More about the house

I may yet do the whole SketchUp thing like I did before the last move, but it's complicated this time because my Real Computer is running Linux and, as such, needs an intermediary program set up before I can install SketchUp.

In any case, the house is about 520 square feet, with no light shafts or hallways and not including the laundry room, whereas the apartments are 410, including light shafts, hallways and laundry room. The smaller of the two bedrooms in the new house is about the same size as the larger of the two where we are now.

So all our stuff will fit. And I like that the living room is contiguous with the kitchen, so whoever's cooking doesn't have to go off behind closed doors (or around corners or whatever) while they do it.

It is, as I said the other day, not very attractive, but the owner seemed to indicate that he would be painting it, and once we put our things in it and choose curtains and stuff, hopefully it'll be nice.

We went down today to transfer our existing application for a phone line (which we put in for last July, but there are no lines available in this neighborhood) over to the new place, and while we won't know till it happens, it sounds like that may work out okay. And when it does, we can have DSL instead of cable Internet, and thereby not have to pay for TV we're not watching. So that'll be nice.

Here's what it looks like right now. We believe that if the owner paints it, it'll be off-white as opposed to another coat of the oh-so-popular Industrial Hospital it's currently sporting.

Definitely a step. Hopefully one toward TOTH

We went ahead and paid the deposit on the house, then stopped over to measure the rooms and take pictures, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow for those because for now it's pizza, beer and Torchwood.

Not TOTH, but hopefully a stop on the way to it

We went to see another house today. I have resoundingly mixed feelings about it. It's on the right end of our budget range, almost as close to the school as our current place, and small but large enough to be workable. In short, it'll do and we're taking it.

I was exceedingly lucky, when I first needed a place to move into, to find the apartment that I did and, when Bob was ready to come here, to have the adjoining one become available. A big part of what I like about this apartment is that it's attractive. It's just pretty, with nice surfaces and interesting colors and attention to detail in the construction and finishing.

This other place is flatly none of that. I'm sure we can make it pleasant enough with time, and it's not like we're committing to years and years there. But I really wish I actually liked it.

As I was saying...

Pursuant to last night's post, this:


is not a happy monitor.

Well, THAT'S never happened before.

So we spent most of the day playing the Harry Potter game (it took the three of us most of the day to get Julia's Harry past the Flipendo level) and drawing temporary tattoos on each other. (Well, okay. Mostly it was me drawing them on everyone. Robin got a butterfly and Julia got a parrot and I got a purple gecko.)

And then while I was cooking dinner they started calling from the living room, but I was all cooking eggs and not about to leave them to go look at the computer, and when I finally did, it turned out something had...happened.

The entire display was rotated 90º clockwise. And the children were still playing the game.

I put an end to that, took them in the kitchen and fed them dinner, then came back out to see what there was to see. I posted a jokey little complaint on Facebook, then restarted the computer to fix the problem.

Except.

It didn't fix. Windows came up and said, "Hey, your resolution and color depth are pretty low, how's 'bout I fix that for ya?" And I said sure, and it did. But apparently Windows had no issue with the whole having-to-crane-your-neck-90º-to-the-right-in-order-to-get-your-hand-eye-coordination-to-work-enough-to-put-the-mouse-where-you-want-it thing.

I tried a few things, complained on Facebook again, and eventually went for help. Bob came up and tried a few things, then helped me turn the monitor on its side (which looked weirder than you'd think - I took a picture but I don't feel like downloading it right now) and then he went downstairs to Google it for me.

Then he came back upstairs and fixed it, yay, the end.

Nice day

The Grinch wouldn't play, so we watched The Gods Must Be Crazy II instead. Julia and I fell asleep, but we'd already seen it. I like the badger part.

I made Robin's cake today; mocha cake with extra dark cocoa powder. Very rich and very yummy. I'm surprised it didn't keep us all awake for the movie, but then we only had small pieces.

Robin got some really nice presents from my family; Lisa faked us out with a Harry Potter computer game that we all started enthusing about, then she opened the box and there was a shirt and some Mad Libs inside. And then under the shirt, there was the game after all. So now we all know what we'll be doing tomorrow.

You know what's an addictive little game?

Pac-xon is an addictive little game. Way better than traditional Pacman.

It's all the girls' fault, naturally. I said it looked like fun, and they invited me to play, and there's this "Try Again" button that works in a non-standard game restarting way (it restarts the game, but keeps you at whatever level you were on), so they convinced me that I kept getting additional lives.

And the news is...

...there is no news.

We drove around town for a while this evening and didn't see any For Rent signs. Guess we'll try again in a few days; in the meantime, the Doctor is about to regenerate and I want to see how he comes out, and also how long it takes for him to mention that the new teeth feel weird.

The one with all the reminiscing

Eleven years ago today, I had lunch with my Mom, and we bought a hairbrush.

We were waiting around to see if I was in labor, you see, and it turns out I was. I'd just had a prenatal appointment and the doctor, knowing I lived an hour and a half away by bus, suggested we not go home just yet.

So we had a (light) lunch at the Hotel Don Carlos, and bought a baby hairbrush at Mas X Menos (I can't recall that we ever once used it, but I'm sure the girls appropriated it for their stuffed animals eventually) and then went back to the clinic and were admitted. Well, I was. And Mom got to stay right up until I went into the delivery room. She brushed my hair for me.

Alex and I picked out the name "Robin" while waiting for the second checkup, if I recall correctly. I was wearing an enormous shirt with a very large paisley pattern. It was nicer than it sounds.

She was born in the late afternoon, and we stayed the night. I remember trying to get her out of the plastic bassinet beside the bed in the middle of the night. I couldn't reach it that well. I'm glad I didn't drop her.

We took her home the next morning, about an hour or so before Dad showed up at the hospital, having moved heaven, earth and office schedules to get an earlier flight.

We scandalized the neighbors (who told my mother in law on me) by taking the baby out of the house when she was just a couple of days old. Broke the quarantine, don't you know. "Quarantine" being derived from the same root as "cuarenta", meaning 40. That's the number of days you're traditionally supposed to be paranoid about the baby and avoid exposing it to...well, pretty much anything if I recall correctly. But I needed nursing bras and wasn't about to leave the baby behind when she didn't have any sort of eating schedule worked out yet.

She turned out okay, though. I don't think we ruined her.

The post on the day she's actually here to celebrate with us will probably be less about me and more about her, but she's with her dad today so I get to reminisce instead.

On the lookout for TOTH

Today is rent day and, as such, the only opportunity to give notice on one or both of the apartments until next rent day.

We went to see a house that was available on Thursday, and at the time we weren't very impressed with it. I described it as "adequate", and we let the owner know we were going to keep looking around.

Last night we talked over the options and decided that, while it really isn't The One True House, it would in fact do nicely as a transition from two apartments to all living together, en route to all living together in a more pleasant space and hopefully somewhere that the girls can each have their own rooms.

Except, when I called the owner this morning to see if it was still available, it wasn't.

Fortunately, Bob measured the rooms and some of the furniture this morning and we determined that we can fit everything into one of these two apartments. It'll be tight, but we're ready to both A) All live in the same place and B) Spend a lot less on rent each month.

And that way when we do find something, we won't be paying for three places for the first month.

So, that's the update on that.

And now for something completely different: