Our house, in the middle of our street!
Well, I guess it's been over a month since I posted. Wow. Sorry about that. We're now firmly ensconced in our new home. Here are highlights of the things we have done since we took possession of it in late April:

• Packed up our old apartment, cleaned, and painted the bedroom walls with primer.


• Hired movers for the first time, and man, was it worth it!


• Got our deposit back even though we left our lease early. Booyah!


• Painted the living room, dining room, and one bedroom of our house. This may sound easy, but it was a huge mess of second-guessing, frustration, more trips to the paint store, cursing, sighing, and so on. But I think it looks good now.


• Five (maybe six?) trips to IKEA. Four of them were in one week. We dropped what seems to me to be an obscene amount of money there, buying a new dining table, bedroom suite, patio furniture, A/V furniture, desk, chair, ottoman, side tables, buffet, shelves, lamps... oh, the list goes on. Yet we spent about what we would have if we bought just one bedroom suite at a "real" furniture store. Yay for Sweden!


• Bought a new TV and mounted that bastard on the wall ourselves.


• Spent too much time at places like Lowe's and Home Depot. Yeah, I guess we're those people now.


• Hired a guy named Jesus to build our hotrod mow our lawn.


• Jinxed ourselves by saying "well, the dining room is finished!"... only to have a giant framed poster crash to the floor seconds later.


• Learned the importance of using a stud finder to hang things on the wall (see above.


• Purchased more tools, including a fantastic cordless drill/screwdriver, which is my new favorite toy, and the abovementioned stud finder.


• Planted some grass in bare patches in our lawn... finally, we are getting little seedlings coming up. Guess how long it took us at Lowe's to determine what kind of grass and fertilizer to use? 30 minutes or so. We have got to get better at making quick decisions.


• Developed a horrific ulcer in the stomach (just me - Victor is in perfect health). Welcome to how my body likes to deal with stress! Hooray for Vicodin and Nexium. And walk-in urgent care clinics that are open on the weekends.

So far, it's been a bit of a wild ride. We had our first houseguests, Mark and Ryan, a couple of weeks ago. The house was mostly finished, and they said they liked it a lot. Ryan, Victor, and I went to see Body Worlds, which we all found interesting. Mark watched a movie while we were there. We had a great time later that night, after Mark and Victor put together our new grill (thanks, guys!). We ate hamburgers and sang along with Mark's iTunes DJing until the wee hours of the morning.

Work has been extremely busy as well, but things should slow down soon. I'm looking forward to that.

Last Friday night we saw Morrissey play at the Palladium Ballroom. It was a good show, and the venue was nice. We didn't get in line early, because there was a torrential downpour going on, but we still managed to get pretty close to the stage even though we showed up after the opening band had already started. We went to my cousin's wedding on Saturday, only we missed the wedding because flights were full in the morning. We made it to the reception though. What is it about weddings in Illinois that always makes us miss the actual wedding??? It was great seeing family again, including my grandma, who I hadn't seen in four or five years.

So yeah, we've been a bit busy. But things have calmed down now at home, so maybe I'll post again before another month rolls by!