Seriously, next time I’m hiring movers. I bribed a friend with pizza and beer and still wound up sore from moving stuff! I hate moving, but I think this is the last time for a while

The new apartment is super cute, and in an awesome location. Pod says he doesn’t think we could have gotten a better place without paying out the nose, and I’m pretty inclined to agree. We’ve got the MAX walking distance on one side, and all kinds of stuff on the other side; Fred Meyer’s, Monteaux’s, IHOP, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Great Clips, and more! Freddy’s has pretty much everything we’d need.

Our couches are totally awesome.. they’re vibrant red without being tooooo bright. Ok, they’re pretty bright, but not Stop Sign Red bright. Our coffee/end table set has cool black bars and black tempered glass.. they’re sleek and shiny and I love them! My new desk sits in the corner and has a whiteboard, though I need a new chair.

We’ve still got some unpacking to do but it feels like home. I can’t wait for it to be all clean and unpacked though! There’s a few sneak peak pictures on my Flickr.

In totally unrelated news, some of you may remember me talking about getting involved with the roller derby. I still really want to do this, but need some help as I’m super broke and getting started is not cheap. I made a page for donations; every little bit will help! If you can’t donate, you might spread the link. Anyway, the page is at Katie On Wheels

So, I’m getting ready to move this weekend. I still have a lot of packing to do… I hate packing. I’ve bribed some friends with pizza and beer to help me move my stuff. I’ve bribed another friend with more pizza to help me paint the walls back to the boring off-white color they were when I got there. I’ve secured a killer vacuum cleaner to rescue my rug that my grandma gave me, and will be renting a super steam cleaner to get the carpet back in passable condition so I don’t have to pay to have it replaced. My plan of attack is to finish packing this week, move the stuff on Saturday (and by “move my stuff” i mean “drive the truck and let the boys load/unload”) during the day, unpack the important stuff Saturday night, and paint the walls and clean the carpet Sunday.

I hate moving. I’m kind of excited though. Xoie will have a friend to play with, since my friend that we’re moving in with has a dog, too. I think having more places to go will help calm her down, as well as running and playing more. Pod is going to bring his computer over to my house so that we can get a little more spread of where we spend our time, cause I’m *always* at his house, and I would really like to spend more time at home, but still spend time with him. We haven’t been playing EQ a whole lot, cause we’ve been playing a lot of Left 4 Dead, which is totally awesome. If you’re on Steam, add me as your friend. lifelessmind. I’d link to my profile but I can’t find the URL while I’m at work cause anything fun is surfblocked.

I had to take back the super sweet 3.16 dual core processor I bought. Turns out my motherboard only supports 65nm processors. So I already bought a new power supply, and got a video card sent to me, and if I bought a new motherboard to go with my new processor I’d need new RAM cause mine is slow, and I’d need a case, and at that point I built a whole new computer and that just wasn’t in my budget I did pick up a 2.2 dual core, which is the best 65nm I can still find at this point.. which, yea, is still better than the 1.8 I had in there, but not NEARLY as exciting as the E8600. Cest la vie. I’m excited for my new video card My friend Shawn says the video card will do me more good than the processor anyway, so the combination of the two is pretty good I’d say.

I’ve also been doing a lot of designing/coding lately. I’ve started (and scrapped) a good 4 or 5 layouts for this site already. I’ve got the main page (mostly) coded for the one I think I’ll be keeping. Here’s a sneak peak of it. Don’t bother clicking any links; none of them work yet. If you have any feedback, let me know. I always like hearing other peoples ideas. I’m also starting a new project. Domain has been bought… but I’ve also scrapped 2 or 3 layouts for that one. I don’t want to get too much into specifics until the site is up, but it was inspired by this random freak-out I had over the weekend. While Kat Scratch Fever mostly is about the NOW of my life, this new project will give a little more insight about my past. I’ll let you know when it’s up and running.

Oh, and I got a new tattoo. I suppose technically it’s 2 tattoos (that technicality meant I had to fill out the paperwork twice! that, and I split it up into two sessions cause we ran out of time the first day). I just got the second one last night and it’s crazy swollen and red still. The left one hurt more than the right one. Probably because I’m right handed so the muscles in my right arm are stronger and more used to abuse. Anyway I don’t have pictures of both of them together yet, but they look the same, just mirror images. Pictures on my Flickr. Go look, leave comments!

That’s all for now.

I don’t even really like snow. I’ve just had a bad couple of days.

I had Friday off, which one would think would be a good day… not so much.

I started the day by having a dream that I was at my Grandma’s house and we were having the family Christmas party, and nobody showed up. My first thought upon waking up was “...well that sucks. My family is supposed to love me and want to see me damn it!” It only went downhill from there.

I went to Home Depot to pick up a light bulb for my light fixture (I have the Fuga light from IKEA) and the stupid things are $7 each. I bought two so I could replace the dead one and have a spare for next time one dies. After that I went back home to play with Xoie but she wasn’t interested in me and only wanted to chew on her bone. Whatever dog.

I worked a little bit on a project I’m doing, then decided that I needed some shots of Downtown.. so I took a shower, put my dog in her room, and walked to the MAX stop. It started raining 2 minutes after I left my house and was pouring by the time I got off the train in Portland. So I couldn’t pull my camera out.. walked down to Eat Pizza and had some food and killed some time because Pod wasn’t gonna be off work for a little bit. Hopped on the MAX and headed over there, then couldn’t remember what floor he worked on.

Tried calling but he didn’t answer so I started wandering around the building. It’s fairly small and has lots of locked doors, so I didn’t get lost per say… but I did manage to find the only door to the stairwell that opens on my first try, only to find that the doors from that side are locked. I started panicking and each door I tried that was locked made the stairwell feel smaller. It really, really sucked. Sent a text to Pod telling him I was gonna die in the staircase then finally located an unlocked exit. It was scary

So then when it was time for us to leave, we got on the MAX, and then there was an annoucement saying they were going to delay the train… and then security walked up to me and asked me to get off the train. My eyes got all big and round and Pod was like “uhhhmmm…” and the security guy was like, “are you with her?” “yeah” “okay why don’t you step off too…” and so we got rained on while they figured out that I was not whoever they were looking for, and they let us back on the train, and everybody was staring at us.

So then I was all cold and wet and cranky and my hot chocolate didn’t come with whipped cream. Bleah.

I guess yesterday was sort of mostly okay except I had to work and I got in a fight with Pod and then I had to work today.

But hey, it’s snowing. I threw a snowball at my friend Sam and haven’t fallen on my ass yet so I guess it’s okay.

We’re coming to the end of October, and that means Halloween is coming up! I gotta say though, I’m less enthusiastic about it now that I live in a place that gets cold.

Friday night, I might maybe go to a haunted house type thing, unless Pod comes up with some sort of better idea. Saturday, we are going to go to the pumpkin patch so I can make a jack-o-lantern. We had the funniest conversation about it.

me: I want to go to a pumpkin patch! And make a jack-o-lantern!
him: You would wantonly slaughter an innocent pumpkin all so you can light it’s head up?
me: You should be happy I’d rather stick a knife in a pumpkin than in you. In fact, you should probably encourage this behavior *nod*
him: Pumpkin patch it is!

We’re also going to go to the corn maze, if it doesn’t rain between now and then. I made the mistake of going through the corn maze the day after it rained last year and almost lost a shoe in the mud. I did wind up having to replace them. They’re still on the doorstep of my old apartment, where I took them off because Tom wouldn’t let me into the house with them on.

We’re going to a costume party on Halloween.. I haven’t decided yet what I want to dress up as. It’s too cold to be anything that I would probably usually have been for Halloween down in LA. Last year I dressed up as Little Miss Muffet and my butt threatened to fall off from the cold. Speaking of, I still have that costume, and Megan still has my shoes. We’re really bad at this “remembering to take the other person’s stuff back” thing.

What are you guys all up to for Halloween? Oh, and what was your favorite costume ever?

(My favorite was the time I was like, 5 and dressed up as a bag of jelly beans. It was awesome. My mom still owes me my picture of that.)