Category Archives: Dave

change is good, right?

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This year, 2005, has been pretty amazing for me so far. I moved in with Dave. I turned 29 – my last official year in my 20’s. I got engaged, which is something that I think most people (including myself) thought I would most likely never do. I started planning my wedding – yet another thing I never quite saw myself doing. And then today, I got offered a job with the Biggest Software Company in the Free World, who I’ve wanted to work for since before I moved to Washington four years ago – and which just happens to be about a 30% raise from my current salary. Holy crap! And it’s only February. What on earth do you have in store for me, 2005? It’s simultaneously exciting and scary, because with all of this great stuff happening, I keep waiting for something bad to happen so things will even out. The universe has to have some sort of balance, doesn’t it? Or is this the payoff for a whole bunch of bad years past? It’s sort of strange to be elated and worried at the same time. I suppose I just need to relax and go with it, but let’s face it, how many of us humans are really all that adaptable to change? I put myself only a slight notch above my cat on that scale – I won’t lick myself bald when my routine gets thrown off, but it frazzles me nonetheless.

Totally switching gears: I got the pictures from our trip to Sun Mountain this past weekend posted online. There’s a whole other drama going on right now about how we’ve had no heat or hot water since we got back from our trip on Sunday afternoon, but that should hopefully be resolved within the next hour or two, so we’ll just leave that story alone.

P.S. Oh yeah, forgot to mention, our wedding date got changed. We really wanted to have it in this one place, which wasn’t available on May 7th. So now we’re getting married on Sunday, May 15th. Still less than 3 months to go!

the busy bee

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So, let’s see. This week I found a dress, which has been ordered in my size, and since I paid a rush fee, it should be here in plenty of time before the wedding (also allowing time for any last-minute alterations that might need to be done). For the record, I have pictures of the dress so I could show it to my mom, Mags, my sister & a couple of friends, but I’m not posting them here. You’ll just have to wait until you see the wedding photos. I must say, though, that I am really annoyed with most of the women who work in bridal shops, who stare at me incredulously, and almost all of them say things like, “You’re getting married in less than 3 months and you’re just now getting around to looking for a dress??” I’ve been engaged for 4 days, lady, back off. Then they point me toward the maternity dress section. No thanks, it’s not that type of wedding. I promise.

Also, on Monday, I had a job interview at a very large software company that everyone in the world knows the name of, but which I shall refrain from writing here just in case they end up being my future employer. (Here’s hoping.) I was supposed to have a 2nd interview with them this morning, but the person I was supposed to meet with got stuck on the east coast and couldn’t get a flight back in time to meet with me. So that’s been postponed, probably until early next week. Keep your fingers crossed.

Today, I am frantically cleaning so we can take off this afternoon for the mountains in eastern Washington. I know I don’t have to leave the house spotless for the cat-sitter, but it makes me feel better if it’s at least somewhat presentable. Anyway, this is the romantic Valentine’s weekend trip that we were supposed to take last week, but then Dave got sick and it didn’t work out. I’m really excited to be going this week, I think some quiet time in the mountains will be wonderful. But before we leave town, we have a meeting with the event coordinator at the place where we want to have our wedding. This less-than-3-months thing is gonna be fun. Whee!

One last side note: Project Runway last night was FABULOUS!! It was “beat up on Wendy” night, which was awesome to watch. The one thing that disappointed me was that I thought I really liked Vanessa, but she was such a sour-grapes bitch that I’ve pretty much decided that I don’t like her anymore. But the outtakes were great – my favorite was during the credits, Austin flitting around in front while Jay was doing some kind of kung fu samurai thing with an empty roll of fabric as his sword/light saber in the background. Awesome.

The Ring

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Now, I know I was bummed that Dave got sick last week and that we had to postpone our trip to the mountains in eastern Washington, but I actually had quite the spectacular Valentine’s Day weekend. Why, you ask? Well, I think this might have had something to do with it. Oh wait, is that not a good enough close-up? How’s this? That’s right folks, it is now official: Dave and I are engaged. I kind of had a suspicion that he was going to propose when we were on our trip (he’s a really bad actor), and even though we didn’t get to go on the trip, he was apparently too preoccupied with the idea of proposing to wait until next weekend. So instead, he proposed over the kitchen table on Friday night. Of course, I didn’t even hesitate to say yes. He then called my dad to get his blessing. It was a really great night.

The thing is, we had been talking about getting married in the fall, but then we realized that his mom and brother will both be here in the spring, my best friend Kris will be here after she finishes school for the semester, and the odds of getting everybody together again in 6 months seemed like an impossible task. So we’re getting married on May 7th. As in, less than 3 months from now. I’m only mildly starting to panic, but we’re going to keep the wedding very small, so it shouldn’t be too bad. The last thing I want is to go into Bride Stress Mode. Since my mom does alterations for a living, I have encountered many a bride-to-be in my day, and they all seemed to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I don’t want that, I want to be the Fun Bride. (This is why I started doing goofy dances in a posh bridal shop yesterday to entertain Dave. And did I mention that I was trying on wedding gowns at the time?) I’m considering the idea of dressing the entire wedding party in clown outfits. Ok, so I’m really not. But this wedding is going to be fun, dammit!

So that’s my big news. I hope everyone had a great Valentine’s Day – although I don’t know if it’s possible for anyone to have had a better one than me.

all by myself

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Dave’s company has an office in Massachusetts, and he has to go there for a couple of days this week for some work-related thing. This only happens a couple of times a year, it’s not exactly the extensive travel requirements of my current job. So I dropped him off at the airport yesterday, and he’ll be back home on Wednesday. And for some unexplainable reason, I got totally freaked at the idea of staying here by myself. I mean, I’ve lived alone for the better part of the last 6 years, but I’ve always been in an apartment. There is something about living out in the country, and knowing that if I were to scream for help, there’s not even a remote chance that anyone would hear me. Also, the house is really big, so if I were upstairs in the bedroom, someone could break in the house and I wouldn’t necessarily hear them. So even though it’s somewhat irrational, I got kind of spooked. Before Dave left, I made him hang up the curtains in the living room (which we had taken down when we painted). There’s a huge bay window in there, and at nighttime, you can see inside from the street, which didn’t sit too well with me. There’s also a sliding glass door that leads to the backyard, but that doesn’t freak me out as much – I think because there’s two huge floodlights there, so if a crazy man with an axe comes running out of the woods toward the house, I’ll see him and have a chance to get a head start out the front door.

Speaking of the woods behind the house, yesterday when I got back from the airport, this was in the backyard. Shortly thereafter, one of her friends showed up. (It’s a bad photo, so I labeled it.) They’re really cute, but they confuse the hell out of the cats. Particularly Beaumont, who can’t seem to decide if they’re just super-huge mice that he should be hunting, or if he should run back in the house where it’s safe. He did get pretty close before deciding to vacate the premises, though.

Anyway, back to my spooked-out self, Dave pointed out that with 2 cars in the driveway and a light or two turned on, no one would be stupid enough to try to break in. So last night I left several lights on throughout the house, took 2 over-the-counter sleep aids (ahh, Tylenol PM, how do I love thee?), set the sleep timer on the TV to drown out any mysterious noises that I might hear while I was trying to fall asleep, and managed to sleep soundly through the whole night. So I think I’ll be fine if I stick with that routine. One night down, two nights to go.

Sunday catch-up

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Sorry it’s been a week since I’ve written anything. Life has been a bit crazy lately, but the main reason for my lack of posting is because last week, our high-speed modem broke. So for nearly 4 days, Dave and I were sharing one measly little dial-up connection. Blogging at 32K? I think not.

So let’s see, what did I do last week? Well, I went to the dentist (twice), went to my regular doc and finally got some drugs to get rid of this sinus thing that’s been driving me crazy since November, we cleaned (most of) Dave’s garage, and moved a lot of stuff out of my apartment and into said garage. Oh yeah, and we goofed off a lot. Having limited Internet access seems to make for a perfect time to catch up on junk TV and video games. [Speaking of which, I did watch Project Runway this past week, but couldn’t post anything about it because it was while we were on dial-up. All I can say is that I am glad Kevin is gone. I was tired of listening to his whiny voice and looking at his buck teeth. Next, they must destroy Wendy and her horrible skunk-striped highlights.]

Movies we rented this week:
* Wicker Park – We made it through the first 15 or 20 minutes, and we were both so totally bored and uninterested that we turned it off. Josh Hartnett should really just stop. I’m not kidding.
* Saved – So great! It was such a reminder of my good little Christian high school, where the girls back-stab you in the name of Jesus. That movie has totally solidified Mandy Moore as a brilliant actress in my mind.
* Dogville – Has anyone else seen this?? It was so strange. I mean, it was good, but my god, that was a dark, rough movie to watch. Plus the fact that it’s 3 hours long. And don’t get me wrong, I really love Nicole Kidman. I think she’s a great actress and a beautiful woman. But she needs to stop with the botox and the collagen now. She should be playing roles that are her age, not 20-something-ish ingenue types. It’s starting to get silly. We all remember you in Dead Calm, Nic, and we know that movie was a long time ago. You’re pushing 40, and you’re still hot. Accept it.

On a more serious note, there’s a lot of crazy changes/stress-inducing stuff that started happening with my job this past week, which I can’t really talk about in too much detail right now. (Paranoid, I know, but you never know who’s reading this stuff. If you really want to know, email me & I’ll tell you.) It could end up being something really positive, but right now it’s a nebulous gray area, and I’m a bit freaked. All I can do is ask everyone who reads this to send happy-job vibes in my direction. It’d be much appreciated.

The Vegas Recap

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The trip to Las Vegas was fun. I just got the pictures online, so feel free to check those out, along with the ones from my birthday, which I also posted today. Here’s the blow-by-blow:

Thursday afternoon: Flew to Vegas. Relatively uneventful flight. Checked in at the Golden Nugget, which is one of the older casinos in Las Vegas (it’s downtown, not on the strip). We ate dinner at the casino, and went to bed early.

Friday: My all-day meeting. Ho-hum, boring work stuff. Dave and I met up in the hotel room that evening (he had a great time playing slots all afternoon), changed clothes and went to my company’s dinner/event thing. Which was, of course, at a bowling alley. The perk was that this time, there was an open bar. Which would’ve been great, except that I felt sick after my first drink (I’m still not sure why), and Dave already had a headache, so we were there for less than an hour total.

Saturday: We went to check out the Strip. See photos. We had lunch at the New York, New York, and then stopped at some random little bar on the strip for a strawberry daiquiri, which I had been craving ever since we arrived. We walked a few more blocks to the Paris, which I didn’t realize was owned by the Hiltons, and probably has some affiliation with that skank ho daughter of theirs. Around the time we got there, I got sicker than I have been in recent memory. I still don’t know what happened, if it was the daiquiri or the food we had for lunch, but my stomach was in knots. I’ll spare you all the gruesome details, suffice it to say that I thought I was going to have to go to the emergency room, but we decided to just go back to the hotel so I could lie down for a while and see if that helped. I almost fainted while we waited in line for a taxi; Dave got us out of the line and sat me down until the cold sweats passed and I stopped seeing spots. We finally got back to the hotel, and I sent Dave out of the room so I could be miserable on my own. (I don’t like witnesses to be present when I’m violently ill.)

Three hours later, I was fine. I went down to the casino floor to find Dave – he had won $180 on the penny slot machines. (After all was said and done, I think he lost $20 total, but he played the damn things for about 8 hours over the weekend, so he did pretty well.) We went to dinner because after my little… um, unintended purge, I was suddenly hungry. Then we crashed for the night.

Sunday: We learned the hard way that everyone and their grandma flies to Vegas for the weekend, and they all fly back home on Sunday. The airport was insane. I haven’t seen security lines like that since the time I tried to fly less than a week after 9/11. We thought we had allowed plenty of time, but it turns out we were sadly mistaken. We finally got through the security line at exactly the time our plane was supposed to be leaving. We speed-walked to the gate, figuring that we were probably going to have to go standby on the next flight, but hoping that maybe our plane was delayed. And what do you know, they were still boarding the flight when we got there. Hooray! So we made it, just barely.

Then we came home, ate Thai leftovers for dinner, and watched “Surreal Life,” “Strange Love” and “Celebrity Fit Club” on VH-1. (For the record, I hate “Celebrity Fit Club” because I think it’s cruel and mean-spirited, but I can’t stop watching it.)

I am 29.

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Today is my birthday. There isn’t a whole lot to say about turning 29, it’s not really a landmark age, it’s just starting to sink in that I’m about thisclose to 30, which isn’t entirely happy. But hey, I’m still officially in my 20’s, at least for the next 364 days. (And I haven’t decided if I’m going to turn 30 next year, or if I’ll just turn 29 again.)

Yesterday, Dave went shopping for my birthday present(s) while I played video games at the house. (I am addicted to Paper Mario.) He called about 10 minutes before he got there, and told me to leave the house because he had to make preparations. So I went to the supermarket to kill half an hour. When I came back, I found that the coffee table in the living room had a balloon tied to each leg, a cake on the table (complete with number candles, which he reversed so it said I was 92 instead of 29), and assorted presents and goodies. Whee! That was so cool, I really wasn’t expecting a big presentation like that at all.

Gift-wise, the boy did good again: I got a Henry Rollins DVD (not the one that was filmed last year in Seattle, this is a different one), a video game, the soundtrack to “Garden State” (happy sigh), a cookbook (which I wanted, it wasn’t some “get in the kitchen and make me dinner” kind of gift), a coffee mug, a teddy bear… oh yeah, and a mountain bike! That was my big surprise gift. Dave hid it so I thought I was done with presents, and I was damn happy with what I had gotten. Then he told me that I should come see something cute that Greta was doing in the laundry room, and when he opened the door, this was waiting for me. How cool is that? I had been talking about getting a bike for a while, because I really enjoyed it when I borrowed Krissy’s roommate’s bike a few months ago. So what do you know, now I have a bike. Now if only it’ll stop raining long enough (and if the temperature would rise about 20 degrees) to allow me a chance to ride it…

The big news for the weekend, which I think I can safely blog about now since our families know: Dave and I are moving in together! Obviously, Test Week went really well, so we had a big talk on Thursday night and decided that this is what we both want. We’re really happy and excited about it. I have to talk to my apartment people tomorrow to find out how soon I can move, since I’ll be breaking my lease. I’m pretty sure this means that I can kiss my deposit good-bye, but it looks like I should save enough money by living with Dave that I’ll make up for it within the next two months. My parents, being the lifelong Southerners that they are, aren’t too thrilled about it. They both think that Dave is great, but they don’t like the idea of us living together before we’re married. I tried explaining that in my generation, living together is a pretty standard phase of courtship, but I don’t think they’re buying it. But they acknowledge the fact that we’re both adults, and they’re glad that I’m happy, so they’re keeping their disapproval to a minimum. Although my mom did say that I shouldn’t tell anyone in the family about it. (Hi, Cat!) Dave’s mom is thrilled for both of us, so at least we have support on that side.

So yeah, it’s been an exceptionally good birthday. I look forward to turning 29 again next year.