Under Destruction

Our downstairs neighbors moved out last month, and now the apartment maintenance guys are going to town, fixing the unit up. This is the first morning in a week that we didn't get woken up at 8am by power tools, but I can still hear them down there working.

We always were a bit wary of those neighbors - I think they were there when we moved in, and we barely ever saw them, and they just seemed kinda odd. The only times we'd know they were there is when they'd leave and slam their door so hard it rattled the entire building. And I did briefly speak to one of them, when their mail ended up in our mailbox by mistake and I knocked on their door. Otherwise, they were just kind of weird...

And they must have really abused/neglected the place while they were there, from all the moldy drywall and trashed appliances the workers have ripped out and thrown away. They may just be gutting the place, from the look and sound of things. At least these people apparently didn't steal the washer and dryer from the apartment like one of our other previous neighbors...

I wonder how fast they'll get that spot filled - it'd be nice to have at least one decent neighbor while we're here. Though I suppose it would make sense that it wouldn't happen until just before we (hopefully) move out of this place after 7 years.

Updating

We've been without phone or internet for the past week, and just got back on-line today. A really nice technician guy from CenturyLink dropped by this afternoon to check it out, even though we weren't expecting him 'till tomorrow. Something was apparently wrong at the outside box, but everything's all fixed up and seems fine now.

We weren't sure about the change-over from Qwest to CenturyLink, fearing that it would be like the WaMu-to-Chase switch (more fees, more headaches), but so far OK. Still thinking about maybe changing providers, especially if/when we move (whenever that is).

Our friend Jamie is currently renting an apartment in a 4-plex that's a big converted farmhouse. His upstairs neighbor may be leaving soon, and if so we're hoping to maybe get in there. It's a nice enough place, and the rent would be almost half what we're paying here.

But, we *have* to know for sure in the next week, to put in our notice, since our lease is up at the end of October. Otherwise, we'll probably sign another one for 6 months and plan on moving in the Spring. Fingers crossed...

Other good news - one of Jenny's co-workers is retiring, and her (full-time) position is opening up. And Jenny got the job! It's not a raise, per se, but it does mean a full 40 hours a week (so bigger paychecks), and should be a regular Monday-Friday schedule for a change.

She heard from other co-workers that going to full-time might lower her insurance costs as well, but she's got to look into that. The new position should take effect at the end of October sometime, but she's not sure exactly when.

I Suppose It's Officially Winter...

... since we just got our first snow last night. It's all gone now, melted away, but it was an inch or two this morning. The weathermen had been threatening snow for the last couple of weeks; it was still a bit surprising, and there should be more in the next few days. It's also been really windy lately - with some power outages and damage from downed trees - both here, and over in Coeur d'Alene.

We were supposed to have our carpets cleaned today, but that didn't happen. When we last signed our lease (about 3 months ago), they had a "get a random bonus for renewing for a year" deal going. We would've been happier with the free month of storage or $100 off our rent for a month, but we'll take what we can get, I guess. But of course, the cleaner apparently had some sort of technical difficulties with his equipment and had to cancel - he's supposed to be here tomorrow morning but, like most things involving this complex, I'll believe it when I see it.

They also scheduled a "preventative maintenance inspection" for our block of apartments, sometime today or tomorrow, so we had to move stuff for that too (so they can get to the hot water heater, under the sink, etc.). I was really hoping they and the cleaners would both be done today so we could move everything back to normal, but of course it was not to be. Hopefully tomorrow.

We were actually planning on putting up our Christmas tree and decorations early, and pulled all the stuff out of the garage a few days ago. But, not surprisingly, we're holding off until the carpets are cleaned. So for now, we're just listening to our Christmas music playlist on the computer and trying to get ourselves into the holiday spirit.

Today was a Good Start to the Week

Took care of some much needed chores: laundry, dishes, some cleaning, and bill paying. Got started on another commission and brainstormed some other ideas. I think this week will be a bit more productive than some recent ones...

We always have problems with wasps making nests in the eaves of the apartment building - I had the maintenance people come by earlier in the summer and take some of the super bug spray to the one's by our windows. But now we've got a giant nest in the stairwell outside our apartment. I put in a work order for them to do something about it - hopefully they've got a tall ladder.

Oh, and a while back I had posted a few of those daily Avengers sketches I was doing. Well, I finished my A to Z list. They're all up on my deviantArt page (http://piotrov.deviantart.com), and just for fun I stuck them all together in one big image. You can click on the image for a bigger version:

Hot Water

They replaced our hot water heater yesterday, even though we got a new one last March and it worked fine. But that must not have been recorded, and the powers-that-be had already decided we were up for a new one. I tried to dissuade them, to save everyone the hassle, but they went ahead anyway.

On the brightside, it didn't take them near as long to replace it this time (last one they were here nearly all day for some reason). Maybe this guy just knew what he was doing. He said that the old one was going to Habitat for Humanity, so at least it's hopefully going to someone who needs it.

However... there were two guys who showed up first to drain the old one, and Jenny said she heard one of them complaining that he hated working when people were actually home. So they hooked up the hose to the old heater, ran the hose down the stairs outside, and left it to drain while they went to eat lunch. Oh, and the front door was propped open by the hose!

So our thought was - would they have done the same if we hadn't been home? Just left our front door open and walked away? I doubt they would've hung out and waited for it to drain. Thankfully a different guy came back to do the actual work, who seemed a lot nicer and way more competent.

Also, my wisdom tooth above the one I had removed has been hurting really bad over the past week or so, and needs to come out. My appointment's on Friday. Yay.

Odds & Ends and even some Art

A few miscellaneous things that I haven't really blogged/twittered about. Just trying to catch up....

• Our local bank is Washington Mutual, which is of course now becoming Chase. Not particularly pleased about that, but we don't do much banking anyway, so it's probably nothing to worry about. I am glad that Jenny and I both hung on to our credit union accounts in Alaska when we moved...
  
  
• I'd mentioned the wasps coming back - I did get the maintenance people over here to spray bug killer and knock down their hives, and it seemed to have done the job. There's still a few around, but they're not swarming directly outside our windows anymore. It got really bad last year, with wasps regularly getting into the house, even after we got the new windows installed.
  
  
• Avista is our local electric utility provider, and they've already been catching a lot of flack recently for raising their already high rates in the face of the current economic conditions. We normally pay our bill on-line, but when we logged on last week we found they'd switched to a new 3rd party company to handle their billing transactions. With this comes the new requirement that we give them our bank account information - even though we're paying with a credit card. We said no, and sent them a check. Just rediculous...
  
  
• We hadn't been watching Chuck, although we had caught bits and pieces of it (since it's on right before Heroes). Jenny decided to start watching it on-line, since about half the series is available, and now we're both huge fans. The show's hilarious, with a lot of geeky in-jokes, and has got some awesome guest stars. Luckily we got caught up in time for tonight's episode, which is the season finale. Unfortunately, it's not certain whether it'll be around next year. Just our luck that we'd get hooked on a show right before it get's cancelled... :)

Also, the AFL tournament I was participating in is over, with Gene Kelly being the champion this time around. For his final entry, instead of just an illustration or comic page, Gene actually made a 2 person flash video game pitting his character against his opponent's! It's really impressive, and can be seen here: AFL 3 - Final Battle

I drew up this pic of his character Rocket, as a congratulations for his well deserved win:

All Hands on Deck

So, on Wednesday we got a note from the apartment people "reminding" us about how they're rebuilding everybody's decks, and that we were going to be scheduled for either Friday or Saturday. Now, they've been pretty good about warning us months ahead of time for the previous renovations (appliances, windows, etc), but this was the absolute first time we had ever heard about this so it was a bit surprising.

We of course were supposed to make sure that everything was cleared from the deck and away from the patio door for when the workers got here. But since this was the first warning we got, we could've just as easily been away from the apartment for the week and missed the whole thing completely.

Well, they showed up bright and early Friday morning and were in and out of the apartment for most of the day which was all sorts of fun... Jenny normally has Fridays off, but she was working that day, so her one day of sleeping in wasn't ruined. Lucky. I guess.

Anyway, they replaced all the floor slats of the deck, but really that wasn't the part that needed to be fixed. The whole thing looks rather precarious, and should probably just be completely torn down. It's not like we actually use our deck, so we wouldn't miss the safety hazard. And it'd be one less place for the pigeons to land on....

Appliances! And Art!

We finally got an official notice from the apartment people regarding our new appliances - they're doing our building next week, and our apartment is scheduled for the 29th. So less than a week and we'll (hopefully) have a new stove, fridge and dishwasher! Maybe even new washer and dryer, but the note they left wasn't specific, just that we needed to clear stuff out from the fridge, under the stove and under the sink before the maintenance guys get here.

They're having an apartment "party"/meeting this afternoon, where they're supposed to be fielding questions about what's going on. But really, all we wanted to know was when, so no point in going now.

Also, Project: Rooftop (a fan site for artists that deals with re-designing superhero costumes) is running another one of their contests. This one is to make a new Batman design, based on the idea of Dick Grayson (the original Robin) taking over for Bruce Wayne. My entry basically tried to evolve his current Nightwing persona into something a bit more "Bat-ty".

Happy Christmas Eve!

Well, it's still snowing.... I'm beginning to see a pattern here. :)

Maintenance has begun clearing the snow off all the car ports in our apartment complex, which is definately good news. They've also finally started plowing today, although I don't think they've quite figured out where to put all the snow, so it's still a mess, what with all the plowing, shoveling and snowblowing going on. So really they're just spreading the snow around...

We signed our lease this morning, so we'll be here for another 9 months, for better or worse.

We also finally got our Christmas cards in the mail today. We probably could have got them out, oh, say a month ago if we'd gotten on the ball. That was the intention at least. But at the last minute I decided I was going to try my hand at adding some "creative personalization" to all the cards. But since I waited till the last minute to start, and really didn't know what I was doing, I got what I wanted done on less than half the cards we sent out (a lot of friends, and unfortunately no family). If I'd known how many I could get finished, I would have just sent the "standard" cards out first, but I was making this up as I went along. Our apologies  for the lateness - just think of them as New Years Cards. :)

And I figure I'd wait to say what the "personalizations" were until I can be pretty sure most people have got them (y'know, just to stretch the wait out even longer). But I'd like to keep doing this, make it a tradition of sorts, and next year will be more organized (well, couldn't be much less....) and hopefully better implemented. I'll explain more later....

Jenny and I will be heading over to her parent's place tomorrow morning, and plan to spend most of the day there. Our thanks to everyone we've already recieved cards and packages from. I hope everybody has a Merry Christmas and a great time spending the holidays with family and loved ones!

We Need to Get Out of Here

I went to make our appointment to sign our new lease today, and was reminded exactly why we keep saying we want to move. I'll refrain from going into details - just to say that they keep exceeding their previous record levels of stupidity....

So, instead of a year lease, we're going to try to go for a 9 month one - because we have to move, and we realize that we won't want to move at New Years (with a year lease) and there's no way we'll have the money to move in only 6 months. We figure the end of September will be as good a time to move as any. We're hoping we'll have the money in 9 months, but I guess we'll just have to find a way.

We've been saying we need/want to move out of the apartments for years now - we just need to do it.

Otherwise - the snow has halted temporarily, but there's several more inches on the way in the next day or so, and then again around New Years. Road crews are working 24/7 trying to clear everything, but I'm more worried about the snow building up and caving in our car ports. Yet another thing I'll need to harass the office about on Monday....

Apartment Stuff, etc.

So we got a note from the apartment people today, saying that the appliance replacement process will (supposedly) begin this week, and will take place over the next 2 months. That's something to look forward to, atleast (new, working, oven!).

Our lease is also up at the end of the month, so we'll have to sign another one of those. We haven't decided how long to go with, but we're leaning towards the year long one. We've been wanting to move out of here for ages, but have never had enough money set aside to do it easily. Now we don't have enough money to do it at all, and until we've got some more coming in, it's going to be quite a while before it's possible.

They're raising our rent again, but atleast if we sign a year long lease, they hopefully won't be able to raise our rent in six months (it's only been six since our last lease/rent hike). And I suppose if we were somehow able to afford to move (win the lottery, find a big bag of money, etc.), we'd probably be able to afford to break our lease as well. Oh well....

My head's hurting again. I thought it was a tooth ache at first, but now I think it's just more sinus problems. Fun.

It's cold here (like, it seems, most places right now). Cold enough for us, I think. Seems like we might be finally acclimating. If it was 4 years ago, I'd probably be wearing shorts - now I just keep turning the heat up.... :)

Happy Halloween & Apartment Stuff

We'll be heading over to Tigger and Lincoln's place tonight. We haven't got a chance to hang out for quite a while, and it also means we'll be out of the apartment and won't have to deal with any Trick-or-Treaters that might come by (since we didn't bother buying any candy this year). Should be fun - we'll probably just sit a round and watch some scary movies. Can't stay out tooo long, since Jenny has to work in the morning.

The apartment people are finally cleaning out the unit next door  - it's been vacant over a month, since the neighbors have been evicted. They really trashed the place, and apparently left a lot of stuff behind, like beds and other furniture. Guess they had to make room, since they took the washer and dryer when they went. Yep, they stole the washer and dryer that came with the apartment (and was brand new when we moved in 3 years ago). Wow. Just when I think people can't amaze me any more....

The prospect of them possibly replacing most of our appliances is definately appealing, and certainly makes the thought of staying here more bearable. But with our current lack of money, it's more and more likely, so we might as well try to make the most of it. Atleast we have somewhere to live. I'm seeing on the local news about how some folks can't get into homes right now, with the current economic crunch, and are actually staying in Motels long term, since it's cheaper than most apartments and they don't require the whole first/last/deposit + credit check thing to move in. Yeesh.

Quick Update

Not a whole lot going on, really - mainly just work-work-working with a little bit of wedding stuff on the side. We did go over to Tigger's place yesterday and hung out for a while and helped her with some of her landscaping projects. Also got to meet her new puppy, Geo, who's absolutely adorable. Held off on going into CdA this weekend, as Jenny's folks are out of town, visiting her Aunt's family in Portland. Jenny did finally get her dress in, and had her fitting today, so they can do the needed alterations.

Otherwise, just catching up on DVDs, and we got out to see Shrek 3 on Friday. I think it was actually funnier than the last one, which was kinda surprising. Fantastic Four 2 also came out this week, which we'll get around to seeing soon, even though all the reviewers seem to hate it (judging by the various article headlines I see online - but I haven't read the articles...). There's far too many summer blockbusters coming out this year to keep up with, so I fear we're going to be a couple of week's behind for quite a while.

In work news, the "new girl" has already left - Friday was her last day. And now Brian has 2 weeks remaining before he's gone as well, which will drop the main staff down to just Derek and myself. Originally, the boss had toyed with the idea of not hiring a new 3rd person, but luckily he changed his mind and put an ad in the paper. Hopefully we'll have a better pool of applicants this time around....

Oh yeah, and we finally got our garage. Only took them, what... 8 months? :)

On the Road Again....

Well, it's been a week since our last post... So, what's been going on?

The big news, of course, is that we replaced the recently deceased truck with a brand new, shiny blue F-J Cruiser! Jenny's mom had offered to "help us out" with a new car as a wedding present, using money she'd received as part of the inheritance when her father (Jenny's Grandfather) passed away. What we didn't know was that meant she was going to buy it for us outright - completely paying it off! That's right - our wedding (and birthdays and next few Christmas) present was a Brand New Car! You can say that last bit in a game show announcer voice to make it sound right. :)

We'd told her parents that we really didn't need any sort of bells and whistles, that the basic package would be more than enough. However, the local Toyota dealer didn't have any basic Cruisers, so we ended up with a whole bunch of extras that we really don't need (but are all supercool and we really are happy to have). Right now it's still in Jenny's mom's name - we'll be able to switch it over to us in the next couple of months.

Sooo.... we've been deleriously happy with our new car. :D Such simple luxuries as air conditioning and a working radio were previously unknown to us, so this just about blew us away. Now we've just got to keep it upkept so it'll last another 20 years like the truck.

We had hoped to sign our new lease and get on the list for a garage (assuming such a list exists) on Friday, but the trainee was at the office instead of the normal secretary. She told us to come back on Saturday and the regular girl could take care of it no problem, but we showed up on Saturday only to find that we needed to set up an appointment first, which of course the trainee failed to mention.... So we've got an appointment this Saturday at noon to sign our new lease - hopefully we'll make some progress towards a garage as well. We're both even more paranoid at night now that we've got our beautiful new vehicle to protect (might as well just paint a target on it...).

On the wedding front, we finally got our invitations/announcements out in the mail, atleast to the people we have addresses for. There are still a few people we don't have mailing addresses for, for whatever reason, and if you're one of those people and are reading this you know who you are and you know how to get a hold of me. :)

Also picked up my ring this week. Went with a super simple white gold band - since Jenny's is such a unique heirloom, we didn't want to try to find a suitable match at this time, just something I would like to wear that wasn't flashy. Figure that a ways down the road we can always have something custom made to match Jenny's and replace mine.

Work is still work. We hired a new girl, who put in her 2 week notice less than a week after starting. So we can't really expend much energy training her, since she'll be leaving soon, but we still have to find busy work for her to do in the meantime. I'm really surprised they didn't just let her go when she put in her notice. Eh, atleast she can clean and make copies - there's always more copies to make. Brian's leaving at the end of this month, leaving myself and Derek (who is very competent, but has still only been there for 3 or 4 months at this point), and now the boss is thinking of just not hiring a new person for the time being and see how things go. I'm not loving my job in the first place, so this is certainly not going to help the situation....

Oh, and June 1st was my (31st) birthday, so Happy Birthday to me! :)

What Else Could...?

Well... So far it's been an interesting weekend. Before the weekend, on Thursday, my allergies decided to become a real cold so I didn't get pretty much anything done then, and slept in on Friday. I got my haircut Friday afternoon with Jenni and kiddos. Another exciting time ending with her son in another headlock with me holding his arms. I don't know what the kid has against haircuts. That evening, Tigger came over and we went to Denny's to have dinner, then came back here to talk for a while. We knew we'd be up later then we normally are, but Peter ended up going to bed at around 3AM and Tigger and I watched the sun come up while talking and she left about quarter to 6AM. I got to sleep soon after. So Peter and I ended up sleeping in.

We were eating lunch and Peter remembered the office for the apartment complex closes at 2 on Saturdays for some asinine reason. The clock said it was 1:50, and we were still in our pj's. So we decided to get to the office some other day. We need to renew our lease soon and they've finally put notices on the garages that the owners need to come forward or move their stuff out or it will be tossed out on June 1st. Yay! So we want to make sure the office firmly knows that we want a garage, and one of the 2 in front of our apartment would be great. (Not that they don't know with Peter and I asking frequently over the past several months.)

Then, Peter and I ended up moving the futon/couch into the former office, now den, and then moving the miniature painting desk too. So then the den was almost complete, just a few more things need to be moved and set up. Once we finally got showered and dressed, it was nearly 4 and we still wanted to head to CDA to visit my parents and do some shopping too. So, then we had to blow off going to the comic con at Gonzaga and were out the door at 4:30. The antique store I had been to with my folks earlier in the week was already closed when we got there, but otherwise our shopping was sucessful and we visited for a while with our Border's friends. After spending some time at my parent's house, we headed out around 10 or something, maybe earlier, I can't remember.

Everything was going fine till we passed the last exit to Post Falls. Suddenly the truck started making horrible noises and losing power. Luckily, there was an exit to the state line coming up, so I started pulling off and the truck died. I still had momentum so I got it to restart and put on my hazard lights as the person behind me looked like they were going to drive up my tailpipe. I wanted to continue on to the rest stop, but the truck died again, and I could only pull off to the side of the off ramp. I tried a few times to restart the truck, but it wouldn't start, so Peter and I got out and lifted up the hood. Right then a bunch of cars drove by and someone in one of them laughed at us like Nelson from the Simpsons ("Ha Ha!"). So I swore back at them. I don't know if they heard me, but who laughs at someone with car troubles on the side of the road?

So, then I thought maybe the truck needed more oil or something, so put in the 2 bottles I had. It still wouldn't start, so we grabbed some flashlights and headed for the rest stop to call my Dad. There was a towtruck driver and another guy already there getting ready to tow a different vehicle, and after discovering no payphone at the rest stop, I asked the guys if I could borrow a cell phone, or if they would be willing to jump the truck, even though they were busy. I described the problem and that we had seen that the battery was all corroded again. The tow-truck driver suggested that it sounded like the alternator (which had just been fixed a couple months ago), and that even if he jumped it, that the headlights would drain the battery long before we got home.

So I called Dad and he came out to help us. After taking the leads off the battery, we discovered that the one leading to the starter was so corroded, that it was nearly gone. Dad tried to put it back together and jump my truck, but it still refused to start. Since Dad's truck was now facing the wrong way on the side of a busy off ramp, a cop came by and wanted to know what was going on. While Dad was on his cell with the Chevron emergency roadside assistance people, we explained what was going on. The cop still decided to run our IDs, and it seemed to take a really long time. Although, with all the crap that's happened since we moved down here, this was the 4th or 5th time I've had to talk to a cop in the almost 3 years since we've been down here, so all that probably came up when he ran my license. But once he gave our IDs back (never asking for Dad's) he told us to turn Dad's truck around and get my truck out of there ASAP. (As though we weren't trying to!) So then we stood around waiting for the towtruck and Dad turned his truck around (and called Mom to tell her what was going on).

The towtruck was one of those flatbed ones, and I had never seen exactly how those work, so watching that was interesting. Dad told the guy we wanted it dropped off at Parker Toyota in CDA who work on all the family cars, and the guy told us we could just go then, he knew where that was and didn't need our help unloading the truck. So, Dad drove us back to his house, where we ended up borrowing Mom's car and leaving my parent's house (again) at Midnight. Also, since it's Memorial Day weekend, there's no way the truck will even be worked on till Tuesday at the earliest. But at least it's not on the side of the road!

We had been planning on stopping to get something to eat on the way home right before the truck died, so we were pretty hungry. But I just wanted to get home. Which we did make it home safe and sound.

Now, we had bought some soda in CDA since Tigger had drank the last of our Mt. Dew, and before we went to bed Peter put in away in the 'fridge. So, this morning, well... Noon, I was in the 'fridge trying to find some food when I noticed some liquid on the glass shelf above the bottom drawer. Yep, you guessed it. One of the Pepsi's (the one at the very back on the bottom) had decided to leak. I, er..., had to spend some extended time in the bathroom at that moment, so Peter ended up cleaning it up by himself. Apparently, since it was the soda in the back, everytime he moved a soda out of the box, a small wave of soda would accompany it, spilling onto the floor. So, there was a lot of sticky everywhere. And to top it all off, both Peter and I have splitting headaches.

Some good things though, we have our wedding invitations and they look beautiful. And, we picked up at Borders one of the Kaiser Chiefs' CDs. We hear them on Triple J all the time, so we knew we would like the rest of their album. While Tigger was here I got some good pictures of her because she was complaining that she didn't have any new (and good) pictures of herself, and I happened to have my digital camera handy. AND! And, now we are much more motivated to get our own car insurance and to get that new vehicle that Mom said she's going to help us get. So that's good.

So, now I'm going to interrupt Peter from rearranging the living room (now studio!) so he can look over what I've written and see if there's anything he'd like to add... -Jenny

The Clock is Ticking....

Wow, I can't believe it's almost May already - it seems like the year is just flying by. Things have been piling up quicker and quicker, keeping us plenty busy:

Jenny and Jenni have been getting to work on the wedding stuff, invitations are now on their way (to us), and soon will be on their way back out. We've also been weighing our photography options and we're thinking of going the potluck route for the food, although we haven't decided if the main course(s) are going to be catered at all.

I'd mentioned that we'd registered at Macy's; well, we were finally able to log on to our account tonight, only to find that they only have 6 items listed - none of them items we actually picked! So now we have to go back and repick everything, talk about a waste of time. We did sign up for Macy's cards in the process, which I guess we can theoretically use to build up our credit a little. Oh, and we're definately going to go up to Fairbanks later this year to visit, even if we're still not sure where we'll be staying....

And speaking of living arrangements, we're now figuring on staying in this apartment for a while longer. We were orginally excited about getting out of apartment living and into a house, but the more we thought about it, the more we realized that with the wedding plans, and everything that entails (both before and after), plus our vacation plans and Jenny not working for a while, we'd be better off not trying to do a big move this year. We don't really have a specific area that we want to move to, and aren't too crazy with the prospect of packing everything up and moving again. However, if we do stay here, we're going to be really getting after the apartment people about fixing stuff and making this place a better place to live. We've already put in a couple more work orders to fix stuff, and are still after them about the garage.

I did finally get the apartment completely cleaned this weekend, which always helps my outlook on things (it certainly needed it...). And I've been going back to basics with my drawing, trying to do some basic gesture drawings and sketches in my sketchbook and filling up atleast a page a day - it's a slow process, but I think I'm (very) gradually getting my skills back.

As much as I'd love to quit my job so I could work on getting my art back up to speed again, it's really not an option now that Jenny quit hers. But she really needed to, what with her wonky schedule and the wedding date rapidly approaching. She's got so much done in just the past week - I joked today that she should have quit her job months ago, we would have had this whole thing planned down to every detail already.

And on the job front, I was surprised today to get my paycheck and find I got another raise! I'm thinking it might be because Brian's leaving in a couple of months and I'll be moving up to top man on the totem pole. Or it may be them realizing they better give me an incentive to stick around.... Whatever the reason, I'll take it!

Work, Work, Work

I can't believe it's already February. Jenny and I have both been at our jobs for a year now, and it's really wearing on us. I've got my one week paid vacation coming up, assuming I'm still working there to use it....

I applied for a very cool job I saw advertised in the paper recently - it's an office manager position with the Spokane Art School down town. It'd probably mean a small drop in pay, but it'd still be a M-F 9-5 schedule, and it'd mean be surrounded by artists (students and teachers) and the possibility of networking. The job closed on Friday, so hopefully I'll hear from them. Soon.

Jenny's also put in for another job - another framing position, but this one's at an actual custom frame shop, so she won't have to deal with all the Michael's corporate retail mess. It would also come with a better schedule and better pay, so if we both got these jobs, the pay would about even out and we'd both be a lot happier.

I asked about the garage situation when I paid our rent on Saturday, but the secretary didn't have anything new to tell me. They're apparently still working on it, but too many other things keep coming up and distracting them. So, by the time we actually have a garage, it'll be just in time for us to move out. Yay.

As for the vacation time I mentioned earlier - the Emerald City Comic Con is coming up, so if I'm still with NWAC, I might use it for that. Maybe we'll try to visit some of our friends over there we haven't seen in a while (I'm looking at you, Eric!). Otherwise, Jenny's 10 year class reunion is coming up this year, and she's been in contact with some of her ex-classmates regarding the whole thing. They're thinking sometime in June, so we may fly back for that - we've been wanting to visit Fairbanks (during the summer), and I missed my 10 year reunion (happened right after we left).

Christmas is Coming....

Holiday work at Borders starts this week on Wednesday, so it's going to be Go! Go! Go! for the next couple of weeks on up to Christmas. No time to think, and barely time to sleep, but we'll have some extra money out of the deal, and time spent with our friends (even if it will be at work).

We just signed a new lease on Saturday, although we still haven't got a garage out of them yet. But they're finally going through all their records and cleaning house and apparently there were a lot of folks (like us) who had let their lease run out and have just been coasting along. We thought our's was up in October, but it turns out we only signed a 6 month lease.... Regardless, if we didn't sign a new lease, we had to go to month-to-month, which was an additional $50.00 a month. Plus, they're raising everyone's rent by $15.oo. Not surprisingly, we're getting out of here when our 6 months is up, and we're looking for a house. No more apartment living for us!

We haven't done much in the way of Christmas shopping yet, even though we swore we were going to be all organized this year and get all of this out of the way well ahead of time. Maybe next year....

I got a Christmas bonus from work this year, which was a nice surprise, and I'm very close to paying off the IRS the rest of the money we owe them, so I suppose things are (relatively) looking up financially.

The New Years is fast approaching, and while I've never put much stock in New Year's Resolutions, there's plenty of stuff on our Big List of Things to do Next Year. One of these Things is to start blogging more, both to keep this updated and to get back in the habit of writing regularly. So (like I've said many a time before), hopefully there won't be quite the gaps between posts. :)

Moving On Up, and other Goings On....

Jenny's been offered (and took) a pseudo-promotion at work, and so she'll be staying with Michaels and actually moving up to (barely) full time. She doesn't want to get over-worked and over-stressed, so she made it clear to her boss that she would take the job, but only work minimal full time hours.

But she will be getting a slight pay raise + benefits, which (apparently) I'll be able to share. This is incredibly good news for the two of us, and the main reason she said yes to the job. That, and the fact that when the person she's replacing leaves, and she moves up to "Head Certified Framer" (something like that), she'll be able to stay in the back of the frame shop doing production most of the time, with new girl up front helping customers. The whole retail/customer service thing is the main part of her job she dislikes, so this is the other main reason she's taking it.

We still haven't got a garage yet, which is disappointing. I have seen (what appears to be) a few people cleaning out their garages, so hopefully the office has finally got after the sneaky people who've been "borrowing" garages for the last few months.

The apartment is clean, and I'm trying desperately to keep it that way through upkeep, as opposed to going on a mad deep-cleaning spree once a month. So far, so good.

We're going to put up our Christmas decorations very soon, so we'll actually be able to enjoy them for a while. We probably need some more, like a wreath, and more lights. But first the tree goes up and then we'll go from there. We also want to pick up some more Christmas music. Right now we've only got a Carpenters album and a couple of Celtic Christmas albums to listen to. We're aiming for "classic" pop Christmas music (Sinatra, Dino, etc.) and I'd also like to find the Limelighters and Kingston Trio Christmas albums on CD, since I fondly remember listening to those as a kid.

National Novel Writing Month is into week 2 , and while I'm way behind (about 2000 words), Jenny is making really good progress on her novel (over 8500 words so far). I had a pretty good idea what I was going to write about up until the day before the month started, and then threw it all out and went with a completely new idea at the last minute. So I've been kind of struggling to catch up ever since....

Not a whole lot else going on - I'm home sick from work today on orders of my boss. I'm not horribly sick, but I've been having sinus headaches and related symptoms, and my job has a general "if there's even a chance of you getting sick or giving whatever you've got to me - GO HOME!" policy, which is kind of nice.

I dropped out of the big Draw Off Tourney that LJamal was running over at Digital Webbing - the last subject was a Halloween themed Bloodrayne & Blade vs. zombies piece that never materialized, and I had to no show finally. Didn't even have time to start the stupid thing that week - disappointing, but I'll live.

Haven't been drawing much lately, with work and the shadow of NaNoWriMo hanging over my productivity, but I've still managed to start scribbling in pen in my various notebooks, so I don't completely forget how to draw (which is how I feel when I don't draw for a long time). Now I just have to remember how to write, so I can finish this novel.

Still have various projects that are still unfinished/started + some other things I'd like to get done, if I can only find that elusive "time" thing that people speak of: current Draw-Off (Cap'n A vs. Iron Man), Rising Stars of Manga contest (due sometime in January), I'd like to do some art-jam Holiday cards with Jenny this year, but we'll probably just end up buying some at Borders on the cheap.

We're starting at Borders this Sunday - the holiday crew meeting is 8am Sunday morning, although I'm not sure how long we'll be working. It's mainly a training day for us. Register training and what not for Jenny, and getting me back up to speed. We won't be working again until the last couple of weeks before Christmas, but Sean wanted to get us back on the payroll so we could take advantage of the discount, especially with an employee appreciation (40% off) day coming up. I see a lot of our friends getting books for Christmas this year! :)

What's Happening....

We were totally planning on dressing up and going out for Halloween this year, but we put off figuring out costumes till...well, now, and so that's really not going to happen. :) The (thoretical) plan was to go thrift store shopping and piece together Britney Spears and Kevin Federline costumes, but we kept putting the actual shopping portion of the plan off till it's too late. We're now going to go over to Jenni and Eric's and have dinner with them and go out with them when they take their kids trick or treating. We might dress up, but it's really not a high priority at this point.

We are definately going to start working on some awesome costumes for next year, maybe try to go out to a place where they're having a costume contest or something. We'd like to continue our "comic couple" theme (e.g. Joker & Catwoman, Peter Parker & Mary Jane), although we may expand that to sci-fi and fantasy couples as well. Regardless, part of the plan involves working out and getting into much better shape in the next year. Neither of us is willing to wear anything resembling spandex otherwise...

The big plan for the coming month is that both of us are participating in the National Novel Writing Month. The idea behind this event is that anyone can write a novel, and that you just have to apply yourself and make yourself do it. I'm hoping that I'll be able to apply this sort of deadline-abiding philosophy to other sections of my life (like my artwork), and be much more productive in the long term. For now, Jenny and I will both be attempting to churn out 50,000 words in 30 days. If you'd like to learn more, check out the NaNoWriMo website; and if you're a participant you can "buddy" us - here's My Profile and here's Jenny's Profile. Wish us luck...

Otherwise - work continues as normal, we still don't have a garage but it'll hopefully be soon (we're waiting for the apartment people to figure out who all's using garages without paying, and whether they'll kick 'em out or charge them back rent), and the IRS payment plan is working itself out. We may be out from under their thumb sooner than we thought, but it's not a sure thing yet.