Cleaning House

Yesterday, Matt and I made the early drive down to Tucson to do some work on our rental house there. Our old renters were 4 nice girls who had been in there for nearly 2 years. The last of them was moving out this weekend, and one of our new renters was moving in the same day. So needless to say, we had our work cut out for us to get the place ready in time. We packed up an arsenal of tools and cleaning supplies and headed out early in the morning. The place looked pretty good on the surface - the girls had scrubbed the bathrooms beautifully, which was actually the area I was most worried about. But there were quite a few issues that needed to be addressed:

The girls told us that the garbage disposal had stopped working so we were anticipating having to buy and new one to replace it. Expensive and time consuming. But Matt's awesome detective skills found that the disposal was actually just badly jammed with something. Cue my small hands that could fit down the drain plus 5 minutes of disgusting digging around in there. The result: a soda pop tab and some popcorn kernels that were holding up the show. So that saved us a few hours and a couple hundred dollars - woo hoo!

Next - holy fire hazard!! Apparently the smoke detector batteries started to die, which causes the alarms to chirp a warning every 30 seconds or so. Instead of replacing the batteries, the girls decided to just pull the detectors down and leave them unplugged. Really? So we threw some new batteries in to those to get the house back up to code. Another hazard (although not as drastic) was that there must have been 15 washes worth of lint in the dryer lint trap. Literally an inch thick. Did anyone else's mom tell them that you have to clean that bad boy EVERY time, or else risk burning the house down? My mom sure did.

Then we spent a good number of hours dusting, vacuuming (with my NEW Bissell!!) sweeping, mopping and scrubbing all of the rooms. The kitchen was by far the worst, but that's to be expected.

Next it was time to tackle the weeds. I am fortunate to have a hubby that keeps our yard looking fabulous by performing a little preventative maintenance every week. These girls apparently gave up on the yard because the weed situation was out of control. I spent literally 2 hours pulling and bagging while Matt took care of manicuring the spiny plants and changing out door locks. Our hands are killing us today.

We finished up around 9:00 at night and drove back home to Chandler. Even though we were exhausted and felt gross, we were so happy that we completed the whole thing in one day. And honestly, I don't think the house has ever looked better. Last round, we hired some maids to come in and help and even they didn't do nearly as good of a job as Matt and I did! So by putting in the time and elbow grease we saved a lot of money and (hopefully) made our new renters very happy.

Tonight, we're going the celebrate the fact that we don't have to do this again for at least another year!!

Jordan Dog Beach Pictures

If you want to see more cute pictures of Jordan at the beach go to the Jordan's JPEGs page.  The first picture is from this last weekend at dog beach and the rest are from our trip a couple of years ago.  Enjoy.

Beach Time!

Last weekend, Matt, Jordan and I made the drive out to San Diego to visit some family and get some beach time in. Matt’s mom (Carol) has a cute little house not far from Dog Beach, and she offered to let us stay there. Friday night when we got in, we were both exhausted from the week’s travels and the 6-hour drive, so we just went straight to bed. The next morning we woke up and headed over to the beach. The last time we were in SD was about 2 years ago when Jordan was still pretty young. But she remembered exactly what to do and ran for the ocean as soon as she saw it. What followed was about an hour and a half of continuous ball throwing – that girl has so much energy!! But Matt was able to teach her an adorable new trick – a combination of her “dance” (where she stands on her hind legs and spins) and her “come on up” (where she leaps up from a sitting position to catch a ball). The end result: pretty frickin cute!



The main purpose of our trip out was to attend a baby shower for Matt’s cousin Dave and his girlfriend Kim. They are expecting a little boy around the end of June which means the little guy was likely conceived when Dave & Kim came out to AZ in October for our wedding – hehe! So we’re taking partial credit for the little guy! :) Carol and I went to the shower while Matt went and had lunch with his dad at the pier. It was a fun afternoon of family and celebration and seeing all of the little baby gear was so cute (although Matt told me not to get any ideas – ha!) Our gift to Kim was a quilt that Carol helped me to sew, although I sort of cheated by using a pre-fab panel for the front. It was still really time consuming though!! But it turned out really cute and everyone loved it.

That evening we all went out to dinner at this place called Red Sails that is known for its awesome seafood. I continued my brave experimentation with eating fish by downing a plate of macadamia crusted sole (actually, I ordered the Mahi like a wuss but Matt liked my plate better so I switched him :) ) It was nice to visit with Matt’s extended family and enjoy good meals together.

The next morning, we went to the beach again and that crazy girl played fetch for another hour or so before we decided to head back. The drive home was pretty uneventful, although we did stop in a town called Dateland for a break and to gas up lil’ Subi (the Subaru) So Matt and I pretended that we were on a date there – eating sandwiches in the car, very romantic – ha! All in all, we had a great trip and can’t wait to go back sometime soon, when we can stay for more than just a weekend.

Oh yeah, side note: people in San Diego like to claim that every day is bright and sunny there, all year long. This is false. Do not believe them. It is overcast most of the day with maybe an hour or two of sunshine in the afternoon. Don’t try to tell me about sunny days – I live in the REAL sunshine state!

On the Road

...but still staying in touch. 

Pamela and I both travel a decent amount for our jobs, but when one of us in on travel we like to stay in touch as much as possible.  This usually includes texts, emails, and in the evenings we like to do skype webcam chats so we can see each other and talk.  It is really nice to see a familiar face when you are in strange city working with people who you may not know that well.  This week Pamela and I are both out on business travel.  It doesn't happen much but even when we are both out, we still like to meet up for our skype chat after work.  We are both surrounded by unfamiliar hotel backgrounds but it's comforting to see that familiar face to remind you of home. 

Cinco de Mayo

When I was in college my friend Sam and I wrote a comic for the school newspaper, The Daily Wildcat.  It was only for a semester, then Sam graduated and moved up to Phoenix to do grad school at ASU.  Pamela actually cut out and saved all of my comics from the newspapers while it was running.  We had done a comic for Cinco de Mayo so I thought it would be appropriate to post it for today.  I hope everyone has a good time tonight celebrating that brave victory, I know I will.

Low Strung

About a month ago Pamela and I went to a wedding for a friend of mine down in Tucson.  While everyone was waiting before the wedding they were playing some nice calm instrumental background music.  I didn't notice at first but the songs they were playing were covers of popular rock songs.  "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey was our favorite.  Since then my good friend Jon found the artist/album that the songs came from.  I guess it's a group of cello players that met while playing in a college orchestra and decided to put out an album.  As far as I know this is the only album they have but it's really well done.  It's very unique and fun to listen to the classic songs played only on the cello.  If you like it, pass the word along and maybe we can generate enough internet buzz to pressure them into making another album.