Move complete

It’s official, I live in my very own house now! The move was fairly uneventful, aside from being badly misquoted by the movers and having to pay $400 more than they said I would. I’ve decided that by the time I move again, I should be rich enough to pay for someone to pack all of my crap and move it. I have moved 8 times in the last 9 years, and I’m very much looking forward to not moving for a very long time!

Of course the very first room we set up was the living room, complete with the TV and awesome sound system that Marcus got me over a year ago. We’ve never been able to fully appreciate the sound system while sharing walls with neighbors, so we watched The Fellowship of the Ring at full volume the first weekend we moved in – wall shaking glory (though Cola doesn’t care much for the noise).

Having the TV set up does make it harder to get the rest of the house unpacked, but we’re slowly making progress. Goal for this weekend is to get the kitchen completely set up and functional. We are going to have a garage sale soon to get rid of all the crap that the previous owner left in the house; hopefully that will happen next weekend so we can actually start parking our cars in the garage rather than leaving them out in the heat.

Off to go work on the house!

Pop the bubbly!

I have some big news, and then I have even more big news. On July 2, 2009, I bought my very first house. And when I walked in the door for the very first time, what did I find? The love of my life, on bended knee, asking me to marry him. That’s right, I’m officially a homeowner and bride-to-be!

What’s this? You want to hear the story? Well then, I’ll oblige 🙂

I woke up to Marcus’s phone ringing at 7:30am, an hour and a half before we were supposed to close on the house, saying that Marcus needed to go to the office to deal with a server emergency for one of his clients. As I laid in bed, groggy and confused, I asked “You’re not actually going are you? Don’t they know we’re closing on the house today?” Marcus apologized profusely but said there was no one else to help, and they’d be really pissed if he didn’t go, and that he was confident that I’d be able to sign all the papers without him there. He said he’d try to finish up as quickly as possible and make it there before closing was all finished.

So I reluctantly agreed and headed out to the title company on my own. Melanie greeted me at the title office, without registering any surprise that Marcus wasn’t with me. In retrospect, this should have been an obvious hint that something was going on, but I figured Melanie just didn’t remember that we were both going to be there since I was really the only one who needed to sign the papers.

An hour later, as I was signing my last sheet of paper, Marcus called and said he was done with his server emergency and was on Mopac heading over. I said that we were almost done so we should just meet at the house. Melanie overheard this conversation and then proceeded to chat happily away with both me and the lady at the title company for another 15 minutes, which I thought was a little strange since she knew I was supposed to go meet Marcus and I was eager to get out and go check out my first home!

So after some heartfelt thanks and congratulations all around, I left the title company with keys in hand off to my first house. I called Marcus on the way, but he didn’t answer his phone. When I pulled into the driveway, his car wasn’t there. I tried calling him again, since I was much later than I said I would be, but still no answer. At this point I was starting to both worry that he was in an accident, and get really annoyed that not only did he miss the closing, but he was also going to miss walking into the house for the first time. I decided it was too hot to wait in the car for him, so I picked up my stuff to head to the door.

On the way up I accidentally dropped my phone and dialed my mom. Then I figured, hey, at least I can be on the phone with someone when I walk into the house for the first time since Marcus is MIA. So I announced to her that I was opening the door to my house for the very first time, and proudly walked in the doorway.

In my peripheral vision, I saw someone crouching in the hallway. Panicking, my first thought was that there was an intruder in the house. I was the only person who could possibly have any keys – I just bought the house! So I turned in panic and shock, and realized that this was no intruder, it was Marcus. In a suit. On one knee. With a ring.

I’m not sure how long I stood there processing the situation before I finally managed to spit out “Ohmygod I need to call you back” and dropped the phone and everything else that I had carried through the door. He just smiled at me and said “Will you marry me?” I responded in the most dignified manner possible – I tackled him on the floor. Of course, my answer was yes 🙂

As it turned out Melanie had been in on the whole thing, working with the seller’s realtor to leave him a key in the backyard the night before and giving Marcus constant updates on where we were in the process, including letting him know when to call me when it was just too late to make it out to the office. I have to give mad props to her, she usually has a really tough time keeping secrets and she managed to keep this one completely under wraps! Even though I had even suspected that he might try to propose when I bought the house, I never saw this coming. It was absolutely perfect, and I have thoroughly enjoyed telling the story to people over and over 🙂

The ring is absolutely gorgeous. I can’t stop staring at it. Though it does make driving slightly problematic when I can’t keep my eyes on the road. Hey, that’s what peripheral vision is for right?

We move into the new house that I just bought this Friday. Is it possible to explode from happiness? Because I think I just might.

By the way…

I bought a house 🙂 Quite an interesting experience to submit an offer on a house you’ve only seen once while you’re overseas on a business trip and gone through most of the option period. Luckily it all worked out in our favor and in a week and a half I’ll officially be a homeowner! More details later…

I’ve earned an A in bitchiness

So my PMP class is drawing to a close (last day is May 7!) and our project manager lady is apparently the type that turns into a complete and total bitch when she’s stressed out. In the past, I would probably do what I could to appease her and just deal with her until the class was over. Now, not so much. My tolerance for obnoxious people has decreased considerably.

Instead I’ve spent the last 24 hours in a virtual cat fight with this woman who has somehow been put in charge of compiling several Word documents together to form a master plan, but has no knowledge of Word whatsoever and thinks that she is the only one who can format the document. I spent 4 hours updating her document to properly use headers and utilize the dynamic table of contents feature since we were compiling a ton of documents, and she didn’t like the formatting so she threw away all of my work and replaced it with her own, manually created table of contents (which now has to be manually updated any time additional text is added that creates a page shift). That was just the tip of the iceberg, and now she’s decided to publicly blame me for the project being “late” (it’s due tomorrow and she apparently has an anuerism at the idea of printing a document the day that it’s due). Never mind that I’ve done more work than everyone else on this project throughout the entire semester. She’s cranky so now I’m the one who isn’t working hard.

Seriously, I don’t know what it is about me that seems to attract rude, bitchy, or otherwise unsavory attitudes lately. I don’t think I’m the type that provokes people into being argumentative; I still try to avoid conflict whenever possible. Really the only thing that’s changed is my response – instead of rolling over, I fight back. I had thought that was a good thing, but I’ve spent the last day furious beyond measure, and I’m not sure that the ability to stand up and respond to temperamental behavior is worth the toll it takes on my sanity.

Quick take life update

My life is a whirlwind of activity right now. So rather than waxing poetic about all the stuff going on, I’m going to keep it brief:

• Major life news: I’ve been shopping for houses for the last month or so, and yesterday we found what could be “the one.” We put in an offer yesterday and will find out in the next couple of hours if we get it. Fingers crossed…
• Speaking of news, I was on it! Fox 7 news wanted to do a special on the first time home buyer tax credit, and contacted my realtor’s brokerage and asked if they had any first time home buyers who would be willing to talk about it on camera. Mere hours later we were setting up the shoot for the following day. Here’s the end result.
• My company recently went through another restructuring, and overall ended up in a much better structure IMHO. I’m pretty happy with the changes that were made. I also got a big raise! Just in time to put it all into a house! Woohoo!
• I’m taking a project management certificate class through UT that is consuming quite a bit of my life. It’s twice a week for 3 hours. I’ll be finished up on May 7, after which I have about a month to prepare for and take the PMP exam (all while potentially moving). Looking forward to being done with school 🙂
• And speaking of school, I’m starting to think about getting an MBA again. Of course, that requires more studying for the GMAT and then two years of studying in school… so we’ll have to see. Just something that’s been on my mind.

And there you have it folks. My life in a nutshell.

Pictures!

For my birthday this year, Marcus scheduled a photo shoot for the two of us, since we don’t have any pictures of us around the house. We were originally going to do it the weekend of my birthday, but weather had other ideas so we ended up doing it the day after Valentine’s Day.

We went out to a park near 35th and Exposition where there are tons of peacocks roaming around. Did anyone else know this place existed? It was surreal to walk around with these giant exotic birds everywhere. We met Sam Marx and his girlfriend and took some shots all throughout the park. Here are a few of my favorites:

You can also check out the entire set of photos at Third Space Photography if you’re interested. 🙂

A Distraction

So I’ve already failed my only New Year’s resolution as I still don’t have any digital copies of my photos to share with the world. As a consolation prize, check out some awesome dad who draws art on his kid’s brown lunch bags every day. I wish I had that kind of talent.

Happy New Year!

Well, it’s a new year. I have no more football to watch (at least no football that I care about since the college season is over and the Cowboys didn’t make the playoffs). Which is probably a good thing since I’m still pissed off at how much the media and voters seem to hate Texas for no good reason. Seriously people, you REALLY think that Sam Bradford is a better quarterback than Colt McCoy? I suppose my only consolation is that OU was ranked below us at the end of the season, but only by one place. And they had two losses. When is college football going to stop being judged like figure skating and start being judged on the field?

Speaking of a proper college playoff, Obama will be inaugurated in one week. I don’t care what else he does in his presidency – if he can get rid of the BCS and help get a college playoff in place then he will be my favorite president ever. Seriously.

Does anyone who reads this have any resolutions for the new year? I’ve decided I’m only going to have one – manage my pictures. I have a ton of crap that is still on my camera that I need to upload, and a ton of picture frames around the house that are either empty or filled with people that I never talk to anymore. My goal is to have pictures online by my birthday. That way I can actually post fun photos of what I have been doing!

I’d also like to become more of a morning person and wake up earlier, but I’m not going to hold my breath on that one until I learn how to go to bed at a reasonable hour. One day…

BCS = Bullshit Championship Selection

This football season has pissed me off so much.  What is the point of shouting for a football playoff if a head-to-head game DOESN’T COUNT???  Texas beat OU on the field on a neutral site, but apparently that doesn’t matter because a team’s final point tally is more important than the quality of their wins (and losses).  OU is lead by jackass Bob Stoops who likes to run up the score and embarass his opponents, while Mack Brown has a sense of sportsmanship.   So since Mack pulled the offense out early against teams we were beating and Stoops kept Bradford in the game when they were up by 40, I guess that makes them the ‘better’ team.  And now because Texas was denied their Big 12 Championship game, they’re probably going to give the Heisman to lame-ass Bradford.  Second time in a row that a deserving Texas quarterback is likely to get overlooked.  I really hope that Florida destroys OU.  I would love to see them get embarrassed the way USC slaughtered them a few years ago.

Obamanos!

For those of you who may have been living in a cave the last few days, Barack Obama was elected as the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday. 

I am truly excited at the prospect of how our country will change as a result of this historic election.  I am also appalled at some of the knee jerk reactions I’ve seen from McCain supporters.  Yes people, a black man (who also happens to be a democrat) will be running this country for the next four years.  This does NOT mean that the world is coming to an end, that the rapture is imminent, that socialism is inevitable, that Americans should worry that Obama’s “terrorist” connections are going to destroy the country, or any number of idiotic and disrespectful reactions I’ve heard.

I wouldn’t call myself a politically active person.  I fall in the “moderate” scale on just about every political assessment test I’ve taken.  I wouldn’t call myself a democrat, just as I wouldn’t call myself a republican.  I voted for Bush in 2004.  I voted for Obama in 2008. 

One of the reasons Obama got my vote because he ran a respectful campaign.  I despise all the mudslinging and finger-pointing that happens in elections.  McCain and Palin were particularly pathetic in this election, and if I had intended to vote for McCain in September I would have changed my mind by November.  Sarah Palin was another reason that McCain did not get my vote.  Ugh.  That woman is an embarrassment to females as a whole. 

I don’t necessarily agree with everything Obama intends to do in his presidency.  But I do think that he’ll do incredible things in his tenure.  This is history in the making, and I can’t wait to see how it all turns out.