No time for a title today

Yesterday I was unpacking some stuff and I got excited because I found the dock for my camera. I immediately decided to snap a bunch of pictures of my new apartment in its current state of disarray and post them here. I thought that might make a nice ongoing theme for a little while: "Watch the progress of the apartment coming together."

It would also force me to actually get it together. I know me. I'm capable of giving up in about 3 days and come spring I could still be living out of boxes. But posting pictures for all of my friends to see is encouragement to get things done, somehow. People will be asking when the next update is coming and I don't want to face the shame of saying that I haven't done anything at all toward settling in for over a month because I'm too busy catching up on back episodes of "Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List" on YouTube.

But the abrupt end of the story came when I realized that I didn't know where my camera was. I thought about using my phone to take some more pictures. But this is a situation where phone pictures won't do. So that's next on my agenda, next time I have time to work on the place, that is. Today is mostly a busy and long day.

This blog is not dead.

It's just resting up a bit. I'll find a horrible picture of me just to prove it.



Ok, it's not horrible, but it is a picture of me in my Zankou shirt which, after only 17 hours and 36 minutes in my high efficiency front loading washer, no longer has a chocolate caramel ice cream stain on it.

Image #123, by request

I was preparing to go on my coaster vacation, which included a special day long event at Canada's Wonderland called "Behemoth Bash." Some people on a coaster message board were discussing the upcoming bash and doing a bit of a roll call. One guy PM'd me and said that he'd like to meet up that day, if possible and we agreed to swap pictures so we'd be able to shout each other out if we saw each other.

So I snapped a quick picture using Apple Photo Booth and sent him this:

I told him that I would look like that while I was staring up at Behemoth. Behemoth looks like this:

See why I'd be gazing upward with a look of purest glee?

It worked, anyway. As I waited in line for the Boomerang (which was terrible), I heard someone say, "Hey are you Robbie?" I looked to see the guy that I sort of recognized from the somewhat recent (in a 20 pounds ago kind of way) photo that he had sent me.

Hooray technology!

I have a whole slew of Photo Booth photos, taken from the time I got this computer up to the present, that I just had to shuffle through in order to find this one. They're rather ridiculous one after the other. I should post a slide show...

The Fun Kind of Stressful

I started packing up my apartment today. It's looking more and more certain that I'll be getting that condo I was hoping for. I don't fully understand what the hold-ups are and what exactly is changing. I assume there's a whole lotta math being done. Honestly, I just don't care at this point. Meh. Condo-shmondo. I was kind of looking forward to Kosmo Village, even though it's a little woodsy.

So in 3 weeks, I'll be outta here. I've lived in this apartment for 5 full years. That's crazy. CRAZY. Anyone who's known me for very long knows that in my first 8 years in Richmond, I lived in 89 different apartments, all within a few blocks of each other, then I spent a couple of years squatting in the homes of 17 different families from various churches that I was involved with, then I almost got married, then I finally settled into this little man-cave on Stuart Avenue. *sigh* Good times. Well, times nonetheless.

So I'm excited about moving either way.

I'm in the middle of taking the VHDA Homeownership Education Course online. I have to read a chapter and then take a quiz, repeat 6 times. If I don't get 80% correct on the quiz, I have to take it over before I can move on to the next section. My second lender (Lender #1) said something about only getting two tries to pass and then I have to wait six months before trying again. That has me slightly panicked. So far, though (I've only taken 2 out of 6 sections), I've gotten 100%. Go me. This is right up my alley: read, quiz, stress, instant gratification. Now that I'm on a streak, I'll be devastated if I miss a question. Pending devastation about something that doesn't really matter but sort of does is really exciting.

Here are some screenshots of when I passed the first two sections:





Ooh! You should click on the pictures to see the full-size so you can see my awesome scores.












I'm so ashamed of the level of self promotion in this blog...so ashamed. Please--if you've read it, don't tell me you have. I won't be able to look you in the eye.