Thursday my cable internet went out. Right as I was attempting to upload the new house pictures I'd taken on Wednesday. I'd had a lot of temporary outage problems with my current provider (making me thankful that they don't provide service at the new house) so I assumed that was the problem. But since I had the same issue on Friday, and discovered my phone line (also provided by the cable company) was dead, I thought I might give them a call. A fantastically helpful woman did everything she could to troubleshoot the problem, but was unable to come up with a solution. So she scheduled a technician to come pay me a visit on Sunday morning. I didn't even know Sunday mornings were an option, but apparently for this company they are! I made the appointment and hung up.

The more I thought about it, the dumber that decision appeared. The new house cable internet and phone will be connected on Friday. So having a cable guy come fix the internet at my apartment so I could use it for only 5 days seemed stupid. I called Saturday to cancel the Sunday technician and cancel the internet and phone service. (The TV service was still fully functional, so I left that one alone.) A fantastically UNhelpful man did nothing but make me want to go down to the call center and punch him directly in the head. I explained that I'd not had service for 3 days, and that since I was moving shortly anyhow, I wanted to save Tech Guy some time and not have him come out. I also told him that I wanted to cancel the service effective immediately, since it's not working anyhow. Why pay when I can't use it? So Mr. Unhelpful cancels the appointment. Then proceeds to tell me that he can't cancel the service until I bring in my equipment, regardless of the fact that they haven't been providing me service for the last 3 days, but I'll be expected to pay them for it. Ok fine, nevermind the canceling of the Tech Guy, I'll just get it fixed since I have to pay for it anyhow. He proceeds to tell me that i now have to reschedule my appointment (since he canceled that first rather than canceling the service), and the next available tech appointment is THURSDAY (the day before the new house gets it's internet service). Um, what? I just canceled an appointment for 10am tomorrow, but there's nothing else until Thursday? Screw that. I'm not paying for an entire week of internet service that I can't even use. So I had to drive over to the payment center and bring them my cable modem to cancel my service. My apartment is without the internet, as is the new house. My phone has net, as does work, so I'm not completely untethered to the electronic world. But I am unable to upload the pictures of the house that I've taken. Sorry!

I will try to sneak them on to my work computer sometime this week, but work has suddenly become busy, so I'm not sure when that'll be. At the very latest, pics will be posted Friday as a test of the new cable installation at the house!

Ignoring the fact that the picture is slightly out of focus because my phone camera sucks, are those not the prettiest keys you've ever seen? I had no idea that they made keys with designs on them! I was like a kid in a candy store when we went to get key copies made at Lowe's last night. There were so many options! I settled on the Hawaiian design for the pool key, and the Dragonfly (which I can't find online) for my gate key. Since they're changing all our locks on the house, we just got generic silver keys made, which seems so sad and dull in comparison to the other keys. But fear not, dear friends! Once the house has been re-keyed, a glorious new designer key shall be made, and the house key will no longer be the drab generic key on a ring of fabulousness!

Also, I think I've lost my mind. But at least I've not lost my keys!

So after all that whining last Wednesday about not finding a house, Thursday we found one. We were actually pretty familiar with it, as it's 2 streets over from where Donald lives now. It had been for sale for AGES, but was always outside our price range. When it came up on a website we'd been looking at for rentals, we called right away and made an appointment to see it. It's exactly what I wanted. I walked in and felt right at home. Donald was running late, so I did a walk through on my own, and it was all I could do not to skip through the house. It's lovely. 2500 SF, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, an office, a loft, and a decent sized fully concreted backyard, with pretty planters along the back wall (so now I have to learn something about flowers. And gardening. And being somewhat domestic). When Donald got there, he looked at all the things I'd skipped: DirecTV dish, outlets, washer/dryer hookups, etc. All I cared about was that the layout was nice, everything was clean, and Mia couldn't get out through any holes in the fences. We submitted our application and got the call on Saturday that said we were approved and tonight we do our walk through and get the keys! I could not possibly be more excited.

I gave notice at my apartment complex last Friday, so I have a full 3 1/2 weeks to move my stuff out of the apartment and into the house. I like that I am not forced to do all the moving in one weekend. I'll be moving a few things every night, since it's less than 10 minutes from me, and once all the little stuff is moved, I can do all the big furniture at one time. I'm not packing as much as I should, since I just plan on throwing things in the car and taking them over, but I'm still finding a ton of things that I'd rather give to Goodwill than move into the new house. If you're in the Corona area and looking for some useless junk, you should stop by the local Goodwill in the next few weeks!

Tomorrow afternoon I'll post all the pictures I'm planning on taking tonight, so you can all share in my joy of this fabulous new house! Happy Key Day!

I have an extremely annoying habit of setting my expectations way too high, and then being disappointed when they don't get met. Sadly, I'm aware of this problem, and am constantly vowing to be more realistic next time. Except that never seems to happen, and I'm stuck with a string of let downs.

I thought finding a new place to live would be easy. We'd narrow it down to a few houses, go take a look, and then the clouds would part, birds would sing, we'd sign a lease and it'd be done. Except that only happens in the movies. We've scoured the net, the papers, and driven through countless neighbourhoods looking for places to rent.We've called a dozen listings, and received a handful of callbacks. (Note to potential landlords: If you are trying to rent out a residence, it's helpful to actually return the call of the renter who is interested in the property. Just a thought) (Also, if you tell someone you're going to call them back, then DO SO. Don't just forget about them until they call the next day wondering what the status of the house is. Even if you were unable to get an answer, a quick call back to the potential customer letting them know you're working on it is better than silence. Schmuck.)

I need to work on patience in my life, and this process is just proof that I am sucking at it. I am an instant gratification kind of girl. When I decide I want something or want to do something, I don't want to wait. I decided several months ago that I was done living in my apartment, and I wanted to get the hell out. The fact that this did not instantly happen was annoying to me. Now that I'm actively looking and trying hard to find some place new and not getting it done, I'm really irritated. And it's irrational irritation. I understand that. I should be looking at the wait as more time to get my apartment cleared of clutter, and more time to get the things I want to keep packed up and ready to move. But logic has a way of escaping my notice sometimes. Like on days ending in Y.

Every now and again I look at the stats of my blog to see how people are finding me. I always click the random google searches and see what else was listed along with my blog. I get a lot of hits from kidney donation, and cute pug searches, as well as hits for people looking for the Italian company De Nora.

A few nights ago there was a search phrase which I found sorta odd, so I clicked on it. I saw my blog came up as the first hit as a post I'd written about my birthday last year, and there were three other links below it. Imagine my surprise when the last link looked exactly like mine. I clicked it and was shocked to find that someone had stolen my words and posted them as their own. A few minor details had been changed, but it was still blatantly stolen from my own blog. At first I was speechless. I just sorta stared and tried to figure out why someone would do it. It's not like it was stolen and used for an article, but rather stolen and used as a personal blog post. What's the point of that? A personal blog is there to express how YOU feel, not to steal the words of others and post them as your own. The more I thought about it, the more upset I became. I mentally wrote and rewrote nasty e-mails demanding that the post be removed. I finally settled on a polite but firm message to the author asking them to remove the post immediately. 

It's a few days later and the offending post is still there. Technically, there is nothing I can do, as my blog is not copyright protected. But it seems that common courtesy should prevail in such a situation, and the post should be removed, yes?

UPDATE: Not only has the post been removed, but the blogger cancelled their entire account. I'd rather they had kept it and written from the heart, but if this is better for them, so be it.