Making Our Presence Known

We finally made it - our first weekend sleeping in our new house! It was an interesting weekend that provided much work, humor, and interesting happenings.

First off, we have carpet! It was installed last week but this was the first time that I got to see it. It's just how I imagined - indescribable. This is mostly because given different amounts of ambient light our carpet looks completely different. Either way, it is MUCH better than cement and is a welcome sight and feel!

Take a look for yourself:

Unfortunately, Jen's first weekend in our house was spent suffering. No, I mean suffering in a different way than what we have been doing (see previous posts, especially "pain(t)" post). Jen came down with a cold/flu thing and was feeling pretty terrible. However, shopping for lots of new items did make her feel a little bit better, if only for a little while.

Since someone took it upon themselves to relieve us of our newly repaired pool sweep, I decided it would be a good idea to "make our presence known" to those around us. I hoped to dissuade any riff raff or urchins from doing what they do best, mainly: doing what I wish I could do sometimes but am prohibited from doing by things like morality, conscience, courtesy and The Law.

This process of acheiving "presence know-age" was much easier than I had hoped it would be. Sunday morning I woke up to the sound of people rolling trash cans on concrete. It was actually, and delightfully, thunder! A big storm had moved in and bolts were coming down along with a few drops of rain. So, being the fun-loving geeky science fan that I am, I figured I would see how far away it was by counting the seconds between the bolts and the claps. To better hear the peels of thunder I opened a window...

Now, having never lived anywhere with a house alarm before it takes a bit of adjustment. My adjustment was rapidly progressed by a new, frightening, and all together far-too-obvious-to-our-neighbors experience of suddenly realizing that you had not turned the alarm off before attempting to open something.

Whoa, that was loud.

So, 7am Sunday morning: Presence = known.

Rank: Amateur.

Just to top this, I also needed to mow our lawn which is not just existing but also green! This is when I realized that our lawnmower that was gifted to us is gas-powered. I have never used a gas-powered anything in my life other than a car and I had a feeling that wouldn't help me at this point. I did use the primer button then found something that looked like a clutch/safety and pulled the rope conveniently labeled, "pull to start".

Rank: somewhat proficient (but proud!)

After sweeping up the clippings from mowing with a dreadfully small broom, I realized that I had mowed off the head of a sprinkler in our front lawn (figures). Cecil came over and helped me do a short term fix by taking a head off an unused sprinkler and swapping the two. This worked wonderfully. I had to test this to be sure since I don't want geysers in our yard overnight though.


Unfortunately, I don't know which sprinkler valve controls which sprinklers. I found out quickly when I selected the valve that had our unused sprinklers on it thus causing a geyser the height of our neighbor's chimney and about 2 feet from said chimney. He probably doesn't actually need any help cleaning out his chimney I think.

Rank: right back down to amateur

So, after a successful weekend I think it is time to stop (before I cause any more success).

5 more days until moving day!