Friends & Family

Moving Out: A Chris Story

2 Comments / Family Funk, Friends & Family /

Lee always says I don’t post enough Chris stories. She’s right, I don’t. I’ll work on that and it’s particularly easy right now because the boy has been driving me nuts.

For months he’s been talking about saving enough money to move out. I guess he was tired of free room and board living in the Florida room because sure enough, he and his g/f saved enough money for deposits on an apartment and their utlity deposits. They found a place in April (or was it May) and signed a lease that would move them in on August 1. They were excited.

Immediately following the signing of the lease they made noises about cleaning their room and packing their stuff. That lasted about 30 seconds and resulted in 3 bags of trash being carried out to the garbage bin.

In early June, Chris asked for packing tape. I gave him my only roll and told him to enjoy! He packed one box (and didn’t return my tape.)

In late June, he and A had a brilliant idea. They would put all of their clothes into trash bags and take them to A’s mom’s house to wash. I’m not kidding when I say ALL of their clothes. They were unable to decide which clothes were clean and which were dirty so they figured they’d start fresh – with everything washed. After 3 nights of washing clothes over there, they returned with no clothing. They decided they would leave the clean clothes at A’s mom’s house rather than risk getting them all dirty again. This apparently left them with 3 changes of clothing to last a full month.

Second week of July, I asked whether they had started packing again. Chris sheepishly said “Not yet, but we have to do it soon.” Uh, yea.

Third week of July, we headed to BlogHer Con and assumed they would pack non-stop while we were gone. We returned, two days later than originally intended and one day before their move in date and no packing had taken place. None. When I questioned this, I got the following answer:

We decided to just move the big stuff over to the new place and then come back later and go through all of our stuff. This will make it easier to throw things away and not move trash from one house to another. Also, with the furniture out, there will be more room to pack boxes.

So, they’ve moved out. They’ve been in their new place for eight days. The Florida room looks like he still lives there – he’s taken nothing but his contraband animals (don’t ask), his computers, his amp, his TV and the one box he packed in June. Everything else is as he left it.

He says he’s coming over today to finish… his reasoning for doing it today was so that he could pack yellow city garbage bags full of trash and take them to the street immediately, rather than having them sit in the yard getting wet and possibly ripped open by wild animals.

Does anyone care to bet on whether he shows up today? Or whether he actually cleans everything out? The last time he came over here to get some stuff out of his room, he took an extra tea kettle and an extra crockpot from our pantry – and that was it.

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RE is a nut

2 Comments / Books in Bed, Family Funk, Favorites, Friends & Family /

And I mean that in the nicest way.

I just walked out to check the mail while the tablet was rebooting. The box was full because there was a small USPS box in there. Hmm, I couldn’t remember ordering anything so I assumed TW had. Nope, addressed to me. I look closely at the return address and at first I thought it was Em. But no, it’s from RE. What the heck?

So I opened it. A book. The Pact? What the F……. why would RE send me The Pact. Surely she knows I already own it. And then it hit me. This was the surprise I wasn’t supposed to know about (I do not like surprises) – I opened the cover and sure enough – it’s signed.

Which is nice.

But RE is still crazy.

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Happy Scoble Day errr I mean Happy Birthday

Family Funk, Friends & Family, Holidays /

Today is my nephew’s birthday but around here we usually refer to the day as Scoble Day! It’s not that “The Heir to the Throne’s” birthday is not important, it is very important but 2 years ago today Scoble commented on my blog, (in a now very badly formatted due to multiple platform changes post about Patrick and their podcasting fun)! The comment is lost due to multiple platform changes but the memory lives on.

We’re missing “The Heir to the Throne’s” birthday party, again, which is troubling for many reason. This year I’m particularly disappointed since my brother’s best friend is there with his band, performing for the party-goers. I cannot imagine a more interesting party is taking place anywhere in the world. I really hope my mother comes through with good photos and that someone takes some video.

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Happy Birthday, little dude!

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Fine Charleston Dining

Family Funk, Friends & Family, Kid Talk, Travel Log /

We made a very quick trip up to Charleston this weekend. Our biggest issue, as always, was where to eat. Charleston obviously has some excellent restaurants and we even like some of them but we tend to avoid those normally recommended in travel guides and travel blogs. We like things that are a little different or a little more laid back.

Since we were in the West Ashley/Downtown area I wanted to stay in that area. Driving into North Charleston or Summerville was really not something I wanted to do just to eat. So, I looked at the Charleston City Paper and TW read the hotel travel guide, I picked a couple and called Jenn and Michelle to find out what they wanted – plate food, not pizza. So, we hit The Triangle for dinner on Friday night. Awesome. The fried avocado rolls were, well, the defy explanation. Next time I go, I might just order a plate of those as my meal rather than having to share with the table! The spinach/avocado dip was also good and the main courses were as well. (TW got a bread pudding to go and was not as pleased with that – so if you like bread pudding, you might want to skip that one)

While TW was reading the hotel magazine she noticed Cereality had come to Charleston! The magazine said it was opening in mid-June. The company’s website still had it listed as “check back for grand opening”. Since we had really enjoyed the Cereal Bowl version in Miami last year with the little kids we thought we’d take the big girls to this one – so I called on Saturday to find out what time they opened. The young woman who answered the phone was unsure and had to ask – 10am, she said. So, we arranged to meet the girls there at 10 before they headed to the beach and we headed home.

As TW were standing outside waiting for the girls and pondering the menu, a gentleman from inside came over to welcome us to “the first 15 minutes of the first day” – huh? We had no idea we had arrived for the grand opening. What luck! The girls arrived, we all pondered the options and ordered. Fun! Pop Rocks in Michelle’s cereal were a huge hit. She and Michelle plotted all sorts of combos, just like the little kids did after we took them to The Cereal Bowl.

We enjoyed the communal tables, it’s a little loud and I really hope they turn the music down just a little bit so we can enjoy the cartoons playing on the TV and the conversation a bit more. Other than that, it was a hit with all of us today. And I’m pretty sure it will be a regular breakfast stop for us on our frequent trips to Charleston.

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Weird

2 Comments / Family Funk, Friends & Family /

I’m finding it a little weird that TW is sitting here emailing my ex mother in law. It’s bad enough that when we go to visit them I get NO attention and TW gets all of the attention. Hell she may get more attention than Michelle and I know she gets more attention than Christopher does. Have I mentioned my ex mother in law makes food that she knows TW loves because she “promised TW last time that she would”? Sheesh.

My ex mother in law loves TW. It’s weird. And I’m jealous! I’m also happy. And lucky. There are good people in my family.

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Back to work, but first….

3 Comments / Cupcake Toppers, Family Funk, Foodie, Friends & Family, Memories, Travel Log /

Some tidbits from the trip home to Charleston:

Jenn’s new apartment is nice. Fewer stairs but too many for my taste (and my knee.) She’s following in her aunt’s footsteps and has a bedroom for the cat.

Riverview Holiday Inn was fun to stay in since I’ve wanted to stay there since I was tiny, tiny, tiny. (It’s a round Holiday Inn and it makes me think of Melissa and “North Carolina” now, which kind of messes with my head.)

The restaurant in the Riverview Holiday Inn, not so good since most people actually like to enjoy their food when they eat. I think they should go back to the old name (which was Prioleau’s) and maybe that will help the quality of the food.

Business sure is booming over there in West Ashley. Sheesh. It’s almost as “bad” as the north area! I do not like getting lost in my own home town, or feeling like I’m lost because NOTHING looks the same.

Cupcake was cute and interesting and fun to FINALLY find but my goodness what a lot of icing! I don’t really LIKE icing anyway, heh. If you like icing and a really sweet cupcake then you must track them down when you are in Charleston. (wrong end of King St! Don’t walk toward Broad, walk away from Broad) Pst… to the owners of Cupcake, your website is too hard to find. Whoever created it for you needs to do something about that.

I successfully avoided the dumb new bridge, though I did have to look at it from the hotel restaurant several times. And, I had to listen to a lot of touristy people and my dumb ex husband talk about it.

Jenn living West of the Ashley is going to cut our driving time. Taking 17 is much faster than going all of the way up to 26. If I can just avoid having to stop at my ex inlaw’s house… ah well, at least it will cut the trip in one direction. A visit to the lake is a requirement, my ex mil would be sad if she didn’t get to hang out with TW for a bit.

My new nephew (OK fine, ex nephew) is damn cute but his mother should not be old enough to have a baby. That stuff makes me feel old and people need to stop doing it. No more babies! No more nephews growing up. None of that. I’m done with it.

Gas is too damn expensive in Florida. I’m considering forcing Michelle to go to college in either Georgia or SC just for the gas prices.

Yarn shops are fascinating places. Even if they have very social dogs wandering around inside of them. If you’re a knitter and you are in Charleston, go to Knit. They’re nice people and the yarn is interesting. (I never thought I’d be talking about yarn shops on MY blog.) FYI there’s a parking garage right next door. How convenient is THAT?

OK enough with the Charleston recap, back to the real world.

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