We did it! I took on the biggest debt of my life (next to marrying Tim) today. The house is ours and it is beautiful. The floors are gorgeous, the back yard spacious and green, the seemingly unlimited amounts of space...and the work we have to do here in Chicago tonight to be ready for tomorrow morning so I can live in it.

Contrary to what everyone said we didn't have to sign that many papers. The whole process took 40 minutes.

Speaking of marrying Tim though, tomorrow is our fifth year anniversary. Here is hoping for fifty more (at least).

I guess it is pretty late and I have to work in...oh say about five hours, but I had a good time. I went to Nocturna with Xtian to listen to their new format. So, to be accurate, I should have said Noctronica. Which is cool because instead of playing goth ethereal for 75% of the time, they played industrial/electronic music for 75% of the time. MUCH better. It was like dmf except with booze and better ... well all around better atmosphere. I guess that isn't hard to accomplish though. :|

Xtian was about 30 min late meeting me, but the time just slipped by. So many weird ....thinky...type things happened this week. I have to process them. Usually this processing happens by talking to my sweet darling, but since he is gone I have to mull them over myself. Not that I mind. It gives me a chance to process them, and more importantly it gives me something to talk about with Tim on the long ride back to Madison tomorrow night. (he is driving here after work to pick my sorry ass up, and then drive BACK to Madison the same night). And yes. He is crazy.

Still. Today was hecktic "to the max". I had that phone interview with MATC followed by an exercise I was timed on and had to email back within a certain time frame. I have decided that since this is the fifth position like this that I have applied for...if i don't get it, then I am not going to pursue it anymore. While I am a good candidate ... always, I am never good enough. I think it is because I don't have have a Masters or seven years of actual experience (as opposed to my one year). The job btw, is basically a native American advisor/support person. I like the idea of this job, I like the idea that I could give back and contribute to others (as others have done for me), but I just think...it might not be right. As weird as that is to admit....it might not be right. I will take it as a sign from our heavenly lord and move on. To what? I don't know. I guess that is what this whole experience of moving and starting over is -- and adventure waiting to be unwrapped. I just hope that I will be able to recognize that door when it when it opens.

Ugh. I have a big zit on my chin. I *hate* those. It just made an appearance in the last couple of hours and I have feeling it will be like that old statement of visitors and fish.

Today I also got a the check for the down payment on the house. That is without a doubt the biggest amount of money I have ever had in my pocket at one time. I felt like I needed an armored vehicle to drive me home. I was glad that there was no problems in procuring it, despite me not doing any real financial mumbo jumbo since I have been married.

Tomorrow is my last day at Northwestern. I am going to miss it. They are going to have a party for me at 3:00. I will be tired... (as I am beginning to be now), but hopefully it will dull the sadness. I just wish I had something good to wear instead of Tim's lame Vampire the Masquerade T-Shirt and a skirt. What's worse is that he has two of them, and they are the ONLY two clean t-shirts left. I have a hard decision in front of me tomorrow.... either Malkavian or the straight up vampire (with a woman with big teeth on the front). And no doubt there is going to be someone taking pictures. Heh. I might be able to prevent that though. No one will remember since I am the one that usually takes the pictures. That reminds me though that I have to download the farewell party pics sometime tomorrow as well. I will do it while I am cleaning my computer.

Today was a ruff day. I drank more than I intended to do last night, and felt worse than I wanted to today. Why is it, that when you are feeling your worst all you can think about is what an idiot you were "drunk talking." What's worse is, the usual advice of "Oh don't worry about it, everyone was drinking," doesn't apply because my two victims don't drink. Ack.

So, the party went well, thanks to everyone that came out. We really appreciated it. I can't believe it went on until 4.00 in the morning. We got tons of packing and cleaning up done so that now the apartment is a little bit more managable. The sucky thing is I am running out of boxes. This packing up everything, absolutely everything, really sucks my box resource down. I have like five boxes left and some more packing to do. While it is the odd's and ends now, they add up...I am going to have to start bringing a box or two home on the train for the next two days. Either that or buy some and I HATE buying boxes.

I called my Mom tonight and had a chat. The first time in a long time. I feel bad for my brother Josh. I wish he would see some worth in himself and ... try.

Tim left late tonight. I bet he won't get back to Madison until like 1.30 or so. Poor darling. I miss him a lot right now. The distance is starting to take it's toll. I just want to be around my darling for unlimited amounts of time. To get a hug, a kiss or an 'i love you' whenver I want too. To just ..."be" with Tim. Only three more nights, including tonight.

I should go to bed. I am tired and didn't get much sleep last night or today.

Mischa stopped by while I was shooting some pool with Eric and Kate at Deliliah's.

I went to the Dr. today to take care of this "nose" thing. I am sick of it. She kept asking me if I was depressed and what medication I am on. I said no to both. I am not depressed and I am not taking ANY medication. None. Zilch. She didn't seem to believe it.

Anyway, I walked away with nose spray, free samples of Allegra and some acumen (penicillian). I hope it works, and I hope that is the real cause of my insomnia. I want to sleep. To sleep deeply and be recharged. I know it is a stressful time, but I honestly don't feel *that* stressed. Really. If any thing I am stressed because I am sick and because I am so tired and can't sleep.

On some good news, I got a call from the job at MATC! They wanted a real interview next Tuesday, but that is impossible. I suggested a telephone interview and they agreed. Yah! They also said that they were doing that for another out of state candidate, and then the second interview came around I wouldn't have any more issues with it. Cool. At least getting an interview makes me feel like I am not that big of a loser.

I think I am going to sneak out of here a tad early today. I am tired.

I finished Harry Potter ... just now. Huh. That ending was....well I guess an ending. Tim and I did a good dent in packing this weekend. I think we have all the boxes we are going to need for this little adventure. I have, counting today, eight days of work left.

Do you remember when you were young, the copious amounts of excitement that would course through your veins for special events? I remember burning with every fibre of my being, willing...willing my mother to let us go to the county fair. The ripe possibility of going and what I was going to do once I was there. Then the nights I couldn't sleep because of the fields trips to the Twin Cities Science Museum, the Minnesota Zoo, and Walker Art Museum. The one time I got to go Noah's Ark with Kinship folk (a big brother/sister type organization), camping for a week (Kinship), and horseback riding. I felt there was nothing more important than these exciting events and they were surely going to change my life because I was on the edge of experiencing supreme happiness. The possibility. The hope.

Since I have "grown up" I feel that the things that excitement me now, are actually things that make me nervous and stressed. Do I get excited? No, I get stressed. Do I get consumed with this boundless energy of fun opportunities for seemingly special events? No, not really. Maybe it is because I can do whatever I want now, and when you are young you don't have much experience, so EVERYTHING seems exciting. The last time I was really really really excited was an hour before I got married.

But. This house and moving, and leaving the job I like to a new city...is still on hold. But the dam is starting to break. The house is a very persuasive force. Trickles of ideas are starting to form. The master bedroom will be our den/office. The second bedroom, our room. The girls bedroom the guest room. Making new covers for the papasan and ottoman. Cleaning the gutters. The dog. The washer and dryer. Being able to jump and down in my living room for a long and loud as I want to. Being with Tim on a daily basis. Wondering if we will actually do something to commerate our fifth year anniversary (other than getting a house)...as in, where are we getting dinner. To have a clean slate....waiting for the future.

We made it level 8, and the terrain looks really cool.

Party Yo. I have the flyers, and sent the email to most of the emails I could scrounge together while at work. I know I missed Marty, and Katherine, but I just can't find the emails. Be kind enough to let them know and others I may have missed.

For lunch today I am going to meet Greg and we will go to Norris.
I decided to take tomorrow off to get some much needed work done and catch up with my personal time scale of what should be done by the end of this weekend. I need that damned house CLEAN or at the very least vacuumed, otherwise I am afraid that Matt will have a siezure upon entering (because of his cat allergy). Normally we have the cat hair under control thanks to swiffering and vacuuming, but as I have mentioned in previous posts it is just plain out of control right now.

I got a great letter from Texas Virginia yesterday, complete with a CD. I was tempted to burn one right back but I felt my obiligations to trying to clean up the bedroom and pack a couple boxes, and eventually read Harry Potter was stronger. I DID pack 5-7 boxes though.

Yeah, I need a day off, regardless of the guilt trip I get from a certain coworker. (wtf?)

I would start out by asking if anyone is really interested in my day to day babble...but I stopped myself because I know someone in Sweden is. Thank you swedish person.

The power must have went out yesterday because when I got home everything digital was wrong, including the phone. It sucks that I had to set the new message. Hearing my voice is not a favorite thing of mine, especially since we hardly ever answer the phone (most of the time it's telemarketer's).

Eric provided me with paper copies of the invitation. Yah! Now I can hand em out and feel like a promotor ... for myself? Eh, I won't think about that tiny aspect. I like to think of it as a party to see everyone Chicago (with two madison exceptions) one last time...together. It won't be the last time I see you (evil chuckle).

I got my hair dyed a dark brown. It looks good, but itches like hell. It was comforting to find out how many women out there have allergic reactions to hair dye, but continue to do it. I intended for that to be my last time, the brown I got is a tad darker than my orginal hair color...but as we all know, hair dye fades. Hopefully it will be a good blend. As for now, I think I look tons better. It's very cute. I also monitored the woman cut an inch off at the ends. They were really terrible looking, I had never had that problem before, but I guess that is what bleaching can do it. Ick.

My coworker lent me Harry Potter. I am a reading it now.

So, the person we thought we found to be my replacement didn't work out. It all came down to the reference check and that only one called back. Holly even called her to inform her of this and give her a chance to have word with her references (this after the number she put for two out of three, was the wrong number), but we haven't heard from her either. This is an obvious sign of disinterest, I think. Maybe her current job offered her more incentive? In any case, that is no way to interview.

Which means we are back to looking again. I feel bad for Holly because now she has only two weeks to find someone. I would stay longer but I did put in my resignation date, and..well, I won't be in the city anymore. We went through the maybe pile yesterday and weeded them out to more potentials, then Holly took the ones I did and weeded it down some more to seven with four of them being good. I think we are going employ phone interviews to acertain interest and skillz before bringing them in.

Last night was Stargate Monday. Woo. I love it.

I came into work late this morning (an hour and half) because I was awoken by the lightening IN my room, to go and shut the windows. It was scary how close it was. I had only one brave cat keep me company and that was Innzer. The other two bitches were no doubt cowering under the bed like the chicken shits they are. I am leaving at 5:00 today for an appointment too.

Tim and Laura are leaving Chicago...



... but before they go, we have to send them off in style.

Tim and Laura's Big, Bad-Ass Send Off
(AKA "Please leave quietly before the cops arrive")

1225 West Chase Ave, #B3
Chicago, IL 60626
9:30 PM
SATURDAY, July 26th

for more information email hadjare@wazika.net

BYOSAOD: bring your own snacks and/or drinks

[Special thanks to the Incredible Eric P for putting this together. It made me laugh for ten minutes straight.]

I put together a little montage of the house since I realize many of you didn't want to join snapfish. You can view it here: http://www.wazika.net/hadjare/tulane.htm

It was a mail BONE NAZ ZA yesterday! I got a letter from my Mom (she said that the clothes I sent DID fit..yah!), a letter package from Gale (newspaper clipping, book on how to handle stress --- as it says in the book apparently buying a house, moving and changing jobs (or losing one) can be stressors, some FB books and a letter. Cool. And then the strangest item of all, from Callie. A chain letter TYPE thing called a Panty swap. Apparently I am supposed to send this letter to six people moving my name and address to the second line, while the current second liner goes to the number one position. Then I sent it out. Oh, and since I got one I need to send the number one person a pair of new panties. Thus, when I send out the six, I will get six pairs? OR something. The math gets fuzzy.

Yes. You read that right. I am supposed to send it to six of my "most fun friends." Jen has already offered to be one of those "fun" friends, but I am wary of sending that off to pen pals. They might think me a tad bit strange for that one. I just need five more "fun" friends. Any volunteers?

So after that, I made a pizza and has some salad and watched Beyond Belief. When that was finished I fed the cats and laid down for a nap. I woke up five hours later at 12:30!!!! Yikes. I must have had some serious slept debt, because when I got up to use the bathroom room I was able to go back to sleep with only minimal tossing and turning. I half-heartedly packed one box ..mostly...because I felt guilty for not doing anything last night.

Tonight I will. I will write and pack at the same time.

Oy. The interviewee today said that he liked partying like four times in his interview. Um. Next? No, seriously though, I think we are going to go with the candidate we had on Monday, Miss Bridget.

First and foremost. Tim and I are having a "See-You-Later" party on Saturday, July 26th. The location is to be determined. Eric and I are going to has that out something this week. Either a bar, his place, my place or Mischa's place. At first I thought my place was a bad idea...but now that I think about it? We could do it my place. The house will be packed. The place will be vacuumed. ... hmm. If you know me, you are invited. If you know Tim, you are invited.

Damnit. I hate this new post thing. You even look at it crossways and it gets rid of your post. No looking back. Today I am annoyed. It's petty work stuff and I am not going to bore anyone with it, considering I just sent an email to Eric complaining about the whole thing any way and I am 94% sure he really doesn't give a shit. :)

Living alone, I can:

Go for a super long time without talking to anyone. It starts to get weird after while.

Use the bathroom with the door open.

Sleep in my underwear without getting harrased if this is a "Shirt or pants optional night."

Eat whatever/whenever I want. Which ends up to be not that much or that often.

Do whatever I want after work.

Live in a messy house and put off cleaning it until the next day. Wait....that happens anyway.

Catch up on my letters. Seriously catch up. Would you believe I am completely caught up right now? This is a prime time for a letter to come to me because I am going to SO totally write a good letter back. And yet my box remains empty.

Busy morning for me. I am getting all the things I need done...done. I am on top of things. It's nice to do once in awhile. Makes me look like I am superhero or something.

Fourth of July was a blast! We went to Summerfest in Milwaukee WI, and had ...well a ton of fun. We hung out with Brother in law Ben and his roommate, and later were joined by his other brother Phil, and two other friends of theirs. At the end of the night we had taken over a picnic table and was dancing to techno music (crystal method). It was by the end of the lake, a cool breeze, tons of energy, fireworks displays in the the distance, and plenty of booze in all of us to make the time very enjoyable. Later that night I had a strange occurence in which I slept walked! You will have to ask Tim for details on this one, as he was the sole witness. It was his first time ever seeing me do it. TO be quite honest I don't think I have sleptwalked since I was last really ill.

I think when I broke my back I would have sleptwalked a lot except I was bed-ridden. Apparently all day drinking and then being woken up on the middle of the night can induce that.

We drove back on Saturday and stopped by the Dairyland Greyhound Track. We got there just at the first half of the races finished. The next showing wasn't going to be for three hours, but we decided to have a look around anyway. Entrance fee was a buck. On the second floor there was a respectable showing of off track wager's urging their horse on through the magical powers of swear words and smoking. After awhile we decided to leave and come back at a time closer to the races having just passed the hardest part....getting there and walking in as total dog racing newbies.

We got home to even more cat hair than I remember. I think it's the heat combined with the stress of moving (boxes everywhere, landscape of the house changing -- cats don't like change in the least bit). In any case it is EVERYWHERE! I brushed them all ton and when I pet them this morning they were still shedding like crazy. You open a door in our apartment and cat fur bunnies fly. I think toight I am going to have to stop packing for a moment and vacuum the hell out of the place. We also picked up a powerball ticket on the way home. Of course, as you may have already heard, we didn't win.

Sunday Tim and I did errands, packed up stuff up and he headed out to start our new adventure.

This morning I did something dumb. I woke up really hot and turned on the air conditioner. It didn't seem to work that well, and two hours laters on my third snooze I figured out why. I had the window right next to it wide open. :| I don't function really well when I have half asleep.

Tim left today. The rain was imminently on the horizon. I drank a high life and watched the Majestic on HBO. Now I am writing email and printing out a letter or two while packing and listening to music. I always stay up too late the first night he is gone. Rather, my sleep schedule in general gets pretty messed up. Sleeping early and long, late and tired etc. etc.

There is a lot of packing to do. Using movers means you have to box things like the microwave, lamps, the vcr, wooden boxes, that makes everything so much more complicated. Good thing I should be able to get a lot of boxes at work this next week as two labs are moving two buildings away. I can't use them of course until Tim picks them up from work on the weekend.

I wish I would get some mail. :( Hell, I would even take Email at this point.

Man it took me a lousy five minutes to go through my morning routine this morning. Friends. I am really disappointed in your lack of presence. Tsk Tsk.

I went to Dunkin Donuts this morning to get some donuts for my office mates because today is my Friday (I took off tomorrow to have a long weekend). Anyway, while I was in line I heard someone with an english accent order an extra large coffee. I thought for a moment it was Bob Lamb and his ego, but when I turned I was pleasantly surprised to see James (from Willougby). He and Jerry came out and said Hi to Tim and exchanged a few words. The most interesting of which was that Eric sold his truck to Andrew for a dollar and a case of beer!

Tim summed it up nicely "That is so Texas"

Hello.

How are you? I am doing fine.

Today is a nice day, beautiful weather. I picked up keys on the way to work today and enjoyed a 30 minute walk in the sunshine and manicured lawns with roses all a bloom. Today we are going to interview three people, (anyone one of them by the looks of their cv and resume could fill my position perfectly). We culled five "yes's" out of a pile of 80 resumes. It wasn't too hard to find them, although the pile of "maybe's" is 15-20. I hope one of them work out. I am still not sure how I feel about being replaced yet. :( I like the authority and responsiblity. I really should have gone into law enforcement.

Fucking A. I am so angry. Why?

eagle1864: hey there
eagle1864: what's new
skatured: Moving to Madison
skatured: :)
eagle1864: oh yeah
eagle1864: right now
skatured: No. Tim is moving there on Sunday and staying with a friend for a couple weeks until the end of the month
eagle1864: oh yeah
eagle1864: and ur staying in chicago
skatured: yeah, until the end of July
eagle1864: u guys find a place or will he be looking
eagle1864: u at work
eagle1864: u still there
skatured: yeah sorry
skatured: I am at work.
skatured: We did find a place. We are buying a house. Three bedroom, hardwood floor, big fenced in backyard
skatured: ranch, with partially finished basement
eagle1864: how much is that gonna cost
skatured: It's my problem. Not all of us are given houses
eagle1864: ain't some one being alittle shitty
eagle1864: talk to u later then when ur in a better mood
skatured: Asking how much it is going to cost is being a little nosy
eagle1864: not really
skatured: yes it is
eagle1864: conversation
skatured: I don't ask yo uhow much stuff is going to cost
skatured: I am tired of constantly being judged on money
eagle1864: i'm not judgeing ur asuming
eagle1864: gotta go,ur acting to white for me
skatured: see
skatured: You judge


Admittedly I was a little defensive...but that is only because I know my brother well. Might I remind you that he is the one that thought he offer to SELL me the the house that given to him last year by my dead grandmother.