When I moved into my house, my uncle gave me some advice.

Do at least one job on the house that needs doing every day. It doesn’t matter if it takes 10 minutes or 10 hours, but if you get at least one thing done every day then you will never get overwhelmed.

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A week ago I put up a new shower curtain rod in the bathroom. It was one of those ones that curve out away from the tub so that it seems like you have more room in the shower without actually installing a larger tub. It works out great. It took me a while to get it up, however. First, the old shower curtain rod was painted onto the wall with what seemed like 5000 coats of paint, so removing it was a little more difficult than just taking out some screws and not letting it drop. Once it was done, though, I had to install the anchors for the new shower curtain. I did not realize it at the time, but I was using too small of a drill bit for the sheetrock anchors that I had.
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High speed internet is important in my line of work, but for most of the year we do not bother with cable television. It is too expensive and it would not get watched often enough to make it worth having. Cable television is one of those things that just costs way too much, especially with our current cable provider. They are going through bankruptcy and are in the process of switching over to Time Warner, so I hope that it will be a little cheaper once that process is completed, but it has not been completed yet.

Our current cable company sends us deals on a pretty regular basis in an attempt to upsell us. The funny thing is that most of their postcards that they mail out are postmarked 2 to 3 days after the deal expires, so you can never actually make use of them.

I called up this morning, however, and ordered an installation. We will have 3 months of digital cable coming to us with a free installation, and then hopefully Time Warner will have completely taken over and will have a new 3 month deal that we can sign up for. If not, then we will go down to just basic cable. We do not really need anything but local network channels anyway. No matter what, at the end of February or in January, we will cancel the cable television service again and stick to cable internet.

Coincidentally enough, the first day that they could schedule the installation was on September 7^th around lunch time. This works out rather well, as Miami is playing Pittsburgh at 8:30 that evening.

Well, our small ant problem that turned into a somewhat larger ant problem is for the most part solved. I never got around to use the gel that you squeeze into the cracks; the 6 bait traps outside and the 18 bait traps inside appear to have worked just fine. I came home at lunch time the day after I set the bait out, and there were still plenty of ants everywhere. That evening, though, you did not see as many. Now, we see quite a few but they are for the most part dead. Every once in a while I see a random ant here and there that is still alive. That is not so bad though. I would rather have to kill one ant every couple of days than have to kill three dozen ants every time I go into the basement.

We have been having ants in the house all summer, but never more than a few at a time. Trying to get unpacked and moved into a new house, plan a wedding, and plan for cutting our income in half seemed more important than getting ant traps set up. Thus, it has not happened until now. Now, though, it is finally time and finally necessary.

Over the last day or two, my wife and I have killed dozens of ants. In fact, I just heard her stomp on another one in the other room. My guess is that when we had our rehearsal dinner, some sort of food got left out to attract them in, and now that we are back from the honeymoon we are finding the results. I have not found anything yet, though.
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My kitten does not usually bother herself over the ants in the house, but heaven forbid a fly get in! She loves to chase them. When we lived in the apartment, she used to chase them and play with them. After the second or third time she had swiped one out of the air with her paw, she would tear off its wings so that she could push it around on the floor.

These days, she just scoops the flies out of the air with her paws, throws the fly in her mouth, and eats it. Maybe the flies taste much better out here than they did down town; less polution, perhaps.

A fly got in the house following me when I came home for lunch today, and it was buzzing around the kitchen. Freja chased it into the dining room and got a few good jumps in before she managed to catch it. She’s been pretty happy ever since.

Our living room is the perfect room for napping. We have a giant picture window along the back wall with some smaller windows next to it, and another window along the southern wall. We have set up the couch along the inside wall directly across from the picture window.

In the mid-afternoon, the sun comes in through the window and really warms up the living room. Just walking into the room can make you slightly drowsy, but if you sit or lay down then you really notice how nice it would be to close your eyes. It is very inviting.

Saturday my fiancé took a nap after we got home from the Beach to Beacon, and after she got up I laid down and took her place on the couch.

Unfortunately, with wedding plans in full swing, there has not been a lot of time to take advantage of those naps. But soon there will be time! And I plan on taking full advantage of those times. We have gotten to take advantage of the afternoon a few times, but not often enough.

When I lived in an apartment, you could be at opposite ends and hold a conversation in a normal tone of voice. This is certainly not the case in the house. In the house, you could be in the next room and have trouble making out words if your voices are not raised.

Sound does not seem to travel around the corners in the house so well. With windows open, fans blowing, and vents doing their thing it can sometimes be quite difficult to hear what somebody is saying if they are in not in the same room. This is not a necessarily a bad thing, but it is an adjustment from what we are used to.

The biggest source of noise is our proximity to the road. Traffic has a tendency to go a bit fast, especially the motorized kind with two wheels. With the windows open, it can sometimes be hard to hear somebody who is in the same room as you are. There is not a lot of traffic, though, so that is not a huge bother unless you do not like to repeat yourself.

Yesterday I was down in my basement, where I moved some blankets in front of the door in preparation for throwing them out. A little while later, I turned around to see my cat watching me, and a mouse watching the cat. I did not want the mouse to get scared and run and hide where we could not get it in the basement, so I herded it towards the cat. Freja did not see the mouse until it was about 2 inches from her head. When she did see the mouse, she chased it into the blanket and then jumped on the edges so that the mouse could not get out. My cat is very helpful like that.
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Having good friends makes the whole process easier. What process? Well, just about any process involved with your home. Helping to pack up your (way too many) belongings, helping you move, helping you unpack, helping you rearrange furniture, helping you put furniture back together, helping you eat your food; there all kinds of things made easier by having friends available who are willing to help out.
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