Category Archives: Dave

are french fries a "vegetable"?

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My performance review on Friday went very well. I haven’t been with the company long enough to qualify for an actual promotion, but they do these evaluations at the end of every fiscal year (which is now). And despite the fact that I’ve only been there 5 months, I am getting a raise of $1,000 a year. The way it was explained to me is that it’s kind of an incentive, like they think I’m doing a good job and want me to keep it up. I figure that after taxes, I might see an extra $50 a month. So that’s 1/2 of one student loan payment. Or 1/6th of a car payment. Or some insanely small fraction of rent. Regardless, it’s extra money, so I’m certainly not going to complain about it.

Now for the weekend summary. Friday was my own private chill-out night. I needed to recover from my Thursday night out with my co-workers, and Dave was having a boys’ night with one of his friends, so I cleaned my apartment and did laundry. Very exciting. Saturday, Dave and I were supposed to go to a bonfire at his neighbor’s house, but the poor guy (Dave, not his neighbor) apparently gave himself food poisoning by eating way-too-old leftovers, so that sort of scrapped those plans. I decided to go to the supermarket because I was out of a lot of stuff, and I totally forgot about the Jesus show going on less than 2 blocks away at Key Arena. I’m not sure if it was just ending or just beginning when I headed out to the store, but the Christian ladies were *everywhere*. Honestly, I have never seen so many unattractive women in one place in my life. Everywhere I looked were overweight middle-aged women in ugly JC Penney’s clothes with bad haircuts and minimal make-up. It was scary as hell. I didn’t want to walk to Blockbuster and have to navigate myself through the Throngs of Ugliness, so I decided that I was going to stay in and watch HBO. I got home, turned on the TV, and…. nothing. My cable was out. I called the cable company, and the automated voice message told me that there was a “known outage” in my area. I had a suspicion that it had something to do with the Christian women’s rally (maybe my cable signal was scared of all of the cellulite clad in unnatural fibers), but of course I couldn’t prove it. So I called Krissy to see if she wanted to go out (sort of a last-ditch desparate effort), but she had a date. Damn. So instead, I watched old episodes of “Sex & the City” on tape, then played GameBoy for a few hours. Not exactly a rockin’ Saturday night, I must say.

Yesterday, Dave and I went shopping, which translates to: he shopped, I whined. I wasn’t feeling well, and I tried to be a good sport, but it just wasn’t working too well for me. I felt better after we ate, then we rented “Super-Size Me” and watched that. Good lord. I already knew the stuff about McDonald’s, but the part about the food that’s being served in school cafeterias was absolutely horrifying. It’s amazing that we don’t all die of coronaries before we turn 25. I’ve never really considered doing the whole organic diet thing, but that movie made me think about it. Maybe that’s the point.

Ooh, and tomorrow morning, Dave’s gorgeous new furniture arrives! Hooray!!

The Fly

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Today marks two important occasions:
1) Dave and I have been dating for 4 months, which for those of you who don’t know my romantic past, is a record for me.
2) It has officially been 3 years since I moved to Washington state. That’s longer than I’ve lived anywhere since my hometown in Mississippi. I guess I’m over my nomadic phase – I really love it here, I think I’m sticking around.

In other (unimportant) news, there is a HUGE fly in my apartment that I don’t know what to do with. It’s just a housefly, but he’s at least the size of a nickel. And he’s aggressive, he keeps dive-bombing me when I don’t expect it. It’s totally freaking me out. But I can’t kill him because (a) he’s so huge that I know it’s going to leave a mess if I squish him, and the thought totally grosses me out, and (b) he’s too fast for me to catch him anyway. It’s funny when he dive-bombs Teenie, she’ll swat at him in the air, but then when she doesn’t catch him, she loses interest in about 2 seconds. Useless little huntress, she is. I tried opening my patio door and shooing the fly out, to no avail. He just dives at my head with his loud “Buzz-buzz-buzz!!!” until I scream and run away. I’m not even scared of flies, but the thought of this huge son-of-a-gun landing on me is freaky. And flies carry germs. Ick.

Teenie and I are taking off in a couple of hours for Dave’s house, where we’ll be doing floors all weekend. Whee! Hopefully Mr. Fly will be dead by the time I return to my apartment.

Oh, and in totally unimportant news, I’m getting a haircut this afternoon. My usual lady has the day off, so I’m taking a chance on one of her colleagues. Wish me luck!

big birthday weekend

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This weekend was a lot of fun. I have to start this story by explaining that Dave is a birthday nazi who won’t open his presents until his actual birthday, which was on Sunday. I’m more of the “birthday weekend = close enough” mindset, so if my birthday falls on a Sunday, I want to open my presents on Friday night.

Anyway, on Friday I made Dave a birthday cake, and that was his one (perishable) gift that he got before Sunday. I’ve never tried to write anything on a cake before, so I took a picture of my first effort. The problem was that the icing came out faster than I was expecting, so the H in “happy” was way too big, and then I sort of had to abbreviate the rest of it to make it all fit. (Oh, and Dave said that my heart in the top right corner looked like intestines.) Ok, so it looks a bit like a drunk 6 year-old wrote it, and I obviously won’t be making a career change to become a master cake decorator anytime soon. But the cake tasted damn good, and as you can see, Dave was pretty pleased with it.

Saturday, we did the Humane Society walk, which was fun except that it was cold and it rained on us the whole time. But we got to see lots of doggies out running around having a great time, and that was cool. I’m waiting for Dave to email me the pictures from that so I can post them here, they’re pretty funny. Afterward (after I had showered and napped), we went to Best Buy so Dave could get an iPod. He was totally jealous of mine (iPod envy) so he had to go get one just like it. But I got mine first, nyah nyah. Sushi for dinner (mmm…) and then we started to watch a movie, but Dave wanted to play with his iPod and I wanted to sleep, so that was that.

Sunday, I was woken up at 8 a.m. by the birthday boy, who wanted to open his presents. He was bouncing around the room like a 4 year-old on Christmas morning. I think I did pretty well, he seemed to like everything. We went out for breakfast and then drove south to the Puyallup fair. Good lord, what an event that is. I had never been before, but I can safely say that it puts the state fair in Mississippi (the fair I grew up going to) to shame. And I learned that I’m allergic to some type of farm animal – most likely goats, since I pet a few of those – because my inner ears started itching before we even left the barns. Anyway, several hours, lots of junk food and a couple of rides later, we headed home. I crashed around 11 last night, which is unusually early for me (lately, anyway).

So overall, it was a very good weekend. This coming weekend is going to be all about floors, floors, floors! And more of that XBox game where you crash into cars! Whee!

hey-la, hey-la, my boyfriend's blog

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Dave started a blog! The poor guy has actually been working on this for quite a while because he refused to go the simple Blogger method like the rest of us. Instead, he taught himself ASP.NET, god bless him. So it’s a little sparse right now, but I’m sure it’ll develop as time goes on. Hooray! (I’ve added him to my links sidebar thingie too.)

ruh-roh

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Whoop-whoop-whoop! Attention: security has been breached!!

Or in other words, my parents found my blog. This is actually not that big a deal, because I think they know most of this stuff already. But the occasional profane word does sneak in here and there, and I’m sure that if they start reading too far back, they could find a thing or two that they disapprove of (not that I’m mentioning topics, so everybody keep your mouths shut). Anyway, looks like I’m going to have to watch my language a bit for a while, at least until they get bored and stop paying attention. 🙂

Oh yeah, and my parents now have high-speed Internet access at their new house. As their personal resource for all aspects of technical support, I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. The good news is that now they can upgrade their pc to Windows XP, and I could use the Remote Assistance feature to help them from here when they have problems. (There really didn’t seem to be any point in upgrading them from 98 when they were on a 56K dial-up line.) At the same time, I’m expecting my call volume to increase significantly over the next few weeks. Whee!

Anyway, events for this weekend are as follows:
* Saturday – Dave & I are doing a fundraiser walk for the Humane Society. It’s only a 3K, so it’s not like we’re doing a marathon. It’s cool because they encourage people to walk with their dogs, so I imagine we’ll see lots of different types of pooches. And since I’m trying to coerce Dave into getting a dog, this can only help to further my cause. (Muuwaahahahaha!!)
* Sunday – DAVE’S BIRTHDAY!!! HOORAYY!!!

(Bonk!) Pet me!

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Dave’s cat Beaumont reminds me a lot of Kris’s cat Toby (who, sadly, passed away about a year ago). Both cats have got a very loud, mournful-sounding meow, can’t ever seem to get enough attention, are total food scroungers – don’t leave anything on the table/counter if they’re in the house – and they’re both kind of uncoordinated goofballs. Overall, very sweet and endearing cats, except for the fact that Beaumont drools when you pet him. But when Toby sat on someone’s lap, he’d grab a piece of his or her shirt in his mouth and nurse on it (we always suspected he was separated from his mother too early), so with both cats, whoever doles out affection ends up with some kind of wet spot on them. Ick. The funniest thing about Beaumont is that when he wants attention, he doesn’t just rub the side of his face along your leg like most cats do. Instead, he full-on head butts you. It’s the weirdest thing, but it’s so funny. So I’ve now started head-butting Dave when I want attention, since it seems to work for the cat. For some reason, it seems to annoy him less than my playing Punch Bug every time we pass a VW Beetle on the road.

We got more accomplished this weekend than I was expecting. The living room and dining room are totally painted now, which was the goal of the weekend. The light sage green looks awesome, too. We made two trips to Home Depot – yesterday’s was by far the biggest trip to HD yet, because we got all the flooring stuff (22 boxes!), a circular saw, and 400 sq. ft. of plywood because we have to shore up the new floors to make them level with the existing floors. At some point, Dave had to go get a nail gun (for the plywood – we got the easy snap-together floors), and rather than pull the several-hundred pound flatbed cart o’ stuff across the store, I just waited in the main aisle for him while he went to get it. Here’s something I learned: You don’t ever want to be the girl standing next to a huge cartload of stuff in Home Depot. I got more unwanted attention in that 5 minutes than I’ve gotten in a loooong time. I had a few Home Depot guys come up to me asking if I needed help – ok, fine, that’s their job, but it felt kind of sexist. Like oh woe is me, how am I ever going to pull this big wheeled cart around? And then a few guys walked by, eyed the flatbed’s contents and made comments like “Wow, that looks like quite a project!” Yeah, it is. Now go away. I imagine the fact that I had a sinus headache and that Home Depot tends to suck my energy out of me didn’t help my attitude.

Anyway, we started on the floors when we got back from Home Depot. I have to say, I’ve never used a nail gun before, and it was SO COOL!! I can’t really explain why. I think it’s because I’ve lived in apartments for years, so I’ve always had to be cautious about my noise level. But the nail gun is so loud, and Dave’s nearest neighbor is far enough away that they can’t hear anything – it was cool to know that I could make as much racket as I wanted, and it was fine. I was heady from the rush of power tools. 🙂 So we got part of the dining room started, and we’ll finish it sometime in the next couple of weeks. Dave’s birthday is on Sunday, so we’re taking a weekend off from home renovations. We should have enough time to get it all done before the gorgeous new furniture shows up.

Sunday evening, we chilled out, watched the season finale of “Six Feet Under” (my god, that was great), and then we played some XBox game (I can’t remember the name of it) where the objective is to crash into as many cars as possible. Now, 99% of the video games out there, Dave could easily kick my ass, because I’m just not a hardcore video game chick. But if the game is to figure out who between the two of us is the worst driver, I am SO winning that one. Out of 8 games, I won 6 and Dave won 2. Yeah, baby! That was fun.

that was a holiday?

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Labor Day weekend was nice, but not nearly as restful as I was (foolishly, I suppose) expecting. Dave & I made it to Bumbershoot twice – on Friday evening and again on Monday afternoon. And we managed to avoid Krissy all weekend, so bonus points there. Friday evening was nice, it wasn’t too crowded, good music, we were provided constant entertainment by picking out the underage kids who were furtively pouring beer into their paper Pepsi cups, and those who were smoking weed and hiding it behind their hands like no one could see them. It was a great time, and the only downside was that everything closed down around 9:30 – I think the festival officially ends at 10 – and we weren’t ready to leave yet. But alas, we were booted out of the Beer Garden (much like Adam & Eve in their garden, but this didn’t involve snakes, apples, or nudity), and we headed home.

Saturday was Home Depot Day. We picked the paint color for the living room, but only bought a quart of it so we can decide whether or not we like it. We also looked at all the dozens of types of hardwood flooring and picked the one that Dave liked best. Of course, he first gravitated toward the stuff that cost $9 per square foot, but we found an alternative that’s only $2.97 a square foot and looks (in my opinion) just as good. It’s real hardwood, not laminate, but it’s the same snap-together style as the laminate. We measured the living room and dining room, and it’s about 375-400 square feet total, so even with the cheap hardwood flooring, it’s still going to be pretty pricey. Somehow, the trip to Home Depot managed to suck all the energy out of both of us – I think that happens when the enormity of everything you need to do starts to sink in – so that was all that we got accomplished on Saturday.

Sunday, we repainted Dave’s office (it needed a 2nd coat) and set up his new desk, which was far more elaborate a project than I had anticipated. It was one of those “we’re going to give you a million pieces and some really vague diagrams that are only partially in English, and let you cry and swear until you figure it out by yourself” Ikea style desks. I started taping the borders in the living room and took the pictures off the wall, but that’s the extent of what’s been done in that room. I’m starting to worry because I want to make sure the living room and dining room are done by the time the (gorgeous) new furniture gets delivered, and that’s only 3-5 weeks from now. I think I need my mom for this, she’s the home repair drill sergeant – everything would already be finished by now. But I think it’ll be ok. Right now the weather forecast for this weekend is chilly & rainy, so we won’t be missing anything by staying in & doing house work for two solid days. Whee!

Monday, Dave & I went back to Bumbershoot; this time, however, the crowd was absolutely out of control. I guess because it was the last day, everyone & their grandma decided to go. Good lord. Dave & I were only there for a couple of hours before we both started to get irritable and claustrophobic, so we headed home. I think the previous day’s house work had worn us both out. Dave headed home, I got take-out sushi from down the street, and I was in bed before midnight.

Oh, and today I learned that I may have a new project for work, which is in Olympia. Hell of a commute (about 60 miles), but it doesn’t involve getting on a plane, so I’m fine with that. I just may have to look into the Puget Sound area train system if this project is going to go on for any real length of time, though.