OK, im back. What have I missed?

Anything good?

He better accept it , its a good one :D

I don't like the SPG rule that credits a stay beginning in the previous year and ending in the new to the previous year. Count it. More is more.

YEAH - IM updating it now

What a crappy morning. We discovered that the passenger side window on my partner's Civic was broken overnight. Fortunately nothing was stolen from the car, as the one valuable item he had in there was very well hidden. They opened the glove compartment and center console, saw nothing, and left. Apparently this is the latest in a rash of similar crimes that's happened to people who live in our complex when their cars were parked on the street or in the visitor's lot over the last week or so. My partner's car was in the visitor's lot.

We now have an appointment with an auto glass guy to fix it Monday morning.

Our condo association fails big time on parking management. There are three lots that are gated and fenced, and nobody's car ever gets broken into inside of these lots. One of the lots is right outside our front door, and we have one reserved space in it. My car was parked there last night. There are no unallocated spaces in that lot. On the other side of the building is a similar lot, all reserved for residents who live on that side of the complex. Then there's the biggest lot, which is easily twice the size of the other two lots, directly across the street. There's enough space there that the larger floor plan units, like ours, could have a second reserved parking space in it. The problem is that the condo association has no clue who parks where, or which spaces are assigned to which units. Normally that lot is about 10-15% full, and there's tons of residents parking on the street. And yet, with the issues with cars parked on the street being broken into, nobody with the condo board is willing to take the initiative to actually assign the dozens of empty spaces that nobody ever parks on in our third, and largest, secured lot to the residents who actually could use them. Now that this has happened to us, we've decided we're not parking the second car on the street or in the unsecured visitor's parking ever again. We're going to start squatting on an empty space in the other lot. If we park on someone's reserved spot, we'll just start parking elsewhere. Obviously some of the spaces are reserved and claimed by a condo owner, but most aren't. And since our association board can't be bothered to do something about this, we'll just start squatting on a space in the lot that nobody appears to be using until told otherwise. We're not dealing with this mess again.

In other news, the downstairs bath I've been repainting over the last few days now has paint on all eight walls! The bad news is that five of the walls have the same deep red color we used in our kitchen, which apparently took three coats when the contractors painted it for us back in April. So now I'm letting coat number one dry, before starting the second coat. It's a lot of work, but it's already looking damn good, and it's an enormous improvement over the crappy white paint/primer that was up in there before, which was so dirty it included a full handprint on the wall left by the previous owner.

Ugh, sorry about the car. That sucks.

Congrats on the paint job though! Red can be a bear to work with.

OK, I have been can't-get-the-joke guy pretty badly today, but I'm well and truly lost when you say eight walls.

MBM3 - How about giving away a pair of J class tickets to AMS? :p

CM, have you decided what to do in SEA yet (aside from the aviation related stuff)?

BL, it has been such a beautiful day. Gorgeous for an outdoor wedding! Too bad I am at work. :( Enjoy it while it lasts. I hear Monday and Tuesday will be wet and cold. I give a :rolleyes: to those kind of days.

Not yet. The fiancee has a list that we're going to go over tonight. when I compiled said list, apparently I didn't edit out seasonal stuff. :eek: The non-negotiables for me are the Needle, Pike Place Market, and the Waterfront. We're using the last of my Morton's goodies at the bar on the Friday night that we're there. That combined won't kill 48 hours. Some stuff is set but not all.

We have the oddest shaped downstairs bathroom. And yes, it really does have eight walls.

Thanks.

Yeah, I knew red was a pain to deal with going into this, but we were in agreement that we wanted the same red that was in part of the kitchen in the bathroom.

I get to deal with all the home improvement projects. I grew up working in my family's hardware business, and know how to fix far too many things. And for several years right after college, I was working there as an Assistant Manager, and in charge of our paint department. So once my partner figured out I knew paint well, he was all for me painting this place. I insisted on hiring a contractor to do most of it before we moved in, as I had no desire to deal with the massive walls we have in this loft (we have three walls that are right at 19 feet tall, and two of those run approximately 30 feet long), but the bathrooms we're doing a lot of the renovation work ourselves. The paint in the downstairs bath is just the start. Later this year we hope to have the shower in there retiled, plus replace the toilet and vanity/sink. However, those projects are a few months off. We'll have to touch up a lot of this paint then, and we're aware we're doing the work in this bathroom kind of out of order. However, we really hated the white walls in there, and decided that getting it painted now, while I've got some time off from work, was a good start. That will make it look far more presentable, and then we'll go back and re-do two of the walls after the other work is complete later this year.

After this project, we're repainting the master bath upstairs. We have grand plans for it, which involve retiling the shower/tub room (there's a huge walk-in shower and tub that's in a completely separate room — you literally could fit about a dozen people comfortably in there), moving some plumbing around, and installing a second sink (we have a very long counter in there now with only one sink), but those plans are for 2010 or beyond. For now, our master bath will just get a fresh coat of paint to get rid of the white primer that the builder put up and the original owner never painted over.

Welcome back! How was HKG?

ssullivan, :eek: about the car - I am so sorry!

We enjoyed some nice time outside at a park watching the ducks on the lake and enjoying the perfect weather. We also attended a train show which was a whole lot of fun for my dad who is a big model train enthusiast as well as for baglady jr. and her friend (they had one display for kids to push the buttons on and move the train). I bid on a couple of silent auction items for my dad and won which he was thrilled with. It was a good day.

ssullivan, sorry to hear about your car.

In our own drama this week - on Tuesday our fridge died, so we took everything out on the deck, where it was a balmy 20 degrees, and looked for a a new one (after a repairman told us it wasn't worth fixing). Found a nice one at BestBuy, and it was delivered today. We watched the delivery idiots scrape the new stainless fridge up the front concrete steps and then break the base of it.

It is now in our garage as we await a replacement fridge. Luckily the nice folks at BestBuy told us to just use it as if it were ours, and a new one is on the way.

Of course, we kindly insisted that they assign a different delivery team for Tuesday. So at least the stuff is mostly off the deck in time for freezing rain tomorrow.