House cleaning... ***WARNING - LONG POST AHEAD***

and setting up...and packing...and unpacking and ARGH!

I'll be SO incredibly glad when all this is over.

On Sunday the electrician came over to see what had to be done, gave us an estimate (which we both thought was more than fair) -- he's a friend of ours -- and made plans to come back on Tuesday.

On Tuesday he came back, and fixed the wiring problems we had in the garage (it was an absolute mess). He also put some drywall up in the garage. You see, the idiots who owned the house before us made a HUGE hole in the ceiling of the garage and ran the wire for the cable tv from the garage up into the FLOOR of the den (which sits right on top of the garage). I'm not talking about a little hole, I'm talking a HUGE 6-9 inch hole (possibly larger) just to run one stinkin' cable through the floor. Yes, the floor. They didn't even bother to finish the job properly.

Anyways, the electrician ran the cable through the wall, where it's supposed to be, and finished the job properly...AND without ruining our freshly painted walls to boot. ;)

Since he had a meeting to go to and had to run from our place to the ass-end of Mississauga, he had to take off and we scheduled him to come back on Sunday.

We got our blinds in on Wednesday and they look SO awesome. We got cream coloured verticals in the living room and dining room that are in an S-shape. It's kind of hard to describe it without a picture, but I'll be posting some once everything is unpacked. (I'm anal about stuff like this, I don't want to show the place with boxes and stuff strewn around.) We have a bay window in both our dining room and our den, and the way they hang really adds so much to the look of the room. We got Merlot coloured double cellular blinds in the den and master bedroom and they look really cozy.

On Thursday morning I got a call back from the electrician and he said he had time to come back today and put our fixtures in. He took down our dining room chandelier at our apartment, drove it over to the house and installed it. He also put up our new kitchen lights and replaced the fluorescent unit over the kitchen sink. Since he was there, and we have a BIG ass ceiling fan over the stairs, I asked him to replace all the bulbs with compact fluorescents as well. I know, we could have done it, but since he was there...While I was getting him the bulbs, I had placed one down on the shelf in our foyer and forgot that the shelf was warped...and watched as it crashed to the floor. I'm just not having any luck with light bulbs this week.

All day Thursday was spent getting our carpetting installed...and...oh...my...G-d...does it look amazing! The colour is 'brown sugar' and it's just soft and cushy. I was actually exhausted from unpacking everything on Thursday that as soon as the installer left, I fell asleep on the floor. I'm pretty much doing all the unpacking, cleaning, etc., myself. At least I was able to get the bathrooms cleaned and the kitchen unpacked...thankfully(?) I've got next week off so I can spent all my time unpacking...(insert eyeroll here).

Also on Thursday I got a recorded call from Bell saying that I needed to be at the house on Friday from 9:00am to 5:00pm because a technician would be over at some point during that time frame to install our new phone line. As soon as I heard that message, I called them up and changed the date. Not only was I not going to be at the house yesterday, it was also the start of Yom Kippur and I had to be at my in-laws for dinner...and there was no way I was going to sit with my thumbs up my ass patiently for nine hours when I could be doing something more constructive like PACKING. I ended up changing the appointment to Tuesday instead since we have someone ELSE coming in that day.

Yesterday morning when I picked up the phone at the apartment, it became apparent, rather quickly, that they had already cut off the phone service. ARGH! I had to call them back and (just to be cute) I had them recite the order to me. So the rep said "The order is supposed to go through on Tuesday, but it's only Friday". Gee, she deserves a cookie for realizing what day it is...

She ended the call with saying that it would take two hours for the phone service to be turned back on (it actualy took over four hours). Blah.

After that we took Deuce over to the boarding place. We thought it was best to keep him there and out of our way harm's way during the move. So he's there until Tuesday or Wednesday...whenever we can start to actually think again...

Last night I ended up having a shitty migraine and had to take two of my 'happy pills' for it. Not fun...not fun at all.

Sunday we're going to spend ALL day packing, so hopefully we can have everything out of the apartment for Monday since that's the day the movers are coming...ack. We're moving the boxes ourselves, so "all" the movers have to do is move the big pieces of furniture. So far we have 41 boxes packed...and probably have another 10(?) to go. It's starting to look manageable.

Stay tuned on Monday (or whenever we get the computer back up and running), as there will be a photo montage for a special kayaker. Imagine much destruction...

Since I've been working my ass off doing house cleaning, I figured it was time for me to shake the lurker tree and see who else falls out...