Chick with Sticks

Christmas is getting closer, and I’m trying to get as much shopping done as possible.

My shopping for Jody is finished, CJ too, and my sister, and I have at least one item for almost everyone else…

But I am at a complete loss when it comes to shopping for Jody’s mom. We joke that the room they added on to their house recently was just another space for her to store her junk…. meaning, she has lots of stuff. And I certainly don’t want to add to that pile of stuff. So what can you buy for someone who doesn’t need anything? We’ve done gift cards for restaurants in the past but they hardly ever use them.

I was just on Gifts.com, which has a “Quick and Easy Personality Profiler” – what a joke that crap is. They ask you a series of questions that are suppose to help figure out what type of person the gift recipient is so they can recommend some gifts, but they only give you two optional answers per question, and most of the time neither of them fit whoever I’m shopping for.

So I went through and answered all of the questions as best as I could, and all they could come up with was “World’s Greatest Grandma” and “I Love My Grandkids” stuff for Jody’s mom. The woman’s youngest grandchild is 15! Why didn’t they ask THAT question!?

But anyway, that’s my rant about Gifts.com.

You’ll be happy to know that I came up with a Christmas card design over the weekend. And I’ve bought all of the supplies except one thing, which I cannot find anywhere…yet. And of course I can’t tell you what it is, because some of you are on my Christmas card list, and I don’t want to ruin the surprise. So you’ll just have to wait

House

is

MOVED!

Better pictures will be posted later. Jody still has my camera, these were taken with my awesome new iPhone. It is greatness. And check out the great weather we had!

I have a lot of work to catch up on, so this will be quick:

• Mover showed up an hour and 46 minutes late
• He was going at a pretty good pace until he knocked over a few trashcans and took out a mailbox (wish I had a picture of that!) – after that happened he slowed down to a crawl.
• Our police escorts had to leave mid way to go to another scheduled escort job. Had the mover been on time, that may not have happened
• Jody and I left half way through to go eat something, we sat in the field to wait for it to catch up
• House was still not in its final place when I left, but it was close enough

Our house, driving up on the field

It’s raining pretty hard right now.

Our house has no roof. Just tarps.

:::grumbles and curses:::

HEY EVERYONE!

YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHAT TODAY IS…

IT’S INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY!

IT’S A MAGICAL DAY WHEN THE WORLD TYPES IN UPPERCASE LETTERS, AND EVERYONE GETS ANNOYED.

YAY!

A few days ago, a bird flew right into the door to my office.

And today, I hit, and probably killed, a bird on my way to work.

Seriously, birds – just stay away from me.

The iPhone 3G has the App Store built in, and I have nothing better to do right now than to look through all the Applications. I have a “Learn Italian” series on my iPod, so I searched the App Store for any (free) Italian apps. And I found one! It includes some very useful phrases for your next trip to Italy, such as:

• What’s your star sign? (Qual’e il tuo segno zodiacale?)
• I am drunk (Sono unbriaca (f) / Sono ubriaco (m) )
• I am hungover (Ho bevuto troppo)
• I want you (Ti desidero molto)
• Where can I buy cigarettes? (Dove posso comprare le sigarette?)
• I have diarrhea (Ho la diarrea)
• I need some condoms (Ho bisogno di preservativi)

There’s a cemetery here in Savannah called Bonaventure Cemetery. It’s a big tourist attraction here – it’s old, it was featured in the book/movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (Bonaventure played the part of the Garden), and some famous people are buried there, depending upon your definition of famous.

I’ve lived in Savannah all of my life, and I’ve never visited Bonaventure. Until Saturday. My mother, who used to “hang out” at the cemetery as a teenager (who does that!?) decided that I had to see it. So off we went. And I took pictures!

This is Gracie. She was run over by a carriage, and while in the hospital she caught pneumonia and died. Her parents had this statue made for her grave.

I bet she looks really creepy at night. I didn't realize her fingers were missing until a few minutes ago.

Father and Mother Grimm. That's an appropriate name for a gravestone, don't you think? If only the Bury family would have taken advantage of their last name. Their gravestones were not even picture-worthy.

This is a bench in front of Johnny Mercer

Johnny Mercer's grave. Apparently when you are dead, the only suitable gift is rocks. He was not the only one to have rocks on his grave, but he had the most.

My favorite! The Doody family. Their name is Doody ::snicker:: This actually is not in Bonaventure. We ended up visiting 4 cemeteries on Saturday, and the Doody family chose to honor their family, the Doody's, in one of the other cemeteries.

.

See this phone on the left?

I own it.

I bought it Saturday. And it is greatness.

Even Jody, who tried to convince that I don’t need it, has spent some time looking up songs on iTunes, or checking the weather, or trying to use the map feature, except he doesn’t realize how important the zip code is so he never enters it and then wonders why the map is giving his driving instructions out of Utah.

But anyway, it’s an awesome phone. And you should all buy one.

I have been in a bad mood all morning, thanks to one customer who thinks he knows how software should be written better than we do, when he actually knows nothing about programming, and insists on telling us how to do our job. It’s the type of customer that makes me want to reach through my monitor and slap him. So, anyway, bad mood going on, until I saw this…

I mentioned it so long ago, you may not remember it, but Jody is trying to get a house moved. According to the contract, it was suppose to be moved no later than July 31, and let me pull out my calendar here to see what today is…

…Oh, well look at the date. September 25th. Almost 2 freakin’ months late. Hmm.

The mover had given Jody some lame excuse about another house he was trying to move that was caught in some legal battle or something like that, and that is why progress on his house was pushed back. Personally, that sounds like the guy has MORE time to devote to moving Jody’s house, not less. But whatever.

Jody finally decided to grow a pair (lets hope he never reads this…) and tell the mover that if it’s not moved by the end of the month, he’s hiring someone else to do it and he’ll demand his deposit back, which he is entitled to according to the contract – not that the contract seems to mean much to the mover.

Miraculously, the mover all of a sudden has soooo much time to devote to Jody’s house. They knocked out the chimneys yesterday. It sounds like things are finally being done to get the house moved. It may actually be moved by the end of the month! I doubt it, but hey it could happen…

As frustrated as I am with the mover, I was also half-way hoping that this deal would fall through and the man who currently owns the home would just knock it down. I do love old homes, I have always wanted to live in one….just not this one. It’s small, and just not the grand old home that I always imagined I would have. Sure, I could turn it into that home, I’ll just have to fight Jody for it. And that’s not fair because this is his house, and it should be what he wants.

But anyway, subject change, Jody’s parents left Tuesday for a two-week trip to Canada. Oh, and they decided to drive. So the trip is two weeks long, but the amount of time they will be in Canada is actually closer to four or five days. I should mention that they are stopping along the way to visit Jody’s brother in Maine, then stopping by the cabin on the way back, which is why they drove. So they’re not completely crazy.

They decided to leave their cats here, at their house, which is great because Lilly has had some friends to play with during the day, but that also means someone has to take care of the cats. That someone is me and Jody. And we do not like cats. Lilly is always so friendly and happy to see me, and the cats honestly could not care less about me or the fact that I’m trying to be nice to them. They just run and hide under the couch. Why would anyone want to own one of these? I guess I’m just not a cat person.