Stupid Comcast

First I would like to report that my spots are better(see attached photo)



Next, I would like to say that it is not due to the fact that I'm been getting plenty of rest. Tuesday night around 1am, I was awoken when our tiny 50 house, dead ending neighborhood became Grand Central Station. This is Never the case since our neighborhood is in a dead end, so no one goes in there unless they need to. A nice very low traffic area, right? Usually.

Tuesday night night there appeared to be a fleet driving back and forth in an apparently random manner. This might not have woken me if they had not been getting out of their cars and talking, thus waking every dog in the neighborhood. (and we have a lot of dogs in our neighborhood.) Dogs barking ment Zoey had to bark too, you know in case we weren't awake and aware of the danger already. Such a good little watchdog.

Eventually, the people put their dogs inside, the men continue to drive about and talk, Zoey growls periodically. Then one of the trucks park in front of our house and the engine running was accompanied by clanking and the slamming of doors. Lovely. I finally got up to see what the noise is and it's a Comcast truck, two in fact. One parked in front of my house, one two houses down. Fixing stuff or something.

Brad finally got annoyed enough to call and complain. (I voted that he go out in his boxers and yell, but he vetoed my idea:-( He was told there was a major outage(so why are they in front of my house at one am, I just closed my account) and they would put the complaint on our file(again, Yeah! oh wait we just closed it)

45 minutes after the debacle started the guys pack up and leave for good. Zoey eventually settles back down and we actually get some sleep. However, Comcast is not high on my list and I doubt another of my pennies will grace their doors.

My Time at the Gym

So, as usual Brad drug me to the gym last night(I mean this is the most loving way possible) My desire to go to the gym is probably well known. I range from actually being drug to complaining and sulking. On two memorable occasions, I felt like going and asked Brad to get ready.(This really throws him off) Anyway, we were there last night and after I read on the bike for a while I decided to do a few weight machines then some ab work.

They have these neat little benches, that are inclined with foot holds, so you get a greater range of motion and don't move around right? Since I hate doing crunches, I've been holding a weight to my chest to make it harder and thus I have to do fewer. Right now I'm on a 10lb weight. My abs are in great shape, but you can't tell under the tummy fat I still sport. Ahh well.

So while doing my crunches on the bench and guy comes over to use the other bench(there are 2 and they face each other) He asks if I always use weight. And I said yes and told him why. He then told me that adding weight like that will add to your love handles. What?!? Now he seemed to want to be giving helpful advice, but addressing a woman's love handles is really not the way to go about it. Especially when he calls them love handles. Umm, can't you just say your sides? Are you looking at my love handles? Are they more than just sides now, you're saying this because they are love handles huh? Do I have a lot to love? Bastard.

He finished up by saying if I switched up my ab exercises then I wouldn't plateau t fast and wouldn't need the weight. He appeared to be in good condition, so maybe he should know. Maybe I should have said thank you, but he mentioned love handles, so now he's on my bad list. The bright side of this story is that I have decided I can no longer do crunches at the gym. It'll make me fat. It's always good to look at the silver lining right?

Spots

OK, I've been all over Facebook with my story, but I will now chronicle it for everyone else too.

January 21st - A pretty normal day. I go to work, I go home, Brad drags me to the gym where I manage to run 2 miles in 20 minutes(Woohoo me!) We go home and I grab some of the black bean soup I'd made in the crock pot and head over to Felicia's house. She's meeting my parents and her husband(whole nother story here) on vacation in Mexico for the next week, so we're going to hang out before she goes. We have some salty black bean soup(my fault), some seriously dense cornbread(Felicia's fault(well I didn't have any milk left, so I used water, humm)) and some sketchy chianti(screwtop, she should have known better) We chat, she cleans I pet the insistant cats, I go home around 10.

I notice after my shower that I appear to have spots all over my torso. Weird, we'ren't there when I changed for the gym earlier. I now begin my internal debate on whether or not to tell/show Brad the spots. They look like chicken pox(but I've had that) but they don't itch. However, Brad is a hypochondriac and I'm thinking he might kick me out of bed for possible contamination reasons. I show him the spots anyway and as a compromise(though I don't think he's terribly convinced by this) I take my tempurature. When it comes out normal that means(in Bradley world) that I'm not really sick and thus safe to have in bed. To me this means I'm not infected with anything, it's just a reaction(maybe to that sketchy chianti)

Thursday and Friday come and go and everytime I go to the gym, my spots get worse. They don't get better in between, but there are definitely more of them after every gym visit. This gives me a whole day reprieve (for testing purposes) from the gym. (What can I say Brad's a tough task master) Regardless, the spots continue to make headway across my tummy and back. I now look like this:
This brings me to Monday morning and a visit to my doctor. "OK, let's see what we have." "Oh yeah, that's Pityriasis rosea. Textbook case too. Can I bring in a medical student to show? We were just talking about this a couple of days ago." Sure, why not. If I'm going to have weird spots why not show the medical student. I've shown half of my co-workers already.

The long and the short of my spots is this. They are viral, but no one knows what causes them to appear. They are not contagious. They will go away on their own in 4-6 weeks and will likely never trouble me again.

So now two weeks later my spots are fading. They are actually peeling, so it looks like I have little sunburn spots all over my torso. Pretty huh?

Did I also mention that my hypochondriac husband has still instructed me to keep my clothes on at all times? Big change there:-)

The Floor Part 2

This is our floor as of Friday morning. The guys came to start on Wednesday morning around 10am. After 2 hours of attempting to pull op the wood, they announced they were off to lunch. Also that they couldn't pull up the wood without pulling up pieces of the concrete floor as well. So they were going to get a new blade for their skill saw, chop up the floor and then water it. he idea was that this would loosen the glue and they could pull up the boards the next day. Thus the wood sticking tot he floor in places and many small pieces of wood everywhere. Anyway after lunch they spent another hour sawing and watering before leaving at 2.

Friday they did manage to pull up the floor int he living room and dining room. Then they put down an epoxy to fill in and holes they'd made in the slab and help the glue stick better or something. Then they had to let it dry, so off they went. 8am - 2pm. Saturday back at 8am and the whole living room laid. We had high hopes they could just finish it out, but one of the guys son had a baseball game so they finished up around 3pm. Right now we can't walk on the floor and they haven't put down the quarter round and it's apparently all held together with painters tape anyway. Ahhh Well, soon all will be done.

House projects are so much fun:-)

To follow the progress go to my photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/lindsayblake10607/OurLivingRoomFloor#

The Wood Floor Saga, Part 1

Our Beautiful New Wood Flooring is RUINED! Yes, life is sad all over but not quite so sad as seeing your 1 year old flooring buckling. So, the long and short of the story is this: our A/C has not been checked since, well who knows, we've never had it checked anyway. I didn't even know you had too have the A/C checked regularly. Geez people, someone needs to tell us these things, I've never had my own house, I've always lived in apartments. See this is the practical life lessons stuff they should teach you in home ec. Not that I took home ec, but I digress.

Well, the point is we figured out the A/C was leaking all under our floors because I noticed they were getting all puckered looking. I was all for blaming this on Bushie, Felicia and Nik's Black Lab. He came and stayed with me the weekend before and spent the entire time ignoring the puppy and panting all over our floor. and shedding too, but I doubt that damaged the flooring anyway. So we figure out the A/C is leaking and turn it off and Brad bravely volunteers to stay home until it's fixed(really this is both brave and just lack of trust in me to get it fixed in a timely manner, Brad looooves him some A/C)

The nice A/C people come and clean out system and find out our condensation coil is clogged. How this happens is a mystery to me, but I thought it might be best not to know. Anyway, all better. The nice flooring people came to give us an estimate, the nice insurance man said "Yes, of course we will pay to replace your floor even though it's your own stupid fault for not knowing how to take care of your house and it's not like we're giving those poor suckers in Ike's path any help or anything." OK, maybe not the last part, but mostly accuarte.

The flooring people take a couple of days, but finally get us an estimate for the damaged parts, then call a few days later and say ohhh, that floor is discontinued, let me see if I can find some extra boxes packed back in some warehouse. A few days later: "Yeah, um, no, no one has any, you'll have to replace the whole thing with something else. " The nice insurance mand says yes we will still cover it, just make sure it says the old flooring is discontinued. No Problem!

So we're getting a whole new floor downstairs! We only have to move everything! Yeah! OK, no that part sucks. To anyone who thought this was actually going to be a short story, You don't know me very well do you? WTF are you doing reading my blog?