It’s been a busy, busy, busy weekend. This morning I’m getting no reprieve, either.

Friday we had the house inspection, which, as posted in an earlier entry, turned out well.

I went home after that and got there about the same time Jenn got home from work. We unloaded some boxes that she had brought home and we sat down to watch TV. Interestingly enough, it turns out Comcast enabled On Demand programming for us (we have digital cable) so we were able to watch the movie Phone Booth (which, while not the most exceptional film ever, was still interesting due to the novelty of the On Demand broadcast. Like a digital video recorder full of free stuff. Very cool. We ended up watching an episode of The Sopranos, too.

Saturday we started packing. We got a lot of books and things packed up from the computer room, but if you look in there all you see is a stack of boxes and you can’t tell anything was packed. I can see this is going to be a long process.

Saturday night we went to see Super Diamond which, as always, was totally fun. They changed up their playlist a bit so we heard a couple new ones (songs I didn’t know) and some of the favorites. I think I liked their old playlist a little better, but change is good, too. (My feet are still aching from the three-hour standing session.)

Sunday we went shopping and picked up some more boxes (they were having a buy-two-get-one-free sale on smaller boxes, which we need loads of, so we broke down and bought some). Then we packed some more. After that, went to the last hockey game of the regular season, which we won. Finally, came back home, did a tiny bit more packing, and sat down in front of the tube.

I’m having all sorts of eBay troubles.

Got in to work this morning and found an email in my inbox from a guy I sold a t-shirt to on eBay. He lives in Australia and apparently hasn’t gotten his shirt yet (I sent it like a month ago and it should have been there in four to seven business days). He did get a strange email from someone asking if he was missing a t-shirt, though, so I’m thinking the post office delivered it to the wrong address. What the hell am I supposed to do about that? I don’t think you can get delivery confirmation overseas, and shipping UPS would have cost - seriously - $75. And that’s the cheap service. What do I do if this guy doesn’t get his shirt? Do I eat the $24 (cost plus shipping) and give him a refund? Or do I chalk it up to the stupid post office and say, “Sorry, buddy, not my fault?” Just what I didn’t want to have to deal with.

Not to mention I sold another shirt to a guy in the UK who pretty much dropped off the face of the planet for over a week and just now reappeared to say, “Oh, sorry, I was out.” (Basically.)

Screw this worldwide shipping thing, man. It’s too much pain in my ass. If I just ship to US addresses, I can print postage and get delivery confirmation right from my computer. If I ship overseas, I end up having to stand in line for an hour so I can pay for service that apparently doesn’t actually get my package delivered to the right place.

My house inspection is at 1:00p today, so I’ll be leaving pretty soon to go do that. I guess it’ll take about three hours, though I’m not sure what I’m going to do during that time. The inspector’s going to run around and do his whole “inspection thing…” I’m assuming I don’t need to do anything unless there’s a problem.

Either way, I’ll try to get some photos while I’m there so I can post ‘em for you guys.

Jenn and I are preparing for the move. With the movers scheduled, we’ve got to get the boxes and start packing. Jenn picked some up this morning so I can tell you how the weekend’s going to go.

Not only that, but I’m not going to have to disassemble and reassemble the home theater system, the arrangement of which is a tricky and ever-changing process. To that end, I’ve created a Visio diagram of my home theater system complete with all of the connectors and wires that I’ll have to have.

Right now, my speaker wires are all over the place, running along the walls and ceiling because I don’t have the ability to actually wire them into the walls. I’ll be doing the wiring the right way in the new place, so I’ve gotta plan for that. I ordered some connectors and adapters from Bose today to accommodate the Acoustimass 6 system I’m running (they have oddly shaped RCA connectors) and those should be coming in a couple of weeks.

I also want to get rid of these generally crappy cables I have and get some high-end cables that are better quality and more easily managed. I don’t think that’ll happen right off, but it’ll be something to shoot for.

It’s a beautiful morning out there, so I snapped a shot of the sunrise as I see it on my way to work (I head west in the morning).

So, um, this is going to be sort of a mishmash of thoughts, potentially stream of consciousness level stuff. You’ve been warned.

Coming home last night, I drove past this guy panhandling at the end of an off-ramp.

I hate that shit. You know, I do feel bad for people who can’t make ends meet and all that, but come on now - leave me alone. I’m not going to give you any beer money, man. Particularly not in the middle of rush hour traffic. I donate to the local soup kitchen; my tax dollars go to facilities to help people like you… use the proper channels. Harrassing me on my way home is not the way to go.

Oh, and when the brand new Suburban picked up another guy off the corner and dropped you off, like you’re all rotating panhandling positions? Yeah, I saw that, friend. Kind of sours my attitude.

Went to Mervyn’s a couple of weeks back and saw these little handbags that looked like bustiers. There was a black velvet one that I thought would go good with some decor we have in the dining room, but I figured there were three of them on the rack so I’d go home and think about it.

Came back two days later and they were all gone.

I’ve been trying to find that one ever since. Unfortunately, Mervyn’s is one of those stores that doesn’t know when the next shipment is coming in or what it’s going to contain, so I have to keep calling back every few days, which I’m quickly tiring of.

After four days of not calling, I called again yesterday and they described a couple of the styles they had in. Nothing I’d seen before, so I went with Jenn and checked them out. Jenn ended up getting a little pink one with roses on it (to carry around):

And I got a gold Asian silk one with frog closures on the front that will go well with some stuff in the living room (I don’t have a picture of that). I’m still looking for the black one, but not as avidly. I checked eBay and they have several interesting styles, but not the one I saw before. Bah. I should know better; if I see something I like, I have to buy it on the spot or I miss my opportunity. Always happens.

My house inspection was successful except for some pretty minor cosmetics:

• There’s a cracked tile in the kitchen countertop
• The grout around the kitchen sink needs to be touched up
• The trim around the front door needs to be repainted
• There’s a spackled area above the front door that needs some touch-up paint
• There’s a dime-sized area on the ceiling above the storage closet under the stairs that has lost its texture
• There’s some ceiling patching in the kitchen that needs to be painted up (it looks like they’ve had some settling cracks that they had repaired; I’m waiting to hear back on a confirmation that that’s all it was)
• There are some loose electrical wires (presumedly not hot wires) in the crawl space that need to be bundled up and properly terminated

Since that all went according to plan and I was able to go back there and spend some time taking pictures, as promised, I posted some pictures in my photo gallery for those curious to see what the house looks like.

I also promised some specs/stats, so here you go:

• 2315 square feet (1151 upstairs, 1164 downstairs)
• Vinyl siding
• Composite roofing
• 4 bedrooms and a bonus room (master bedroom, two regular bedrooms, bonus room, and an office… but I think they count the office as a bedroom)
• 2.5 baths
• Built-in microwave, range, oven
• Gas fireplace (with blower)
• Walk-in closet and bath off master
• Gas heat
• Air conditioning
• Maple cabinets and tile counters in kitchen
• Oak hardwood floors (not Pergo!) in the entryway and kitchen
• Two-car garage with automatic opener

I hope that’s enough for those of you craving more info. Again, I highly encourage you to check out the pictures and see what you think!

This article on Life After The Video Game Crash has to be the funniest thing I’ve seen all day. Maybe even all week. I’m damn close to tears laughing in my cube.