In which a frustrating and embarrassing situation all works out in the end - kinda

My sister-in-law does amazing things with coupons.  She's constantly giving away stuff that she got free or freakishly inexpensive because she had a coupon. 

Me?  I can barely drag myself to the store to get food, let alone plan ahead enough to hunt down coupons!  I mean, I like saving money, but I just can't build up any enthusiasm about the whole process.

My version of coupon-searching is looking at the Kroger website prior to going shopping, and downloading some coupons onto my card.  If I'm feeling majorly ambitious, I'll head over to the Kroger (and maybe Publix) websites and look at their weekly ads.

Just so I'm buying seasonal stuff, of course.  After all, can't expect Easter Eggs when they're selling Halloween candy.

Yesterday evening I went to the store with a mission.  I had at least $10 worth of coupons, and between that plus what was on sale at Kroger, I was looking forward to spending and saving some money.  (That, and we had no food in the house.)

I spent about an hour and a half wandering Kroger, meticulously crossing things off my list, marking things that I'd have to go to Publix to get, and making triple sure that the items I was getting matched the coupons.  Finally, exhausted, I headed to the checkout.

The lady rang up my groceries.  I reached in my bag ...

to find no wallet.  No ID, no credit card, nothing.  I did have my checkbook, but without my ID, it would do me no good.

I was so utterly embarrassed.

The checkout lady (a very nice lady named Marie) kindly told me that she'd keep the cart in the cooler for me, so that I could go look for my ID.  I thanked her, and left the store, wondering frantically where my wallet was!

Well, it wasn't in the car.  And it wasn't at home.  John got home about an hour or so later, and we found it in his car, but by that point, it was so late that there was no point in going back to the store.

I almost forgot about it ... until I went looking for a bedtime snack, and remembered why I'd gone to the store in the first place.

The worse thing?  I lost all those coupons.

Little Bits of Drama

Here are some small dramas that are happening right now.
My Work:
I'm in the middle of a company merger/consolidation.  Thankfully I have a job afterwards, but that's not the case for everyone.  I'm working with various committees to make sure everything transitions smoothly; which I honestly enjoy since I like knowing the details behind things.  But that's not the drama.

The drama is that one side of the company (the one I'm on) backed out of a planned joint event at the last moment, and now the other side is offended.  The people on my side are frustrated and annoyed because the other side keeps harping on it, while the people on the other side hasn't been directly told why my side backed out.  I'm in the middle, attempting mediation.  I managed to get our side calm enough to agree to address the issue calmly at the next meeting.  Let's hope the other side can react in a similar fashion.  This particular drama has been going on too long.

UPDATE:  Another situation exactly like this has just landed on my desk.  Argh!  We haven't finished cleaning up the last one!

John's School:
Most of John's classmates are amazing.  Very intelligent people from all over the world, who have also been kind enough to "adopt" me into their group.  The fact that I make them cookies doesn't hurt!

But some of his classmates are causing trouble in the lectures.  Some don't show up to lecture at all, even though there is a strict attendance policy (3 absences = failure).  Others spend the lecture interrupting the professor with stupid questions.  For instance, the professor explains a picture on the powerpoint.  The student raises their hand and asks, "Can you explain that picture?"  Not even exaggerating.  That happened.

This seems apt.

Those questions mean that the professor can't cover everything the professor needs to cover for the test.  Those same students have been known to raise their hand and say, "Excuse me, professor, but class ends in 5 minutes.  Can you just tell us what will be on the test?"  AFTER they had spent the whole two hours interrupting with stupid questions so that the professor got behind.

John's Labs:
John is in his second lab rotation, and although he says it's a good lab, he doesn't think it's a good fit for him.  We've been having an on/off discussion over the past few days about what he wants and expects out of  a lab.  For some reason, even though we were talking, we weren't communicating, and both of us were getting frustrated with the other one. 

Thankfully, we finally had a breakthrough last night and were able to talk it out.  We're good now.


On a completely different note, John and I decided that I need to try various types of tea.  The only tea I've ever tried is the tea made in the south, and I do not like it at all.  It tastes and feels like flavored water, and often leaves a bitter aftertaste.

I do like Chai tea, but can't drink that all the time due to how many calories are in it.  (But if I could, I would.  So good!)

So, probably starting soon I'll be trying various types of tea to decide if there is a tea out there I can drink.  I wonder if there is a place nearby where I could get samples...

We Bought a House - Part Three

So, where were we?

We put an offer on the house the first week in May, with a closing date of May 24th - which just happened to be our 4th wedding anniversary!  Obviously it was meant to be!

Various drama abounded throughout the month ... after approving and entering into the contract, the seller became angry at her realtor for "letting her sell so low".  I worked on projects at work that required 60+ hours a week for two weeks, as well as tried to pack up the house and clean it and get ready to move!

John spent the month working his summer job, which changed from 20 hours a week afternoons to 50 hours a week days and weekends, as well as juggling finances to deal with the last minute costs of moving and the down payment.

But the biggest headache/project, was figuring out the flooring for the house.  Because they were not allowed to sell the house without flooring, the contract stipulated that we would receive $5000 to get flooring installed.  After much discussion with the banks, and countless hours at Lowes (we got to know the guys in the flooring department really  well.  They're awesome, by the way!), we decided to have laminate installed throughout the house, with carpet in the bedrooms.  There was a very cheap linoleum already in the bathrooms, so we'd leave that as is, and at a later date install tile.

The problem all came down to timing.  We couldn't get the money to pay for everything until the closing - but Lowe's couldn't order the laminate that we needed until they were paid.  The flooring had to be installed within a week of the closing, but Lowe's delivery time was about 2-3 weeks.  It wasn't happening.

John brought up the idea of Lumber Liquidators for the laminate; they had a store that he passed on the way to work.  We went over there, and they were happy to work with us.  We ended up putting all the laminate on a credit card, and then getting re-imbursed by the bank at the closing.  

We had also received permission to install the flooring ourselves - saving on the installation costs, and allowing us to get a higher quality flooring.  Between the carpet from Lowe's and the laminate from Lumber Liquidators, we spent the entire $5000.  

We closed late afternoon on Thursday, May 24th.  John wasn't able to get off work, so I went to the closing by myself, armed with my cell phone and my in-laws phone number.  (John's parents love working with real estate, and have bought and sold numerous houses.  They were super helpful giving advice throughout the whole process!).  I even called John's mom at one point during the closing because I got confused, and she was able to explain things to me much better than the lawyer.

So, we got the best anniversary gift ever!  A new house!

And immediately went to work.  We had a deadline to get the flooring in!

We spent Thursday and Friday evenings cleaning and sealing the floors throughout the house.  John's dad came to visit for a few hours on Saturday, and he showed us how to install the laminate.  My brother came for a few days to help us, and we spent the next 5 days working like crazy to get the laminate installed.  Lowe's came and installed the carpeting about half-way through the process.  

Ready for some pictures? 

Doesn't the laminate look nice?  Throughout most of the house, John did all the cutting with the saw, and I did most all the actual placement and installation.  My brother helped for a few days, and John did some installation in the trickiest parts.

We chose "Blacksburg Barn Board" as our laminate.  It's gorgeous!

The hardest part, I think was getting started.  We didn't really know what we were doing at first, and the fireplace tiles were interesting to work around.

Looking into the dining room.

We set up the table saw in the front bedroom instead of the garage to save the air conditioner.  It was already 90+ degrees outside - we saw no reason to air condition the garage!

We still had a long way to go.  You can see my brother in the top left.

Here is a shot after about the third night of hard work.  It's a bit hard to see, but the corner on the left goes into the Master Bedroom, and is a triangular shaped nook.  That plus the doorway made cutting the pieces to size a bit tricky.  I was so proud of John when he figured it out!

We're making progress!

Most evenings we brought Honey with us.  Since we were working like crazy, we hated the thought of her being home alone in the evenings as well as the days.  Plus, this gave her a chance to get used to the new house.  Of course, she wasn't too sure about the whole thing.

With no furniture, there's no place for me to hide from the loud table saw.
Except outside, but I don't want to go there in case you leave me.

She wasn't quite sure what to make of all this.  Whenever we stayed late working and she got tired (SHE got tired, lol), she'd go hide in a closet where it was dark and take a nap.  Several nights I had to go find her so we could go home.

Can we go home now?  It's bedtime.

It took John forever to figure out the closets.  I'm still not sure why, but for some reason it was complicated.  The fact that this was our 4th night of hard work and we were exhausted didn't help, I'm sure.

Almost there!  You can see the carpet has been installed by now, too!

With the carpet, we also purchased a new fridge and dishwasher at Lowe's.  John wanted to buy me a new stove instead of a new dishwasher, but I refused.  I can learn how to cook on an old stove as long as it works.  But I want a good dishwasher - the one in the other house had been annoying me since we got it.

Thankfully, he agreed.  And after a great deal of bleach and elbow grease, the old stove works just fine.

We left the linoleum by the garage door and laundry room, and will tile that later.  

I had to include this shot.  This was just after we'd put the last piece of laminate in.  It was 1 am, and we were so exhausted we could hardly drive home.  We still needed to do all the thresholds and put the baseboards back up.  And clean and actually move.  But the floor was in!

Hooray!!  I think we went to Sonic on the way home to get some celebratory milkshakes!

And finally:  some finished shots:

Looking toward the front door, with Honey

The front door, all finished

Looking toward the kitchen and eating area.

Even with just the floors done, the house was so much nicer!  Next up:  We're finally moving in!!

In which I have to choose between posting something mediocre or not posting anything. Guess which one I choose.

I have nothing really to say today.

John is starting his new lab today ... he was a bit concerned this weekend because he hadn't heard from the PI in the lab, and thought that maybe the PI had double-booked students.  I haven't heard from John today except for a brief email saying he didn't know when he'd be done.  So, he's in lab somewhere!

I spent the weekend baking and baking and walking and baking.  Silly me couldn't for the life of me remember whether I normally follow the recipe for sugar cookies and use powdered sugar, or regular sugar.  So I used regular sugar.  Mistake.  They still taste good, but they aren't amazing.  I'm still a bit upset about it.

Not enough to remake the 60 cookies sitting in my freezer, though.

Saturday we went to the local park and took Honey for a walk - we walked about four miles.  Then Sunday evening we met up with one of John's classmates and his girlfriend and their dog, and all went for another walk for about 2 miles.  It was one of those situations where we really shouldn't have gone because both John and I had stuff to get done before Monday ... but we didn't want to push off the relationship that we're trying to build.

Of course, they might completely shun us after John brought up politics.  But, probably not.  Hopefully not.

I am thinking and writing in very choppy, incomplete sentences today.  I think it's because today's Monday.  Or the fact that I'm only now getting caffeine into my system.

Oops

Just a quick note to say that John came home and announced that he'd read the calendar wrong.  The GSO needs all those cookies next weekend, not tomorrow.

Sigh.

I just packaged all the cookie dough up and stuck it in the freezer.  Guess what we're doing next Friday?

Rambling at the end of the week

We made 60 sugar cookies last night ... well, we almost made 60 cookies.  They are currently chilling in the fridge, and still need to be baked in the oven.  Besides my brief panic attack that the recipe called for powdered sugar instead of regular sugar like I had thought ... it went well.  I'll make another few batches tonight while baking.  I did take some pictures - but my camera battery died before I could finish.  It's charging now.

Today is John's last day in his first lab rotation, and they're taking him out to some Italian place downtown for lunch.  Neither one of us have been there before, so he'll have to scout it out and see if we should go there together sometime.  We were talking about the lab and his experiences in the lab.  Yes, it was a good lab, and he could work in that lab.  But, rules or no, English is not the main language in that lab.  Even in the three weeks he was there, he'd come home frustrated because he'd made a mistake because he didn't understand what someone told him.  He doesn't need that additional barrier for the next 4-5 years.

He's super excited about his next lab - I think it's diabetes research - and from what he's heard, this lab will work him a lot harder than the first one.  On the one hand, this is good; he's been a bit bored lately.  On the other, he probably won't be able to get as much studying done during the afternoon, and will have to study more in the evenings.

I've been trying to find a good podcast to listen to while at work.  For some reason, I haven't really wanted to listen to music lately.  Let me just say ... Itunes is not user friendly at all when it comes to podcasts.  It's impossible to peruse or find ratings easily.

Either that, or I'm completely useless when it comes to Itunes.

I'm looking forward to the weekend.  Baking makes me happy.  Happier than cooking, anyway.  It's nice to have something really good as a result of your efforts.

Let's get ready to .... bake!

It's Cookie Time!!!

Actually, John and I are going to be spending the next few days baking as many cookies as we can.  John volunteered me to bake 4 dozen cookies for a GSO event on Saturday (the Graduate Student Organization Fall Festival), and then signed me up to bring something to a luncheon at church on Sunday.  Monday, we're having a lunch party at work to celebrate Boss's day and two office birthdays for the month of October.

So ... Cookies for everyone!

Yesterday I picked up some ingredients and handy tools to help us make a bunch of cookies - like a cookie cooling rack.  I'd been using the rack from my toaster oven, but that's not really ideal.  I also tried to find some cookie cutters, but either Publix doesn't stock cookie cutters or I was looking in all the wrong places.  Maybe I can get John to run to the drugstore to pick some up.

Since John is the one that volunteered me - I've roped him into helping me bake.  Tonight we're going to make up a whole bunch of cookie batter to chill overnight.  Friday night we're going to actually bake everything, and possibly create more batter.

Thankfully we don't have to decorate the cookies - the whole point is to have cookies for people to decorate at the fair.

I'm super excited.  I will try to remember to take pictures so that I can post pictures with the recipe.