What’s been keeping me so busy?

Well, a few things really.

#1 This!

#2 THIS!

#3 THIS!!!

and a totally unfruitful and unproductive job search, but I’ll save that to complain about another day.

So, what you see there in picture number 1 is the new love of my life. My Dyson vacuum. I’ve heard people say it was great, but that does not describe the truly life changing force that is the root cyclone technology. Truly, the suction is so strong that it’s like vacuuming with a fire hose. I live in an 800 sq ft apartment, and by the time I was done vacuuming the life out of this place, I had filled and emptied that canister 6 times. 6 TIMES PEOPLE! That is disgustingly awesome.

#2 is my brand new baby. I love her so. Her name is Ethel and I rock her to sleep every night. She is an Olympus E-Volt 500, 8 megapixel, lightweight camera with an enormous lcd screen. I’ve been pining away for a digi SLR for years now, literally saving any pennies I could find. I thought that I wanted a Nikon D70 because I have a Nikon film SLR and I wanted to be able to scrimp on the lenses. So we went down to our local independent camera store to talk to a salesperson who actually knew what they were talking about and found Stephen, a beautiful Nigerian man who knows everything about these cameras and is all too happy to teach us. He talked us down to the D50 because price was a major concern for us, so he was convinced that we’d get all we wanted out of the D50 and pay less for it. He won us over for life.

While I was off at youth conference, Bear went into the store to pick up the D50 as a surprise, but they were all out! His romantic surprise dreams were crushed! But the beautiful Nigerian saved the day. Stephen negotiated a price on the Olympus so we paid the same amount thanks to rebates and got a way better camera.

When I came home Bear had a couple of presents all wrapped up for me on the couch and the house all cleaned spic and span. I opened the first little present, and it was a 2 Gig memory card, so I immediately knew what had to be in the big box. But when I opened it up and it wasn’t a D50, I was immediately disappointed. Little did I know what I had in my hands. What a fool I was!

Now, #3. That is the Robin. That is our future home. See, here in Modesto, the real estate market has gone ca-razy. It is California after all and a lot of Bay Area commuters live here, so the prices were insanely high. Like, this 2000 sq ft 3 bedroom home was selling for 480K. All this talk about the real estate bubble bursting, however, is finally starting to make sense because the market here is going soft like melted jello. Every street we walk down has three or four homes for sale on it. There are three different home builders just down the street putting up colossal neighborhoods, and they’re starting to run into problems. All the big big houses are still selling OK, but the 3 bedroom ones will not move. Basically, no one wants to pay 500K for a house that is about to be worth half that.

So the prices are slowly dropping, and we’re reaping all the benefits. Bwah ha ha ha.

Bear has already passed big scary awful test #1 to get his license and now he just has to take sort of frightening, unpleasant test #2 and he should get a mondo raise, we will no longer be “starving students” and we will get a house and my long awaited PT Cruiser (I know they’re goofy looking, that’s why I like them!).

Crazy times. After nearly 7 years of marriage and all of our downs and slight rises and downs some more, things are finally, FINALLY, FINALLY turning around for us.