New Digs!

It's official- we've been selected to become the new renters in a cute little cottage on 33rd Road. Woo hoo! Time to party and start booking your room at Chez L2. That is supposed to look like L squared, but I haven't yet figured out how to do that in Blogger. So here are some pics of the soon-to-be-new-abode:

Front of house

Living room & dining room (the fireplace is the room to the right of the front door in the pic above)

Kitchen (there's a doorway leading from the dining room to the kitchen... and that's pretty much where the pics of both rooms were taken from)

And finally, the backyard

The backyard is probably the crown jewel of the place. It's much wider than this picture, and you can see a little path in the pic that goes down a few steps to a second part of the yard where there's basically a lot of little flower beds that have various plants, herbs, and flowers in them right now. The fiance has big plans to register for a grill ASAP... if I have my way, it'll be the cute green Weber from C&B, but outside is allegedly his domain and inside is allegedly mine. So we'll see.

Basic stats of the house: 3/1. (Yes, 1 bathroom. Could get interesting. Right now the plan is to drink fluids at opposite times.) We'll have 1 guest "suite" and the extra room will become my home office (because oh yeah... forgot to mention that I officially got the thumbs up to transfer up there. Hooray for dual incomes!). There's a laundry room off of the kitchen (to the left of where the pic was taken from) and then there's a "sun room" off the laundry room, which is really just a big, screened-in porch. Hello rocking chairs, here I come! Seriously, if I could find rocking chairs just like the big green ones on the Rec Hall porch at camp, I'd so buy a pair.




There's also a basement and although it is fully finished, there's nothing really fun or exciting about it. You can only get to it from outside and since it's not climate controlled, we'll just be using it for storage, mostly probably for lawn equipment. There's also a cat door in the door to the sunroom. Yes, a cat door. And I had the privilege of seeing the current tenants' kitty actually use it while we were touring. I thought that was pretty awesome. Not sure if we'll be getting a kitty (I enjoy cats, but both our moms and my sister are allergic. Although who cares because none of them will live there or pay the bills) or a dog any time soon, but it's fun that there's a tiny door for an animal to run in and out of once we're ready for one.

I wish I'd taken pics while we were touring so I could post them, but that seemed like it would be a creepy thing to do. I mean I wouldn't want random people taking pics of where I lived and all my stuff before they were officially living there. I would just send L to take some but homeboy doesn't own a camera (what the deuce?!) and I assume his Blackberry has a camera but I've never seen him use it so I'm not sure if he even knows how. Also it has to be said that sometimes his picture-taking skills are hit or miss (we end up with a lot of pics with people missing feet but we sure do see a lot of the ceiling and/or sky). Since these wouldn't involve people I'm sure they'd be fine, but oh well. Guess you'll have to come visit to see what the rest of it looks like! Chez L2 will be booking rooms beginning December 1, 2009. To book a weekend, call my cell.

Hopeful Housing!

So I've been in D.C. since Sunday to get in a little face time with the fiance' and also to find a place to live. We went and saw three places last night and all were no's for a variety of reasons, which was disappointing. We went and saw three more tonight and all three were VAST improvements from last night, plus we have the added bonus of knowing that if worse comes to worst, there's a townhouse in an apartment community that would definitely work. We're going to submit an application on the third place we saw tonight. I'll give more details when I find out if we get it or not, but I'll tell you that it's cute! It's not EVERYthing we want, but it meets most of the requirements, so that's nice. Keep your fingers crossed for the next couple of days!

75 days and counting...

So, it's been like a week, and where are we? The seemingly endless (to me) list of to do's has been cut down a little... I knocked out one shower, the bridal portrait trial run of hair and make-up, partook in the wee pledge class reunion, and even started the wretched packing process. The fiance' and I are also making progress on places to live. Bridal portraits and another shower are coming up this weekend, so things are getting slashed right and left, or so it seems.

Completely unrelated: I took a batch of thank you notes to the post office last week, and I decided to park and take them in to the drop box inside because they'd go out sooner. I pulled in to my spot, turned off my car, and noticed that the car to my left must have a young child who frequently sits in the back seat on the passenger side. I'd be so pissed if I turned around after a long road trip and the back window looked like this:

Yes, friends, that is a window full of stickers, and yes, I felt obligated to photograph it. In case you can't tell, the round one kinda close to the top, like third down and from the right, is a moon. I couldn't figure out what any of the other ones were without feeling like I looked like I was casing the car for a break-in. I can only imagine that this happened on a long car trip and that the parents were chatting away in the front while their child sat strangely quiet and content in the backseat, because I know that if that had happened in my family, the sticker artist would have definitely been spanked as soon as that first sticker went up, thereby negating any chance to add to the collage. Also that first sticker would have come down IMMEDIATELY. My family is one in which cars are not a canvas on which to express your creativity- no bumper stickers, which we attempted to defy in high school... my sister threw a very sizeable Harley Davidson decal on the back window of our awesome '82 Century Buick (it was a 2-door- THAT'S RIGHT, A 2-DOOR BUICK SEDAN- try to contain your insane jealousy) and that came off as soon as she graduated. I didn't complain about that because while it's pretty much impossible to look or feel cool as a 16 year old driving a 14 year old car, I actually felt like the Harley sticker made me look even less cool. My sister has a certain je ne sais quois that I lack when it comes to Harley Davidson paraphernalia. I actually got to upgrade cars during high school because The Pimp (code name for the Buick) was sent to greener pastures, and I decided to declare my undying love for Dave Matthews Band and the summer camp I went to on the new wheels. Those expressions of love didn't last long (thank you, Dad and your handy dandy razor blade). Then of course came college and the obligatory college and sorority stickers, all of which lasted at least four years. The BEST sticker I ever had on my car, though, was the product of a holographic sticker war that my friend Brad and I started one summer. The stickers came from the vending machines that are right by the entrances to WalMart; we'd pick them up every time we went in. The one I ended up with was a holographic piece of cheese that said, "Who cut the cheese?!?!" For the record, he ended up with a smiley face that had a popped bubble of gum on his face that said, "Ooops!" Several other friends were victims, but the sticker on my car was by far the best. But I digress... as I stated moments ago, a sticker display like this would have meant spank-city. Or if we'd been in my best friend's car, her mom or dad would have turned around and whacked our legs with a wooden spoon. As in, the kind you cook with. I have no idea where they came up with that one, but I can say I never got the spoon. Only their kids and my sister. Let's hope the owner of this car has some Goo Gone or else they will be in a world of trouble when they get tired of the collage. I do wonder how in the world they really see out of that window. I never hang my dry cleaning on that side because it blocks my view when I change lanes. I wonder if the driver has to roll that window down to get a good view...

Bananas + Anarchy = Bananarchy = Austin's Newest (and only) Frozen Banana Stand!!

Okay so this has absolutely nothing to do with anything I ever planned on blogging about, but I just found out today that Austin has a new frozen banana stand called Bananarchy.

This thrills me to no end. What's that you ask?? Am I a fan of the frozen banana? Actually, I have no idea because I've never had one. However, I AM an ENORMOUS fan of Arrested Development, and I can only hope that Bananarchy pays homage to the Bluth Frozen Banana Stand.

If you've never watched, it's comedic genius, unless you don't get it, and then you'll probably say you hate it. I love Michael. I love George Michael. I love Buster. I love Lindsay. But most of all, I love GOB. How can you not love this man:

He loves illusions and rides around on a Segway as much as possible. Genius, I tell you. Genius.