Back at work after Memorial Day weekend, it’s beautiful out and I want to get out of here, so I’m killing some time by doing a quick general life update.
The holiday weekend was good. On Saturday I went to a cookout at the house of one of my coworkers. It was a good time, though I ended up having to leaver earlier than I would have liked in order to get Jason back in town in time for a family event.
Sunday had a new first for me, a family event at my home! In the past my apartments have always been too small or too unpresentable to have people over, so it was nice to finally have my mom, one of my stepbrothers and his family over for a cookout. The weather was great, and it seems like everyone had a good time. Bailey was a little freaked out about all the people, but was okay with the kids.
Life in generally has been going pretty well. I hit 30k miles on the Prius last week and purchased a new set of tires, Goodyear Assurance Fuel Max. We’ll see if they actually make any difference on the fuel mileage. I’m still on track to hit my savings goal to hopefully get a house next year. Also decided to switch banks. I don’t really have any complaints with TD Bank, but their online services have somewhat stagnated. A lot of places now let you set up e-mail or SMS alarms on limits or events, and they’ve shown no improvement to their services in the past 4 years or so. Opened up a couple of new accounts at Bellwether and will probably be transitioning over there in the next month.
With the nicer weather, I’ve been giving more thought to taking a real vacation this summer, but I have no idea what to do. I was thinking it would be cool to get a few people together to rent a house somewhere for a week. Not sure who would be interested or where to go, but I think it’d be fun.
This is my first family holiday in a while where I’ve had no family things to go do. It’s kindof odd. Just me and the Bailey cat at the moment. He moved in on Friday, and seems to be enjoying himself. I think he’s a little confused that the floor is covered in carpet and there aren’t cages on the walls. He’s kindof like a big old kitten; everything here is new to him, and he has some of the kitten skittishness to him.
Work has been going well. My department just finished up a major project, which went pretty smoothly. Now we get some breathing room and will hopefully be able to fix up some of the less important things that deserve to be fixed. The company has issued me a Mac Book Pro, which I am quite liking. I keep comparing it to having a Linux laptop where everything works properly without having to futz with it. I’m really liking the little things, like iCal and Address Book, and how well everything syncs together, including my BlackBerry.
Stuff in the apartment has stalled a bit now that most of it is how I’d like it. The past couple of weeks I’ve been coming home, taking a walk, and just haven’t felt like doing much around the place. I should probably work on the office a bit this afternoon. Once I get that squared away, I’ll have a nice work area for doing projects. I should get some pictures posted once I get everything in place.
Finally got down to IKEA last weekend to buy some bookshelves for the new apartment. Picked up two of the tall units and two of the shorter ones. The plan was to put all four along one wall, but I measured wall to wall, not between the mouldings at the bottom of the walls, so I was just a bit short. I think it worked out pretty well anyway, and the other short case is in the dining area.
Now that I have a place for my books, I’ve unpacked the last of the boxes, and it finally feels like I’m settled in to the new place. Still a bit of clean up to do in the office, but that shouldn’t take long. And once it is done I’ll have space to start working on some of my other projects.
The only thing left on my list of things I want to get is some bedroom furniture. There’s a set at Bob’s Furniture that I like the look of, though none of their sets match what I want. I think I’ll end up getting the bed set, two night stands and a chest of drawers. Other than that, I’m pretty much set.
