Last Friday marked a big day for me.  I finally got the 42" Plasma screen that I've been waiting for so long to hit a reasonable price point.  It now sits on our living room floor.  I bought a wall mount for it, and I'm now sitting at home waiting for CompUSA Digital Living people to come give me a tech orientation for my new home.  They'll tell me how much it will cost for them to mount the TV and the speakers.  I'm hoping that it's cheap enough that I don't have to do it myself.  But back to Friday.  The granite guy came and ground out the scratches on one of kitchen counters.  The Best Buy service guy came and fixed our new washer, which had filled with water and then stopped.  The building warranty guy came and fixed the gas connection to the dryer.  And I came home from work looking forward to spending a relaxing weekend in our new place.

On Saturday, we did some unpacking in the morning.  Don & Connie came up in the afternoon to take me out for my birthday dinner to Saddle Peak Lodge, which, having done it two years running, has become a birthday tradition.  It was a nice leisurely drive up the PCH and then back through the Santa Monica Mountains.  Along the PCH, you could see where they had moved a lot of mud and dirt off the road after the recent landslides caused by the unusual amount of rain.  The road was definitely narrower than it used to be.  The dinner was excellent; I had buffalo.  Also, I was sporting one of my spiffy new shirts that Jamie got me for my birthday.  Side note: I love tagless T's.  The Siebers spent the night on our air mattress, and then we headed to the Omelette Parlor or Factory or something like that for breakfast.  I think there was a quirky-commercial-guy convention nearby, because we saw a bunch of random guys that are in a lot of current commercials, like the State Farm commercial where the wife runs over her husband's toe.  After that, Don & Connie headed to San Diego, and Jamie and I did some more work on the house.

Things are coming together slowly.  With Jamie and I both working a lot, it just takes a while.  Hopefully, my desk will be delivered this week, so I can start putting together my office.  I bought a label maker and labeled both ends of all my home entertainment system wires.  There will eventually be some rewiring that I'll have to do on that as I upgrade my components, but I've got the basics set up for now.

Oh, there is one thing that is done.  The kitchen and Jamie's office are all set up and ready to go.  I've run enough water and ice through our refrigerator dispenser so we can start using that.  We sealed our granite counter tops, so we could finally pick things up off the floor and set things on the counter.

Two last things:  I plugged the phone line in my office into my computer modem, and now caller ID shows up on my computer screen.  Thank you Windows Media Center!  Also, Mark hooked me up with a flickr Pro account, which means that I'll be uploading some high res photos of the place very soon as we finish putting stuff together.

We are all packed now, and I've got nothing to do, so I uploaded a set of pictures of our place as of March 12th to flickr.  Click here to check them out.  I wasn't really trying to take the pictures in a virtual tour order, but I've tried to put them together in order as if you were walking into the building from the front.  If you use the slideshow view, you won't get the titles and descriptions I put in for each pic.  The quality is not that great, as I'm just using a free flickr account, and I haven't figured out yet what a good file size per pic is for me.  Also, I didn't notice until I uploaded the last six photos that they have tools that probably would have made my uploading a bit easier.  Doh!

We are almost packed up completely.  What's left is the bedroom and our computers.  The plan is to have everything ready to go Monday morning, go for our second walk-through, pick up our rental truck, pack it up, and head over there.  We'll sleep on the floor Monday night, then start the unloading first thing in the morning on Tuesday.  While packing today, Jamie found something that makes me happy.  It's an essay that Brandon Wilson wrote in 8th grade on February 4, 1991.  It's entitled, "Falling In Love".  With B-dub's permission, I'd sure like to reprint it here.  (He got a 100 on it.)

We are still on track for moving in on the 12th!  We're just waiting to get some final papers from the bank to the escrow company.  I've been working non-stop for this place down on Wilshire.  I worked longer hours this week, so I can cut out at noon on Friday to head down to the Siebers' for Easter.  What's new?  Too much.  We went to the Damah Film Festival Awards Night and saw some great shorts.  Two couples from NY that we knew from the Haven are moving out here in the next couple of months.  We went and saw a taping of Norm McDonald's sketch show pilot for Comedy Central.  Next week we're going to go to a taping of the new sitcom "Stacked" with Pamela Anderson, because Tony is doing a guest spot, and he got us on some list.  I've priced out all of the components of my new desk that Scott Coones is going to build for me.  I'm getting two pieces of glass for the desktop and having them sandblasted.  In my head, it's a sweet desk; let's hope it turns out that way.  We got a chair at Z Gallerie that matches our couch.  All we have left to buy for our new place is a dryer and a flat-screen TV, if we can afford it.  Jamie did her first official key position for the agency Zenobia.  She was the food stylist on a Johnson's brats shoot.  It was kind of rough, because the people in charge didn't provide near enough brats for Jamie to cook, and only had two tiny prop grills for her to cook on, but it was a great learning experience and very cool that the agency booked her for it.  There should be more than that after a 2 week gap, but stories about me sitting in front of the computer programming aren't too interesting.

Jamie and I have been blessed with a ton of work of late.  When last I blogged, we were just finishing up Jamie's Irvine gig.  That next week, she started on another project that is with the same people and the same client that she did her first project for.  She's almost been doing this for a year!  This time, she's hired buddies Clinton and Scott Coones to work on it, too.  I also started last week on a new on-site contract with a company called Zentropy Partners.  It's a pretty cool company that offices out of a great building on Wilshire.  I'll be going in there until the end of April.  Hopefully, by then, I will have won another contract that Mark and I are going to work together on.  It's hard to tell what the chances are of getting the contract, though.

On the home front, I called Chatelaine a couple days ago, and the rain has not pushed back our move-in date yet.  Fourteen more days until the first people close and then we'll know for sure.  We bought ourselves a washing machine on Sunday.  (It won't be delivered until after we move in.)  We found a great Maytag machine on clearance at Best Buy, so we snapped it up.  I've designed a desk for my office, and the aforementioned Scott Coones is going to build it for me.  We've priced the wood materials, but I've still got to price the glass top I want.  It's going to be LOADS cheaper than the one that inspired it at Alan Desk ($3,400).  Jamie and I were picked to be in our builder's magazine.  Jamie was interviewed on the phone the other day, and they are going to take pictures of us out there next week.  On another home-related issue, though not our home, my brother Paul and his wife Christen finally sold their old home, just in time to avoid the sinister two-house-payment scenario.

I would like to announce for Clinton's sake, since there's something wrong with his blog, that he will be doing stand-up Thursday night at 424 again in Beverly Hills.  Let me know if you need info on how to get there.

I found out the last time we were out at the condo that the people that are scheduled to close first in our building are scheduled to close on March 16th.  Once they close, they can't push us back because of any type of construction delays.  So, if their closing really happens, we'll know that April 12th is firm for us.  Here's hoping!

The lights now work in our new condo, so we should be able to get some cool new pics the next time we go out there.  They really haven't done much new stuff in there since they put all the tile down.  But we've got pictures of the model apartment I think around here somewhere.  I'll add them if I find them, but at the moment, I'm at Clinton's waiting for a package from FedEx while he's running some errands.

Cool news today out at the condo.  I already knew that there were ethernet drops throughout our place for connecting to the internet, and that these were all connected to a router in our upstairs closet.  What I didn't know is that it's also a wireless router, so I won't even have to mess with setting that up.  Also, CompUSA, who is in charge of all of the wiring stuff seemed very willing to work with me to mark where the speaker wires in the ceiling are, so I don't HAVE to hire them to mount my speakers if I don't want to.  More to come about the wiring fun.

Ben noted that I didn't mention what kind of computer I got.  I did link to it in my first post, but very subtly.  Here's a link to what I bought, at Best Buy where I bought it.  The reason I'm not mentioning what computer I bought is as a reaction to how horrible their customer service was for Clinton as he attempted to buy his computer.  He eventually went to Best Buy and bought the same one I did.  The computer itself is great, and I'm very excited to make full use of it, including the Windows Media Center, but I'm not going to hook it up until we move into our new place.  New move-in date, by the way, is April 12th!

For those who don't follow it, California has gotten more rain in the past two weeks than in the history of California combined.  As a result, we got a call today saying that construction has been delayed on our new place.  No new date has been set yet.  Blast!

The models at our new condo, Chatelaine, opened for a special event for owners on Saturday, so Jamie and I headed out to Playa Vista.  The lobby, waiting area, conference room, reception desk, and great room are all completed and furnished.  It looks awesome!  In the great room, there are a couple of couches, some tables and chairs, a fireplace, and a big flat-screen tv.  We didn't have time to go through all of the models, but we went through the Plan B, which is what ours is.  It was great to see it completed.  While the flooring choices for the model weren't our favorite, the appliances were in, and it was helpful to see what the rooms looked like once some stuff was added.  It's starting to become real now.  Our home presentation date is scheduled for March 8th, and we close on March 15th.  In anticipation, I've added a little countdown up in the header, just for funsies.

Jamie and I (and Clinton) bought tickets for a matinee of Harry Potter tomorrow.  She's “super-excited”, while I am merely “looking forward to it”.  I watched Bjork's Dancer In The Dark today.  It was quite sad, but somehow not depressing.  It was sad enough though that I was still sad an hour after watching it.  Jamie would probably have found it depressing as well, but the enormous personal sacrifice that Bjork's character willingly makes in spite of everything kept it from dipping to depressing for me.  The musical numbers also kept the spirits up.

On another note, Tony & Martel have decided to rent an apartment across the park from us in Playa Vista, so we'll be neighbors.  It's already turning into a little community for us.  Hopefully, we can get Clinton to get a place over there as well.

As I was checking off the categories, I saw 'Celebrity Sightings', and I thought of a couple that I may have forgotten to mention.  You know the dorky looking guy with the spiked red hair in the new Burger King commercials set in an office?  We saw him at Anthropologie.  OK, not really a celebrity, but still.  The other actually happened months ago now.  We were at church at Bel Air Pres, and we were exiting out to the courtyard after the service.  That's when we saw the Hoff.  That's right, David Hasselhoff, in all his Germans-love-him glory.

That's enough categories for one night.

For those struggling with the context of the pictures in the last post, here's a link to where you can see the floor plan of our new place.  http://www.standardpacifichomes.com/images/iFloorplan/chatelaine/floor_pop.html.  Under Select A Plan, choose Plan B.

I just got some pics of our place from our sales guy.  The first one is the shower in the master bath.  The second is the staircase.  That's right; that's a staircase.

 

Ha!  I bet you thought I was referring to the 3-dot variety of ellipses in my title, but I wasn't!  Granted, I misled you by using the 3-dot variety twice in the title, but still, you fell for it!  In reality, I'm referring to the Elliptical Trainer that I ordered today that is going to get Jamie and I into shape.  Why don't we join a gym?  Elliptical is cheaper than a 6 months at the gym.  Why don't we run outside?  Our neighborhood is nothing but traffic, and we'd have to stop every block.  But Pete, I've seen your apartment, where on earth will you fit this contraption?  Well, we're getting rid of our little table in our kitchen, and it will go there.  Then, we'll roll it out into the living room to use it.  To celebrate our new purchase, I purchased a dozen Krispy Kreme.

Hey everybody, here are some pictures of the new place. Let me know if you have any questions, as I suspect that they are mostly self-explanatory.

So we got up to our new place today offcally. My frst order of busness was to mae a hole for the refrgerator whch dd wth the jgsaw. t was my frst experence wth the jgsaw. Guess whch fnger hurts worst.

Hey, Jamie and I are going to officially move in to our new place on Friday. By officially move in, I mean that we are going to spend the night there for the first time. We were up there all day yesterday getting it ready. We got cable and internet hooked up. The gas company was supposed to come out, but they never showed up. We got our refrigerator delivered, which didn't fit into the space by about 1/16". So, I'm taking Don's jigsaw, beveller, and electric sander with us on Friday to try to make some room. I don't exactly have a long history with power tools, so hopefully when I post something up here on Saturday, I'll have all my digits. If, however, I've lost one, I'm not going to tell you which one, and you are going to have to guess based on which letters are missing in all of my words. We got the bedroom in shape (it's a pretty tight squeeze), and now that we have the living room organized, it actually feels kind of roomy. I still have some work to do in my office, but less work thanks again to the Siebers, who outfitted me with some new equipment. They got us a new OfficeJet printer, and since I don't have a cable jack where my office is going to be, they got me a wireless router, so that I don't have to run wires all over the house. I have to rewire all of my stereo components, because the cable box didn't have the outputs on it that I was hoping for, and I got some new, longer wires so that we can arrange the components a little more flexibly. Once we get settled in, I'll take some pictures, so that you can get a little taste.

Congratulations to our friends! While we don't have much space in our new apartment, we now have an inflatable queen size mattress to put out in our living room for those of you who come to visit us, courtesy of the Siebers. The mattress is courtesy of the Siebers, not your visiting us. Sorry.

Jamie and I and her parents began the process of unpacking our boxes in our new Hollywood apartment yesterday. We got a lot done, but it's not quite livable yet, so we're back here in Fallbrook until Tuesday. That's when we meet the cable guy, and Jamie has her interview at Quiksilver and the Tony Hawk store in The Grove. We got the bed put together but not made. I got all the TV components hooked up but no cable yet. There's also the saga of the couch and chair and ottoman. We were shopping for a couch, chair, and ottoman for the new place, and we leisurely came across a set at Pier 1. We made a mental note, but continued shopping elsewhere. Little did we realize that in less than a week's time, this set at Pier 1 would become a discontinued item, and they would quickly be difficult to track down. So, we started calling all the Pier 1's between Los Angeles and San Diego. In the meantime, we also found out that the price had become drastically reduced! So now, we could get the chair, ottoman, and couch for the same price as just the couch! Finally, we found the chair and ottoman at the Hollywood Pier 1, but we are going to have to drive down to San Diego today to get the couch down there. Anyway, things are coming together, and we'll probably be living at our new place late next week. Also, I had some time to think while unpacking, and I've got some candidates to replace blog. That post to come shortly.