This morning, I bribed my escrow officer with a mocha, so that I could sip my chai for an hour and not feel rude for drinking in front of her. She's a wonderful person, so it was all to the good.

We no longer, as of tomorrow, own our condo, although we'll live in it through the first week in October. Maybe.

Now, we're pushing our lender to do their thing, and pushing our realtor to do her thing, so we can close on the purchase, probably late next week, after the Section I termite work is done.

Saturday, we're going to the house to look at the bathrooms, so we know what color tile to pick for replacements, and measure the gaps where appliances will go, and such.

On a side note, the woman who bought our condo currently lives in the same apartment complex where we lived for six months in 1998, just before buying said condo.

Just a token “small world” story.

The thing about working so many hours is that it leaves me with very little energy, and since I'm at a computer all day, I have periods where, much as I love certain online activities, I'm just not in any kind of mood to be in front of a computer all night. Shocking, I know :)

In any case, with all the books packed save for the four I bought with birthday money, and have already finished, and the one I'm about to pick up tonight, the only thing left to do is veg in front of the tv. And since we moved furniture which apparently killed the downstairs cable feed, if I don't want to be in the computer room, the only thing I can watch is movies.

So, we've been having an orgy of DVD rentals, lately, and not from NetFlix, because I've emptied my queue there, until after we move.

Last week, for Fuzzy's birthday, we saw Signs in the theater, and then came home, and plowed through The Time Machine, The Imposter, and Legally Blonde, and over the last week, we've seen America's Sweethearts and An Ideal Husband, as well as various episodes from Season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is one of my guilty pleasures.

Most of these have been things we've both watched, though some have not. I don't think Fuzzy was in the room while Dinotopia was playing, for example. Last night, though, I not only cooked real food (only chilli, but, still, not from wrappers), we watched a movie we both enjoyed: The Count of Monte Cristo. It wasn't at all true to the letter of the book, but I loved the use of Malta as a stand in for early 19th-Century Marseilles, and I think they kept to the spirit of the books quite well.

And on that note, my last page is printing, and I'm ready to shut down the copier, and head home.

Fuzzy and I never managed to see MIB2 when it was originally blasting it's way through the summer movie scene, and had pretty much decided we were stuck with waiting for it's eventual release on DVD.

Yesterday, however, we got a pleasant surprise. We'd been arguing. Well, no. I'd been stressing, and lack of protein and stress made lose all control, to the point where, I'm sad to admit, I flung a pair of shoes at my poor, innocent husband (black suede lace-up MIA's with very hard chunky soles, if you really want to know). Yogurt, of all things, helped me calm down enough to become human again, and when I was looking for ideas on where to eat (we tend to avoid cooking at home, these days, because there are PEOPLE traipsing in and out to do STUFF all the time, and it's easier to just not worry about whether or not things are done) I found out that the Camera Seven in the Pruneyard was playing MIB2 that evening. We could just make it and eat, too.

So we went, and when we got there, they said, “It's actually a double feature with Spider-Man.” Well, cool. I mean, we'd seen Spider-Man, but the novelty of a double feature made our decision for us. And it didn't cost any more.

So, I had a salmon-salad sandwich, and he had roast beef with bleu cheese, and then we got a large drink and popcorn at the concession. (Note: While I find it horrendous that these people charge nearly five dollars for a large drink, I like the fact that they give free refills of their large sizes, which, for a double feature, makes sense.)

Fuzzy's favorite part of MIB2 was the dog. This should surprise no one.

Then we stayed and the crowd got bigger, and Spider-Man started. Except fifteen minutes into the film it got all streaky. And then the sound s l o w e d d o w n. And then it stopped. A few minutes of some weird hoedown music, and it restarted. Still streaky. Stopped again. Repeat process, including hoedown music.

After the third time they gave up trying to fix the projecter, and came in to offer money back, free passes, and the right to wander into anything still playing. Or some combination thereof.

There was nothing still playing that I wanted to walk into the middle of, and since we'd seen the movie we wanted to see, we saw no point in getting our money back, so we have free passes. Yay.

I have to say, the crowd was really polite, and most people found humor in the situation. And the whole thing reminded me of when my parents would take me to movies in Idaho Springs, CO, when I was about seven. It was the only theater for several towns, and I think the projecter from the Flintstones was more sophisticated. In winter, you'd have to bring blankets to keep warm. And almost every night the bulb would over heat and stop the film, and everyone would throw popcorn at the projectionist, and scream. Not in a malicious way, just as part of the ritual.

Anyway, we drove around the neighborhood that will soon be ours, trying to figure out (in the dark) if the new house has line-of-sight to a certain building, because we're some minimal number of feet to far for PacHell to do DSL, and while we can get T1 through Fuzzy's company, there's a wireless option that's considerably less expensive, and can install w/i three days.

Results were inconclusive, but we did scope out a park about half a mile from the new place, where we can go to let the dogs RUN every once in a while. Yay, parks.

And even if we didn't get to see all of Spider-Man, we still got 2.5 movies for the price of one, and to me, that's a good deal.

I'm feeling very fractured and not at all coherent lately. Maybe it's the 20 files I still have on my desk, or maybe it's being caught in two escrows. Probably it's both.

The buyer of my condo is the most anal person I've ever not-quite-met. She fails to understand basic things like, no, we are not going to tent the entire complex because she doesn't want to have to re-treat for termites that are ONLY in one teeny section of the garage wall, in a year.

Her realtor, someone I've encountered before, is an uptight bottle-blonde bitch, who pushes everyone else to do things at her speed, but then doesn't return phone calls. I hate folks like that.

So, I'm irritated, and grumpy, and lunch was brought to me at 11:45, and here it is 7:21, and I managed to drink the energy blend, but the omelette sits, untouched.

Who has time for things like food that requires actual utensils?

For that matter, who has energy? We've been living on so much fast food (which neither of us even likes) for so long that we're going to end up preserving our own livers.

I wish I had a fairy godmother who would whisk me to her cottage and cook me a fabulous dinner, which I didn't have to help make, or clean up after.

Well. One can dream.

[Whine mode, over. I promise.]

So, the buyer of our condo has docs in title, and has to sign by Friday or she loses her rate lock, and our realtor hasn't yet sent us their last laundry list, or answered my message from this morning, but I refuse to worry, because with docs in title, if she decides she doesn't like what we counter with, we keep her deposit.

And I won't even mention that we STILL haven't negotiated a rent-back.

Nope, no stress in my life.

Have cold.
Am grumpy.
Cannot open windows (at all) in house because mold test is tomorrow and there's some thing about needing to capture inside air.
House is hot and stuffy.
Am tempted to sleep on deck, but there are spiders there.

I hate spiders.

Bed now.

I realized today that part of the reason I've been so cranky is that the death of my laptop has caused my routine to change.

I used to go to our bedroom around midnight, surround myself with pillows, and post my entries, write my thoughts, whatever, from the cushiony comfort of my bed. The dogs would rest their heads on my outstretched feet, or just curl up nearby, and, with Fuzzy just a room away, I'd have my alone time.

Without the laptop, I don't have that option. (I mean, my Vaio slimtop is small, but not quite small enough to cuddle with.) I feel like an addict who's gone cold turkey off whatever her addiction was. Well, without the leg shakes.

One month, and we'll be done with house stuff, and hopefully, I'll be replacing my laptop.

This morning at Starbucks I was in line behind a pair of medical office personnel who'd obviously never been to Starbucks before. They'd been given the task of fetching drinks for half of Campbell, it seems, or at least for their entire collection of coworkers.

This is not the problem.

The problem is that rather than giving the baristas the entire list of drinks, and then having her itemize the receipt, they ordered one drink, then paid for it, then ordered the next drink, and paid for it, and continued this process until twenty drinks had been purchased.

Then, they had to be told which of the drinks being passed over the bar were, in fact, theirs.

By the time my turn came, I was ready to slug them.

It was justifiable, don't you think?

I am a person who goes through phases, cycles really, where I surround myself with something, whether it be as ethereal as an idea, or as specific as the work of a particular author. I revel in whatever my current phase is until I am completely saturated by it, and then I move on to the next phase.

My phases have included everything from gambling on professional horse racing, to gardening, to art, the last of which is not a phase that lingered long, as I apparently have no talent for drawing and can only paint walls, although I still have the leftover fetish for art supplies. Indeed, when packing up the house to 'stage' it, I found not one, but TWO unopened packages of felt-tipped pens, two boxes of colored pencils, and several drawing tablets with only one or two pages used (which drawings were whisked from Fuzzy's sight, and shredded, almost instantly).

Lately, I've realized that this journal has become stuck in a rut where I whine about how tired/stressed/overworked I am, but forget the original point of journalling in the first place, which was writing practice.

This was brought home to me a couple weeks ago when I ran into at the ATM and he commented that he works less than a mile from where I live, and yet only knows what I'm doing because I bitch in here. (Um, that was paraphrased.)

The thing is…unlike that Other Place where I write, LJ doesn't let you shed user id's the way the proverbial snake sheds its skin. And changing user names is one of the ways I mentally refresh myself.

So I've started a second LJ…well, a third, since I had a LASIK specific one, although, that's going to be deactivated, since I'm more than six months out of surgery now and there's not much new to report.

Anyway…right, I've started a second LJ.
If you're desperate for stuff to read (though as yet there is nothing to read) ask, and I'll share the ID.

This entry is dedicated to a fellow Diary-Chameleon, whose name (this week) shall not be mentioned. She's also a fellow domain slut. *snugs* Candle's lit for you, hon.

I haven't been writing much lately. It's not that there aren't things rattling in my brain – I keep thinking of things to write about when we're NOT near a computer, and then I get frustrated because our computer room is blistering hot when the temp is 80 or higher outside, the white deck reflecting all the sun through the sliding glass doors. One of the reasons I'm psyched about moving is that the house will be all on one floor, and is surrounded by grass, which is cooler.

***
Saturday, Fuzzy was still feeling really clingy, which is odd for him. Usually his stoic prairie farmboy, typical Midwestern Male who never reacts to anything, and is the strong rational one, so to see him needing me so much is jarring. Then, too, there's the fact that we didn't wish to bother with a rental, so we're driving our 1990 Camry, which we generally keep just for my parents to use when they're here. It's so low and zip-less after the now-deceased 2001 Forester, which, of course, we still have no word on. I hate holiday weekends!

***
Saturday on the way to do dinner and grocery shopping we were behind a truck/trailer that had a bag of ball-hitches hanging from the rear. To be specific, there were two hitches in the bag, positioned in such a way as to look just like a scrotum, which for some reason I found hysterically funny, but only for a few minutes. Of course, I had the song, “Do your balls hang low” stuck in my head for the rest of the evening.

***
Yesterday we went to the new (well, it's been open over a month now) Camera 7 cinema at the Pruneyard, which has a scaled down version of Willow Street Wood Fired Pizza inside. Yum! I know my great-grandfather would be rolling in his grave if he knew, but I had “Hawaiian” pizza (pineapple, canadian bacon). We then saw the remake of “The Importance of Being Earnest” with Colin Firth (*swoon*), Rupert Everett (whom I'd never seen in a straight role before), and Reese Witherspoon. It was both period, and done in a style to make it look old – purposely grainy, for example. But it was still hilarious. And I'm glad I wasn't disappointed, because it's been one of my favorite plays since my senior year of high school when we read it in AP English (let me tell you, reading plays out loud takes on a whole new dimension when you're in a Performing Arts school, and the people reading can actually ACT), and our teacher brought us cucumber sandwiches and tea.

We came home and played on our respective computers for a while, and then watched Fellowswhip of the Rings, on DVD, which was supposed to be Fuzzy's birthday present, but he really needed it this weekend.

***
Today, we might go see Signs, or we might not. It's hot, though, and I've told Fuzzy I actually want to go to the office for a bit, but he was pretty emphatic about wanting me not to. So, we shall see.