In my darkest hour

What's going on?
Why is it so dark in here?
Did I forget to pay the electric bill?
Wait a minute.
There's a light switch around here somewhere...

I think I like it better in the dark.
At least until I clean up the mess...
do a little light dusting...
maybe bring in a bulldozer...

Besides, everyone is celebrating Earth Hour, so I'm not being anti-social, I'm demonstrating solidarity with environmentalists. Yeah, that's the ticket.

A toast to imaginary friends

I'm telling you, CBs are the best imaginary friends anyone could imagine. I'm saving the champagne for the Summer Solstice party, so I can raise my glass and toast CBs present and absent together. Thank you for my lovely housewarming gift!


(Um... I don't promise that all the chocolate will still be available, but I do promise to substitute the best chocolate I can find.)

Secret Canadians

It feels bizarre to be back to using the Internet, back to Blogland.

Who are all you people again?

Part of my confusion can be down to exhaustion. It's crunch time at work; my life consists of sleeping or working. No time to exercise or socialize or laundrysize. I did take time out to showercize, but even that was a bit questionable.

Luckily, the rest of the team is taking the afternoon off to watch some kind of football game, so I'm taking a breather to catch up on email and blogs. It feels very strange to be sitting here in my new house (My house) reading what everyone out there has been up to. You've all been busy, clearly. Very productive people who somehow manage to balance family, work, blogging and that sleep-thing.

How do you do it? Maybe you're all secret Canadians. (I mean besides Miss Keziah and Scope, who are quite open about their nationality.)

A Canadian ministry sent out a directive to its employees urging them not to use their Blackberries on evenings or weekends. (Or during meetings, or during lunch...) It's kind of sad that they have to tell people to relax now and then. But maybe it will help some people learn to balance life and work.

Perhaps it's a sign I should emigrate. That way I'd have time to exercise. And do laundry. And whine. No, no, I'll aim for two out of three.

Going dark...

Aghast, I said "A week without internet access?"
"Well, ten days or so," said the Verizon rep cheerfully. "We'll let you know in a couple of days exactly when we can re-schedule the installation."

I can stand that... can't I? I have my doubts. It's not that I'm addicted... exactly... sniff

No, no! Cheerful Mary time! I'm going to get so much done without any computer distractions. I'll compose haiku and compost vegetables and completely organize my new house. Maybe I'll solve Global Warming while I'm at it. Worth a try.

Okay, enough with the cheerfulness already.
Sniff I'm going out for awhile. I may be some time...

If you click on this photo to enlarge it, you can see a faint meteor in the lower central area of the sky. Or you can go to flickr, where there's a note pointing out the meteor.

Me vs. the Universe

Last night about 9 o’clock, when it was pitch dark outside, and I was about halfway through loading up the U-Haul, and it had just started to snow, it occurred to me that sometimes I tend to overemphasize the self-reliant bit.

I mean, people did offer to help me move. And there were more people who would have helped if I’d asked. But I was fixated on the idea of trying to have an Organized move. I had 10 days in which to move, and I wanted to move stuff over, organize it, then go back for more stuff. Every time I’ve moved it has been a rush to box stuff up and schlep it over in as short a time as possible. Then everyone drives off and I’m left with dishearteningly, overwhelmingly, discouragingly huge piles of boxes, boxes, and yet more boxes. There’s only a limited amount of amusement you can derive from trying to guess where the toothbrush is, or the toaster, or what’s behind box #3.

Of course, the reality is that I needed to rent a truck to move the box-springs over, and of course I ended up getting stuck with a much larger truck than I wanted. I ended up doing an everything-in-a-box move anyway, simply because I didn’t want things to rattle around when I moved. But it's not all the rental agency's fault. The truth is, I have way too much stuff. Moving would not be such a trauma if I traveled light as a way of life.


So I’m making a New Year’s resolution. (I can still do that, right?)

By the end of the year I’m going to get rid of half of the possessions that I now possess.

The good news about the move (besides the fact that once I get the fence fixed, I’ll get my dog back) is that I can go back to bicycling to work. It was getting so dark in the afternoon that I didn’t want to ride home. Now I can bike in and take the Max (lightrail) back. It’s nine miles to work from my new house, and it’s almost a straight run in – long stretches where I don’t have to slow down for cross streets. Once you get into a rhythm on the bicycle, it’s easy enough to continue; you can rack up some good mileage and get a good workout without too much hassle.

I'm in! Backaches and feng shui

I now own a house.

I'd gotten quite cynical, didn't think it was really going to happen, but I've got the keys, they've taken the For Sale sign down, and I've started to move stuff over. Must really be happening.

Damn, but I've got a lot of stuff.

I've moved three times in the last five years, so I'd gotten to the point where I just left stuff in boxes until I needed it. Yes, I'm lazy, but I've also been a pack rat all my life, and damn but I got a lot of stuff. I'm hoping that leaving it in boxes this last move has helped me disentangle myself.

One of the books I have on my overflowing shelves is called Clear your clutter with Feng Shui. I thought it was a joke; somehow it's hard to take a title like that seriously. But reading a book on a subject is one way to get myself motivated, and one thing the author said got me thinking.

According to the author (Karen Kingston), people who collect lots of clutter also tend to be overweight. In both cases, the excess is used as a buffer between the self and the outside world. This could be true, at least in my case. It's a theory I can test, at any rate.

I'm giving myself this week off from regular exercise. I justify this on the grounds that carrying endless boxes of stuff down two flights of stairs constitutes enough damn exercise already. Thankfully I only have to carry things up two stairs. (Not two flights, two stairs. My back loves this.)

Next week, I'm planning to do two things:
1- sort through all this damn stuff
2- go back to my regularly scheduled exercise program

I'll have more time to sort and exercise, since Verizon is cutting me off from Internet and phone for a whole week. I'll see if getting rid of stuff helps shed pounds.

Once I find where I packed the scale, that is.

The meek may inherit the earth, but it takes a bitch to get a house

So to continue the saga that is my life.

I called the bank again. This time, when the customer service rep started giving me the same spiel, I interrupted him and fiercely demanded his supervisor.

When she came on the line, the supervisor asked what she could do to help. I told her the story about the mythical husband, and she interrupted me. Now their record shows that I'm single, and she was puzzled why I would have gotten the impression that they ever thought otherwise. (So apparently they corrected the situation, they just couldn't be bothered to mention it to me.) And damned if she didn't go on to imply that I Must Have Misunderstood something that had been said. I pointed out, rather dryly, that I had a piece of paper from them SAYING that I was married. That at least shut her up on that topic.*

She proceed to go over the whole spiel again about how they couldn't change their process, things had to be done a certain way. (For example, they wouldn't wire the money to me; they would only mail it. Even the woman from the mortgage company said that this bank was a "real winner.")

So apparently the whole situation was not going to change. That's when I went into Drama Bitch mode. In a voice full of barely controlled emotion I pointed out that an error on the bank's part had resulted in several days' worth of delay on this loan, that I had already incurred several hundred dollars' worth of extra charges as the result of this delay, that if they kept delaying matters further I was going to miss my closing date and lose the house, were they trying to deny me the loan? If I hadn't been getting the runaround from these people for days, I wouldn't have done it, but damn it everything I was saying was true.

After about 10 minutes of "there's nothing we can do" the woman suddenly thought of another option. Apparently** I was already pre-approved for a five-year loan. If I went for that instead of the six-year loan that I was applying for, I wouldn't have to send in an application at all. Magically, all I had to do was speak to someone on the phone and voila! The check would be sent out to me that very same day.

So why the hell couldn't someone have mentioned that option A LONG TIME BEFORE THIS?

Thank you Bag Lady, Heather, Reb, and McB for recommending that I take the assertive route. I bow in homage to your wisdom.

Theresa, Crabby, Zandile, Katharine, thank you for your support. As Cary pointed out, this is a funny situation, and I do see the humor in it. (Most of the time.) All the same, it's nice to have someone who'll listen when you're having a bad day.

Maybe now everything will go smoothly and I can get back on track with exercising and eating them green leafy things and stop carrying on cranky. It's possible.

* It was the same situation when I spoke to the first customer service rep. He said that they had been told by my company that I was married; it wasn't the bank's fault if they had that in their records. The people in my HR department deny this, and frankly I'm with them.

** I use that word a lot when I speak of this bank, because I don't quite trust anything they say.

Bring on the popcorn!

I've decided to treat my life as if it were something happening to someone else. Really, when you step back and look at it, this situation is not without humor.

The background: My progress toward getting a house has been held up at the last minute by a bureaucratic mixup: the bank says they need my husband's signature on the loan or else they need documentation proving I'm unmarried.

The story so far: My HR department, who are wonderful, offered to fax or email a screenshot of my single status in their records. So I called the bank to get a fax number or email address. This time got a woman customer service representative.

Me: All I need is a contact number or address and I can resolve this situation today. There is a time-critical element to this issue; if I can't resolve it, I won't be able to close on the house.

Her: I'm sorry, I can't give you any contact information. Because of your last call, your loan application has been put into an expedited queue. You can't send any information in, but a customer service representative will call you to deal with your situation personally.

Me: When will they call me?

Her: In a couple of business days.

Me: So instead of resolving the situation today, you're saying that I will have to wait a couple of days so you can expedite it?

Her: Yes.

So far as I'm concerned, my life is some kind of dark comedy. I like to think that Julia Roberts is playing my role. Bring on the popcorn!

Okay, God, enough already?

No matter how bad things get, there's no reason why they shouldn't simply get worse.
-Douglas Adams

I thought I was all set. I finally asked the seller to provide a home warranty for a year. If he was that confident in his wiring and plumbing, I wanted him to back it in writing. And he did, so I figured everything was settled.

Nope. There's more house drama.

My headache du jour is with the 401k people. I'm taking out a loan to cover the down payment (since I will please God get a loan from a relative in a few months to pay the 401k back).

So I go to fill out the form they sent me, and it indicates that I have to have my husband sign as well.

I call the 401k company and explain to the customer service rep I'm not married.

Him: Our records indicate that you are married. This could affect getting the loan approved.Can you prove that you're not married?

Me: How do I prove that I've never been married?

Him: Well, do you have any documentation? Maybe a copy of a divorce settlement?

(At this point I begin gently hitting my head against the wall...)

They consider this issue serious enough to delay my getting the loan, which means I'll have to push the closing date back, which means I'll have to... oh, I don't know, probably something. Hey, maybe they can delay matters for a couple more weeks, at which case I'll be out of my apartment and homeless!

Yes, I know I'm dramatizing. I like to think of the Worse Case Scenarios even though they almost never come to pass, just so I can be prepared. On the plus side, eventually Life is going to get tired of throwing challenges my way. Or I'll become a tough, assertive person who sneers at obstacles, climbs over them, and charges ahead to her goal. Well, it's possible.

I'm not going to hold my breath though.

News from the home front

Never attribute to malice that which may be explained by stupidity.

Does the course of true home buying ever run smooth?

Made an offer on a house, had it accepted.

Had the house inspected, told the seller all the trivial details that needed to be fixed (e.g. dry rot in the foundation, leaks in the plumbing, electrical outlets that were miswired).

Seller's response was basically "Gee, could've sworn I got all the dry rot out. That plumbing was done by a licensed plumber, but to be nice I'll fix the leaks. But the electrical outlets are all fine, nothing needs to be done about them."

My Realtor, seeing that the deal was going to fall through over this issue, called the electrician personally. He said the outlets were wired fine.

She asked him why they failed the home inspector’s test. He replied that maybe they needed to be fixed. He’ll write a letter offering to fix them.

She asked if he could email or fax the letter. He doesn’t have email or a fax machine.

She asked she could drive by his office to pick up the letter. He doesn’t come in to his office very often.

At this point I’d almost feel sorry for the Realtor if she hadn’t gotten so snippy with me the other day when I’d said I was concerned over this issue. (“Well, the inspector can’t see through walls, you know. If the electrician said it was fine, then it must be fine.”)

I started out thinking that since the seller was a contractor, they must have some idea that these things weren't done right to begin with. Now I'm starting to think the seller is merely inept. Doesn't fill me with confidence either. And he does have some experience with home renovation. Google tells me that he and the electrician went to Mississippi with members of their church to renovate homes after Katrina. That's a positive sign, anyway.

Of course, they were probably long gone by the time the home owners tried to plug in an appliance.


_____________________________________
Tried a new sport tonight: indoor jogging. Well, it was different.
Jog/walk 2/2 9 times.

Brick wall courtesy of ... oh heck, click here to find out.

Top 10 things to do at 3 a.m.

1. Stare at the ceiling fan going round and round in its pointless existence. Try to avoid thinking of any parallels with your life.
2. Whine on your blog.
3. Watch the raindrops running down the window.
5. Take deep breaths until this becomes actively irritating.
4. Learn to list things in order.
6. Surf the internet until this becomes intensely annoying.
7. Think of all the things you didn't get done today and therefore need to get done tomorrow.
8. Get cold, go back to bed, get restless, get back up. Repeat.
9. Ask yourself a lot of "Why" questions to which there really aren't any answers or at least not any good answers so it's fairly pointless.
10. Listen to an audiobook that a kind friend has shared with you. (Thank you, McB!)






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Maybe exercise will help. 50 minutes jog/run 3/2.

Thanks Keziah!

10 steps to a Happy Inner Slug

Top 10 reasons I haven't blogged in a week:

1. Working 12 hour days
2. Sleeping 4 hour nights
3. Spending much of the intervening hours trying to switch the ratio of #1 and #2.
4. Aliens. They're always a good reason.
5. Trying to cross every i and dot every t in the Getting-a-House process. (Yes, I know the phrase is usually the other way around. I was being symbolic, or ironic, or trying to indicate the use of subtext; one of those things.)
6. Learning that sometimes people who sell houses Aren't Always Honest.
7. Working on not getting emotionally involved in the G-a-H process, but nevertheless spending hours each night staring at the ceiling grinding my teeth (see #2).
8. Taking life Waaaay more seriously than I should.
9. Christmas presents? Oh wait, wasn't I supposed to buy things and ship them to people?
10. Trying to think up better reasons than these for not Getting On With The Program, and working on avoiding feeling self-loathing, self-disgust or self-avoidance (that last is a tricky one) for giving in to the Inner Slug.

The good thing about posting a list like this? It's motivation for me to get off my ever-expanding backside and go out there and move. Now.

Me & Hugh Laurie

More excuses.
And why didn't you exercise yesterday, Mary?
Well, I bought a house.
Tsk. Not good enough. You'll have to come up with a better excuse that that.


It's a beautiful house, if that's any excuse.

I got very discouraged from having spent weekend after weekend looking at scruffy, depressing, even-with-a-lot-of-fixes-it'll-still-be-a-dump houses, then I walked into this house and fell in love. Makes me wonder if I gave up on dating too soon. Maybe I should hire a relationship broker and start touring fixer-upper style men?

Oh all right, so that's not a good enough excuse for getting distracted from exercising. I am glad that this week is over. Next week I'm going to go back to my regularly scheduled exercise. Nothing to worry about except the fact that I'm going to move in three weeks. Not sure if I should break open the champagne or go throw up.

Photo of my new house Castle Howard courtesy of flickr.

Excuses, excuses

Not been a good start to the week. Though I'm no longer a valid invalid, I still can't stop coughing and sneezing. I have been giving out lots of gratuitous and unreliable exercise advice on Cranky Fitness. Does that count as exercise? No, I didn't think so.

Plus we're still getting hit with the tail-end of that typhoon. Just now the wind was so strong it was actually shaking the long building of townhouses where I live -- which is a neat trick. This area is pretty sheltered, with lots of... lovely tall trees... oh dear. No, seriously, probably no worries. I might drown, but I doubt a tree will do me in while I sleep.


In other words, no, I didn't run today. And I'm not going for it tonight either. We'll see what tomorrow brings. Maybe a fresh set of excuses. On the other hand, maybe I should take some thought to taking up swimming.


Pictures of an Oregon park courtesy of flickr.

Clichés, credit, and sundry trivia

I hate when cliché's come true. They used to say that if you go out in the rain you'll catch cold. I always thought that was hogwash, but I went running yesterday and got sprinkled on, and yes, I came down with a cold later that day.


Coincidence? Or is running bad for you after all?

I've been a good girl today; I went and got my free credit report at www.annualcreditreport.com. If you're a USian, try checking out your credit report with this site. I've finally convinced Experian that I did not open a Macy's card two years before I was born, but they are stubbornly clinging to the possibility that I did open a Sears charge account when I was 7 days old. After all, I was alive at the time, so it's possible.

I was going to do a summary-of-the-month post, but I'm going to postpone it until tomorrow. "I have a cold," she whimpered. "I have to baby pamper myself."

Completely trivial factoids:

• If you borrow $20,000 more, you can explore the possibility of getting a much nicer house.
• According to the World Clock, there have been three times more bicycles produced than cars.
• In computer networking lingo, the acronym JBOD stands for Just a Bunch Of Disks. I challenge you to use that in any rational conversation that doesn't involve computer networking.
• And the Great Scottish Haggis Hunt has begun!

A post with three damnits

This is a nagging post.
Self-nagging, since all the sane kind sensible people out there are sensibly tucked up in their warm beds refusing to get up yet.

I am trying to psyche myself into running. I should be out there already, damnit, but instead I'm sitting here in a warm room typing, so I have to justify it somehow.

Oh it the hell with. Go i now. And I'm posting this for all the world to see.
Yes, I know all the world is probably tucked up in bed snug and cosy, but that's not the point, damnit.

p.s. Here's my star, damnit!

Quote du Jour

"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called. ~A.A. Milne

Quote from Winnie the Pooh, courtesy that A.A. Milne guy.
Photo courtesy of flickr.

Peaceful thoughts

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. -Buddha

Good positive thoughts.


There are 1,950,000 people in the Portland area.
I met 1 who was a jerk.

Therefore, there are 1 million, 949,999 other people around.
Math is not my strong point, but I'm willing to bet that the odds are good a large number of them are fairly decent people with good will and peace toward their fellow human.

_________________________________________________
A thank you to all the kind supportive people out there! I really do appreciate all the positive thoughts. That woman in the red sedan probably doesn't have any friends; I am lucky.

And thank you Keziah -- I did run tonight after all. Frosty clear night, moon rising behind the trees, beautiful experience. I would have missed all that.


Also -- iPods are really neat.
_________________________________________________

The story so far...

*** Warning. Post contains strong language. ***

To review: It's Monday, and I'm still alive, no thanks to the bitch in the red sedan who's unclear on the concept of a red light.

Honestly, if you commute by bicycle you get used to people Not Seeing You. A couple of cyclists have been killed in Portland this month by people who simply forgot they were there (i.e. they passed the bicyclist then turned right, directly in front of them). That's stupid, criminally stupid if you will, but it's still easier to accept than the other kind of asshole driver.

The sort who sees you coming, looks you right in the eye, and still comes on toward you as if life were a game of chicken and you were supposed to magically leap 20 feet in the air to get out of their way.

Don't, please don't leave comments about idiot cyclists who run red lights or otherwise behave like idiots. It's not the same thing. Yes, some cyclists are morons and yes, in this instance I had a green light, the motorist had a red light, but frankly that's not the point.

The point, to me, is that another human being can be so removed from all humanity as to look you in the eye and still see you as some sort of insect that can be removed from existence. I resent the thought that someone would be willing to swat me like a fly and then continue on with their evening.

If you're driving a ton of metal, pay attention to what you're doing and to what damage you could do. Care.

When whoopee becomes ennui... ka-ching!

Exercise-wise, things have been looking bleak the last few days. No pep in my step, no spring and no zing, my bop has gone pop.In other words, I am not having any fun. I can't stay motivated. Things look dire. In a situation like this, I can only think of one thing to do.

Yes, it's time to go shopping.

I've been putting off going the iPod route because I was trying to save my spare change for the Buy Mary a House piggy bank. But if music can't cure my ennui, nothing will.