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Ack! 2012 has started off with a bang. This must be what runners and racers feel all the time….except we are sprinting through January instead of December. So, here’s a collective update.

The Move

Last year, our rent went up almost 10% and added some fees, too. We knew it would happen again (we heard rumors of $100-$150 increases in 1/1 units!), so we started shopping around. It had to be a Perfect Storm in a lot of ways. It’s not worth moving unless we can stay close to the same total expenses, get more space, get nicer fixtures and stuff, etc. Well, when we started looking around, there were a lot of ways we could make this happen. So, on 25-Feb, we’ll have a new place to live. We have until 22-Mar to get out of Riata, but we’re hiring movers so we can leave early in the hope that they can flip our unit quickly like they did for our neighbor. We have been quite happy at Riata. Unless they screw us over on move-out, I’ll give them a 5-star rating on Yelp. But, when we got this “shoebox” shaped apartment, it was an amazing deal we just couldn’t pass up while we still had a mortgage. We were so happy here that when the lease came around, twice, we just stayed. Now, we’re ready to face moving again to go for bigger/better.

We looked at ~20 places and had a very strong Top 5 list. I fell “in like” with two leasing specialists, one where an acquaintance of ours lives. We found: a lovely town home, an über quiet place up the road, hardwood floors, door-to-door valet trash service, amazing views, and a couple of places with a lot of rugrats. All of the options gave us more space (so I can use Daddy’s desk again!), better amenities for our lifestyle, garage options (so we can stop paying for a storage unit primarily for Daddy’s desk and “junk”), better fixtures, and a better layout.

Just like we did when house hunting, we made a matrix of all the “stuff”. And just like most brides do with a wedding gown, we ended up at the first place we wanted to see: Villas at Stone Oak Ranch. We have good/affordable access to a game room and a 30-seat movie theater. There is a “gift wrap” area full of paper and tape and scissors. All the standards are there too: gym, pool, business center, etc. We have a detached garage, a square balcony, “Romeo & Juliet” doors off the dining room (which I’ve re-named Rapunzel doors), garden tubs, a kitchen that is open on two ends, an excellent pantry, and data ports in all the rooms. The only things we didn’t get: gas cooking (REALLY hard to find) and a fireplace (again? dammit!). But the deal was just too good to pass up compared to the other places in consideration.

Aside: During the process we met an amazing woman named Wendie. She gave us the low-down on why so many communities are doing away with their hot tubs. Turns out, some really scary (as in: there is no known cure) stuff can survive even in 104?-temperature chemical-treated water. The report is new and we could not find it online, but it’s scary. Do not, I repeat: DO NOT get in a public hot tub. Feet only. No “sensitive” areas allowed. eeeeeewwww!

Don’t worry friends and family: we’re hiring movers. We are also cleaning out the storage unit and holding a big moving sale in their parking lot. What doesn’t get sold is getting donated. Goodwill is going to LOVE us! LMK if you are close and care about the few big-ticket items we’re selling.

Oh! And we were able to surprise a friend with the referral fee paid to REALTORs. She’s a single mom and a cancer survivor, so she was elated with the news.

(The) Grandaddy

Grandaddy is quite frustrated and bored. His hip is so messed up from the botched “Paris-effin’-Texas” surgery that he can’t sit up. He’s been laying down since Hallowe’en. The Longview/Tyler doctors have deemed all surgical options too risky. Health care is a joke from the beginning; but in a small town that is 20 years behind the times, 1 hour from an interstate highway, and 2 hours from anything you’ve ever heard of, it’s nothing short of tragic. Mama Bee is still fighting the residuals from the beotch who called APS on her (the witch has since apologized), but no one wants to take Grandaddy on as a client. They claim he’ll have a stroke if he stays in bed too much longer, but they won’t come help her get him the physical therapy he needs to get out of the hospital bed. It’s heartbreaking….worse so to be physically and financially powerless to help. If I could wave a magic wand, I’d care-flight him to one of those fancy-schmancy places in Dallas where he’d get all the help he needs. Again, I need to win the lottery for that. I don’t know what those places cost, but even the crappy Paris nursing homes are $6K per month…and for terrible care compared with what my Grandmother can do (even at her small stature).

The Fraud

In the midst of The Move, we got a call that we’d have to pay rent with “certified funds” like a cashier’s check or money order. We’ve been on auto-draft, so this would be a real pain in the butt. Today, I called the “ladder” of people to find out the cause. Some jackass spoofed my Texas driver’s license number when writing a bad check at Walmart in a town I’ve never been to in Oklahoma. Telecheck reported it to credit on my DL number without checking any facts like the name. So, now, I’m in the middle of yet another fraud mess. I’ve lost count of how many times this has happened. So, to all the people who gave me shit (my sorority included) for wanting to protect my SSN, DL, DOB, mailing address, and other “credit” information, Fuck You! THIS is why. Less than $300 of stupid means we have to get a money order for rent every month? Are you kidding? Since Emil was just frauded over Xmas, this is just another reason to try to get off the financial grid. I haven’t even owned checks in years and I’m still dealing with this kind of bullshit.

Dear Walmart: stop taking checks. They are not money. They are only theft.

“Dear” Telecheck, this a’int our first rodeo for something completely out of my control. I already don’t shop at any store that posts they use you. You have needed better processes since ~1993 when I bought <$10 worth of socks from one of your client stores. Your sign in the window means I don’t shop there. fuckers. Oh, and if you think I’m alone in my opinion, search “telecheck” on Twitter. You need to learn/use social media, too, BTW.

The Fun

Austin is about to ride the big wave of fun that is Spring. Right after we move in, we’ll have RISE (free workshops for entrepreneurs) and the four South by Southwest conferences. I’ve been invited to return tot he photo crew for SXSW. And, I’ve been selected to wrangle for another all-time favorite photographer at Texas School in May. It’s a fun ride, but it’s a sprint, so jump on board fast if you want to hang with us!

Oh, and for those of you close by, look for a party in April or May. The party room at the new place is stellar (pool, poker, shuffleboard, music, swimming, etc.)

2012: Prioritize Joy, Now!

Touched by my friend Nanette (whom I’ve met IRL a couple of times, but feel I’ve known in my soul for a lifetime or two), I give you my newly-stolen 2012 mantra:

“Prioritize joy, now!”

Now, go read her words of inspiration and the post that instigated her’s.

And Nanette, Friend, though we’ve known each other briefly in this short life, please know that I love you. (#7 was a close second for my 2012 mantra thievery.)

Your Turn

Do you have theme/mantra/slogan for 2012? If so, please share! And, if you have resources for the, please cite/share. We all love to share the love.

We joined two childfree friends for a quiet New Years Eve celebration with the games of Talisman and You Don’t Know Jack for Roku. Hours of gaming fun! Even though I was last-place-by-far, I was quite surprised to learn it was 11:30 and we should freshen our drinks and find the new stand in for Dick Clark. Time flies when you’re having fun.

Jeff and Judy are fabulous and comfortable hosts, so we had plenty of options for snackage and drinkage. They got a Hickory Farms gift for xmas filled with summer sausage, cheese, mustard, fancy crackers, etc.

They also shopped a little. Wallace and Gromit fans: we got to try Wensleydale Cheese! (Come On! Say it in your best Queen’s English Accent, “Weeeeeennn-sley-dale!!!”) I was tempted to have more that just a taste. nom nom nom. I didn’t expect to like this exact one because it was laced with cranberries (texture issues) but it was divine and smooth! Emil liked it too, which says a lot about the cranberries adding to the flavor in a good way!

We had some great beer and wine options, but since I was officially skipping a dose of Codeine for a respiratory infection, I kept a slow pace. They did send us home with a lovely bottle of Innovac!ón wine. It’s a Tempranillo Malbec from the Mendoza region in Argentina. Bliss. In. A. Glass. I hear it’s at Specs and even Costco!

Judy was the only one who would eat Hoppin’ John with meat, so she made one like none I’d ever seen: with collard greens and ham. Interesting. It smelled good and inspired me to add greens to my next vegan version of the same.

Emil grabbed his usually favorite party snack tray from HEB and about 30 bottles of Dr. Pepper.

I made two new things that were just lovely, in my vegan opinion. (And, since both casseroles I made for xmas were so bland I dumped all of them down the disposal, this was a nice change of pace.)

Vegan Chili-con-queso

• 1 can vegan chili (Some are just beans and tomatoes with seasonings. Others have textured soy protein for a “ground meat” feel to them.)
• 1 8oz tub of vegan cream cheese

1. Bring the cream cheese close to room temperature.
2. Heat the chili for 2-3 minutes in a microwave.
3. Blend the two together.
4. Microwave again as necessary to blend and/or just before serving.
5. Serve warm with tortilla chips.

This is the closest thing to a real queso I’ve had and it was good. Judy liked it, too! The beauty is that any of you can pick up a can of Wolf Brand chili and cream cheese and do the same non-vegan version. The recipe didn’t call for heating it, and it is good when it’s no longer warm, but it was so much better heated up! One advantage of the vegan version is that there is nothing in it that will spoil if it sits out all night for a long party. So, if you are taking this to share, you might consider keeping it vegan for convenience.

Cream Cheese Sandwich Spread

• 1 8oz tub of vegan cream cheese, room temperature
• fresh garlic, minced; to taste. (I used about 2 Tablespoons and it was quite garlicky.)
• 1-2 bell peppers (the small red one I was was not quite enough. I’ll use two colors next time.), diced
• celery, diced (based more on taste/texture than anything. I used about half a small bundle. I’ll add more next time.)

1. Bring the cream cheese close to room temperature.
2. Mince the garlic and dice the veggies.
3. Blend all together.
4. Serve with crackers, baguette pieces, Melba toast, etc. Or, use as a spread on your favorite veggie sandwich.

I’ve been in a hummus and guacamole rut, so this got me right out of it. I can’t wait to try it again with other veggies (carrots? tiny broccoli?) and on a sandwich with fresh veggies to compliment. Again, if you aren’t vegan, use your favorite cream cheese and some crisp veggies for fresh noshing. This will be great in the summer (and since it was 78 degrees on New Year’s Eve in Austin, it was a welcome refreshment.)

Whatever way you found to celebrate, we hope it was grand.

To all our family and friends, Happy New Year! We wish you a prosperous 2012.

What a great  Cristmas Emil and I had.

We got to see both sides of the family  and made time for oursleve, too. And, this is the first time in a long time that we didn’t get each other a same gift.

Armed with new toys and gadgets (this blog post is coming to you from our couch via the new bluetooth QWERTY keyboard for my iPhone), we have a few days of R&R planned. We’ll see you all in 2012.

Happy New Year!

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At Thanksgiving, we learned that one oft he Amanda’s is pregnant. Today, we learned the other one is too. The first cousins will be born in June and July. If my count is correct, these will be our 20th and 21st great neice/newphews. That’s a lot of babies in just 10 years.

There has been much debate over the last few days over the definition of the term Childfree. I feel the spectrum is best described with a graphic. Unable to find one on the web, I made one.

Best viewed with a browser that will re-size the graphic to fit the window.

From people who happen to have children, to parents, to the childless, to the childfree, this graphic I made describes the whole spectrum.

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Tuesday was like any normal day…except that I ended up with staples in my head.

At lunch, I went to visit my doggie BFF. Our routine is a quick walk (In spite of being a greyhound, he’d have it no other way.), followed by some couch time, and then back in his crate with an afternoon treat.

At the end of my couch time I got up to get his treat, knelt to give him kisses on his head (which I always do) and was met with barking and two bites to the top of my head.

I cleaned up, tried to stop the bleeding, and called Emil to tell him I was ok. I asked him where the nearest urgent care facility was. He offered to come get me, but I was fine, I was sure. I just wanted a professional opinion of what I couldn’t really see among my hair.

Four staples. Yep. And, having had stitches several times, I’ll take staples any day! I’ll especially take them if I can request the same Novocain-without-epinephrin numbing agent that the kind Dr. Saeed gave me!

Every couple of days, the wound hurts and every other couple of days I have to go in for a checkup. I get the staples out on Tuesday, supposedly.

I nick-named myself The Borg. Emil has been much more creative: Metal Head, Frankenstein, Staple Head, Broken, Iron Head, etc.

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squick alert for the picture of the staples

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Diet is a Four Letter Word

For the last ~2 years, we’ve been working on getting @Purrrrrl‘s weight down.

Boring How We Got Here Story

While we used to free-feed them dry food, we switched to canned for a while. Her sensitive tummy, means days of mixing food and lots of accidents. Canned food was a pain if we wanted to go away for more than just the day, but we made it work. At the next “Kitty Weight Watchers” “weigh in”, we learned she’d only lost a few ounces. She’s a cat, so that’s good progress, but she needs to lose several pounds, so when the next “weigh in” showed she’d gained, we went food shopping again. Another pet store owner told us about this grain-free dry stuff. Well, it makes her sick. We kept trying it because she kept showing signs she was getting more accustomed to it. However, she has proven to me that, given the right circumstances, she can poop faster than I can clean. After trying for too long, we went back to the canned.

New Game and Some Kitty Conversation

Because we are feeding them limited amounts and on a schedule, I have an alarm in my phone for 9:00 each 12 hours. They can’t eat until my phone meows. Still, anywhere from 2 minutes to 2 hours before 9 o’clock, they beg. Today, Purrrrl sat next to me at the computer at 8:50am and the conversation went like this:

Purrrrrl: Meow

me: Not yet. Ten more minutes

Purrrrrl: Meow

me: No. Ten minutes.

Purrrrrl: Meow

me: Eleven minutes?

Purrrrrl: Meow

me: Twleve minutes?

Purrrrrl:

I knew cats could show angst and be flippant, but who knew they could count???

On October 12th, I deactivated my facebook account. True to form, facebook reactivated it (those bastards), and I deactivated it again on October 18th.

In the first ~10 days after closing my facebook account, I noticed a substantial–journaled/documented–increase in productivity.  Now, let me be frank: I never played games on facebook. Furthermore, I was ruthless about junk posts and hiding stuff that wasn’t useful to me for the way I used facebook. (I’ll also admit that I was a timid user given my history of bona fide stalkers who used this information to find me.)

Productivity? What’s That?

In the week after I killed my facebook account, I lost count of the tasks in the productivity spike I had.

• I’ve cleaned up and cleaned out several areas of our home. I’ve done that once-a-year stuff like wiping down the insides of the cabinets and cleaning out the areas known as “I wonder what we keep in there.” I’ve kept up with laundry, dusting, etc. I even bound my computer cables to keep Marble out of them. I don’t know how many boxes of paper we recycled. I have another box to shred. And, I know have a “projects” box full of stuff I can do in shorter bursts…which means it might get done.
• I not only had the bridge installed, I’ve been working on whitening the rest of my teeth (all part of the plan).
• I’ve gathered a charity donation and made a lunch date with a friend so I can deliver it.
• I’ve been shopping (shopping!) for things I’d put off much too long.
• I set up some small marketing for our #CroKnit group.
• I’ve planned two small parties, attended another (& I took/processed/posted images), and prepped for a wedding (some bigger tasks within that, this time).
• I ran one marketing project for As You Wish, booked a client from it, and am prepping the next offer/message to go out in a week or two.
• I’ve done half a dozen administrative tasks for me, us, our home, and As You Wish.
• Shot a wedding
• Duped/backed up images
• Edited and posted the images
• ..and I still went to Miami’s watch party, #CroKnit, and other weekly routines.

What I Have “Missed” — that I know of:

• One person wondered why I unfriended her…and then immediately realized I must have finally deleted my account.
• One person wondered if I was the reason his friend count dropped by one. Yep, that was me!
• One friend said she’d invite me to her daughter’s birthday party, but never did. I’m guessing it went out on facebook. Other friends only use facebook to invite friends to events. I’ll be sad to miss the ones where they don’t think outside facebook.

What I Have Missed with Elation:

• Being invited to events in places like Toledo or San Francisco.
• The pure drivel of some. I had hidden most of those who wax poetic in ways other than those I can appreciate, but there is only so much you can do.
• Religion, I expect a “separation of church and state” attitude. Have your religion and enjoy what comforts and supports you. Do not push your faith onto me. I have friends/family who range from Jewish-to-Catholic-to-Christian/Evangelical-to-Hindu-to-Buddist-to-Agnostic/Athiest. I’m respectful–even celebratory–of holy events of others. I share others’ celebrations. I do not acknowledge anything shoved down my throat. (Funny how that’s always some form of Christianity, huh?)
• Politically, Emil and I don’t vote alike, but share a lot of views. Unfortunately for facebook, it’s the most prolific/asinine who use social media as a platform….and ruin the experience for the rest of us. I had to unfriend and then block the one terrible “friend”. If they don’t know me/us, then how can they dare get “upset” when I call them out for using social media cred for furthering someone else’s agenda. (Yes, that really happened.)

And Then There Is Time

Again, I didn’t play any games on facebook. I severely restricted the suck factor that drags you into viewing photos of people you don’t even know. I had all the gadgets and widgets to control my flow of information. I used fb purity and better facebook. I had blocked feeds from many apps and several people. I had blocked all “non-friends” so I wouldn’t see their stuff, but more importantly, so they wouldn’t see my posts.

None of it worked. When I quit facebook, I had the most productive week of the year. Even with all the “lock down” versions of content I was willing to read and friends I really wanted to connect with, it was a huge time suck. Losing access to facebook caused very few “I miss” moments, but gave a lot of “I’m kicking ass!!!” reasons to be proud of my work. If I had realized exactly how MUCH of a timesuck facebook was (even when I had it filtered like crazy), I’d have dumped it a lot sooner.

I don’t know if you can call it an addiction since I am able to restrain myself when I have to do othter things, but Pinterest sure is fun! Here is my favorite board:

http://pinterest.com/asyouwishaustin/booyah/

and, of course, all my boards:

http://pinterest.com/asyouwishaustin/

If you like to look at pretty things, fashion, good photography, (bad photography), DIY and crafts, home tips/tricks, wedding inspiration, or just about any other interest, you need to be on Pinterest.