(no subject)
Well, I've accomplished a good amount of things lately, and I am pleased.
I completed a number of things from my to-do list of January 3 in the last several days, plus other things as they came up. Some things are still pending, but will have to wait a bit.
1.) I set up the switchover from one home to the next for our gas and electric with BGE (Baltimore Gas and Electric). January we'll have to pay for both places.
2.) I set up budget billing and automatic bill payment with BGE too, while I was at it. I used to just pay all the bills by check, but I've gotten bad about keeping track of bills, so I've set up many of them to be paid automatically.
3.) I picked up 2 packs of photos from Wal-Mart :) I need to have someone help me set up the photo scanner I bought over a year ago now, so I can scan them into my computer. Since John bought me the digital camera in June 2005,I usually use my digital camera for my photos; that way I can easily get them uploaded to my computer and onto the smugmug website where I keep galleries of my photos, but lately the digital camera is acting funky and unreliable, so for my most recent photos I used a regular "disposable" camera.
4.) I arranged to switch to Vonage instead of Verizon for our phone service. in order to save some money on our local and long distance (we still will have Verizon for our DSL) - and our phone number is staying the same. We got the new box of Vonage stuff by UPS today, so I don't need to find the old one that the adapters came in to plug into the walls. I was planning to try and find the old box, which is buried in the bedroom somethere, but now that the new one's come, we'll just use that one and return the old one which I'd never opened. I was also going to move the stuff that's in FRONT of the walls so I could locate the places to plug the Vonage equipment in, but now that we've actually started living in the house, there's no need to plug anything into the walls in the apartment, but I do need to tell Vonage when we want to switch our phone service over to the house. Now I also need to get a jack installed in our bedroom, because there appears to only be one in the dining room, right outside the kitchen.
5.) We spent our first night in the new house on Saturday! It was kind of a spontaneous decision, because we found out we were getting Lily (Gerry's daughter) for the weekend, for the first time since September! Yay! I don't know exactly what was going through Linda's mind - maybe she is getting nervous about our upcoming court date on January 15. I had meant to write a long post about that situation a while ago, but never got around to it. Suffice it to say, we'd been kept from our regularly, COURT-ORDERED visitation with Lily for several months, and had to hire a lawyer to make sure that we got that situation straightened out. Maybe it's because of getting the house that Linda let her come stay with us. In any case, it was wonderful to see her. She and her cousin Miranda (Gerry's niece, his sister Mary's daughter) stayed over at Jean and Buzz's on Friday after our buffet dinner, and then at our place on Saturday, after a LONG 6 player game of Settlers of Catan at Jean and Buzz's. Jean was kind enough to make dinner for all of us since we hadn't gotten any food for the house yet at that point. Everyone except Matthew played. We'd never had to use the expansion set before. The Chriests and Joneses had only played a few times before, Gerry and I had taught them sometime in the past year. It was Buzz's first time playing, and he and Jean played as a team. The other players were Gerry, Lily, Miranda, Mary, and myself. Gerry won, just beating Mary by the fact that his turn came before hers. I'd like to get them all into played Cities and Knights of Catan, because I find that to be much more fun and interesting, but I know they will want to get more proficient at the basic game before learning the more involved one. All except Lily, who's played C&K with me once or twice, and really likes it. Matthew also prefers C&K, but he doesn't like playing with more than 2 or 3 players. He hasn't had the attention span for a long game. Maybe if I have him take his ADD meds on the weekends, when we play games, it would help him. I'll try that next time.
6.) We got a double bed for Lily from our friend Mary McQuade on Saturday morning, along with a couple of lamps, a small table, a large drafting table (her late father had gotten it at an auction, and I've wanted a drafting table for a long time!)and a small plant pedestal. There is more to come, but we need to wait until we clear room to take the other things she has for us - some bookcases, 2 recliner chairs, and a queen bed for Matthew. Meanwhile, Matthew is sleeping on 2 sleeping bags on the floor in his room, until the bed is available. I'm not sure if it's a queen or a full bed that Mary has for us - if it's a queen, he will have to have something else to add height - maybe John can make him a captain's bed, which would add some drawer space for him, so that would be nice.
7.) We moved our mattress into our 3rd floor bedroom and the mattress and box-spring and frame for Lily into her room Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately, our box spring (we have a queen bed) didn't fit up the stairs, so we had to toss it. Buzz had even tried cutting the bottom part of the box-spring in half (the bottom is wood, but the top is metal) and it still wouldn't fit up our staircase, so we're meanwhile just sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Maybe we can find a wooden platform on Freecycle. That would be FABULOUS. Or another queen mattress. It was also hard getting that up the stairs, but it folds some, which of course the box-spring didn't.
8.)I informed the landlord in writing of our intention to move out, gave them our new address for them to send out security deposit to, and paid the last month's rent.
9.) I cut up a LOT of 12 x 12" paper into 8 1/2 x 11" so they would fit in the Staples copy machine, then did a large print run some days back at Staples for the buttons I owe my friend Mary McQuade, and for GAFilk, which is next weekend (eep!), and just to have for stock in general.
10.)I had Gerry print off this morning the Dave Alway memorial buttons that Kira (whom I met at Confluence in Pittsburgh last July) kindly e-mailed me so I can make more of those buttons up to hand out at GAFilk - which is especially important to me because that was the last time anyone in fandom saw him before his untimely death last year right after that con.
11.) While I was cutting up the paper, I talked with my friend Jeannette, who lived right across the street from me in Lorton, VA. She is still living there. We spoke for probably over an hour. It was really nice getting to catch up on things in our lives. It had been way too long since we'd spoken to each other.
12.) The storage area (10 by 10 feet) is now emptied of all our stuff - I can't recall if I'd already mentioned that previously - it got done before the New Year started. Gerry's parents have been gradually moving boxes of the stuff at their place in his old room across the street to us, and Gerry's been moving the boxes of my books gradually up to our place on the third floor, and we have one small Freecycle bookcase up in our room.
13.) I started sorting my books into categories last night - OY! I've got 17 categories already - History, Politics, Sociology, Science, Literature, Art and Architecture, English Language, Healing, Organization, "How To", Science Fiction, Computers, Mythology, The Mind, Self-Improvement, Non-SF Novels, Humor.
14.) Gerry and I did a grocery store run to at least have a few things at the house to make for the next few days.
15.)We brought over a bunch of kitchen and bathroom stuff, including our shower attachment. I prefer to have a long hose and variable head shower, so I can use it to clean things that don't fit easily under the bathroom faucet. It's also useful because you can remove the shower head when you first turn the water up to the shower from the tub faucet, so you don't get a blast of cold water when you're starting out. Gerry likes baths better, and our new tub is SO much nicer than the one in the apartment. He changed out the shower heads last night. Oh - when we shower, the curtain doesn't "attack" us - I hated that about our apartment's shower. The curtain rod is inches closer to the tub than it is in the house, and every time I'd shower in the apartment, I'd have to tuck the bottom of the curtain up and "plaster" it to the tub top with water to keep it from touching me while I showered. Ick. We actually had bought a rod from Home Depot that has a nice outward curve in it to install in our apartment bathroom, and then - you guessed it - we never got around to installing it. I don't think it's really necessary in our new place. But we may do it eventually, just to give a bit of extra room.
I guess that's the main stuff that's gotten done.
I completed a number of things from my to-do list of January 3 in the last several days, plus other things as they came up. Some things are still pending, but will have to wait a bit.
1.) I set up the switchover from one home to the next for our gas and electric with BGE (Baltimore Gas and Electric). January we'll have to pay for both places.
2.) I set up budget billing and automatic bill payment with BGE too, while I was at it. I used to just pay all the bills by check, but I've gotten bad about keeping track of bills, so I've set up many of them to be paid automatically.
3.) I picked up 2 packs of photos from Wal-Mart :) I need to have someone help me set up the photo scanner I bought over a year ago now, so I can scan them into my computer. Since John bought me the digital camera in June 2005,I usually use my digital camera for my photos; that way I can easily get them uploaded to my computer and onto the smugmug website where I keep galleries of my photos, but lately the digital camera is acting funky and unreliable, so for my most recent photos I used a regular "disposable" camera.
4.) I arranged to switch to Vonage instead of Verizon for our phone service. in order to save some money on our local and long distance (we still will have Verizon for our DSL) - and our phone number is staying the same. We got the new box of Vonage stuff by UPS today, so I don't need to find the old one that the adapters came in to plug into the walls. I was planning to try and find the old box, which is buried in the bedroom somethere, but now that the new one's come, we'll just use that one and return the old one which I'd never opened. I was also going to move the stuff that's in FRONT of the walls so I could locate the places to plug the Vonage equipment in, but now that we've actually started living in the house, there's no need to plug anything into the walls in the apartment, but I do need to tell Vonage when we want to switch our phone service over to the house. Now I also need to get a jack installed in our bedroom, because there appears to only be one in the dining room, right outside the kitchen.
5.) We spent our first night in the new house on Saturday! It was kind of a spontaneous decision, because we found out we were getting Lily (Gerry's daughter) for the weekend, for the first time since September! Yay! I don't know exactly what was going through Linda's mind - maybe she is getting nervous about our upcoming court date on January 15. I had meant to write a long post about that situation a while ago, but never got around to it. Suffice it to say, we'd been kept from our regularly, COURT-ORDERED visitation with Lily for several months, and had to hire a lawyer to make sure that we got that situation straightened out. Maybe it's because of getting the house that Linda let her come stay with us. In any case, it was wonderful to see her. She and her cousin Miranda (Gerry's niece, his sister Mary's daughter) stayed over at Jean and Buzz's on Friday after our buffet dinner, and then at our place on Saturday, after a LONG 6 player game of Settlers of Catan at Jean and Buzz's. Jean was kind enough to make dinner for all of us since we hadn't gotten any food for the house yet at that point. Everyone except Matthew played. We'd never had to use the expansion set before. The Chriests and Joneses had only played a few times before, Gerry and I had taught them sometime in the past year. It was Buzz's first time playing, and he and Jean played as a team. The other players were Gerry, Lily, Miranda, Mary, and myself. Gerry won, just beating Mary by the fact that his turn came before hers. I'd like to get them all into played Cities and Knights of Catan, because I find that to be much more fun and interesting, but I know they will want to get more proficient at the basic game before learning the more involved one. All except Lily, who's played C&K with me once or twice, and really likes it. Matthew also prefers C&K, but he doesn't like playing with more than 2 or 3 players. He hasn't had the attention span for a long game. Maybe if I have him take his ADD meds on the weekends, when we play games, it would help him. I'll try that next time.
6.) We got a double bed for Lily from our friend Mary McQuade on Saturday morning, along with a couple of lamps, a small table, a large drafting table (her late father had gotten it at an auction, and I've wanted a drafting table for a long time!)and a small plant pedestal. There is more to come, but we need to wait until we clear room to take the other things she has for us - some bookcases, 2 recliner chairs, and a queen bed for Matthew. Meanwhile, Matthew is sleeping on 2 sleeping bags on the floor in his room, until the bed is available. I'm not sure if it's a queen or a full bed that Mary has for us - if it's a queen, he will have to have something else to add height - maybe John can make him a captain's bed, which would add some drawer space for him, so that would be nice.
7.) We moved our mattress into our 3rd floor bedroom and the mattress and box-spring and frame for Lily into her room Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately, our box spring (we have a queen bed) didn't fit up the stairs, so we had to toss it. Buzz had even tried cutting the bottom part of the box-spring in half (the bottom is wood, but the top is metal) and it still wouldn't fit up our staircase, so we're meanwhile just sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Maybe we can find a wooden platform on Freecycle. That would be FABULOUS. Or another queen mattress. It was also hard getting that up the stairs, but it folds some, which of course the box-spring didn't.
8.)I informed the landlord in writing of our intention to move out, gave them our new address for them to send out security deposit to, and paid the last month's rent.
9.) I cut up a LOT of 12 x 12" paper into 8 1/2 x 11" so they would fit in the Staples copy machine, then did a large print run some days back at Staples for the buttons I owe my friend Mary McQuade, and for GAFilk, which is next weekend (eep!), and just to have for stock in general.
10.)I had Gerry print off this morning the Dave Alway memorial buttons that Kira (whom I met at Confluence in Pittsburgh last July) kindly e-mailed me so I can make more of those buttons up to hand out at GAFilk - which is especially important to me because that was the last time anyone in fandom saw him before his untimely death last year right after that con.
11.) While I was cutting up the paper, I talked with my friend Jeannette, who lived right across the street from me in Lorton, VA. She is still living there. We spoke for probably over an hour. It was really nice getting to catch up on things in our lives. It had been way too long since we'd spoken to each other.
12.) The storage area (10 by 10 feet) is now emptied of all our stuff - I can't recall if I'd already mentioned that previously - it got done before the New Year started. Gerry's parents have been gradually moving boxes of the stuff at their place in his old room across the street to us, and Gerry's been moving the boxes of my books gradually up to our place on the third floor, and we have one small Freecycle bookcase up in our room.
13.) I started sorting my books into categories last night - OY! I've got 17 categories already - History, Politics, Sociology, Science, Literature, Art and Architecture, English Language, Healing, Organization, "How To", Science Fiction, Computers, Mythology, The Mind, Self-Improvement, Non-SF Novels, Humor.
14.) Gerry and I did a grocery store run to at least have a few things at the house to make for the next few days.
15.)We brought over a bunch of kitchen and bathroom stuff, including our shower attachment. I prefer to have a long hose and variable head shower, so I can use it to clean things that don't fit easily under the bathroom faucet. It's also useful because you can remove the shower head when you first turn the water up to the shower from the tub faucet, so you don't get a blast of cold water when you're starting out. Gerry likes baths better, and our new tub is SO much nicer than the one in the apartment. He changed out the shower heads last night. Oh - when we shower, the curtain doesn't "attack" us - I hated that about our apartment's shower. The curtain rod is inches closer to the tub than it is in the house, and every time I'd shower in the apartment, I'd have to tuck the bottom of the curtain up and "plaster" it to the tub top with water to keep it from touching me while I showered. Ick. We actually had bought a rod from Home Depot that has a nice outward curve in it to install in our apartment bathroom, and then - you guessed it - we never got around to installing it. I don't think it's really necessary in our new place. But we may do it eventually, just to give a bit of extra room.
I guess that's the main stuff that's gotten done.