fatrockstar

Refresher course: http://winifred.livejournal.com/647613.html

I found an email for the DDES and wrote to them. Today I got a call back from a woman with a pleasant voice explaining to me what the letter meant and how to take care of the issue described inside. I could not tell if she was irritated with me or just abrasive, but I tried to convey to her that I wasn't an unreasonable & bitter divorcee, I just wanted this taken care of and it wasn't my fault it hadn't been yet.

I got a copy fo the final notice because the people who installed the furnace last year hadn't responded to the DDES's inquiries for a permit. As a last resort, the property owner gets a letter. And here we are. The furnace will get inspected next Tuesday.

So it wasn't Garret's fault after all, it was the installer's. If the installers contacted Garret and he still didn't bother to contact me... yeah, I'd be pissed. Right now I'm just happy to not be pissed at somebody who doesn't deserve any more of my emotional energy than I've already given him.

Grady burped at me today. I don't think I've heard it quite like that before. Just a little "UGKH" like he'd just taken a big swig of soda pop. He sits on the chair next to me while I'm on the computer, so it was hard to miss. I looked at him and he stared at me for a few seconds. «What? You do this all the time.» He then began to wash his face. «Whatever,» he dismissed.

( I hate sneezing. )

( Interviews! )

( Who the hell are these people? )

( Monday is band rehearsal night )

Tuesday is another phone interview. I keep my fingers crossed for each one.

This is to announce my tentative plans to host a Thanksgiving dinner this year.

Last year I did not want to travel and was in no state of mind to spend the holiday with couples, children, or families, despite everyone's loving invitations to join them. Instead I had a great dinner with a couple of friends at home, there were many leftovers, and we played Super Mario Party 8 until the batteries ran out on one of the controllers. Good times.

So if you cannot travel, have no significant other, and/or do not want to be the only single person at someone else's family celebration -- join me. Heck, bring a friend. If you're local and interested please comment or send email.

Oh, and wish me luck that I still have the house in November.

I seem to have recycled all but one of mine, so if you're in the area and have some of these materials lying around, please contact me. I really want to make one of these:

http://lifehacker.com/software/diy/make-a-draft-dodger-with-paper-towel-tubes-335300.php

Maybe even two. I have magnets, and glue, leftover fabric, and tins. What I need are plastic grocery bags and paper towel rolls.

I hate the sound of pipes knocking. Soon I will need to find out where the water main is on this house -- I should have figured out where it is the day we moved in, but didn't. Garret was certain that anything we needed done to the house we would hire someone for. So much for that.

I started a new dragon. He is too fat, and his feet are too big, so I am going to cut off his head and smoosh him. That sounds pretty gruesome, doesn't it? I assure you his head will be put on a skinnier, daintier body. Right now he looks kind of like Big Bird dragon-ized.

Grady is a good cat. The worst he's ever done to the house is barf, and that is easy to clean. Recently I've been smelling this cat-like smell, and I have no idea where it is exactly. His litterbox is taken care of, so it's not like it's there. It would be more accurate to say it's in the hallway somewhere, but it can't be pinpointed.

The black light isn't as helpful as you'd think. The previous owners had the carpets professionally cleaned, but old pet stains will always leave a mark that a black light can find. Determining which blotch is recent is easier said than done, and I'm not eager to crawl on the floor and *sniff* for a fucking cat smell.

Like I said, Grady is a good cat. He doesn't climb up on countertops, sharpen his claws anywhere he shouldn't, or do his business outside the litterbox. If anyone has an idea what else I should be doing to locate the source of this smell, please feel free to share. There are several things that smell like cat pee to me. Two of them are juniper and passion fruit. Neither of those things are in my hallway.

It may be time to just bite the bullet and re-carpet the entire house.

As I walked outside to fill my bird feeder this evening the dogs next door were going ape shit. I was curious if my slab-o-concrete was holding up at all but when I looked I didn't see it. This was not a good sign. Just as I thought that, Priscilla stuck her head out of the hole she dug under the fence and started working her body through it. I lost it and chased after her, yelling. She was aggressive but backed back in to her side of the fence.

From what I could see she just continued to work on that fucking hole all goddamn day long after I covered it, and then through to the next day. The garden liner had been dug out onto my neighbor's side of the fence, and the concrete was nearly there. I was livid at finding that nothing had slowed this dog's digging down at all, a fact not made any better by both dogs barking non-stop. I was yelling at the dogs to shut up, even though I knew it wouldn't do any good (like I said, I was livid).

After a string of really loud obscenities (classy, I know)I realized nobody in the house was coming out to see what all the commotion was. There weren't even any lights on in the house. Did she leave her dogs outside all day? What parent of a five-year-old isn't home at 8pm? Seriously -- what the hell?

I was still pissed off when I went into the front yard to get the garden hose spool. Two doors down some of my other neighbors were gathered in a driveway, talking. None of them were the offending neighbor. I'm sure I gave them plenty to talk about.

In the back yard I attached the hose and sprayer and walked over to the hole in the fence. When Priscilla stuck her head out I drenched her. I did this every time she got close to the fence, whether it was under it or trying to press her face through the half-inch spaces between slats. I kept this up for ten minutes until there was a nice little pool in the hole she had dug and she was no longer coming after me.

It didn't occur to me until after I'd turned the water off and gone inside that if this dog was as dense as its owner it probably stuck its face in the mud after I left. The only thing that keeps me from feeling bad about that is knowing a muddy dog will be sleeping in that house tonight, probably on someone's bed.

When Garret and I moved into this house two and a half years ago the yards were shit. They were covered in weeds and moss, and had patches where grass no longer grew. With the help of a good landscaper we managed to turn everything into something rather nice. No bare patches, very few dandelions, and the moss is all but gone. The only thing we weren't able to really take care of was the area by the fence. You can probably guess why. I worked too hard on this yard to have a dog come in and fuck it up by digging.

Fine. If Priscilla wants to crawl under the fence she can until I can pour concrete into that hole. In the meantime I plan on leaving the gate open. Maybe another escape will get my absent neighbor's attention. God knows she's never home when any of this is actually happening.

My auto is back and purring like a kitten. That's what happens when your transmission gets some TLC from a good mechanic. Sadly, it set me back quite a chunk of change. I really should have asked for dinner and a movie first.

I approach the weekend with tentative plans. I will be rearranging my bedroom and hanging things on the walls on Saturday. Having some kind of a plan is my effort to not spend the entire day in my sweats existing on vodka and cookie dough. I will probably swing by Allison's place to check up on her -- her broken foot is not healing well and she's been working from home because of it. I have a number of people to contact this weekend. Maybe you are one of them.

I was asked by an acquaintance if I was up for another collaboration effort. He's a DJ by the name of BooSan, and I'm used to DJ's so I said sure. He sent me a couple of wav files to review with instructions to freestyle it. I wasn't sure what he meant until I played the tracks. I've never written for hip-hop before. It will be interesting to see what I come up with. Bitches and crunk and shit, yo. No? I'm sure something will come to me.

If you've contacted me this week over my lack of entries you are not alone. Knowing that my writing will sometimes have some mass appeal, and that a lot of my net-friendly friends and family are not bloggers (or even LJ users), I try to write publicly on a regular basis. I have no restrictions on commenting on my entries because of this. However, if you comment Anonymously without identifying yourself... you are fair game and I will show no mercy.

There is not a lot in my personal life I care to share publicly right now other than I'm broke and looking for work. I'm not living in my car yet, but come May 7 I may need to consider it if I have nothing lined up. I have been actively applying for positions since about the 10th of last month, and next week I have a phone screen scheduled. My weekend will most likely be spent at the library or in a couple of books, brushing up on my programming theory.

I take things one day at a time. Saturday mornings are the hardest. The good days outnumber the bad days, but that is probably because my ex hasn't made his presence known outside of one or two emails in months. It's like he died and I don't know where he's buried. If he showed up on my doorstep or called me I would react accordingly.

My friend Allison is one of the few people I've met recently that's been able to pull me out of my shell, even for just a few hours. She's not local, and neither are any of her friends she's introduced me to since we started hanging out. Most all of them have roots back East. Allison herself is from the Carolinas and it shows. She's been supportive -- I can be obnoxious with her in a way only Southern girls know how.

I don't know what else I can share here. Everything else isn't what I want to open up about. There was a time where I felt I had enough people in my world I could be honest in an open forum, but all that changed on November 3rd, 2007. There is at least one person out there who, if I ever see her again, will lose an eye. If she's smart she has left the state. She's not as invisible as she thinks she is.

Everything has fresh paint, the coax cable has been mostly hidden (at the expense of my knuckles), all the random unnecessary crap has been removed, and I have vacuumed. This room has a much different vibe now.

Sadly, some things may not change. Note the ceiling apparatus that a certain person told me he'd take care of, including whatever patchwork the remaining holes required.

I know. I need to let it go. I might as well, because the longer it's up there the more ideas I get for hanging stuff from it.

But I'm very happy that the room is finally done. Now I can start putting together my studio!