Monday, December 31, 2007

A New Year

I wish I could say going into 2008 that this is going to be our year. While I am sure in many ways it will be great, we will also be facing some crappy situation with the apartment house; whether it be a shortsale or foreclosure. It seems for the past 3 years that I have been saying, 'this year will be better', and while perhaps there have been slight improvements with each new year, I am aching for a GOOD year.
The good news is come the end of January 2008, I will have paid off all of my medical bills and my car. I can only hope and pray that by freeing up the cash from these payments and snowballing them into my credit card debt that I will come out ahead. Unfortunately, $150 of that extra cash is already being eaten up by my student loans which come back out of deferment this month.

Anyways, my goals for 2008 are:

1. Get my butt in gear planning the wedding and make it happen no later then October 2008.

2. Reduce my current credit card debt by 50% (I'm not giving an actual figure because it is embarrassing) by the end of 2008.

3. Refinance our house.

4. Build our saving up to at least $1000 (30% there now).

5. Get some type of flooring down in the living room (sooner than later).

6. Finish the 2 classes I need for teaching.

7. Apply to nursing school.

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Planning a Wedding....

Sucks. Just kidding. Sort of. I am overwhelmed and frustruated and haven;t even begun. I can't even choose what state to have it in. My family is all in CT and T's family is all in Maine, so maine, new hampshire, or connecticut are the main contenders. We've only really gone to look at one place so far, we really liked it, but the dates we would like are completely booked. It is also in a bit of an odd location, making lodging accomodations a bit trickey for everyone. So this one was pretty much ruled out.





It is called Castle in the Sky and was really beautiful. We were there on October 29th. It was chilly and just past peak foliage. An ideal wedding there would have been the first week of October, but they are all booked for their Sept and Oct Saturdays.


















Next contender is the Bedford Village Inn. We still have to look at this one and I am not sure where the ceremony would be. I just like the silos and the maybe looks of the reception hall. Sorry about the crappy images on this one. They are off the website.









Then there is the Barn at Outlook Farm. This one we really like for the recption hall. I love the post and beam look. Again, not so sure about where the ceremony would be. I think Saturday is the day we are finally going to go look at this one in person. We keep putting it off but have got to get our butts in gear. Couln't find any good pics. Go to the website to see this one.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

First Alert


Over the last few weeks, our house has become smokier and smokier everytime we had the woodstove crancking. First it was just super smokey when you opened the door to add wood. Smoke would bellow out at you. We figured it was just a draft issue. Then smoke started seeping out of the connections between the stove pipes.In the last few days, smoke has been coming out of the cracks in the stone wall behind the wood stove. I would guess the 3 day migrane I had going for me had something to do with all of the smoke.
Today we decided it was time to finally replace the stove pipe and see if it would help the situation. Tony removed the old pipes, and holy shit.... where they bad. I literally had an anxiety attack and had to go outside for some fresh air. The pipes were a chimney fire just waiting to happen.
Mom made me pick up a CO2 detector today. We got one and it is all plugged in. New pipes are in place and all seems well. I am sure my Dad is shaking his head reading this. He is not a fan of fire and would get mad at me when i was a teenager for burning incense in my room. I think this was worse than burning incense.
So the old stove is smoke free. Next i think i want to find some stove blackening to refinish the ugly thing.
Good news is we were able to find some seasoned hardwood and we have 2 cords waiting for us to pick up. Looks like we will at least stay warm this winter.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Bathroom Changes

The wall in front of the washing machine and water tank is never right. It has been changed 3 or 4 times now by us, but hopefully this will be the last change for a while. We put up an actual door to access the washer and dryer and we will be putting in some type of removable shelving unit in front of the on demand water heater and tank.



The Return of Big


Biggies home. Thank God. I went out calling for her again and got no response. So i went upstairs to look out the back window (spotlights light up the backyard pretty good) and there she was, running towards the house from the pond. I went out onto the screened porch (where they can come in) and could hear her meowing as she ran in to me. Poor Big was shaking and her little butt was all icy, but she is home. I couldn't get a picture because my camera is dead (again), but the pic up top is mone of my favorites of our littlest cat, Biggie.

Biggie Bottoms


Still waiting on Biggie. I don't know how am I going to sleep if she is still out there. This sucks.

Storm Kitty




The snow is piling up outside. Biggie went out at 6 this morning and still hasn't come home. She is usually back by 8, especially in snowy weather. It is almost 2pm now. I went out looking for her. The snow is up to my knees. I can't see her having an easy time getting back to the house in this stuff. I put on snowshoes and walked all the way to the side road, looped around to the pond, over to the pipeline, and back to the house. I saw what looked like tracks, but they led in circles and didn't look very fresh. At least my trails from the snow shoes will give her a path to get back to the house. Normally the garage door is left open a crack for them to go in there, but it didn't seem to be open enough this morning for her to have gone in. We just sent monkey out on a recognizance mission to hopefully track down bigstuff.
I need to get back to cleaning the house. I haven't done anything all day in here. I did manage to make some blueberry muffins but they didn't come out as good as they normally do.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Storms coming

They are predicting a big storm to hit tonite and tomorrow. I have heard all different predictions, some saying up to 2 feet, some saying 8-12, some say all snow, some say sleet and rain. While I really don't want any type of storm right now (except for the fact of a snow day), I espically don't want an ice storm. I enjoy having electricity thank you.
Meanwhile on the homestead, I have been working all morning, cleaning and rearraging the house. There is WAY too much crap in here for me to get what I want done. We still have piles of Earl's stuff to get rid of plus extra furniture pieces that we need to move out to the garage. I moved our computers out to the main room. The living room just doesn't get warm in the winter and we both spend a lot of time on the puters so we should be nice and cosey by the wood stove....for about 3 days or so until we run out of dry wood. We are desperately trying to track seasoned hardwood down but there has been a big demand this year and the while state is having a shortage. Super.

Still no xmas tree or wreath but i did manage to string up some lights on the spiral staircase. I will add more pictures later as once again i need to change the batteries in my camera.
cleanish side

messy side

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Post

Well, Earls apartment is offically ALMOST done. I didn't take any pictures while we were there yesterday, mostly because I am so over it. I think the black footprints that got tracked on the new rug I just installed and the green stain on the new vinyl in the middle of the bathroom floor pushed me over the edge. Anyways, the new tenant is in, and believe it or not she has expressed some interest in maybe purchasing the apartment house. I certainly don't have my hopes up though. In other EXCELLENT apartment house news, it seems one of the boilers has died and the upstairs apartment is only getting heat in the front half. SUPER.



I had my doctors appointment the other day. I feel like I have been there every week for the last month. They removed more skin around a mole that had a bad biopsy. They also took a third mole off my back. The big one.


We got a lot of snow last weekend and I am already ready for it to all melt. Our wood pile is looking dismal, and my latest call to buy more dry wood turned up empty handed. I am getting worried. It has been all over the news up here that everyone is out of seasoned firewood. We only have enough to get us through a couple more weeks if we are lucky. The bunnies waterbottles are freezing up. I have to dethaw once in the morning and once at night. The chickens haven't come out of the coop all week. They have stopped laying as well so I put the light back up in the coop in hopes to get them going. I had to buy eggs at the store the other day. Something I haven't had to do in over a year. Once you have fresh eggs the grocery store eggs just seem and look so wrong. Today I get to spend cleaning house. It has been so neglected due to our weekly trips out to Bath. Its bad. Really bad.

Monday, December 03, 2007

Making Progress at Earls

Tore up bedroom rug, living rug, ripped out bathroom floor. Clean hardwood floors in bedroom and paint walls and wood work white. Touch up ceiling paint. Fill in gaps in living room floor and lay down new rug. Paint living and kitchen walls and trim. New bathroom subfloor, lay vinyl, new shower ( which we had to take a window out to get it in the building), new lights, paint walls and trim. Clean kitchen. New fridge. ......Almost done.