The Cure for Boredom is Curiosity.

House in escrow. Woo Hoo! We close January 5th. Woo Hoo!

Now if we can just get the post office to deliver our mail here and not there. Our realtor discovered a mail tub full of our mail sitting on the back porch. The US Postal Service sucks.

We've been house hunting today. Found one that we really thought about putting a bid on until our realtor called and the sellers had just accepted another bid. *sigh* It was a really good house too. Oh well, if it's meant to be the current deal will fall through on it.

And now for those with dirty minds.

Your Drag Queen Name Is:

Ophelia Cox

I'm sitting here at the computer thinking that I should go back to bed. I'm up now, so now sleepy-bye for me.

No news on an offer yet. Our realtor called around 7:30 last night to say that it was rather late if their realtor wanted to present an offer so she expected an answer/offer this morning. So I'm waiting on pins and needles with the next question being "is there anyway that this can fall through?" assuming we accept the offer.

We've found a house in Seattle that Ronette wanted to buy last week. OK, make that two weeks ago. But we're waiting on our house to sell. Which is probably a good thing because Ronette did a trial go-to-work run last week. 45 minutes to get from Seattle to Redmond. She wasn't extremely ecstatic about that, but it's better than the 1 1/2 that she had heard from several people. Then the big wind storm last week that has knocked out everyone's power happened. That's when everyone tells the real story on commute times. For weeks the party-line has been "45 minutes is average, you just have to watch for baseball games and concerts because they make the trek a little longer". Of course this is also dependent of what area of Seattle you live in, some places have better commute times than others. Then the storm. And everyone starts owning up to their two hour commute in the evening. (!!!!!!) Crazy!

Now we're looking on the eastside as well. The whole point of moving up here was being able to actually spend time together rather than Ronette commuting most of the week. Of course we started our preliminary searching at 3:30 in the afternoon while most of the eastside is still without power. It makes it difficult to find houses 1) in the dark, 2) with trees fallen down, 3) roads closed and 4) most missing their For Sale signs.

There is still traffic though, which is a bit of a wake-up call. San Francisco is bad, but I think Seattle may be worse. We had appointments for the eye doctor at 5:30/5:45 last night. Two miles away, we left at 5 and walked in right at 5:45. Two fricking miles! So I get to go back this afternoon. I'm hoping that part of the problem out here right now is everyone Christmas shopping. I think everyone went to the mall last night and took two cars for every two people. Crazy traffic.

Guess I'll go eat breakfast now and start on my projects.

Nothing much going on here. I thought I'd just come around and post a few things.

No offers on the house yet. That's a boo! I'm hopeful for next week though. *fingers crossed* This should be a link to the listing

Still house hunting here. And we'll start car shopping this weekend. That's exciting but yucky because I don't want another car payment. However Ronette is worried because we only have one car and Seattle doesn't have public transportation the same way that San Francisco does. Really, she's worried. I've driven her to work because I might need the car. It's raining cats and dogs. I'm not going anywhere if I don't have to go.

We've got turkey day plans with our friends John and Carl. Which is nice because I don't have to cook, but a little frightening because there is a good possibility of extremely zesty, I don't know who could eat it, cranberry sauce/relish concoction that tastes like ass. Bad cranberry sauce can ruin Thanksgiving. I'll look forward to the food adventure because knowing Carl he'll have at least two dishes that he "just had to try this year".

We're going to Florida at Christmas to see Ronette's side of the family. Thank goodness we're staying with her dad. Her mom is actually asking for Christmas lists this year. It's a good thing because this means not receiving anything that will go into a Goodwill bag as soon as we get home. The best part this year is that her sister is pregnant with baby #2 and her brother just eloped which means we're out of the spotlight.

UPS delivered the mysterious rifle to our friend Donald and he has gotten some time to research it's history.

What Donald knows so far - It is a true M.1888/90 Mannlicher, not an M.1888 or M.1888 converted to M.1888/90 standards. It was made in 1891 in what is now Steyr, Austria and proofed/accepted into the Austria-Hungarian Imperial Army in Vienna. There were about 350,000 M.1888 variants built, and most of them stayed in Austria-Hungarian service until 1917. Many, but not all, of the smaller countries that succeeded the Empire replaced it with more modern rifles. There are no other European marking visible, and no markings indicating that it was originally made for export. I have an as yet unproven suspicion that it could have come here via South America after WWI. There are no American import markings, so it came into the US before 1968. It has been taken apart and re-assembled at least twice, once by someone who knew what they were doing and had a lot of similar rifles (possibly a government arsenal, but whose government?) and once by someone who had only the one rifle and could not remember exactly how it went together.

So here is the probable life history:
1891 Manufactured
late 1890's Placed in reserve service or storage (replaced by M.1895)
c1914-5 Re-issued, probably reworked and inspected at arsenal
1917 Removed from service. Used as war reparations?
?? Belgian arsenal rework? Sold to South American country?
Left in a dusty European warehouse? Re-issued in desperation in 1945?
<1968 Brought into the US.
?? Disassembled and almost reassembled (some parts are put on backward)
200? Found by You.
2006 Sent to Me


The best part is that we can all be 12 and giggle hysterically whenever he says "Mannlicher". *giggles*

And that's about all I've got. I hope everyone has a great turkey day.

Well, I assumed that I would have some mess because the tile guy is replacing the shower surround in the bathroom today. However, I did not assume that all of the papers and stuff tucked into their cubby hole in the office which backs up against the bathtub wall would be having a heyday in the floor. Actually, I'm suprised that the printer isn't on the floor with the amount of banging that they have accomplished.

I guess I should clean this up.

Well, 45 minutes and $200 bucks later, I have a kitchen faucet that is connected to the water pipes and doesn't leak. I should go to plumbing school and become a plumber. Although, I have to say that I don't think I have the physical strength to do some stuff. The nipple I couldn't get off. Yeah, this guy had it off in less than 5 minutes. I think I loosened it for him. Anyway, I've got water in the kitchen and I'm a happy camper. Now I can fix the faucet in the butler's pantry.

Where!? Oh where did all these fricking ants come from?

For all of us who have ever rigged up some backass way to fix something -

DON'T, for the love of all that is holy, Don't use caulk to fix a leak in a pipe!

Please.

This will spare me the need to wring your neck and you the wringing of the neck.

On that note, obviously I still don't have a kitchen faucet. And the shortest nipples are still too long. I will have to check Home Depot to see if they have shorter ones. Now I need to go cry.

Yesterday sucked.
( Let's see how it sucked )
ajayne, I owe you an email that I will do as soon as I finish the faucet.

This is why I hate having someone else do something that I could probably do myself.
I have to put up with workmen.

We ordered new countertops for the kitchen and the bathroom weeks ago. As of yesterday morning only the bathroom countertop was in stock and they were going to come install that today. Which was okay because we were waiting on the backspash for the kitchen. Yesterday afternnon they called to say that they could install the kitchen countertops too. Yay and Boo, because the backspash won't be here until this afternoon. So Ronette and I were running power tools late last night to put up the board that our backsplash will be mounted to. Pain in the butt.

Anyway, so they are here and are getting everything in order to install my countertops. They've bitched about the guys who did the demo and have just added my kitchen sink to the bitch list. I'd really like them to go away, but I'd like my countertops too.

And I have internet!
But most importantly, I have power again!!!!!!!!
I love energy.