Arachnacide

Settling into our new place has been a rather slow affair. We're "moved in", but we're still compiling our "move-in" list of all the various issues in the house, and there's still work that needs to be done before we can finish unpacking and really get situated.

We've been taking copious amounts of photos as we go, as we keep finding things that need to be fixed. This weekend we went through the basement and looked for problems and "pre-existing conditions". The basement is also a haven for (in some cases, very large) spiders, and we spent some time trying to clean out as many 8 legged inhabitants and cobwebs as possible.

Here's an example of one that appeared in the kitchen, next to the back door, that Jenny nearly walked into. I know that spiders are supposed to be beneficial since they eat other insects, but the ones in our house seem unusually industrious. And fearless, feeling quite content to drop down directly into our faces as we're walking. This will not stand...

We're going to get out and pick up some spider glue traps, on the recommendation of one of Jenny's co-workers. We were at Fred Meyer the other night grocery shopping, and looked there, but they were completely sold out of (just) spider traps. So apparently we're not the only ones dealing with an infestation.

Status - House: Achieved!

We've been in this apartment for almost 7 years, which seems insane now that I really think about it. Not sure how we've lasted this long, considering some of the things (and neighbors) we've put up with...

But that will all soon be in the past, as we're finally moving!

We found a 2 bedroom house to rent, in what seems to be a nice neighborhood, that's going to cost us about what we're paying now (the rent is actually less than this apartment, but we're expecting our utilities to be higher there). It's also got a full basement with a lot of storage space, and an actual back yard. :)

It's a little farther west from where we're at now, over into what is Spokane proper, but Jenny's work is still about the same distance from the new place as from here. And she's got some friends/co-workers who live in the same area - one only a block away.

It is an older house, which hasn't ever been remodeled as far as we (or the landlord) know, so we won't be surprised if we run into some issues later on... But since neither of us has rented a house before, and we would eventually like to own our own place, we're looking at this as a learning experience of sorts.

But the property manager/landlord also lives just around the corner, so if anything does come up she'll be easy enough to get a hold of. She's getting the place cleaned/fixed up right now (as the previous tenants didn't seem to do any move-out cleaning...) so we won't be able to start moving in till closer to the end of the month. But at least we should have a few days to move instead of it being a mad rush over a day or two.

Still, super excited! More updates, and eventually photos, are sure to follow.

Update - Been a While...

Hmm.... apparently I haven't blogged yet this month. Time flies when, well, we haven't really been doing much actually. Just working for the most part. Jenny's job is great. even if it's only (very) part-time. I've started taking a different bus up to her job some nights, so I can meet her when she gets off work. It's a lot more convenient - I don't have to rush to catch the bus after work, and I don't have to switch lines three times. And the ride's shorter too. The library she works at is little, and really cute, and it seems like all the people she works with are really nice. I hope she can get some more hours there and maybe move up the ladder a bit. Seems like a keeper of a job.

We haven't got a good chance to really look around the area where the library is; but what we've seen of it and the surrounding neighborhoods seems really promising. If she sticks with this job, we might try to find a place up there (on the South Hill). We did do some looking through the classifieds this week to see what the range of prices are for the area. We haven't gone and looked at any places yet, but we really can't move until June anyway...

Our new-ish neighbors are definately gone now (hooray?). Seems they didn't even tell the management they were leaving either - they might have been here a month and then just up and left on the 1st. So no pounding bass (or anything else) on that side of the apartment, which is a nice change. Now if we could just get rid of the neighbors below us who are always slamming their door hard enough to make the building shake. Also, since we've rearranged the apartment, our "living room" is now above their master bedroom, so we try to be considerate and not be too noisy (no watching TV loud up late, that sort of thing). It'd sure be nice if they would return the favor.

I took Monday and Tuesday off from work - I just needed some down time to relax and also so Jenny and I could actually spend some time hanging out together. We went out to see the new monster movie Cloverfield on Monday. It was... good, however it was shot in a "real world" handi-cam style, from the perspective of the people trying to escape New York while a giant Godzilla type monster is destroying the city. So between the shaky camera, the heat in the theatre being turned up way too high and possibly being still a bit sick, both Jenny and I were actually nauseous by the time the film was over. I'm glad it was a short movie, because I don't think I could have taken much more. I think I'd like to see it again, but not until it's out on DVD and I can pause it whenever I want.

Started deep-cleaning the apartment on Tuesday night, and it's about half done right now. My hope/plan is to have the whole apartment thoroughly cleaned by the end of the week so I can have the weekend free to work on other stuff: art, catching up on TV, various work I need to do on the computer, maybe even break out my miniatures and do some painting.

Jenny's sister's birthday is tomorrow, and I think the plan is for Jenny to go over tomorrow for cake and presents. I'll probably stay home - I'm not really sure when she's even heading over. And then she's got another jewelry making class on Saturday and Sunday, although she'll have to skip out early on Saturday since she's got to work that afternoon. Should be fun!

So yeah, not a whole lot going on, but still more than enough to keep us busy. Hope everyone else out there is doing well, and maybe the next blog post won't be such a long time coming....

Happy (nearly) New Years!

It's kinda hard to believe that 2007 is almost over, but here we are again, just about to start a new year. I'm not a big fan of resolutions (mainly since most end up being far too unreachable, and then you're just setting yourself up for disappointment), but I think we do have atleast one achievable goal for 2008:

Get out of this apartment and into an actual house! Our neighbors finally moved out a little while back, and now we have new neighbors who seem to be nice enough, but are just as loud. Seriously, why does everyone in this complex have to slam their door everytime they leave? Why?

Our old neighbor had his parties and booming rap music - and after talking to him a few times he slowly learned to keep it under control (I think he realized he should be nicer to us after helping him get his stolen car back, but I can't be certain). The new neighbors apparently have an X-Box or something similar, and love their wargames, since right now it sounds like the building is getting shelled by mortar fire.

We're still not sure where exactly we want to live, but we want to have atleast a little bit of room around the house (like a good size yard, with some trees), and it obviously has to be larger than the apartment we're in now. We'd like to have another bedroom (to be a permanent gaming room for all of our miniature stuff), a bigger kitchen with more pantry/cupboard space and newer appliances, and more storage space in general. Oh, and definately a garage, preferably bigger than the one we have now.

Our lease is up in June, but we need to start looking soon, atleast to figure out what area we want to move to. And whatever job Jenny gets will have an impact on the location as well.

Otherwise, I'm sick again, this time something I picked up from hanging out with Tigger so much before Christmas. Her and Lincoln have both been sick, and it's obvious I've got the same thing.

The house is in post-holidays shambles - Jenny started taking down the Christmas decorations today, mainly because the tree is in the way of her studio stuff and her plants (since there really wasn't anywhere else to put it). So now we've got Christmas stuff (presents, decorations, wrapping paper, etc) scattered throughout the house in disarray.

And we got some more wedding pictures from Shane, as well some from Tigger, that we haven't uploaded yet. It'll all get done, eventually, I'm sure...

Thanks to everyone for all the Christmas cards and presents - here's wishing you a Happy and safe New Years! :)

Movin' On Up

Well, we've been in our new apartment for a week now. Everything's going pretty good so far, although we have less storage space in the new place, so it's been a big game of Tetris moving some of our stuff around. And we got our new neighbors (who are in the spot that we were supposed to have) and, of course, they have loud obnoxious friends and listen to pounding rap music. Yay. Getting off to a great start there.....

We don't have our phone or internet up yet, so we'll be offline for a while. Hopefully when we get back online we'll have more interesting things to talk about then a stupid landlord and crazy neighbors.

Two Starving Artists: Season 2

We. Are. Out!

No more stupid apartment! I did the final walk thru with the landlord today (after cleaning all of yesterday). She's not taking any out for cleaning (other than the $100 for the carpets-that's in the lease), but she is charging us for 5 days since we technically were living there. That's gonna cost us almost $100, but that's still $800-$900 back, with August's rent added on. And, we never have to deal with her again! Yippee!

Plus, I talked to the new apartment people today - we move in this weekend, we sign paperwork on Saturday, and all together it's gonna cost us less than $800. Again with the Yippee!

Landlord's gonna mail us the checks, so we'll just being paying out of the money we have. So we were talking about using the money we get back from her and opening up a new, joint, bank account. Hmmm... joint bank account.... sounds like we might be serious. ; ) We are gonna keep our old accounts in AK, but this will be for bills and expenses and saving for mutual stuff.

Now we need to get all of our utilities changed over, addresses changed, and I need to find me a job. This is a new, new beginning for us. We're still figuring out what we're doing down here, and now maybe we'll stay here for two years. heh...

I Just Want To Get Out Of Here!

What is it going to take to get us out of here and into another appartment?! Peter tried calling the new appartment place twice yesterday morning, but no one answered. So we thought, maybe they are out cleaning, lets drive over there and find someone to answer our questions face to face. Good plan, huh? Aparently not. It's only a half hour drive or so, that's not the problem. The construction people causing a bottleneck in traffic right before the exit we need wasn't the problem, although it was annoying. No, the normal secretary at the new appartment place was out sick when we got there, and this bitchy lady who didn't give a crap who we were and had a "that's too bad, here's a quarter call someone who cares" attitude about our needing to move in earlier then 3 weeks from now, was the problem. She seemed almost gleeful that she couldn't help us in any way. Although she did give us the name of the head guy, although we can't call him till Monday, which is when we would have to call to get ahold of the normal secretary anyway. So we still don't know when exactly we can move in, and we don't know if we can expedite the move by taking on the cleaning duties ourselves either. So it was a useless trip.

So we had my Dad come over and help move all the boxes we had packed already over to his garage. On the way over to his house, I noticed the truck seemed to be swaying back and forth. I had only ever felt the truck sway when it's really windy, but it was only raining, not windy at all. Peter thought that he kinda felt it too, but we were both tired from hauling boxes of books around, so thought maybe the swaying was just in our heads. Once we unloaded my Dad's truck, I was about to get into mine to back into the garage, when I noticed that my left rear tire was nearly flat. After unloading the truck, the tire didn't look so squished, so we determined that it was probably safe to drive to a place to fix it, rather then change the tire. "We" meaning Dad was tired and didn't want to help change a tire. The handyman installing my parent's new dishwasher mentioned a couple places that specialize in tires on Gov't Way road. So after a recouperating lunch, Peter and I headed to one place, which had just closed. Then drove to another place, which was closed, and finally found a tire place still open. I've had to get a tire patched before in Fairbanks, they let me watch, and it took less then 5 minutes to take the tire off, find the leak, stick in the patch, fill it with air, and put it back on. But there were other people who had come in ahead of us yesterday, so we had to wait almost 45 minutes before they ever got to mine. The good thing though, other then getting the tire fixed, was that they didn't charge me anything for it. I don't know why, maybe they felt sorry for me and Peter having to wait so long next to a woman with 4 annoying kids that she only paid attention to to yell at. Whatever the reason, I'm just glad that the tire didn't go flat while we were driving out to the new appartment place. By the way, it was a nail that was making the slow leak. There, I think I've rambled on enough. I can't wait to go see the movie Serenity today!

They Still Want Our Money

Finally got a hold of the apartment people yesterday... As of then, we're not scheduled to move in until the 2nd or 3rd week of October, but that might be moved closer. Turns out the cleaning crews are really overwork/understaffed with all the move ins/outs they've got right now, but if they can hire some extra help they'll be able to push us up.

I'm supposed to call this morning to find out what (if anything) is going on, but so far no one's answered. But te secretary knows that we want to get in ASAP, preferably in the first week, so we'll see what happens. If we have to, we can start moving boxes and stuff over to Jenny's folks' place to store in the garage, until we get the place.

Still packing. Man, we've got a lot of crap. OK, I need to get back to work, then. More packing....

Artist's Block

Surprisingly little was accomplished today, much to my chagrin....

I'd decided to spend the whole day working on Art of some sort of another, concentrating on the current Draw-Offs over at Digital Webbing, but my self sabotage struck again. Lots of staring at my sketchbook, drawing, erasing, more erasing, etc. I just froze up and it took pretty much the whole day to loosen up my creative self.

The whole apartment is in shambles right now; mid-packing mess-a-palooza. I can't concentrate in all of this, but by the same token, I can't blame it all on the apartment. And I'll never "make it" as an artist if I can't be left at home alone without wasting away the whole damn day. I'm working on it....

Jenny drew a completed picture in about 45 minutes in her notebook tonight. If this was a competition, she'd be way ahead right now.
If. ; )

And still, no one answers the phone at the apartment place. We just want to give them money so we can have a place to live. Do they not want our money? I just don't understand.

1st day of Peter's "Vacation"....

So, my last day of work was on Saturday, but I'm still technically on the schedule. Instead of just paying out my vacation to me, Sean is keeping me on the schedule on "vacation" for the week. This way, he doesn't have to term me until next week and I'll get the bonus for the last month (that I worked and deserve) on my paycheck. Boo. Yah.

Spent the day packing. Still haven't set a day for finalizing the move in stuff. I tried to call the apartment folks several times today and no one ever answered. Worse, their voice mail was full, so I couldn't leave a message until the last time I called, which was after 5pm, so they probably wiped their VM and went home. Guess I'll call them first thing tomorrow.

Serenity opens this Friday, and we're planning on going to see it with Sean & Lisa and Josh. Then I made the mistake of inviting Lucky & Erin as well. Don't get me wrong, I want them to come to the movie, but I had forgotten that (for some stupid reason) Josh hates Lucky so I'm just inviting more stupid drama. Gah. So 8th grade....

Perused the want ads and found a few prospects. Mailing resumes takes just as long, so I'll probably try to drop them off on Wednesday when we go in to pick up comics.

Irony Is...

We finally get the green light on our new apartment, and now our drunk-ass neighbors are moving out before us. They're loading up the U-Haul as I type. Yay? (too little, too late)

Meh...

Today was not a horrible day of work, but not great either.

A portrait of mediocrity. Some drama, but nothing involving me.

Good thing I only have one day left! Too bad it's Saturday so I have to put up with one last atrocious local author signing. ugh...

No word from "new apartment people" today. grrr... I have tomorrow off, so I guess I'll be calling them. Again. Oh well, I don't care as long as we get our spot and we get all of our money back from our landlord (plus deposit).

Another short entry again tonight. It's late and I'm sleepy....

It Is Now Within Our Grasp....

The apartment people have received our landlord's e-mail! Success!

Apparently, they gave me the wrong address, or I copied it down incorrectly, or she typed incorrectly, or something.... the landlord sent it this weekend, but the apartment folks never received it; I call landlord yesterday, give her apartment folks' phone number and she remedies the situation. Huzzah!

Apartment folks are supposed to call us tomorrow with info as to when we can pay and sign paperwork and move in. Sweeeet.....

So Close We Can Taste It....

We've tentatively, maybe, hopefully gotten into the apartment we want. Everything checked out OK on us, except for "some thing about still owing money to a landlord". So now we're waiting on our landlord to e-mail the apartment people with a statement saying that we had in fact paid all of our rent, and that it was a big misunderstanding (and their fault not ours).

I'm calling the apartment this afternoon -- just to make sure they got it.

Still nothing on the job front, but getting the apartment is #1 priority for now. I had Earlee call over to Waldens yesterday to see if there were any openings, but the only thing they had coming was the calendar kiosk during the holidays, so that'd be a no. And B&N only wanted me for the cafe, so that was a no go as well.

We went to see Sky High last night at the discount cinemas, which was extremely cheesy and entertaining. Convenient that we were the only people in the theatre, since we were laughing and talking through the whole thing. And that's why we love the discount cinemas.... (that and they're cheap-ass!) Also saw Transporter 2 recently. Also rediculous as all hell and just as entertaining. But Luc Besson can basically do no wrong in my book. Oh, and it turns out he's writing childrens books now. Who'd a thunk it?

Started trying to teach myself Illustrator (and really learn how to use Photoshop). I've got the dem for Ill. 10 and PS 5 right now, but my brother's looking to get me copies of the CS versions soon, which will be awe-some. I needs to learn myself some real skills so I can get myself a real job.

Useless, Useless, Useless....

Our landlord was supposed to stop by the other day after work to pick up our (August) rent, but instead she sent her husband (Earl), who didn't show up till 6. We're pretty sure she didn't want to face us after acting like such a bitch to us and being completely wrong about everything. Well, atleast we're all paid up with her, so that's cleared up (but no less stupid).

This has been the longest week ever at Borders. We've been super-dead, and noone's been motivated to work. I thought I was going to have the whole weekend off, but I re-checked the schedule today, and I'm working on Sunday. Yay me. Yeah, next job is going to be a fixed schedule, Mon-Fri 9-5 type job. Working at the bank is looking more and more appealing....

We still haven't heard back from the apartment we want to get into, but we won't be surprised if our land lord has screwed over our chances with them. There's still Meadowridge, the other place we really liked, but we don't know if they have any spots open right now. I tried to call them (twice) before I went to work today, so I could set up an appointment on Saturday, but no one ever answered the phone. You'd think, in this day and age, they'd atleast have an answering machine. Yeesh!

We also haven't received anything regarding the AWOL money orders yet, so Jenny'll try to call the Western Union folks tomorrow and beat some information out of them....

Guess that's it for the moment. It's late and I need sleep. Sleeeeeep..........

Another Day Off

Another day off, with relative acccomplishment....

Sean dropped me off in town, theoretically so I could go job-hunting, but that wasn't really successful. I wandered around for a while, went down to the park, filled out one application and turned it in (Barnes & Noble).

After Jenny got off work, we did go look at another apartment, this one off of Pines, which looked really nice. Lot's of potential there. I'm taking next Saturday off so we can run around and look at more places and turn in applications to places we've already seen.

And on the "we need to move" front: There was a knock on the door last night around 8pm, and it turned out to be Damien, the kid down stairs (from the loud apartment with the drunk husband). He's got a cast on his leg (which would explain the wheelchair that keeps showing up downstairs), and wants to know if he can use our phone. We ask him why, and he says he needs to call his parole officer! He's like 14 or 15 tops! Yeah, we definately need to move.

Jennie (Jenny's best friend; I'll spell them differently to differentiate) did have her baby today! Eric's mom called and left us a message, and Jenny called back and talked to Eric's sister (Eric is Jennie's husband, BTW). Apparently mother and son are doing just fine, although she did have to have a caesarean. Jenny hopes to be able to talk to Jennie soon, but Jennie will probably be in the hospital for a few more days, recuperating.

Things Falling Into Place

Sunday is our one day off together, so it's our day to "get things done". So we started the day by not setting the alarm and sleeping in, because we sure did need it....

Today was relatively productive. We found a few more potential apartments, although only one of them had office hours on Sunday, but we went and looked at that one, got our name down as interested and picked up applications. While in the Valley we drove by another complex down the street that wasn't open but sounds (and looks) really nice. We'll have to check that one out on Wednesday after Jenny gets off work. I also picked up an app at Michaels while we were there, but they're only hiring for Seasonal at the moment, but you never know, something might come open.

We also got the whole deal with our rent resolved (atleast for now). She (our landlord) just wants us to pay our September rent like normal and to wait for the refund to kick back to us and then we'll take care of this month. She knows we're good for it, and we've always paid our rent on time before. Of course, the irony is that this will be the last month we'll be paying, since we've decided to put in our 30 days at the end of August.

We we're talking today and decided that getting a good place to live should be our #1 priority, followed by me finding a new job after we figure out exactly where we'll be living. I realized today that I can't really accept the Inventory Supervisor position since we don't know when or where we'll be moving, especially since she want's someone in the position by the 6th of September.... not very realistic.

So, I won't say never, but this looks like it'll probably be goodbye to Borders Inc. for now. I figure I'll put in my 2 weeks mid-month and work till the end of September, since we'll be moving at the beginning of October (fingers crossed).

After we got back to town, we stopped by Gamer's Haven and I picked up the new Wood Elf book, Jenny got some Chinese food at a place we haven't tried yet, and then we went home and watched Fox cartoons for the rest of the night. Jenny's already headed to bed, and I think I'll be nodding off soon too, I'll need to be getting up not too much later than her. Jeff's giving me a ride into work tomorrow but I'll be going in an hour early. Yay....

Update-a-palooza!

Well, we've been kinda slacking on this Blog thing lately, with neither of us posting anything since Jenny got her awesome job. So, how about some updates....

Jenny is loving her job at Budget Blinds. They're swamped with work, but it's exciting and fun and not Hastings. She gets to sleep in tomorrow and for that, she is happy.

I have a potential job lined up at the Spokane Borders, since their Inventory Supervisor just put in his 2 weeks, and the first thing the GM there did was call Sean, so he could tell me to put in my application. She says that she really doesn't have anybody at her store that she can promote, so I think I'm already a shoe-in for the job. I'm going to apply, and take it if it's offered, but I'm going to keep looking for another (better) job as well. I really don't want to work in retail anymore, and if I can get out, I will. The IS job is pretty good, since it's a set schedule (T-S, 6am-3pm), but I'd rather have a M-F 9-5 desk job in all honesty.

So now that I've got a (semi-) sure job offer, we can start really looking for a place to live, except our landlord called us the other day to inform us he hasn't received our rent yet. We sent the money orders on the 1st, but who knows where they're at now.... We have to try and get them refunded, but all refunds requests have to be done by mail, and there's no guarantee that someone else hasn't already cashed them. We're so close to getting out of this place and then this happens, of course before we've had any reference checks done. And I know that when we tell our landlord that it could be up to a month until we get reimbursed, he'll want his money first. It's just stupid, because we're the absolute best tenants they've got here, and I really want to tell them that they can have their money when they get rid of the loud, obnoxious, alcoholic, druggie tenants who have the cops called on them.... but I don't want to chance losing a good new place by them giving us a bad reference. So close, but yet so far.

Tigger has her new house. She's moved in over there (all the stuff from the apartment, Lincoln still has most of the stuff at the house in Seattle). However, Monday her sprinkler system sprung a leak and flooded her basement. Luckily, almost everything was upstairs, but it still was a huge mess, and Jenny & I went over there and helped her pull all the carpet up downstairs. She was goping to get rid of it anyway, since she's putting all the critters down there, but she wasn't planning on doing it so soon, or under these particular circumstances....

Not sure what else to report on at the moment. I'll be very happy to get out of this place ASAP; a house would be nice, but we'll be happy with a nice clean apartment. I'm still trying to work on my art. I've been forcing myself to draw in my sketchbook everyday, but I haven't done anything I'd consider beyond a sketch or doodle in quite a while.

I've been trying to read more as well. I finished Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethum, which was an incredibly good read, although it took me forever to finish. Normally I'm a fairly quick reader, especially if I'm into a book, but this one was different. I wanted to read it, but I found myself having to go back and reread parts alot. Still, I highly recommend it. After that, I started reading The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. It's very well written, but also very heavy and quite depressing, and I couldn't really get into it right now. I needed something light and fluffy after Fortress of Solitude, so I picked up a young adult fantasy novel I've been eyeing at work for a while called Ranger's Apprentice: The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan ( a first time author). I read it in a couple of days (borrowed it from work), and it was light and a lot of fun. I just started Last Call, which is one of the last couple of Tim Powers books I haven't read yet. I've been looking for this one for quite a while, and finally found it at a used book store in Spokane. So far, it's excellent. After I finish it, I still need to finish Expiration Date and it's sequel Earthquake Weather, which I still don't own. I did pick up a new collection of short stories by Powers, Stange Itineraries, at work a couple of weeks ago, but I'm still waiting for a new novel by him. Latest word is probably another year (Summer 2006), but atleast I know it's on it's way. The next one is supposed to involve Einstein and Time Travel. Sounds like a winner! I still wish that someone could convince him to write a year (or more) worth of Hellblazer. He, of all people, understands how Magic should really work.....

If you're interested in learning more about Tim Powers (my favorite fantasy author), I'd highly recommend checking out:http://www.theworksoftimpowers.com/

Jenny just finished re-reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and has started Neuromancer by William Gibson. So far she says she enjoying it, so I'll have to remember to get my copies of Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive back from Josh so she can read those too. I still haven't got around to reading his latest, Pattern Recognition, or even All Tomorrow's Parties since I finally picked it up in paperback. But with ATP, I'm gonna want to go back and re-read Virtual Light and Idoru first so I know what's going on....

A Productive Day Off

Let's see what's been happening:

1. I told Sean we were moving. He's sorry I'm leaving, but he'll do what he can to get me a good job over at the Spokane store. There's still the off chance I could get a Supervisor job over there (I'd take Merch or Inventory), but I'm not holding my breath.
2. Jenny had her interview with Budget Blinds today. It went really well, and she's virtually got the job. They're just waiting on the background check, but that's really a formality. So...
3. She put in her two-week notice today with Hastings. this makes Jenny very happy.
4. We're looking at apartments. There's one so far that looks really good, more out in the Valley, but that's fine (better for her commute, and I'll be taking the bus regardless, so it doesn't really matter to me).
5. Went up north and checked out the Spokane store, to see how it's layed out and stuff. They apparently have no one who looks after their Graphic Novels and Comics. I really wanted to just sit down on the floor and start rearranging everything right there, but I'll get my chance eventually....
6. Tigger's getting her house in about 2 weeks; she's deliriously happy about that.
7. Oh, and I've had a reaffirming desire to work on art again. Yay!

Otherwise, works going fairly peachy. It's a lot easier to go to work when you know you're not going to be there forever. Shirley's coming on Friday, and Merch (for this week) got completed. Monday night, me and Victoria actually got done early, and had time to put everything away. the store really looked nice!

Hopefully, I'll know on Thursday when I go back to work what kind of openings are available for me at Spokane. I'm planning on spending tomorrow going through the paper looking for apartments, drawing, maybe a little writing, reading my book, maybe watch a movie and generally just enjoy my day off since I don't have anything to worry about facing when I go back to work.

Things Are Moving FAST!

All right, so it's been less then a week since we decided to move to the Spokane area because our building just came up for sale. We are no longer under contract (lease is over), so we can move as we please. We are tired of this crap-ass place anyway. Peter has talked to his boss about transfering from his Borders to the one in Spokane already, so we knew things were moving fast... I had given my resume to Peter's boss to give to his wife, and I was hoping to hear back from them, but realistically, I wasn't expecting it before Noon on Monday morning. I was going to tell my boss on Saturday about the fact that Peter and I would be moving in the next month or so, but I had chickened out and decided to wait till I had a better idea of when we were going. So I just got over the shock of talking to the woman who works at the same place Peter's bosses' wife works, and she seems interested in me, even though somehow, the last page of my resume got lost on the way to her. The part that has my education, GPA, and my list of skills. So the first question she asked me was if I knew how to use a computer. So I said yes, and listed the first 3 programs I know how to use: Word, Excel, Explorer. I know more, but my mind blanked. Then she asked when would be the earliest I could start, I said 2 weeks. She wanted to know if I was free today for an interview, but I have to work at 4PM, but I have the whole day off tomorrow. So I might, if I interview well, have a new and better (much better) paying job in 2 weeks.
So the story behind this job is when Peter's boss Sean moved up here with his family, his wife went to work at Buget Blinds. It was her and her boss, a woman Sean's wife, Lisa, didn't feel was doing the amount of work she could be doing. They were catching up after being understaffed for a long time, when the bigger bosses came through to inspect the remote business. They also felt that Lisa's boss wasn't pulling her weight, so demoted her to Lisa's job, and promoted Lisa to the boss position. Lisa told Sean that it was only a matter of time before the lady quit, and he knew from both Peter and talking to me, that I needed a better job, so he asked for my resume, and then gave it to Lisa, who aparently gave it to the right person who liked what she saw and called me as soon as possible. Cool huh? The good jobs are always about who you know, but with my current job, I always have a random schedule, so I could never take the time to get to know other places or other people outside of work. So I didn't know someone who has a friend who knows someone kind of thing. But Sean, he hasn't been here half a year and he already knows people who know people. But I'm thinking he's much more of a go-getter then I am. He's also got about 10 years on me, and has been the top manager at several Border's stores, so he's used to talking to people and making connections. Anywho, I'm excited and nervous. Now I have to mention that I might (hopefully) be leaving to my boss, and then if I get the other job, I have to quit and go through the last 2 weeks of barely repressed envy and resentment from my co-workers and supervisors. Although, the big boss at my work is notorious for cutting short the hours of people who give their 2 weeks notice, so I might get out early, but then again, as I'm a manager and a key holder, he might get as much out of me as he can. I don't know. All right, I've blathered on enough.