Christmas of Firsts

This was the first Christmas I ever...

- spent with Dan. Last year he was at sea doing secret squirrel Coast Guard stuff, and while we celebrated Christmas during one of the few days he had off last December, it sucked pretty hardcore to be away from him on Christmas day.

 - had pizza for Christmas dinner.  Most people have turkey, some have ham, we had a large cheese pizza and a side of chicken wings.  I was fully prepared to make a real, big-kid Christmas dinner, but Dan convinced me to wait until Sunday.  In his family, it's tradition to sit at home in your p.j.'s all day on Christmas and play with the new toys Santa brought you.  Then on the 26th, head to your family's house for the big dinner.  So I absolutely sat in my p.j.'s all day, played with my Christmas presents and opted to make our big dinner of ham, pineapple stuffing and potatoes on the 26th.

 - watched Goonies.  Don't judge me.  I was only 3 when that movie came out, and I didn't watch anything but Disney movies until I was about 10.  By the way, mom, that shit wasn't cool.  You should have rented cooler movies for me to watch.

 - watched Top Gun.  Again, don't judge me.  And see previous bullet point for explanation.  Dan is constantly amazed at the number of "classic, must-see" movies I've never seen.  So I bought him these two on blu-ray for Christmas and we had a "Jamie needs to catch up on the last 20 years of cinematic excellence" marathon.

 - received a piece of a Quaker Oats box as a Christmas present.  Dan ordered me an album for Christmas, and when he found out it wouldn't arrive in time, he printed out the album's cover art, with a note saying when it would arrive, scotch taped it to a piece of Quaker Oats box and wrapped it in Christmas paper.  Gotta say, it was the most creative gift I ever unwrapped:)

 - didn't go home to Kansas to spend Christmas with my family.  Typically at Christmas I get shuttled from house to house, help my Grandma wrap hoards of gifts, then go into a diabetic coma after eating sugary goodies for a week straight.  And that's all tons of fun, but staying home was definitely nice and relaxing.  At least it was relaxing between the hourly work-related fire drills.  And Dad, the invitation still stands for next year!

Guest Blogger: Camper!

Dear friends, family and blog-follwers:  Sorry for the delay in new musings.  Life, for the time being, seems to have taken hold of all my time and will not share it with me.  As a special treat for waiting so long, I'm bringing in a guest blogger.  He's had quite an exciting last few weeks and would just love to tell you all about it.  But please forgive his spelling errors.  He is, after all, a dog.

Hello Hoomans!

Camper hard at work writing.

It's me, Camper!  The noowist and purtiest edishun to deh Evans-Ball familee.  I'm gunna post this week's blog cuz I been doowin all sorts uh kewl stuffs.  A cupple weeks ago I went to dah Point Isabel Dog Park for the furst time evah!  It waz soooo amazun my doggie head almost ES-PLOH-DED!!  I WANTED TO RUN EVEREE WHERES!!  But meh hoomans wuld not takes off dah leesh.  Unkewl.  But after a lil bit, dey dropped meh leesh!!  Cuz at home dey says meh name, I come to dem and get treets.  But I not gunna come to dem at deh park, cus ders too much goins on!!  So I runs throo deh park and out to where deh hooman cars are, just to sees wats happenin.  Den meh hoomans catched up and dey was all outta breath like they waz runnin.  Dunno why.

Den a weeks later I goes back to Point Isabel.  Only dis time, dey not drop my leesh.  Bummers.  But dey puts me on a reelly reelly longer leesh, so I canz run around wile deys holds me.  It wuz sooooo MUCH FUNZ!!  But sumtimes I forget dey still has da leesh and I starts to run far, den dah leesh jerk me round in a sircle and all deh hoomans laffed at meh.  I gunna pees on deh floor laters for dat.  Hehehehehe.

Den sumthin SOOPER KEWL happind.  I learns how to open deh front door!  And I didn't need thums ur nothin!  Our front door has a handle insted of a nob and thanx to sum sooper great fire codes, deh door unloks when you pulls on deh handle!  So wile mom and dad were out, I wents over to dah park to chase birds and eat deh bread krazy old peeple feeds to dem.  Den the naybor hoomans came with der doggie, Shiloh and day tooks me home and told mom and dad on me.  Den dad tooks dah door apart and it done open any moors.

Dats just a fews of the way good stuffs I been doin'.  I reely likes it here!  K, bye.

Anyone missing a well-dressed drunk?

I woke up this morning to an email from our Property Manager, Beverly.  Typically emails from Beverly mean one of two things: surprise building maintenance, or we owe money.  Oh how wrong I was.  How amazingly, and hilariously wrong.  Some background information you need to know before I tell you what her email entailed:


We live in a building that has apartments and lofts.  We have a loft, which is on the first floor and has it's own entrance from the street.  People who live on floors two through four have regular apartments and must enter through the front lobby of the building.  We only go into the lobby to check our mail and dump our trash, so for the most part, we're spared the "joys" of apartment living.  Below is an excerpt of the email, detailing such "joys" which we have, thankfully, been spared:


"Good morning,
For the past few days, there has been an unusual amount of messes left around the building. Most surprisingly what was found this morning, a pile of feces between the 2nd and ground floor stairwell on the 10th St. side."

Yes people...feces.  Apparently when you gotta go, you gotta go.  Oh, but there's more:

"Earlier this morning, one of the residents found a drunk man passed out in front of a unit on the 4th floor. Please see attached photos and if you know who he is or if you saw anything last night, please let me know."

PHOTOS WERE ATTACHED!!!  I nearly lost my mind from giddy enjoyment at the misfortune of this seemingly mature, well-dressed gentleman.  The poor guy got all snazed  up only to pass out in the hallway of a strange building while his friends partied on, a stranger pooed in the stairwell, and an angry neighbor snapped his picture, which is now on the internet.  Now THAT is a Saturday night.

Apartment Fever

As you probably know, I finally received a job offer from a company I’ve been interviewing with since May.  However, that was two weeks ago and I have yet to actually start working thanks to the longest background check known to mankind.  I think they were tracing my history all the way back to when my ancestors emigrated from Europe.  The wait to begin has been brutal…I feel like a starving person watching a dangling smorgasbord, and so does my bank account.  Speaking of smorgasbords, with my abundance of spare time I’ve been cooking and baking up a storm, and then eating up a storm.   So far today, for no other reason than shear boredom, I’ve eaten Captain Crunch, two huge brownies, salami, cheese, pickles and three cups of coffee.  Ew, I kinda want to barf from just writing that combination of food. 

The obvious solution is to go out and explore our new city and surroundings.  Which is a great idea – in theory.  But finances allow me to explore only what is within walking distance from our apartment, and you can’t really “explore” shops and restaurants with no money.  Well, I suppose you could, but it’s just not very much fun.  So I mostly just explore sidewalks while gazing longingly at people sipping drinks, chatting over hors d’oeuvres and proudly carrying around their full shopping bags.  It’s enough to drive a girl right over the friggin’ edge!

BUT NO MORE – AAAAAHHHHH!!!  After seven interviews with five different people, the company being bought out in the middle of my interview process, filling out two rounds of applications, a two-week long background check and a lost social security card I’M FINALLY GOING TO WORK!!!!

Now, who wants to bet all of my blog posts from now on will be filled with ranting about work ;-)

Fun With Neighbors

You can’t pick your neighbors, and when you live in an urban setting your neighbors multiply while the square footage shrinks.  Over the past month, we’ve learned quite a bit about our neighbors.  Some good, some bad, and some just not right.  As our loft is a first floor corner unit, we often see various neighborhood peeps walking by.  We also hear a lot of interesting conversations courtesy of our open windows.  The most…uh….fascinating are the conversations people have with themselves while waiting on the corner for the light to change.  Then there’s the pudgy Philippine-Asian-Super Creep that lives in the house behind our building who, instead of walking down the street and talking to himself, stands on his stoop and talks to himself.  Which makes walking by SUPER enjoyable.  Sometimes he even does a little dance and hops from foot to foot, which really only adds to the enjoyment of passersby. 

Not all our neighbors are crazy though (thank God).  We also met the loveable, happy pup Shiloh and his human counterparts Elliot and Theresa.  We first encountered the trio soon after Elliot and Theresa had adopted their new family member and were walking down our street (they live in the same building).  We just happened to recognize Shiloh from a local Petfinder.com advertisement and struck up a conversation.  Since then we’ve gone on puppy play dates, they’ve had us over for dinner and even lent us some glasses and mugs to use as ours are now lost and gone forever thanks to those wonderful movers.  

But now, it’s time to tell you about the most horrible urban neighbor ever known to man: the street sweeper.  It’s bossy and dictates where you park on what days, it’s loud and shows absolutely no regard for whether or not you’re sleeping, it’s loud, and it’s frigging loud. 

Alas, thus is our new urban life; the good, the bad and the downright crazy.