about everything from God and state to hiking in the Appalachians.

Erin left early Saturday morning to continue her trek to Kansas. We lounged around and waited for the Trommers to come. They arrived around noon. After a quick chat, we were off to El Molcajetes for lunch, my favorite Mexican food spot. Then it was back to the house to rest, relax, and catch up on any Trommer news. In the evening, we went to tour Griffin’s new house. He is renting a house with his buddies for the school year. It’s in a nice neighborhood, very calm with lots of huge trees surrounding the property (Andy’s very jealous). Though not exactly a house I would look to buy, it’s absolutely perfect for a group of college guys.

After the ooohing and ahhing, we went to Griffin’s work for a fancy dinner. Griffin works at the Robson Ranch‘s posh restaurant. The Robson Ranch is a fairly expensive gated living community with a beautiful golf course, country club, bar, and restaurant (I think it’s called Wild Horse? Lone Horse? Something to do with a horse?). The view was fabulous! Who knew Denton had a view? Griffin and Courtney then proceeded to treat us to an amazing three course meal for Andy’s mom’s birthday, which is next week. We all had a wonderful time, and ate WAY too much wonderful food.

A picture of Andy and I enjoying the night. Look! We’re not blinking, chewing, yawning, frowning, talking, burping, or hiccuping! This picture is really one in a million for us!

On Sunday, Griffin came over to our house. There was much Wii playing, laughing, chatting, and eating. Andy and I planned a simple birthday dinner for his mom. We had a variety of grilled sausages, lemon pasta (my personal favorite entertaining dish), smashed chipotle sweet potatoes, and I made a lemon cake for the occasion. We all talked way into the night. It was a great time! Sadly, Griffin left late Sunday night, and Andy’s parents left early Monday morning. I’ll write more about our Monday at a later time, I’ve got to book it to get to work on time. Sigh…work…not working is so much more fun! Though I suppose money is always nice. Oh! Here’s the link to the photos I took for the weekend. Enjoy!