First Snowfall!
There is too much, let me sum up:
Moved into the new house about three weeks ago. Got our first snowfall of the season today! (Photo up on Facebook for those connected there.) The roads are clear, but we expect continuous snowfall throughout the day, so since my company has a very liberal policy about working from home, I decided to stay in today. I love it! This is first chance I've had to spend any real time in our home office in the finished basement of the new house. I don't think I've been at this computer for more than 20 minutes at any one time since we moved in. It's nice down here. It surprises me to discover that the basement is actually the best-insulated room in our entire house. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised by this since it makes logical sense, but I am. In which case, why don't we build all our houses underground or with underground spaces? Okay, so there are questions about ventilation and light, and aesthetics, not to mention radon and maybe bugs. Still. Seems like every house should have a finished basement. Dear World, please make it so! The basement is always the coolest when it's warm, and quite nice in this climate even with the computers on and no a/c at present. Today it's not too cold outside, about 30, I think. I've got the heat set on 64 in the house, and it was too warm down here to wear a sweater! It's really a cozy space.
I'm liking the new house, but as with any relationship, it takes awhile for that like to mature into love. I love the concept of being homeowners. As with any move, however, the place still feels foreign to me, and like we're visiting. I will feel that way for several months until we really get settled in. We're getting there, but we have reached the unfortunate point of having unpacked the really important stuff, which means there is considerably less impetus to keep at it for the seldom-used stuff. We could also really use some more shelves. While we have plenty of square footage of storage space, right now leaving stuff in boxes is probably the most efficient means of organization until we make an Ikea run.
That Ikea run, meanwhile, won't happen for a bit. Ian and I are good savers, and buying the house was a comfortable financial process, thankfully. (After we fired our first choice of lender whom I think, in all seriousness, may have been a coke addict!) We're lucky to have found a house in fantastic shape, and it needed very little in the way of monetary outlay when we moved in -- mostly wants, not needs. Even so, $200 seems to have been the magic number, more or less for what has been done: paint, tree limbs trimmed, fireplace repaired, just other stuff like buying outdoor trashcans -- you know, stuff. Although the rentmortgage (yes, I actually typed "rent" first without thinking!) and utilities are actually lower here than in the apartment we gleefully fled, still there's just a lot of extraneous costs with moving into a new space. After draining our savings for the actual home purchase, then all these little things, and with our income currently restricted to my salary and Ian's Unemployment benefits, yeah, I just think we can put off our desire for an Ikea run for more shelves to hold our collection of consumer goods awhile longer!
The cats, however, fricking love the house! As we hoped, they're really having a great time with larger rooms and three floors (counting the basement) to literally run up and down. They're getting tons more exercise than they have for the past year in the much smaller apartment. They're enjoying the exploration immensely. There's also this loft that looks over a portion of our kitchen with ceilings that vault to the second floor height. The cats can jump from the half-walls of the overlooking loft to the top of the kitchen cabinets, to the kitchen counters, to the floor. DEATH FROM ABOVE! You cat owners can imagine how our little darlings are loving that! All things considered, they weathered the move really well, too -- much better than even the packing in their first move from Austin to Denver. Now I think they know that stacks of boxes do not, in fact, mean the end of the world.
Let me update you on how Ian is doing: He got all the way to a design test for LEGO. They loved his work, he got high praise, things were looking great for getting rehired... then LEGO had another round of layoffs and canceled the new position! ARGH! That was understandably really frustrating. There is hope that jobs may open up again after the first of the year, yahda yahda yah, but we've given up holding our breath. Ian has been working with Jose (whose help has been of tremendous value) to dust off his old IT resume. I took a look at it this morning, and it looks great, so that's underway! And if LEGO ever comes through, all the better. Of course we'd love it if Ian could stay in his chosen industry, especially after everything we did to put him in it... but ultimately, we love living here even more, and it was worth the lifestyle choice to buy the house though knowing there are only two game companies in town, and neither are hiring right now. "Right now" is not forever, however. Hope springs eternal!
Ian has been volunteering once a week at the Dumb Friends League, a really massive regional animal shelter in Denver. I can't emphasize strongly enough how proud I am of Ian for doing this, and how much he just impresses the stuffing out of me with the work he's put in there! He just completed his mandatory 15 hours of lowest man on the totem pole stuff like just cleaning out cat boxes and changing their water. Now he'll take a class either in clicker-training cats, or just being a cat buddy and literally volunteering to play with the cats and make sure they get their exercise. I don't think he's decided which way he'll go yet.
I'm in school, taking Legal Ethics this semester. It's a cake walk. Thinking of Contracts, and an "internship" class (at my day job) next semester.
Things at work are kind of stressful... but that's just sort of par for the course there.
Knitting good. Friends good. New LARP(s) might start soon. Pathfinder on Saturday nights good. Social life... good, but honestly maybe even a little too busy for my current tastes! But I'll take that over a lonely alternative.
Finally got on the bandwagon and started reading Game of Thrones. I'm about 200 pages into the first book, and richly enjoying it so far. No, I haven't watched the series yet; yes, of course I will when I get the chance later.
Moved into the new house about three weeks ago. Got our first snowfall of the season today! (Photo up on Facebook for those connected there.) The roads are clear, but we expect continuous snowfall throughout the day, so since my company has a very liberal policy about working from home, I decided to stay in today. I love it! This is first chance I've had to spend any real time in our home office in the finished basement of the new house. I don't think I've been at this computer for more than 20 minutes at any one time since we moved in. It's nice down here. It surprises me to discover that the basement is actually the best-insulated room in our entire house. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised by this since it makes logical sense, but I am. In which case, why don't we build all our houses underground or with underground spaces? Okay, so there are questions about ventilation and light, and aesthetics, not to mention radon and maybe bugs. Still. Seems like every house should have a finished basement. Dear World, please make it so! The basement is always the coolest when it's warm, and quite nice in this climate even with the computers on and no a/c at present. Today it's not too cold outside, about 30, I think. I've got the heat set on 64 in the house, and it was too warm down here to wear a sweater! It's really a cozy space.
I'm liking the new house, but as with any relationship, it takes awhile for that like to mature into love. I love the concept of being homeowners. As with any move, however, the place still feels foreign to me, and like we're visiting. I will feel that way for several months until we really get settled in. We're getting there, but we have reached the unfortunate point of having unpacked the really important stuff, which means there is considerably less impetus to keep at it for the seldom-used stuff. We could also really use some more shelves. While we have plenty of square footage of storage space, right now leaving stuff in boxes is probably the most efficient means of organization until we make an Ikea run.
That Ikea run, meanwhile, won't happen for a bit. Ian and I are good savers, and buying the house was a comfortable financial process, thankfully. (After we fired our first choice of lender whom I think, in all seriousness, may have been a coke addict!) We're lucky to have found a house in fantastic shape, and it needed very little in the way of monetary outlay when we moved in -- mostly wants, not needs. Even so, $200 seems to have been the magic number, more or less for what has been done: paint, tree limbs trimmed, fireplace repaired, just other stuff like buying outdoor trashcans -- you know, stuff. Although the rentmortgage (yes, I actually typed "rent" first without thinking!) and utilities are actually lower here than in the apartment we gleefully fled, still there's just a lot of extraneous costs with moving into a new space. After draining our savings for the actual home purchase, then all these little things, and with our income currently restricted to my salary and Ian's Unemployment benefits, yeah, I just think we can put off our desire for an Ikea run for more shelves to hold our collection of consumer goods awhile longer!
The cats, however, fricking love the house! As we hoped, they're really having a great time with larger rooms and three floors (counting the basement) to literally run up and down. They're getting tons more exercise than they have for the past year in the much smaller apartment. They're enjoying the exploration immensely. There's also this loft that looks over a portion of our kitchen with ceilings that vault to the second floor height. The cats can jump from the half-walls of the overlooking loft to the top of the kitchen cabinets, to the kitchen counters, to the floor. DEATH FROM ABOVE! You cat owners can imagine how our little darlings are loving that! All things considered, they weathered the move really well, too -- much better than even the packing in their first move from Austin to Denver. Now I think they know that stacks of boxes do not, in fact, mean the end of the world.
Let me update you on how Ian is doing: He got all the way to a design test for LEGO. They loved his work, he got high praise, things were looking great for getting rehired... then LEGO had another round of layoffs and canceled the new position! ARGH! That was understandably really frustrating. There is hope that jobs may open up again after the first of the year, yahda yahda yah, but we've given up holding our breath. Ian has been working with Jose (whose help has been of tremendous value) to dust off his old IT resume. I took a look at it this morning, and it looks great, so that's underway! And if LEGO ever comes through, all the better. Of course we'd love it if Ian could stay in his chosen industry, especially after everything we did to put him in it... but ultimately, we love living here even more, and it was worth the lifestyle choice to buy the house though knowing there are only two game companies in town, and neither are hiring right now. "Right now" is not forever, however. Hope springs eternal!
Ian has been volunteering once a week at the Dumb Friends League, a really massive regional animal shelter in Denver. I can't emphasize strongly enough how proud I am of Ian for doing this, and how much he just impresses the stuffing out of me with the work he's put in there! He just completed his mandatory 15 hours of lowest man on the totem pole stuff like just cleaning out cat boxes and changing their water. Now he'll take a class either in clicker-training cats, or just being a cat buddy and literally volunteering to play with the cats and make sure they get their exercise. I don't think he's decided which way he'll go yet.
I'm in school, taking Legal Ethics this semester. It's a cake walk. Thinking of Contracts, and an "internship" class (at my day job) next semester.
Things at work are kind of stressful... but that's just sort of par for the course there.
Knitting good. Friends good. New LARP(s) might start soon. Pathfinder on Saturday nights good. Social life... good, but honestly maybe even a little too busy for my current tastes! But I'll take that over a lonely alternative.
Finally got on the bandwagon and started reading Game of Thrones. I'm about 200 pages into the first book, and richly enjoying it so far. No, I haven't watched the series yet; yes, of course I will when I get the chance later.