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I love the rain

Posted by Tomithey on July 2nd, 2009

It has been a quick week, as it always is when I have Friday off. The problem with having a day off during the work week is that it throws off my whole schedule I kept think I was one day ahead of what it really was.

I had a little more than 3″ of rain at my house this week, between two days. Yays! I LOVE when it rains because it means that I don’t have to water my grass or my plants! Watering is such a huge chore and it sucks up all my time… not that I’ve really been doing anything this week other than sitting on my butt watching TV. It is too darn hot to do anything outdoors! At least that is the excuse I’m using right now.

I’m having second thoughts about the colors I chose to paint my house. Luckily I have bought paint yet. I guess I’m going to have to think on things for a while longer.

I’ve been busy working on graphics for a friend’s business and I just took on the task of designing some websites for a Mississippi Senator, so I will be busy with that for a while.

I haven’t had a good night out dancing in a while and I’m craving it like CRAZY! I won’t be able to go out this weekend, so I’ve got another WEEK before I can dance off all this energy and bad juju.

Well.. I’m going to make like a baby and head out. Laterz!

I can’t be trusted at Target

Posted by Tomithey on June 29th, 2009

Friday evening I went home and was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my evening. I didn’t really want to go out, but I wasn’t against it. I started doing some stuff around the house, like taking down the ugly light fixture in my formal dining room, and then made plans with Aaron to have dinner.

Aaron invited his friend along and we went to La Fuente. Kristi and I had seen the billboard for the La Fuente many times while she was here and kept commenting about how we needed to try it. It’s over in my neighborhood, so it seemed like a good idea to give it a shot. I really like the place. It has a great atmosphere, good food and cold beer.

After dinner we went to the Rusty Spur. It was kind of empty and really hot in there. I kept yawning and feeling like I was going to pass out. It was really too hot to dance and there weren’t enough people there to even dance with. I ended up leaving early, just like everyone else and got home around 11:30ish. I was so ready to pass out.

Oh there was a guy that I thought was kind of cute and was trying to see what his deal was. I made David act as my wingman and we were outside talking to this guy when he reached in his pocket, pulled out some dip and stuck it in his mouth. YUCK. That’s when I decided we were done and went back into the club. That’s NASTY.

I had to be up kind of early Saturday because my microwave was getting installed anywhere from 9am to 11am. My alarm woke me up at 8:30 and I laid in bed wondering if I should get up or not. I remembered that they usually call 30 minutes before they arrive, to let you know that they are on the way. I figured I would just stay in bed until they called. I woke up at 9am to the sound of my doorbell.

They didn’t call first and I guess I was the first appointment. Darn my luck! When I want them to come early they come late, so naturally when I want to stay in bed and sleep they come early. It didn’t take them long to install it at all, but we had one problem.

The location of the outside vent in the cabinet above the microwave does not work well with the location of the vent on top of the microwave. They are too close together to find a normal stock vent tube to connect them. The installer realized this right away. I had already opened up the back of the microwave and set it up for venting out the top of the unit through the hold in the cabinet. He suggested changing the fan in the microwave to recirculate the air back into the house and then putting it back once I could get someone to make a custom vent tube for my unit.

I thought it wouldn’t be any issue to have a custom vent made, so I told him to leave it venting the way it was and I wouldn’t use it until I got the vent made. After they left I climbed up on a chair to look at the set up and realize it would be next to impossible to make a vent for there. DAMN. So I needed to take the microwave back down and change the fan to vent inside.

Robert came over and helped me and it was pretty darn easy. If I had known that this was how things were going to play out, I would have just got Robert to help me install it in the first place.

I spent the rest of the day shopping and doing too much of that. I actually didn’t have any intention to go shopping. I was driving WAY UP NORTH to turn in the keys to my old apartment at the office and decided that since I was up that way I might as well stop in at Smith and Hawken. BIG MISTAKE.

They had some great things on clearance and some other things that I felt that I couldn’t live without. Ok I could probably live without them, but it would be a really bad way to live. I ended up buying a bunch of stuff and it was kind of funny because when I was finishing up at the register the cashier came around the corner and handed me two bags and I started to walk away. As I was walking away I noticed her following me with two more bags. I hadn’t realized that I had bought that much. We loaded up the stuff in my truck and as I started to get ready to drive away she came running back out with another bag.

I’m horrible with math; anyone that knows me will tell you that. When she rang me up I was a little surprised at the total, but paid anyway. As I was driving away, and had gotten pretty far away, I started to add it up in my mind and realized she must have made a mistake. When I was shopping I had been putting all of my items on the back counter and started a pile, so I thought maybe someone else’s stuff got too close to my pile (as it grew and grew) and I ended up with someone else’s stuff as well.

I pulled out my receipt and realized that she didn’t charge me the super clearance price on 4 of my items and instead charged me full price. I had to turn back around and fight traffic to get back and have her adjust my receipt. All the while I kept thinking, “it’s only 20 something dollars.” I was tempted to just leave it because it’s such a hassle getting around in that parking lot and I had gotten pretty far away by the time I realized it. Well, my math is REALLY bad because it ended up being a refund of $62.

I dropped off the keys to my apartment and then I had to go buy plants for all the new fun things that I bought at Smith and Hawken. I stopped by my favorite garden shop, Gardens, and got some cute little plants and then went to another called Plant Escapes on S 1st and bought another plant. YAYS for cute new plants! (As if I don’t have enough already)

My friend Lynn met up with me at my place and we went to have drinks (and lots of chips and queso) at La Fuente. We had also made plans to go to dinner and a movie with Aaron later on. Lynn and I stayed at La Fuente for an hour or two and then went back to my place to hang out and wait for Aaron. Once he showed up, we went to dinner at Abuelo’s and then to see “The Proposal.” It was a pretty cute movie. It is super cliché and predictable, but it’s cute.

Sunday I got up late because I didn’t feel well. I’ve been having allergy issues. Xochi came over to help me decide on paint colors, because I’m having second thoughts about everything. I made pork chops and rice and beans for lunch. She hung out for a bit and then I spent the rest of the day watching DVDs and relaxing.

I went to Target to get some food and forced myself to stay on the grocery side of the store. I knew that if I went to the other side I would end up spending more money and I don’t need to be doing that! I did a great job of keeping myself in check. Last time I went to Target I had only gone for ONE LIGHT BULB and ended up leaving with almost $400 worth of stuff… and not the light bulb.

Tonight I have to do laundry. BLECH.

iPod

Posted by Tomithey on June 24th, 2009

Ugh. So I’ve messed up my iPod and it’s driving me crazy. My iTunes is a big mess as well. I was trying to transfer all of my music in iTunes from one computer to another and made a mistake.

All of my music is still there, but the computer re-organized it and now iTunes doesn’t know where some of the music is.

The I made the mistake of trying to use a 3rd party program (Ephpod) to copy the music off of my iPod onto my new hard drive and then Ephpod messed up the database on my iPod so now it thinks it’s empty even though it has 69 gigs of music on it.

Aaarrrgh! I spent so much time rating a good portion of the music I own and I don’t want to lose those ratings. The only way to fix this now is to go through all 15000 songs I have and find out which ones have an incorrect path in iTunes and correct them. I hope it’s not a lot.

Once I do that, I can sync my iPod and get it working again. Now when am I going to have time to do this?

I’m still working on decorating my house and painting things. I also still need to try to return those horrible shades to JC Penny. I’ve got a back-up plan if they won’t take them back. :)
I haven’t been doing much this week, other than relaxing and painting things in my house. I need to start on the actual painting of my house, which I might do this weekend.

Anyone want to help me paint?

VIBRANT!

Posted by Tomithey on June 22nd, 2009

I got a lot done with my house this weekend and I’m super happy. It feels like a new place in there!

Friday night I didn’t do much. I really can’t remember too much of what I did. Oh! I went to pick up the custom frame I had bought at Hobby Lobby for my Virgin de Guadalupe print.. I’m really wishing I had waited until they had a half off coupon, because I paid way too much. It is beautiful though and it looks great in my house!

I spent about 3 hours on the phone with Kristi trying to help her learn PowerPoint, Word, Excel and Access for a test she was having Saturday. I had connected to her computer and we were sharing her screen and going over tutorials. After that, I just went to bed. I was exhausted.

Saturday I woke up early, and without having to force myself out of bed. It was so nice to wake up refreshed and not exhausted. I talked to Kristi for a bit and wished her luck on her test, and then I got an emergency page from a tenant. Yeah, I carry a pager every third month for tenant emergencies.

I had to go into the office anyway to do a lease signing, so I went in a bit earlier to work on this crisis. When I arrived at the office I had another crisis on my voice mail. I managed to handle both of those and still do my lease signing on time! Super Property Manager to the rescue!

After leaving the office I did a ton of stuff! I started by working out in the back yard pulling weeds. My yard had become so overgrown with weeds and it was looking pretty bad. I pulled so many weeds that it filled an entire garbage bag! I’m hoping as the grass becomes more established it will choke them out.

I repotted some plants and moved some inside. I swept up my patio and made it prettier. I also cleaned up the garden in front of the house. I spent all morning working in the yard! Oh and somehow I got bit by some spiders or fire ants and they left three huge welts on my right arm, about two inches up from my wrist. It’s super ugly.

I finally got something to eat at around 2:30ish. I’m horrible about making time to eat on the weekends. I’ll go all day and never get hungry or feel like sitting down to eat. I drink liquids like crazy though.

I went Home Depot to buy some diamond drill bits to use on tile and a few other things to get my over-the-range microwave installed. I started taking down the vent hood above my stove and getting things ready to install the microwave because Robert was going to help me do it on Sunday. It was easy getting everything down and then starting the preparations, but then when I read the instructions for the install, it got a little less easy.

The hole that is sawed out in the bottom of my cabinet is a circle. The hole for the microwave will need to be a rectangle. I only have a hand saw. Once I started adding up everything I had purchased to do this install and would need to purchase, I realized it would be cheaper to just buy an install. If had already owned all the tools necessary it would have made more sense to do it myself. I went to Home Depot to return all the stuff I had bought and purchase the install instead.

I watched a movie (on DVD) Saturday evening and that’s when the text messages started coming in from people trying to convince me to go out. I was fully determined to stay in and be productive around the house, but after a slew of text messages and the movie ended, I realized I had nothing left to do and it was only 6 o’clock… so I might as well plan on going out… and I did.

The other reason that I wasn’t going to go out was because they were having a live band, and I’m so anti-live music. I don’t usually enjoy dancing to live music as much as DJ music. However, I danced a LOT Saturday night. I wore myself and few other people out. I really had a good time. After the club, Robert, Aaron, David and I went to have breakfast at IHOP.

Sunday I did laundry, cleaned up around the house, watered the plants and the grass, watched a DVD and basically waited for Jorge to show up to help me decorate. When he finally showed up we spent 7 hours decorating! We painted some frames and vases that I have to match the new decor and did a lot of rearranging. It looks awesome in there now! I have chosen really BRIGHT BOLD colors and now it’s much more vibrant and happy in my house. It’s like a new place!

I have all my wall paints picked out now as well. I just need to go buy the paint and get busy on that. It’s going to be VERY VIVID in my place! I’m super excited!

SYTYCD

Posted by Tomithey on June 18th, 2009

It’s been a pretty good week so far. I’m annoyed with myself that I’ve forgotten to blog regularly. I was doing pretty well for a while. Pity. Not that I have really all that much to say. My life isn’t that exciting.

Monday night I spent a few hours organizing my garage so that my vases and decorations would be more accessible. I like the idea of having a supply of things in the garage to swap out with the things inside, when I need a change. It looks so nice out in the garage now! If it wasn’t 4000 degrees out there I might spend more time in it.

Hopefully none of my neighbors were watching me while I had the garage door open because then they’d probably think I was insane, and they’d have good reason to believe so. I keep thinking I need to have a garage sale, but I can’t imagine parting with any of it.

Tuesday night was game night. I met up with Eric and Taylor at Serranos for dinner and drinks. I really don’t like the Serranos by my house because it’s so open and it feels like a cafeteria in there. The food is good though, and beer taste the same anywhere! I ordered a Dos XX and expected a bottle and she brought me draft. Shockingly, I have never in my life had a draft beer. It wasn’t bad, but I prefer holding the bottle to a glass.

Eric and I were supposed to watch “So You Think You Can Dance” after dinner but we obviously had the night wrong because it comes on Wednesday and Thursday, not Tuesday. :( So I made him watch a bunch of episodes of “The Big Bang Theory” instead because it’s my favorite show and I want everyone to watch it and love it so that it never gets cancelled. I do the same for “The New Adventures of Old Christine.” That reminds me, that crazy lady Sylvia has my season DVDs of Christine.

Sheldon in “The Big Bang Theory” reminds me a lot of myself, only not NEARLY as smart. I could be really OCD and crazy like him if I didn’t work so hard on keeping it in. He also reminds me a lot of Eric, the nerdy Sci-Fi parts. Hahaha.

Last night I went to dinner with River at El Mercado, because apparently all I can eat is Mexican food… well all I WANT to eat is Mexican food. I could have it for breakfast, lunch and dinner and be plenty happy. Occassionally I’d need some Macaroni and Cheese or Pizza, but not too often.

Anyway, after dinner with River, I came home and watched “So You Think You Can Dance.” I LOVE that show but watching it always makes me wish I had done more dancing. I should have taken the opportunities I had when I was dancing with the University of Texas to do more dancing, branch out or join a professional group. I wish I had been wise enough then to realize that dancing was what I wanted to do, instead of sitting in front of a computer all day. Pity. I’m old now.

So my favorites this season are Jonathan, Ade and Melissa. I love Jonathan! He’s adorable and he’s a salsa dancer. Ade and Melissa are just AWESOME together and I hope that they make it really far. I could watch their performances over and over again… and have.

Tonight I actually don’t have any plans! I’m going to watch the results show of SYTYCD and maybe organize my spare bedroom that has all the kiddy toys and stuff in it. I need to make it look all cute. Well, I can’t really make it all that cute until I get all the furniture in August, but I can make it less ugly.

Tomorrow night I’m meeting up with Lourdes for dinner… maybe. We’ve had to reschedule several times already. Then I have the entire weekend to do whatever I want. Oh wait, no I have a lease signing at the office tomorrow. Bleh. That will only take about 2 hours total with drive time and preparations.

Jorge is supposed to come over Sunday to help me decorate the house. We’ll see how that goes. ;)

Entertaining

Posted by Tomithey on June 15th, 2009

I started reading a book last night about entertaining and parties. It’s by Amy Sedaris, so you know it’s no Martha Stewart type thing. It’s funny and very relaxed.

It’s really making me want to have a party and I wish my chairs/stools for my table would hurry up and arrive so I can have one!

On my way to work this morning I stopped to get a Mt Dew, because I couldn’t sleep last night and now I’m EXTRA tired. The Shop & Carry that I stopped at had FOUR different kinds of Mt Dew, but NOT the regular/original version. What’s up with that?!?!?!? So I’m drinking Mt Dew Code Red, which is even more syrupy sweet than the original. This is too much for this early in the morning.

I’m super manly

Posted by Tomithey on June 14th, 2009

Friday night I was determined to stay in and get stuff done around the house… and what I mean by that is that I sat on the couch and watched TV and then took a nap. Hahaha Ok, after the nap I did get up and organize my closet and I cleaned out my TiVo, which is a big deal because having unwatched shows on there stresses me out. I talked to Kristi for HOURS and went to bed at about 1am.

Saturday I got up late and then Chad came over and I helped him with some web stuff and graphics. While I was helping him my microwave got delivered. I was pretty sure I was going to install it on my own (with help from my boys), but now I’m thinking I may get the handyman at work to help me out.

I know I could do it, but the part that freaks me out is drilling into the tile backsplash. SCARY! I would freak if I started cracking tiles. I don’t know, maybe I’ll read up on it online and decide if I can still do it. Do I need a special drill bit for tile?

After Chad left I went shopping for a light fixture for my breakfast nook. I had one of these flying saucer looking things in there and it was making me insane!

I went to the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store first because I thought maybe I could find a nice recycled light and feel better about saving the world and all. I didn’t find anything in there except some nice flooring, and when I get to that point with my house I will go back.

So I went to Lighting Inc way up north and found this really cute pendant lamp and I’m so happy with it. I even installed it myself! I was super macho. Although I will admit that I keep worrying that it’s going to fall and crack at any minute. I felt really proud of myself for doing it on my own.

I need to replace the one in the formal dining room now. That one doesn’t bother me quite as much, but it does bother me. I also need to replace the ceiling fan in the living room. It super annoys me that all the lighting and door knobs in this house are brass, yet all the plumbing fixtures are chrome. That is SUPER TACKY! I want to replace all the lighting with wrought iron and I’m wondering if it’s going to clash with the chrome fixtures? Maybe eventually I’ll replace all of those with something that matches better.

I spent some time rearranging my living room and trying to pretty up the place. I still need some help with the overall decorating and I still need to figure out what to do with those HORRIBLE shades that I have. I’m going to try to return them this week, but I have a backup plan if I can’t. I’ve hear of people using spray glue to attach fabric to the shades to make them look better. I might try that.

Saturday night Aaron came over and we went to dinner at Serranos and then went out to The Rusty Spurs. I had an ok time. The crowd was kind of off and it was hotter than sin in there. I still danced a lot though. I was really annoyed with all the bikers in town though. The ROT Rally needs to be moved somewhere else, like Kyle or San Marcos.

Today I got up kind of early and did some more shopping. I bought a tool box because I have so many manly tools now that I needed something to do with them all. I organized all of that and all my tape measures, levels, screws, bolts and other manly things. I can be a handyman on the move now!

I bought a cute end table for my side chair that kind of matches what I am now using as my coffee table. I decided to use this really cute trunk that I re-finished as my coffee table and I happened to find a tall trunk/sidetable thing at Target that kind of matches. Yays for me!

I’ve been trying to transfer my music and my iTunes library to another computer and I’m not having much luck. I can transfer the music, but I need to transfer the library too or I’ll lose all my ratings and playlists. Does anyone know how to do that? I have all the music and my library on an external hard drive that I use with my laptop and I want to keep it on that hard drive and just connect the drive to my desktop. HELP!!!!

There is a fly in my house that is driving me crazy. I never had problems with flies in my apartment, but it seems like every time I open the door here a fly gets in. OMG! I’m 100% sure that’s what set off my motion sensor and alarm last month. It probably landed right on the sensor or flew right in front of it.

I watched Wall-E today. It was really cute and sweet. I really want to see “The Proposal” and “UP” and I have no desire to see “UP” in 3D. That technology has not come far enough yet and I always get a headache while watching 3D movies. Plus, it’s kind of gross to wear those scratched up and used glasses. They should give you the option to purchase new ones if you want.

Ok, dinner is almost ready… gotta go!

I love free water

Posted by Tomithey on June 12th, 2009

I got my new camera delivered yesterday and it’s awesome. I love it! It’s such a cute lime green color and it’s tiny! I read the manual and it has great features that I’m super excited about trying out.

I also went to pick up my roller shades yesterday and that was a not so great experience. The guy at the counter was super slow and not so bright. It took him forever to find my blinds in the back and then he’d walk up a few at a time to the counter and he was walking like he was on his way to his OWN funeral.

I had 12 shades to carry out from the back of the store through to the parking lot, and it wasn’t easy. I got to my truck and realized that I had forgotten my keys on the counter, so I had to carry them all the way back in. When I got to the counter, the same guy said, “Oh you forgot your keys. Here they are.” OMG! He knew I had forgotten them and knew I was carrying all of that stuff out and didn’t follow me?!?!?!? RUDE!

Anyway, the shades suck. I hate them. I hung one and then took it right back down. They are of the worst quality and they don’t fit… even though I custom ordered them. The lady at the store told me to order an inch wider than my window and it looks like I should have ordered two inches wider. I’m super annoyed. I haven’t had a chance yet to look up the return policy. I’m scared.

So, instead of hanging shades last night, I applied a privacy tint to the tiny window in my bathroom. On weekend mornings the sun is rising right in that window and it blinds me while I’m trying to get all clean and pretty. I had lots of tint left, so I applied some to one of my bedrooms windows that also gets a lot of sun… so much sun that it wakes me up super early on the weekends.

I watched “So You Think You Can Dance” last night, the episode from Wednesday night. I already have my favorites! I loved the second to last routine with the 29 year old girl, Melissa Sandvig. I watched it three times! She’s my favorite girl and I think my favorite guy is Jonathan Platero. I LOVE Salsa dancers!

I also watered my back yard and my plants. I was standing out there watering and I kept thinking it looked like it was going to rain, so I texted Google for a weather update. Google said there wouldn’t be any rain. I watered a little bit more then went inside and checked weather.com, kxan.com and kvue.com. None of them had any mention of rain, just a tornado watch and strong wind. I went back out and kept watering. Sure enough, 30 minutes after I finished watering it started pouring. I had an a little more than an inch of water in my rain gauge. Thankfully I had only water my plants and my new sod, not the entire back and front yards.

I swear the weather people are useless. They can’t even predict what’s about to happen in a few hours! I checked all those sites and I even checked the hour by hour forecast. I don’t know why people listen to the weather at all.

I took a picture of the weird sign that I see on my way to work. ENJOY! You can click it to make it larger.

I Love Sangria

Posted by Tomithey on June 11th, 2009

Last night I went to Abuelo’s with Eric for dinner and then to see “The Hangover.” It was our day for Game Night, but everyone else bailed because they are all losers.

Those Sangrias were REAL good. I could have sat around drinking those ALL night. I really want to try and make some myself at home with real fruit and all that jazz. Hrm… maybe this weekend! I’m planning on trying to stay in all weekend and get a ton of stuff done. I’ve got shades to hang, closets to organize, windows to tint, gardening and cleaning to do. I’m going to be a busy little beaver!

Anyway, the movie was pretty funny. It wasn’t as funny as I had expected, but still pretty good. It wasn’t predictable and it was fresh. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I bought a new digital camera because mine is broke and I’ve had it for four years. I bought a waterproof one this time and I can’t wait to use it. It’s supposed to arrive via UPS today. It’s lime green and made by FujiFilm. You know the color was the primary reason I bought it.

I wanted a waterproof one because sometimes I want to take a camera out with me when I go dancing, but I didn’t want my other one in my pocket getting all sweaty and humid. I was worried it would get ruined, so a waterproof one is PERFECT!

Fathers Day

Posted by Tomithey on June 10th, 2009

I’m sitting at Abuelo’s waiting on Eric to show up. I’m having a delicious REAL Sangria.

Today was a pretty good day. I got A LOT done and was super productive. I also got a present in the mail! Kristi and the baby sent me a really nice leather tape measure for Father’s Day. I was super surprised and touched!

Eric is running 10 mins late and I am inhaling this queso. I might be able to finish it and send it away before he shows up… he’ll never know!