Shelby's Life and Whatnot

Busy Busy Busy

I've been spending a lot of time away from my computer lately. The lack of web access has played a big part in that, I must admit, but I've been doing a lot of reading and other activities.

One thing that's taking up a lot of my time is seeing a chiropractor (heh, whenever I word it that way it sounds to me like I'm having an affair--"Don't tell Kevin, I'm seeing a chiropractor"). I like him and he's really helping my neck, but he's in Torrance, which is now 45 minutes away (and add at least 1/2 an hour for traffic, usually on the way back), and I'm seeing him 3 times a week for intensive therapy. So between driving there, chiropracting, and driving back, a large part of my day is shot. That sucks.

Click below for more of my adventures.

The new house is great. We still have boxes everywhere but are slowly working through them. Our housewarming party is December 11th so that's an incentive to get things done. We've been on a major buying spree lately. We didn't spend as much on the house as we'd budgeting (hooray!) so that left us free to buy a few nice things we've always wanted. Like a couch that doesn't sink to the floor when you sit on it, and is actually in an attractive pattern (we ended up getting a sofa/loveseat/overstuffed chair set from Macy's at a reasonable price). We got a refrigerator to fill the gaping hole in the kitchen where a refrigerator goes. Much to my dismay, our gaping hole was one inch too small to get a full-sized fridge so we had to get the slightly smaller version. Still, it has water and ice in the door--something I've been lusting after.

We got a new stove too. See me shaking my fist? Grrr. First, the Sears people come by and drop it off and get ready to install it but they can't because it takes a different size hose than the one they had. So his recommendation was to call "some guy" (yes, that's a direct quote) to come and install it for us. That some guy turned out to be Kevin's grandfather, who just installed a gas stove in his cabin. So everything gets hooked up and we're all happy, but then we start noticing a gas smell. Hmmm. So we turn off the gas valve and the smell goes away. Hmmmm. So we call Grandpa back and sure enough, there's a small leak at a joint that apparently wasn't tightened properly or something. And here's your lesson for today--how do you detect a leak in the hose? Paint it with some dish soap and water and look for bubbles. Who knew?

So we get it all set and turn the gas back on and a little later--hmmm, what's that smell? It looks like the stove has a faulty joint that unfortunately is a part of the stove and probably the whole thing needs to be replaced. It's still under warranty (at less than one week old) but what a pain.

Last week I spent the day babysitting for my nieces Corie (9 tomorrow) and Seana (2). I was a little worried about it beforehand. Have my childcare skills gone rusty? Am I going to encounter a massive poopy diaper? As it turned out, no and no. We had a great time. Corie and I played games and she kicked my ass at Yahtzee 3 times in a row. I managed to rally to win the next 2 games, but man, that girl is good. Tomorrow is Corie's birthday and she's having a party at Build-a-Bear which should be a lot of fun.

Okay, I've got party invites to address so I'm off for now.