The Most Boring Job...

Today I was in the lobby of a large corporation waiting to start my meeting and I realized what the most boring job in the world is.

As I sat there I noticed the receptionist repeatedly answering the phone and saying, "Hi you've reached _________, this is Wendy. How may I help you?"

Over and over and over again. The same line. The whole time I waited, she kept repeating the EXACT same phrase over and over. I think I would go insane if I had to do that.

The Word "Trusty"

Daniel just informed me that I use the word "trusty" entirely too much in my notes. So I will try to be more creative in my use of words in the future.

Frustration Over A Tree

Our neighbors have not yet done anything about their tree that has fallen into our yard. So Daniel has been doing some research and apparently a tree that falls into your yard from an act of God is your responsibility to clean up.

This makes me want to cry. In the last 12 months we have already had 3 trees fall on our property and now we have another one to deal with. This means that it will eat into our time to work on the house and it is just plain hard work to cut up and haul a tree to the street for take away.

Also, in his research, he discovered that if someone hurts themselves on your property you are liable - even if it is their equipment and they inadequacy - YOU are responsible. The only way around this is to hired someone who is licensed to remove trees which will cost more and there is no way we are spending a ton of money on tree removal OR that Daniel will let anyone onto the property with a chainsaw who is not licensed.

Chasing the Recycling Truck

This morning we slept in so I was up trying to help Daniel get out the door when I heard the rumble of a truck go by. My first thought was "Crap... It is Tuesday which means Garbage/Recycling Day and we didn't take anything to the curb yet."

I opened the door to see where the truck was. It was the recycling truck and it had just passed our house. I contemplated what to do and here is what happened:

1) I considered running down the road with our recycling bin in the hopes that they would take it.
2) I look across the street and notice that they haven't picked up on the other side of the street.
3) I see the truck turning around at the cul-de-sac down the road and coming back down the other side of the street.
4) I grab the recycling bin, run across the street and sit it next to the neighbor's bin that is completely full of beer cans.
5) The truck made the pick up and moved on and I crossed the street again to reclaim our recycling bin from the neighbors yard.

Mission accomplished. I really couldn't afford to miss that pick up b/c we fill our recycling bin to above capacity every week and I really need to go get a second bin to use.

I need to be challenged more.

I just got back from my interview with ECMS Worldwide. It seemed to go well and I should know something by the end of the week.

The creative director who interviewed me was from either Australia or Britain (I think Britain). During the course of our meeting, he kept making long pauses and I had to try really hard not to fill those pauses with my incessant talking. He seemed to like me, so I will just have to see if it pans out.

He is one of the few people in my life who has pointed out that he thinks that I need to be challenged more in my work. It is refreshing for someone besides me to realize that.

Lowe's Mega Shopping Trip

We completed our mega shopping trip to Lowe's in just under 3 hours - this includes time to shop, go through the check out and load all of our goods into 2 trucks (we borrowed a truck from a friend and took our trusty Pathfinder).

To prepare for such large expenditures of money (especially if you are married to Daniel Moore) we had to do a lot of recon work - we probably spent at least 10 hours scoping out what we needed to buy, taking inventory of what we currently own and doing a lot of measuring of rooms in our house to make sure we had the right amounts of base board and crown molding.

Though I HATE spending extra time in Lowe's than I perceive to be necessary, it does make our actual shopping trip well organized and uneventful. This is our second large trip like this and we always get lots of curious stares - after all we had 3 huge Lowe's carts for the 2 of us to lug around...

Anyways, thanks to our 10% OFF coupon, we saved roughly $200. We have made a pretty sizable investment into our house in the last 2 years (at least sizable to us). We are always blown away when we read magazine articles or books that state approximate costs of renovations - since we are doing all of the work ourselves, our budgets are always WAY LOWER than anything we have read regarding budget estimates.

The hardest part of these shopping trips is the loading and unloading. We got off easy this time as a Lowe's employee helped the 2 of us load everything. Let me tell you drywall and cement board are not light items and we had 10 of each! Unloading at home was even more difficult b/c we had to find places for everything which involved some reorganizing of our basement.

Overall it was a successful trip and we have everything we need to finish installing baseboard and crown molding in the entire main level of our house as well as everything for the master bathroom renovation.

75% Discount At Lowe's

First of all I am annoyed b/c I just wrote my whole note and I lost it!!! So here goes again...

Daniel and I have been finalzing our mega shopping list for Lowe's. We have a 10% off coupon and if you use your Lowe's card for purchases this weekend you get 0% interest for 12 months. I know that this is not the Dave Ramsey way, however we are pumping equity into our house and since we are doing all of the work ourselves we will eventually recoup the investment.

Anyways on to the story of the evening... tonight we were on our way to Barnes & Noble and decided to make a stop at a Lowe's that we normally do not go to b/c we wanted to make sure we were both happy with the tile selection for the master bathroom. While there, we swung by the bathroom section and noticed that they had the vanity and mirror we had been eyeing on sale marked down from $148 to $42!!!

We were really excited about this and decided to go ahead and make the purchase tonight instead of waiting until tomorrow b/c our normal Lowe's was selling the same thing for $84. We were soon disappointed to find out that this store did not have any of our vanities in stock, but another store across town did.

So we hightailed it across town and found both the vanity and the mirror. However they had different prices and would cost $84 and $50 instead of $42 and $25. We decided the price was still good, but Daniel stopped by customer service just to see if they would give us a deal.

The customer service guy was emphatic that all of the stores were different and that he couldnt give us the cheaper price but he agreed to call Lowe's corporate HQ just to see. After being on hold for some time, he got of the phone and incredulously told us that someone at HQ must be smoking crack b/c even though several stores had the item on back order, they said to go ahead and give us the discounted prices! So instead of paying the original price of $250 for both items, we only paid $84!!!

We only had one small problem... we were in the Altima instead of the Pathfinder b/c we were not planning on making any big purchases tonight. The box that the vanity was in would not fit in our car. We had to take everything out of the box and put the vanity bottom in the front seat, the vanity drawer in the back seat with me and the granite counter top and the mirror in the trunk! Daniel broke down the box with his pocket knife and shoved it into the back seat with me! This kind of reminded me of when I was in college and me and my siblings bought my parents a TV for Christmas one year. It would not fit in the car so we had to take it out of the box in the parking lot. It still would not fit into my car so I had to call Daniel to come pick it up in my parents mini van!!!

We need to just start driving our Pathfinder any time we have the inkling to go to Lowe's or Home Depot!