If Humping Stingrays Is A Crime…

Lock me up and throw away the key.  Seriously.

We have been so freakin’ busy that I almost forgot that we were going to be on the beach in a week.  How does one forget something that important?  Easy.  Just have the school across the street want to take your house and make it a playground or a parking lot or a gym or a school house or a day care or whatever else they want.  Then have to scurry around like a rat to find a new house.  Sprinkle in some of the busier days at work to ever exist… and you have a perfect storm.

Why do we say that.  “Perfect” storm.

What’s so perfect about it.  I think “shit-storm” works better.  Imma use that instead from now on.

Enough about everything bogging us down… I’m tired of whining about shit.  Aren’t you tired of reading it?  Why hasn’t someone told us to suck it up and quit playing victim to the world?  You dissapoint me internets.  I thought you would whoop us into shape before now… all we have got is “atta boys” and “atta girls”.  I expected more. 

Thats all I’m saying.

Back to the beach. 

This time next week we will be…

Nassau Bahamas

I will be doing a lil bit of this action…

Drinking on the beach...

And I’m sure Shala will be gettin’ in on a little bit of this action….

Foofy Drinks

See this look in my eye… its love… humpin’ love.  It’s on Stingrays.  haha

James + Stingrays = Love

Something is weird about that picture… maybe its because I’m wearing my hat underwater.  That has to be it.  Its not that look in my eye like I just crapped my pants.  Nah - has to be the hat.

There are casinos on the ship.  Not good.  Not smart.  Gambling, drinking, beaches… crappers, we might come back without a house - it might get spent in the process.

The countdown is officially on.  T-minus 5 days.  Or 4… or something.  Hell I don’t know, I just know its soon and less than a week, and LORD ARE WE READY.  Mentally at least, we have yet to pack.  I know I know… get off our backs.

Good day.

Where I Blantantly Post Something To Spur Birthday Wishes In Hopes To Get Comments To Build My Self Esteem

Might as well be honest right?

It is “someone’s” birthday.  Can you guess who?  Some blogger.  His name starts with a “J”, ends with an “s”.

Ok… it is me.

Glad we got that out of the way.  You can send checks, money orders and presents to…

Double Danger

c/o James Cross

123 Main St.

WALLA WALLA Washington…. haha

Just kidding.  Thats my lame attempt at a joke.  I just wanted to say Walla, Walla.  Is that place real?  Yup, it is.  Who knew.  Actually, I think we are going to tone this B-day down a bit.  We just got back from New Orleans N’awlins and it tried its best to kill me. 

But failed.  :)  Good thing too eh?  What else would you be wasting time with on this glorious Friday?  Who are we kidding, probably some random nonsense.  I know we aren’t the only random nonsense on the intraweb.

Enough birthday crap already…

Happy Friday to every that has an unbirthday… hope your beers are cold and your weekend is long.  Be easy.  Not that way either… I mean relaxed.  Be relaxed.

The Squirrel Hunter: Izzy

This weekend Izzy was going crazy in the backyard with her “I’m chasing something or digging or doing something I am not supposed to be doing” type bark.  It is a cute little bark though.  More high-pictched… not the low “Imma whoop some ass” type she uses when someone is walking by or mowing or doing whatever.  Anyhow, I sneaked to the backdoor and was watching and she ran back and forth in the yard looking straight up.  It took me a minute to find out what was going on, but once I did - I realized we had a certified squirrel hunter on our hands.

There were a few squirrels running back and forth on the power lines and Izzy was doing her best to keep up with them.  She would eventually tire out and decide to watch them for a while from the most comfortable place in the backyard…

Izzy - Squirrel Hunting

We love that big ass ghost dog.  Really we do.

Under Paid, Over Booked

Thats how we live these days.

Trying to put everything together for the next two months is where we are breaking down at the moment.  We are SUPER over-booked at the moment.  Never did we think we would be selling one house, moving into another, going on a cruise, flying to New Orleans to train a huge customer at my work, flying in for a big game in DFW, remodelling a few things at the new house, celebrating Thanksgiving and my birthday even before that (next week actually)… in a 2 month timeframe.  Oh and just working in between it all, packing in between all that.

No biggie right?  Life isn’t fair.  Life isn’t easy.  Life is exciting and wonderous at times.  This is one of those times.

Where’s The Tape & That Lovely Smell Of Cardboard.

Moving sucks.  Like Hoover-style.  It is probably one of our most hated things.  Apartments made us hate it so bad, I’m sure of it.  What sucks even more is we pulled all our cards last move, since we didn’t expect to have to move for a while.  So this one we will be trying to do mostly on our own, minus the big stuff.  Did we mention we acquired a piano since the last time?  Yeah.  So even more fun.  We are running out of friends.  haha  Anyone hanging out in the Midland area that would love to move a piano… say… around the end of November?!?  Want to be our friends?  We love you.  We know we would.  Seriously.  Let’s be friends. 

Time Is Money - We Are Broke.

So we close on our new house and we will have about 2 & a half weeks to get the new house the way we want it before we will move in.  The problem is, we already booked a flight to go see a football game with friends & family and its one of those things that pretty much as been hyped up for so long… it has to be done.  I know, stupid… still… shut up.  So one weekend is gone.  I think we can get the walls textured & painted during the weekdays after work (and late into the night), but one weekend will have to be spent putting up a new fence.  So that leaves the last weekend of November for moving.  Fun.  Did we mention we need more friends?  Know how to texture?  Dig post holes?  We love you.  We want to be your friend.  Seriously.  Let’s hang out.  We will supply the beers.

Cruising Through Life, One Island At A Time.

When we booked this cruise it was a great idea at a great time.  Now it seems as if it landed in the middle of a shit storm.  We can’t decide if it has come at the perfect time, or at the worst time… but regardless, its coming.  We need it… it might not be the best timing in the world… but we do need it.  Bad.  So the 19th of this month we will fly to Ft. Lauderdale and stay at Tropic Rock for a night before heading to the Port of Miami to leave for our cruise.  We are doing Carnival… because we like to party?  or something.  We will visit the Bahamas (couple stops) and Turks & Caicos.  This is our first cruise so we could LOVE it… or we could possible throw up the whole time.  Who knows.  Who cares.  Rather throw up in paradise… then not throw up at home.  Does that make sense?  Probably not.

Living To Work At The Moment.  We Know It Is Backwards.

I know the saying that you shouldn’t live to work, but work to live… but sometimes it gets your ass, and you don’t have a choice.  This is one of those times where it doesn’t matter, you just gotta get it done.  At my work we have been working to get our newest and biggest customer live.  This means setting up over 40 computers, their live & offline versions of their websites and also to cap it all off it will mean flying to New Orleans and training them on the system.  Did I mention it is next week?  Yeah.  So throw that right in the middle of everything else.  We didn’t have enough going on… might as well put a cherry on top.  Actually this would be more like one of the bananas on the bottom… since we have the caramel, choco syrup and nuts still to go.  The cherry might be Christmas.  **face palm**

Happy Birthday To Me… Happy Birthday To Me.

That was me singing.  I think.  I turn 29 in about a week.  Fun fun.  Right in the middle of everything else.  Thank God it isn’t thirty or something.  It is on a Friday too.  Freakin’ Friday birthday.  Can we say… DRUNK?  Yup.  I can.  I haven’t had a birthday during the weekend in a LOOOOOOOONG time… it should be cool.  Hope so.  Yeah right, I will probably be asleep at 10:30 after watching the weather channel for an hour.  I will be in New Orleans 2 days before my birthday… celebrating early with my boss a little.  Won’t be the same though.  Would much rather be at home with Shala doing something together.  That is called love.  Capital L-o-v-e.  ;)

Are You Ready For The Holidays?  Oh, You Know We Are.  **crooked smile**

Isn’t it crazy we are almost in the thick of the holidays again.  Freakin’ Christmas trees.  Turkeys.  **shakes head**  I can’t believe it.  I think I am going to boycott them this year.  All of them.  Presents, trees, lights, turkeys, stuffing… all of it.  Unless its made of chocolate or sings songs… then I might not boycott it.  The holidays makes families crazy.  Ours isn’t any different.  I’m not looking forward to it.  Not after the two months that will precede it.  No thanks.  We might be the crazy ones this time though…  “what do you want for christmas?”  FOR YOU TO LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE SANTA!  And screw your lil elves too.  I never liked their pointy ears anyway.  It is just weird.

I read something the other day that said something to the effect that you should apologize that you haven’t blogged in a while.  Your readers understand and just move on to other blogs during your hiatus.  Good.  I hope that is the case.  I promise we still garden, we still BBQ (sometimes) and we do miss you crazy people that read us from time to time.  We will be back, just think of the fodder we will have with the new house and doing it all again from scratch.  Think of all the things you will learn at our expense (literally $$).  Think of all the crap we will fix, document and inspire you to do the same.  Or inspire you to do the exact opposite.  Think of all the awesome pics we will take on our cruise.  The pics of the new house, the stories of the world coming down… and us crawling out from under the rubble and screaming obscenities the entire time.

Who knew Q4 would be so crazy.  Especially after Q1,Q2 & Q3.  C’est la vie eh?  We would love to hear from you though, let us hear your horror, your good times, your projects, your strageties and travels… we love to hear it all just as much as you love to hear ours.

Oh… BTW, We Won.

I know a few of you were wondering if we were forced out of our house for mere pennies, or did the private Christian school do the right thing.

They did.

It has been super stressfull, too damn busy and overall sucky for the past couple months.  But we made it.  We got what we needed and we will be moving into our new house in November. 

Overall we upgraded.  Our new house has 4 bedrooms (we only had 3), 2 bath, 2 car garage (which we didn’t have before), about 400-500 more square foot, 2 living areas (we only had 1 before), a sunroom (we didn’t have one of these) and its on a cul de sac (we were on a very busy street with all the school traffic).

How’s that for an upgrade?!?!

So now we begin the whole packing, inspecting, appraising, financing, moving… all that crap.  Yay.  My favorite part.

We are getting new carpet put in all the bedrooms and living room of the new house and we are going to redo the living room before doing so.  On top of that, we are going to put up a new fence before we move in as well… so we have some work to do, but we are excited to get on with it.

If there is a moral to this story…

If you work hard enough at something, “it all works out“.

Don’t get me started.