Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Happy Birthday Andi

Yesterday was Andrea Woody's birthday. Yes, the Andi that both the Chicago and KC friends love so much is now 26 years young.

Hopefully she's feeling alright this morning, because last night when we met up with her and friends at a local Mexican restaurant, she was DEFINITELY feeling alright after a couple hours of drinking margaritas. Maybe "Miss Andi" can work with her pre-school kids on their counting today, by having them count up to her blood-alcohol content. Except these kids are pretty young and may not be able to count that high. Oh well, they can at least work on their colors and point out the red in their teacher's eyes. Ha!

We love you girl and are so glad you moved here.

Happy Birthday, Andi!

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Home from the holiday

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Well, it's over now. We're back home and a couple pounds heavier, but it was worth it. This year we had to drive back to KC because the flights were too expensive. It's an 8 hour trip, which sucks, but it was pretty cheap and Andi was good company.

The highlights of the weekend include: winning $140 at the casino, my sister & brother-in-law surprising the family by coming into town, seeing Blackpool Lights at the Record Bar, seeing our friends and playing with our nieces. Uncle Corey and Aunt Mo are becoming quite popular with Mikaela and Sam who are 4 and 2 1/2. We had a blast playing with them. Man, we are not used to being with kids all day. They wore us out.

But it's back to work now - boo! Yesterday was tough. I was dragging all day. Not just because I was tired (I took a 2 hour nap last night), but just feeling blue, don't really know why. It's probably just from coming back to work after a 5 day weekend. Life isn't too rough for me, though. As part of the Activities Committee, we made Christmas ornaments yesterday at work and had a delicious burrito party tray. Seriously, my job is so hard, you should pity me.

The next few weeks are going to fly by, however. We have a bunch of shows for various holiday parties on the books, and family coming into town for Christmas. Before you know it, it will be January....which means one thing.....THE CRUISE!

to be continued...

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Patience Please

I know we owe you a post.
Both of us have just been super busy at work.
What? Monique actually works? I know, shocking.

Hang tight and we'll have something up soon.

Until then, imagine Pete dancing in the complete costume and makeup from the Broadway musical, "Cats." That'll keep you entertained for a while.....

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Floor recap

Alright, update on the condo..... Our floors are done!!!!!
As we've talked about before, the jerkpods at Venter and Ass. messed up our floors time and time again. Their lack of communication skills continue to cause problems.
To recap:

1st - They didn't pay attention to our move-in date, or tell the floor guys the right date or something, but not only were we forced to move in a day later than expected, when we did move in (nearly 24 hours after they finished the coating) the floors weren't dry. Apparently since they hadn't installed the A/C and it was a humid day, the floors were still sticky. End result = footprints in the coating, ruined floors in the bedroom and hall just outside the bedroom door. Annoyed, but confident it would be taken care of soon.

2nd - We had agreed to set up a time to move the furniture out of our bedroom and stay overnight with a friend in order to have it redone. Instead, without telling us, they came in, recoated the floor, being careful not to move any furniture, only going around it. Since it is the floor, we of course walked on it. Since we weren't expecting the floors to be wet out of the blue, we tracked the tackiness and foot prints further into the hall and in the kitchen. End result = more of the floor ruined. Mad, we gave a stern talking to Elvis, he agreed to redo the floors at our convenience later.

3rd - AGAIN, the guys come in and redo the floors without telling us. This time, they kick out our guests that were staying with us, were rude to them and threatened us about not messing up the floors again. AGAIN they didn't bother to move furniture and only worked in the bedroom, not bothering with the hall or kitchen. End result = A fury from Corey and Monique like you've never seen. Screaming, cussing, name calling....

4th - Finally, the floors are done!!! Of course it didn't happen easily. We agreed to have them come over on a Monday. We spent the night before moving furniture and marking spots in the hall and kitchen. Well, there were so many foot prints that it just made more sense to have them do the entire hall up till the end of the kitchen area. We had Elvis come over before we left for work to show him what needed to be done. He promised to call when it was done. The plan was to stay the night at Anne's house and come home after work the next day, Tuesday. PLENTY of time for everything to dry.
At 3:00pm, I called to check on Elvis (of course he hadn't reached me). He informed me that they needed to do the floors all the way into the living room, because it wouldn't look good if we just stopped in the kitchen. Okay, fine. He also told me that they moved our furniture to the other side of the room and that we couldn't come home until Wednesday. That night Corey called to confirm why they were doing things they needed to do and express to him our frustration that he didn't warn us we'd have to stay out of our home another night. We didn't have an extra change of clothes and hadn't planned on eating out 2 days in a row. Still, we just wanted it done.
Then, on a whim we needed to stop by the house to reach in the door to where the spare keys to Anne's place were. We were shocked to see that the floors hadn't been touched. The only work these people did all day, was move our furniture. On top of it, they were going to make us stay out of the house an extra day for no good reason. We could walk right in. The floors weren't wet! Of course we called Elvis, asked him what the hell was going on. Their lack of communication had been the source of the problem yet again. Elvis had no idea what was going on w/the floors. He had just assumed the floors were wet. Even when we told him we weren't prepared to stay the night out more than one night, he still didn't look into it. IDIOT!
He even had the balls to blame us because they thought it was just going to be spots, not the whole hall. When we told him that we gave him ample opportunity to come look at it before, he complained that we always asked him to come at inconvenient times, in the morning or evening. WHAT!?!! Yes, I guess I shouldn't bother someone to do their work. Like these people haven't caused me to take enough time off work IDIOT! We slept in our own bed that night and they finished the job the next day. It was a hassle, but thank God that part is over!
Just a couple of punch list items left - only 5 months after we moved in.

Seriously, is buying a new place this difficult for everyone?

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

How Rude!

In the words of Stephanie Tanner - How Rude!

This morning I got on the El. In the seat in front of me there was a woman, about my age putting on her makeup. Not a big deal, but she did have her makeup case and purse and bag sprawled across the seat next to her. Train etiquette says not to take up an empty seat with your purse so that there's room for others to sit there.
Another older woman gets on the train and clearly wanted to sit in the seat next to the makeup lady. Now granted, there were other seats around, but maybe she wanted this specific seat because it was a window seat, or facing forward (some people get sick riding backwards). Either way, she asked the young lady if she could sit there. Train etiquette also says you should give up your seat for the elderly. Though it doesn't specifically address this rule to purses, it's safe to assume an older lady has more right to the seat than a bag does.
The girl actually told her no. "I'm getting up in a couple of stops." Then she just continued to put on her war paint for the day. The woman was sort of just dumbstruck. She stood around waiting for the girl to move.
Then I remembered that I too had been denied a seat by this jerkpod in the past. Just remembering it, I think I verbally uttered, "Well that's rude." I hope she heard me. Finally when her stop came, in a huff she gathered her stuff together, gave the old woman a dirty, "thanks for inconveniencing me" look and brushed by her, smacking her shoulder against the old woman's shoulder as she stormed off.
Myself and the other passengers just shook our heads at each other. Seriously, how hard is it to have a little consideration?