House Diaries - Week Two Recap

Life needed to return to some semblance of "normal" this week. No more half days or days off (although I did skip astronomy on Tuesday night). Normal is a misnomer, however, because we've actually been living in TOTAL CHAOS.

Everything is somewhere out in a box in the garage. Don't ask me where. Don't ask Scott where. Neither of us has a clue.

I am so sick of fast food. Our entire kitchen was pretty much still at the apartment, so we've been eating out for every lunch and every dinner this week. Killer Pizza from Mars, Carls Jr, Burger King, Boston Market, Sbarros, etc. Last night we finally went grocery shopping and got some easy food that will fit in our little temporary mini-fridge. Thank god

Scott is the best husband. He, his dad, and Bryce went over to the apartment on Saturday morning and finished packing and moving everything over so I could sleep in (getting up an hour earlier everyday has been taking its toll on me). He's been such a pro through this whole move. <3

We have internets again! The cable guy came over Saturday morning (while I was sleeping in). It took him like 4 hours and apparently it was set up in a way that completely defies logic and will require Scott eventually crawling up in the attick to rewire, but we have cable/internet! It is significantly faster than Time Warner in our apartment (TimeWarner sucks). I'll be stopping by the Apple store after work today to pick up an Airport Extreme to make it even faster ^_^

The BBQ has been christened. Since we couldn't go to Karl Strauss' Beerfest with Sarah and Sandra on Saturday, they brought Beerfest to us. We broke in the built-in grill in the backyard with New York steaks, boiled corn on the cob, and not one- but TWO chocolate cakes. It was awesome. They also brought us Tiki torches and much needed cleaning supplies.

We finally found our fridge! The space available for our fridge is really awkward: only 66 1/2" tall, and 32 1/4" wide. We were hoping to find a fridge with 20 or 21 cubic feet so that we won't feel inclined to replace it once we have kids. At Lowe's we found one that was almost perfect: perfect size, stainless steel, if only it weren't for this awful GREY trim! Apparently last year's model came with black trim, but they changed it this year. I told the sales lady that was pretty stupid of them, and she agreed.

We were almost resigned to taking it anyway, but we decided to go check out one last appliance store that is tucked away in a side street near Car Country Carlsbad. I can't even remember what it was called but this place was pretty great. We found a fridge with perfect dimensions, stainless steel, and only 18.2 cubic feet. It was a little smaller than what we wanted, but unless we tear out the cabinets that is really as good as we can make it. Scott and I each walked by and picked it out separately, actually, which pretty much decided us. The best part is that it was about $200 cheaper than the grey fridge.

Scott's dad pointed out also that it would be very easy to compensate for the size by getting a cheap freezer off Craigslist to put in the garage (and if it's in the garage it really doesn't matter what color it is). He bought the fridge for us as a house warming gift, which is super awesome. It's being delivered next Saturday, so we just need to hold out in our mini fridge for another week!

The Yard is (being) Tamed. We have all kinds of fruit trees and herbs and roses but everything is crazy overgrown and wild and dying. I pruned our huge rosemary bush- enough to give us a supply that would last us years to come. Scott took a chainsaw to the brown/droopy fronds of the two huge queen palms out front.

I tried to prune the rose bushes in the backyard. One in particular is currently six or seven feet high, about five feet across, and FILLED with earwigs (YUCK). I quickly realized my attempts were futile and am more inclined than ever to tear all the rose bushes out alltogether and start over with smaller, easier to maintain flowers. We pruned down the kumquat tree as well so it is no longer hanging onto the bar.

We picked up all the fruit that had dropped and started rotting on the ground- hopefully that will help keep the bugs down. We probably would have continued with the lemon trees except our huge green waste trash can was packed full already.

On the Drawing Board...
Scott wants to try to get things organized to a point where we are only tackling one project at a time rather than splitting our energy/resources in a hundred different directions. So, the rest of this week is going to be largely dedicated to getting OUT of chaos! We'll need to get (mostly) unpacked so we can have our garage back. The painting isn't done, but at this point it just isn't feasible to wait until its finished. We'll have to go room by room a little later on.

Top Priorities of this Week:

-Clean out the apartment. We still have some food in the fridge and I think some more kitchen stuff over there. Scott is planning on picking it up during his lunch break in the next couple of days and going through the final walk through.
-Get unpacked! We'll need to get a variety of those plastic food containers to keep the cockroaches out of our cupboards. We'll probably need to go find things like additional shelving, hooks, etc to help keep things organized. (We have significantly less storage in this place than we did in our apartment.)

Secondary Priorities: (these will probably carry over into the next couple of weeks)

-Fix the rest of our cabinet hinges and install the new cabinet hardware
-Prune the lemon trees
-Take out the rose bushes
-Pest Control. Spray the fruit trees, cut down on the snail population
-Get our new security system installed
-Outdoor lighting
-Find some new electric plate/light plate covers
-Paint the bathroom so we can hang the new hardware (towel rack, etc)
-Find curtains
-and much, much more...