visible_bruises

i'm alive! and have rejoined the ranks of the employed! full update later, but for now i have a favor to ask - i need to get a security clearance, so would those of you who A) know me in person, B) are willing to be a personal reference for me, and C) read this by wednesday afternoon drop me an email with your address and preferred contact number at shelby.saum@gmail.com?  thanks!

so...it seems i don't get around much anymore.

( yes, technically i'm still alive... )

so, it appears that i've killed another work computer. the powers that be are NOT amused. i'm being sent another one (though the tech support guy didn't bother to confirm my address and sent V1 to the old address in VA, which means that i've been without gainful employment for over a week and counting), but it's coming with a stern admonishment that i'm not to use it for anything personal. since our other computer is used by joe pretty much full time for working, my internet access is going to be severely limited for the next few weeks, until we can get me a backup from craigslist. i am a sad panda. :*(

one of the things i really love about living in the city is having places to walk to. i walk so much more now, i'd probably be losing weight if i could get my eating under control! i've probably racked up between 7-8 miles this weekend - the baltimore museum of art is 1.6 miles from my house and they have a family fun project on sundays. joe took us past there yesterday so i would know where it was when i took the boys today. i've GOT to get some better shoes, i'm walking in these sandals now that basically just protect my feet from stones. luckily, my mom offered to buy me a pair of walking shoes, so i sent her a link to some sketchers i really like!

i've decided that in my travels i'm going to start taking pictures of my neighborhood and city, so here are a few from yesterday & today:
( come check it out, hon! )

did i hear that correctly?

did kenley actually utter the words "what does tim gunn know?"?!?!?!!?!?!??!eleventy?!?!!?!?!?!?

note to self: don't sit on the faux-leather chair with no pants on, EVEN FOR JUST A MINUTE!!!

soooooooo.......
despite them "not being affiliated", the boys are being given information about joining the cub scouts while they are in school. i already have a problem with the organization, and putting me in a situation where my only options are join or be the bad guy to my 6 and 8 year olds does not win them any points in my book. we went through this in 1st grade with gabriel, where all the boys in school were taken into an assembly and given a little "lesson" about the cub scouts and all the fun stuff they do. we managed to dodge the bullet at that point in time because we were about to move, but have no such escape hatch this time around. the boys came home from school talking about archery, and races, and all the fun stuff they will get to do.

i have a HUGE problem with that organization, and don't want any of my money to support it. but you can't really explain to a 6 year old about discrimination, and while i would certainly hope that my children will grow up to embrace diversity and open-mindedness, forcing that on them is just as bad as forcing the other side on them. so i guess i'm going to a damn cub scout meeting tomorrow night.  I DON'T HAVE TO BE HAPPY ABOUT IT THOUGH!!  >:(

COOTIE FREAKOUT!!!

ok, this is about the awesomest thing i have seen in at least 36 hours, srsly.

holy effing shit there has been so much internet drama this week it's CRAZY!!!

first of all, thanks to everyone for your well wishes on the move. it's been a REALLY trying couple of weeks, which is why i haven't been around as much. part of what i've been dealing with is the dilemma i'd like some opinions on...

i think i mentioned here before that our old landlord, who had SEEMED like a nice guy, was starting to put off the vibe that he was going to try and dick us on our deposit about a month and a half before we moved out. well, on moveout day we cleaned the HELL out of that house - we cleaned the bathrooms, vacuumed all the carpets, we cleaned or painted over ALL of the smudges on the wall that they were so concerned about, scrubbed all the floors, wiped out the fridge and freezer - we left that house cleaner than it was when we moved in. we have SOME pictures of the condition of the house, but the batteries in our camera died before we could get as many as we wanted, and due to the overall circumstances of the day, running down to the store to get more was not really an option. we were there when the handyman that dicklord hired showed up. joe went in to talk to him about the condition of the house; according to joe he said that the house looked great, that he was a realtor and he would rent the house as-is (however, it's worth mentioning that we can't get that guy to return our phone calls now). we left town around 9pm because we spent something like 4 hours cleaning.

a few days later, i hadn't heard anything from dicklord about getting our deposit back, so i sent him a short, polite email giving him our new address and inquiring as to when we could expect to hear from him about it. he called joe a few days later, and they had what apparently ended up being a pretty nasty conversation, and dicklord said that he was keeping half of our $600 deposit. $100 of that was for mowing the yard, and while i feel that issue was WAY exaggerated, i don't deny that the yard needed to be mowed. but he claimed that he was keeping $200 because the house was so filthy that he had to hire a cleaning crew to come in and clean it before the new tenants moved in on tuesday.

here's my issue. that statement about the house being dirty is a damn lie. on the surface, this seems like a simple issue - i should take him to court. but i've made myself sick over this issue for a week already, and even if we WERE to win, i feel pretty confident that standing in court and listening to him paint us as these horrible, irresponsible, DIRTY people is going to cause me quite a bit of mental stress, for at least a week afterward. i wasn't able to let this go and stop being miserable about it until joe and i made the tentative decision to just take his check and let it go. and i also have the worry that is we take them to court and LOSE (the whole issue is complicated by the fact that VA is a state that tends to favor landlords, and since dicklord only owns the one house, the standard landlord/tenant laws don't apply to him) that he would countersue us for his travel expenses, since he would have to miss work and travel from TN for the trial.

but on the other hand, just letting it go makes me feel like we're basically agreeing with his statement that we messed up his house, and that just galls me! i wouldn't have bothered doing all the cleaning that we did! i feel pretty confident that he wants to keep that money because his new tenant is much higher-maintenance than we were, and he didn't want to foot the bill for things that she wanted him to do for her, he gave us a list of things that he was concerned about, and we fixed every one of those things, so he had to find something else to use to keep our money. i also think he's counting on $200 not being worth making a fuss over. my mom says that for the sake of my mental health, i should just accept that what goes around comes around, and i kind of agree with that. it just makes me so mad to feel like once again, i'm getting dicked over and there's not much i can do about it. so what are your opinions on this? should i take his money and let it go, and trust the universe to even things out? or should i take his ass to court?

how the hell did i miss the memo about otakon?

THE INNER HARBOR WAS FILLED WITH WEEABOOS THIS WEEKEND AND I MISSED IT!!!

i live in baltimore now! the move was a fiasco as only moves can be. details, and possibly pictures, forthcoming.

note to self: the end/beginning of the month is a very popular time to move. next time, you may wish to reserve your truck in advance. D:

so it appears that our current landlord, despite my belief that he was a nice guy who wasn't going to pull this kind of crap, is going to try to nickel-and-dime us on the deposit. the stuff that he's concerned about is ridiculous:
-we added a small addition to the railing on the deck - the CRAPPY deck that was made with non-deck-suitable-sized boards, mind you - so that we could put a baby gate across the entrance. he's concerned about the damage caused by the 4-5 screws joe used to put it up. (these have since been filled in.)
-we hung a shelf in one of the upstairs bedroom, and he's concerned about the holes put in the wall from that (though not, strangely enough, about the holes in the wall from the pictures we hung). in his words "you can't just repair holes in plaster like you can with drywall". uh, yes you can, and we did. conveniently enough, there is leftover paint in the closet from when they originally painted, so ALL holes are being filled and painted over, you can't even tell where that shelf was now.
-a small pane of glass was broken out of a door in the living room. he actually asked us not to repair it because the door is old. sorry buddy, doesn't work like that. it's been repaired and repainted, and you can't even tell.
-a small pane of glass was broken out of the "antique" chandelier hanging over the stairs. we're having a replacement pane cut this week. of course it won't be "antique glass", but it obviously didn't have enough sentimental value for you to take it with you - and if it's fixed, it's fixed.
-there was a spot in the playroom that she (i forgot to mention, he sent his wife out here a freaking MONTH ago to do an inspection that they expected to be able to use as their "final inspection") thought was a chip in the plaster. it wasn't - their paint job was so poor that what she thought was damage to the plaster was actually the layers of paint getting pushed up and chipped off. needless to say - filled in with actual plaster and repainted.

happily, since they live in TN, they're going to take the word of the handyman they've hired to do some other small repairs (NOT caused by us) as the determination of what needs to be done, and i trust him to be much more objective. (he even said, when he came out to do the estimate, that he didn't understand why they were requesting that one of the rooms be repainted.) i'm going to take plenty of pictures, and i'm more than willing to take him to court.

but there is justice in the universe. the lady who is supposed to be renting the house when we move out called me on friday - she wanted to know if she could bring her 17 year old daughter by to look at the house, because she had just told her that they were going to be moving. that seemed really strange to me...about as strange as when she had mentioned that she had bought a whole new house full of furniture to move into here. so they come by yesterday to look at the house, and while they're upstairs, joe overhears the following conversation:
mom: honey, are you sure you'll be alright living here by yourself?
17 year old daughter: yes, i'll be fine, i'm planning on getting a few roommates.

HA HA HA HA HA!!!! unbenownst to my landlord, the next tenants in his wife's precious house are going to be a bunch of teenagers!!

in other moving news, we DID get approved for the awesome house in hampden that we wanted! AND, the landlord there (who seems very awesome, and much more our kind of people, if that makes any sense) was planning on repainting the kitchen, and he let us pick out the color! so now i have to spend the week finishing packing and cleaning. one week from today i'll be back in baltimore! W00T!!!!!!

oh holy hell why do we have so many fucking BOOKS! this is the worst part of packing, the books. a box of books is really fucking heavy, too, so we have to pack the books into 45342897346587876743 small boxes. 

also, julian and the packing tape are conspiring to drive me out of my fucking mind today. julian is just determined to get into EVERY SINGLE FUCKING THING that he knows he's not supposed to be into today. oh look, now he's completely naked. nice.

in other news, i did not win $110MM last night. amazingly, out of 10 chances, i only matched up 2 numbers.  :( 

ok, time to pack moar. i need to post a bunch of stuffon craisglist today, so maybe later i'll post pictures of my disaster of a house.

mmmm, i love the smell of fat wank in the morning. it smells like BACON! 

only 14 more minutes until i can check and see if i won a bazillion dollars!! 
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ok WTF, the drawing was 10 whole minutes ago, i want my numbers!!!  ;p
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i r not rich.  :(