vacation

I just got back to Portland today. Jeff and I went to Canada and went backpacking in the Juan de Fuca park. It was awesome. The trail was really cool, very challenging. Lots of up and down in and out of canyons, steep stuff. We hiked about 16 or 17 km. Our first night we got to the park really late and still had to organize and pack our packs. So we started on the trail in the dark, hiked 2 km to the beach and set up camp. I think it was about midnight when we got to the beach.

-AND- I actually uploaded a whole bunch of pictures to my Flickr account. I've had one awhile, but never used it until now. Besides the few Rosie pictures I posted last August. Check out my pictures!

moving sucks

I feel as if there have been previous posts of the same title...... most likely because that's what I have to say about moving.
This has been the most disorganized I have ever been for a move. Though I'm sure it could be worse. All my stuff has gone back to pulpshopgirl's garage, where it was residing a mere 6 months ago. Only this time, I will also be moving into a bedroom! as soon as the painting is done. One more coat for the ceiling and the trim. The walls are a beautiful orange, truly fantastic. They may even be more orange than my old room at my alder st. house in eugene.
The last week has been a blur of working, scraping, spackling, painting, and shuttling people to the airport. I had a great super quick trip to Eugene last weekend. My parents spent two weeks in Roatan, where they bought a condo that is under construction at Infinity Bay. Looks pretty nice there! I'm looking forward to going someday.
I'm really looking forward to next week, Jeff and I are going to go camping in Canada! We're going to go check out Juan de Fuca park on Vancouver Island.

sky of the 5

Drove to the eug today, the clouds were amazing!

blog-GRRRR!

I've been trying to upload pics to blogger, but its not working. grrrr...... what I've been up to lately: I have no idea. Last night Jeff and I went to my firend and office mates home, we played snooker on her husbands 100+ year old snooker table. It was awesome. they made tawsty salmon and green beans for dinner, and I drank too much whiskey. Good times, good times.
So when I was down in Scio at my grandmas, we were going through the garage a bit trying to find the old papers from the survey of the lot that they had done quite awhile back. We did end up finding them, which is great. I also found a knitting machine! and my grandma gave it to me, it's a Light Knitter model LK 100. I have no idea how to use it and of course it didn't come with a manual. I haven't been able to find one yet on the internet, but I also haven't spent much time trying. I'm excited to get it set up and give it a try, i think I will wait until i am fully moved in with Pulpshopgirl. No point in setting up that crazy machine when i'm just going to put it back in its box and move it in a week and a half. We've been working hard on fixing up Pulpshopgirls upstairs. Scraping wallpaper, spackling, sanding, lots of scraping......We've got to really bust some ass so my room will be ready to move into. Lots more spackling scraping sanding to do before we can texture and paint! whee! I'm excited. i have lots of good pics, but like i said.....they're not wanting to post.

it pays to ask

I just called my credit card co. for two reasons: 1. I had a late payment last month and my dad wanted me to make sure it wasn't going to go against his credit since he is still co-signed on my card 2. my card is expiring next month and I wanted to know when I would get the new one.
So during this conversation the guy voluntarily removed the late payment charge of $40, then when he asked if he could do anything else for me I said "only if you can lower my interest rate." He lowered my interest rate from 9.9% to 1.9% for the next 12 months. What a fabulous miracle of timing! I am pretty much living off my credit card right now, so this huge reduction is a huge help and relief. Yay!
It's amazing what they'll do for you when you call and ask nicely.

My First Listing

Please take a look at my new listing. If you know anyone who wants to buy a home with some acreage in scenic Scio, Oregon please let me know!
and you betchya we buried a wee St. Joseph in the ground upside down.

keep on workin'

I'm working floor this morning, no calls though. I have 30 min. left. I've gotten some stuff done, I like doing floor because I have to stay put and do things. My flakey buyer who I wrote up all those offers for has gone AWOL. What a bummer! He's not returning my phone calls. We even had two good counter offers and he had no response. So depressing. there was one of 'em I would have loved to buy at the price they were countering with, it was really a deal. Oh well I guess it's bound to happen sometimes. But in good news, I may be listing my grandmas house in Scio! that would be fun. It will involve some frequent commuting to Scio, and i will also see my grandma and my uncle more.
I have to go buy my first lockbox...... how exciting!
oh, and I found my keys. Somehow they got shoved way down into the laptop compartment of my bag....I even had looked there before, but when I finally took out all the magazines and files that I had shoved in there I found the keys.

general malaise

Some days are better than others, today was not one of those. I had to go to a stupid seminar, blargh, it was boring and could have been titled "realtor ethics for dummies." the most annoying part though, was that i was stressing the whole time because i had a counter offer that was expiring at 1 and i couldn't get ahold of my client to do anything about it. rather, i did get ahold of him, he was supposed to get back to me, and I never heard back from him. So there's one deal down the toilet. I'm also really cranky. The last couple weeks I've been feeling like, "How the hell did I get here, and what the hell am i suposed to do now that I'm here?" I'm thinking I've hit the February slump. thankfully february is almost over.Yesterday and today I've been feeling really bad. Like, woozy and ill and afraid I'm going to get a huge crazy head rush and pass out kind of bad. icky. spinny. no fun. i also seem to have lost my house keys, which sucks. They just aren't in the pocket of my bag where I always keep them. I hope they show up, i have my house keys, Pulpshopgirls house key, and my bike lock key on there. Plus my "Damn I'm Good" keychain that I've had since 8th grade. Lucky for me I keep my car key seperate, 'cuz those things are real "special" and expensive to replace.
yesterday my co-worker and I went to on a slightly drunken quest to a catholic stuff store to get statues of St. Joseph. Evidently, he's the patron saint of realtors. the lady at the store assured us that even though we weren't catholic, if we prayed to st. joseph he would help us out. They even sell him with a prayer card as a home selling kit.....you bury him upside down in the yard! I love it. Even though I don't have any listings, I figure he might help with selling to buyers too, and I can use all the help I can get!

my first offers

Yesterday I wrote up 3 offers for 3 different houses for one guy. my first contracts! my first real client! if they are all accepted he will buy them all, but we came in pretty low so I don't think they will be. but we'll see..... I'm going to be working with him more to find some more investment properties for him. We spent about 3 hours writing up offers, I wrote up 4 but he decided to hold off on one of them, so we submitted 3. I sure learned a lot about the Earnest Money Agreement and am quite comfortable filling 'em out now. I may be selling some houses! Pretty exciting!

adventures in broker's opens

Tuesday I toured a million dollar listing in gresham. what a joke, I don't know who priced it but whatevs, thats not the interesting part. the interesting part was the creepy stuffed animals all over the house. I only got pics of a few with my phone, and these aren't even the creepiest. the creepiest was a small whit dog underneath a side table. to many people around to snap pics of that one.






also, I'm proud to report that our trivia team came in 2nd on tuesday! we won $60. it was president theme night. sadly, we were missing pulpshopgirl as she has fallen ill. i think we would have gotten 1st if we had been in full effect. maybe next week.

whataweekend

Heres the short version of last weekend -
Friday:
left for Eugene around 4, arrived at my parents around 6. My parents dog Max promptly bit Jeff. Quick initiation into the fam. We made a quick dinner, then went to the "Garden" part of Braden's play, which was AMAZING. not only were the high schoolers british accents just priceless, but it rained on set for almot 10 minutes! they had this whole sprinkler and drainage system, incredible! Afterwards we had beers with R! and AKofN at their pad. good times.
Saturday:
got up early, went for a hike up Mt. Baldy with mom and the dogs. went to Dorris ranch in Springfield to see the port-a-potty house that Braden is building as his eagle scout project. went for a nice walk there and played some soccer. went and saw grandma mae. had a funeral for Honey. spent most of the afternoon preparing a HUGE indian food feast that R! and Andie also came to help us eat. went to the "House" part of "House and Garden", which was also fabulous. hung out at Andies for a bit after the play, then went back to my parents house to observe the cast party that Braden was hosting. What fun it is to eavesdrop on highschoolers!
Sunday:
walked the dogs, got a haircut, had breakfast with KC, hit the freeway, stopped in Scio to see my grandma and my uncle. we missed the bar b q for my cousins mission farewell, we were really late. made it home to Portland, watched a really bad movie (Black Dahlia.....so sucky) went to bed.

Here are pics from last weekend:

live radio and lungs

Lats night I went with Mohas to a taping of LiveWire. It was really fun! It's kindof like the Oregon local version of Prairie Home Companion. Theres some comedy, music, and interviews. It was awesome! some of the Rollergirls were there, that was hilarious. and Tony Starlight who was really fabulous! It was a great show, i just felt bad because i couldn't stop coughing. i sucked down half a bag of halls trying to keep the coughs at bay. I had to get up at one point and go have my coughing fit in the bathroom. It was funny, (strange not ha ha) cause I was hacking in the stall and then I peed and while I was peeing and hacking I hear a little voice "are you ok?" I was like, "yeah, I'm ok." it was weird, i guess someone was concerned and followed me into the bathroom. But then when I left the stall there was noone there. It was kind of surreal. I've been coughing so much I think I pulled something in my back, it hurts real bad and its hard to put on my jacket. I got home from the show and was searching for nighttime cough syrup in my medicine cupboard when I came across a small miracle.....an old prescription of cough suppressants! YES! I thought I had some and had looked for them previously but hadn't found 'em. There are like 9 left. it was like finding gold, I did a little happy dance in the bathroom. They must be from the last time I had a real bad cough. It sucks when I get coughs 'cause they really like to stick around. I have this floating broken rib from coughing too much when I had bronchitis when I was I think about 19, and when I cough now it jumps and it really starts to hurt. I'm also paranoid about my lungs, i don't want another collapsed lung, those are really no fun.

goodbye sweet kitty

my mom had to have my cat, Honey, put to sleep today. I am very sad that I couldn't be there, though my mom said it's probably better that I wasn't. but still......My mom is so sweet, she wasn't going to tell me until later because she didn't want to ruin my valentines day. i just happened to call in the middle of the whole thing. Honey lived a long time and had a very good life. She was 18 years old, that's an old kitty. I'll miss you, Honey!

adventures in real estate meetings

I just had an interesting afternoon lunch meeting. it was a title co. tax tips for realtors thing at papas pizza. there was this great big group in this conference room that was mostly windows, and all of a a sudden there were a whole bunch of cop cars and cops with guns pointed our direction in the parking lot. It was quite unsettling to have a gun pointed my way from a not so far distance. our group was sitting at the table right by the window. another cop came running in and made us all get up and leave the room, saying "you're right in the line of fire, there is an armed robber he does have a gun" this was after the guy was standing in the parking lot surrounded by cops and dogs with his hands way way up in the air.

dad's are funny

I told my dad that i have a new boyfriend. I have never had this type of conversation with my dad before, but I figured I should give him the heads up since we're going to go down to eugene and stay with my parents next weekend. It went something like this:

dad: "are you going to come down this weekend to see Braden's play?"
me: "no, i'm coming down the next weekend, and I'm bringing my new boyfriend to meet you guys."
dad: "oh. Is he nice?"
me: "yes, he's very nice."
dad: "Is he a druggie?"
me: "no, he's not a druggie"

kickin' trivia butt

Last week we started playing trivia at bridgeport. Last weeks theme was superbowl, our team finished 7th. Last night the theme was 80's, our crackpot trivia team really pulled through and finished third place! We won $48! We were very excited.

run down

I've been sick all weekend. despite the sick, i still had a very enjoyable visit with chris and auna who came down from seattle to sit around the house being lazy. it was great.
this morning as I was driving to the office I saw the Oscar Meyer weiner mobile driving the opposite direction down powell. what a strange thing to see on your way to work.
I managed to drag my tired sick little self to the office, now I'm here and feeling like I have no reason to be here. I may just head back home and go back to bed.

fish bowl effect

My office is the first one in the area of new agent offices, i sit with my back to a giant window that is the first thing one sees when one walks into this area. This way I face the door to our office and the window to outside. We re-arranged our desks because as it was before we were all facing walls and facing away from each other. I share my office with two other ladies, but they're hardly ever here and I'm almost always here. Anyway, the major drawback to this configuration is that I feel like I'm sitting in a fishbowl. Everyone who walks past my window can see right over my shoulder to what I may be viewing on the internet or doing on my computer. Usually its no big deal, its usually just email or word or excel or whatever other mundane thing that's open. but it can be a bit embarrassing when it's celebrity gossip blogs.
Speaking of, according to PITNB the next and last Harry Potter book is scheduled for release July 21st. So we should be able to get our mitts on it thenight of the 20th at midnight. Sorry anatomist, you have to reschedule your wedding. We're all going to be busy reading the book, and or crying about it.