Market Research

So I do a fair bit of market research surveys for extra cash here and there and because they are ridiculous and fun. I like to think I influence the world by doing these and that I single handedly am responsible for the Meow Mix packaging and Pizza Hut selections. So I was just asked a lot of questions about eating out and they always ask a question to make sure you can read and write and form a cohesive statement. Here's my question and answer. I think its awesome.

If you could invite two famous living people to have dinner with you, who would they be, and why?
Wow, this is difficult. I imagine I would rather eat with a living person so I won't even ask if they can be deceased or not. Perhaps I would invite Brangelina to dinner so I can tell them that while their intentions are good they need to stop now. They may not be good dinner companions though so I'll settle for the rock star Pink because she seems fun and Adrian Genier because I love his show Entourage and he's cute so maybe he and Pink would hit it off and forever be indebted to me.

Updates

I have no new pictures right now but will try my best to put some up tomorrow. For now you can see cute Lanie waiting for a car ride.

The tiny house is coming along. I told Travis to finish the windows and the trim in the living room and I'll go ahead and paint it this weekend. We're also going to try to finish a bedroom so we can shove everything in there for now. Its too cluttered.

Lanie is still not healed up. She went to the vet yesterday and they took a sample to make sure it isn't Drug resistant staph. She still has a dime sized hole in her side and now I get to put drops in it twice a day. The drops are like liquid maggots in that they eat the dead cells and promote healing. BLECH!

Tomorrow i will tell you about the Strut on Saturday. It was a blast!

Fishy quilt

Back to basics. I sew you know, so I thought I should share one of my latest and greatest. I got crazy when I was given the topic of "fish". It turned out fantastic and the flippers are 3 D and actually flip. Oh and one fish is upside down and swimming top gun style over the other fish. The funky zebra print fish is my favorite. I wish you could see up close how awesome the quilting was on it. You can see some of the bubbles coming out of the mouth but its hard to see the scales I quilted in. Sorry the pics don't do it justice but its hard to get good shots of thread.

Oh, and if anyone wants to commission one, let me know now because Christmas is coming and you can't ask for one the week before. Well, you can ask but most likely it won't get done.

Funfest continued

I forgot to mention the beauty pageant at the Gwinnett County Fair. Its hard to get a great picture because it was so crowded and we had to sit way in the back but this is the lineup for Junior Miss Gwinnett County. The dress styles really haven;t changed much since i was in high school a million years ago. Julie Bradshaw, my 8th grade BFF used to always be in them. But she wasn't a cheerleader so she didn't win.

I'll skip to Saturday because I can;t remember what I wrote in my last post. Saturday we got up and went to dim sum. We ate the most ridiculous amount of food and it was all so good. Well, the weird meatball thing was odd but still acceptable. Claire loves shrimp by the way. After dim sum we went to Stone Mountain. I thought it was important to see the world's largest piece of unearthed granite and the largest confederate memorial. She was impressed as we rode the tram to the top and hung out. Luckily it wasn't too too hot but it was hot enough to reward our efforts with a slushie. We went to the mall and then Atlantic Station next. Have you been to H&M? Its okay but its not great. I'm still trying to figure out why everyone loves it so much. Forever 21 is cheaper but everyone isn't beating their doors down. We relaxed after all of that with some chips and cheese dip and a wonderful episode of Tru Blood. What an excellent show. Look for it! You know its good if I watched that instead of I Love Money. That night we went to an art show and then to the Gravity Pub. We got to hang out with Angee and Derek and Mike and it was fun and low key and even included cheese fries and wings! YUM!

Sunday we slept in and then had Vietnamese. It was delicious and my system was very happy to have a variety of nationality's foods put in it. We then went to the Cyclorama. Never been there? You should. Its the world's largest oil painting on canvas. Its huge and the room spins so you get history AND a ride. We shopped and relaxed all day and then I sadly had to send Claire home. It was a fantastic visit and really kept my mind off the stresses of the tiny house, the East Atlanta Strut* and Lanie**.

*Saturday- come see me at my booth!

**she's doing okay even though she busted again. Just a little bit. She'll be fine (one day).

The weekend of cheese

Claire and I had a blast and almost all of it involved cheese. I picked her up Friday and we immediately went to cheese. We went to Decatur's awesome Tesoro. Its similar to La Casita but it doesn't suck. We started out with this awesome skillet of cheese and chorizo. It was definitely a week of calories. After lunch we went to the acquarium. It was cool and fun. Friday afternoon is THE time to go! It was almost empty compared to the Saturday I went with my parents and Scott. After the aquarium we went to the Gwinnett County Fair. Olivia and Jane and Claire and I all went because we love the fair. Sarah should have come but it was half assed planned. We rode the most awesome haunted Cave of Doom ride in the world. Usually those rides are not scary but funny unless you are like 3 years old. so Claire and Olivia got in a car and because Jane does not ride rides I wasn't about to go alone. No, I wasn't afraid...it would just be dumb to ride alone. So the guy running the show said I could ride with Claire and Olivia. I hunched down in the front of the car and with 3 big girls weighting the thing down he had to give us a push. So we're laughing and carrying on and all of a sudden someone is talking with us! ARGH!!!! Just voices popping up here and there. It was AWESOME! We ate cheese fries and funnel cakes and fried veggies and roasted corn and so much more! But at least the 4 of us shared it so it wasn't enough to make us hurl or anything. I won a Tupac photo when the age guesser guessed i was 29 instead of 35. YAY ME!
I have to continue this tomorrow and I will add photos as well...

Claire is coming!

Claire's plane lands in 5 minutes! FUN! YAY!!!!!
In the meantime, lanie is cone free and bandage-less. Also, the tiny house lost its bathroom last night. I gave the trashmen cookies to say thanks for picking up so much bullshit these past few weeks.

Tiny houses are all the rage

This article was sent to me by not one, but two people! Yes, tiny houses are the wave of the future!

Old Door, New Door

Look what we did last night!

Old door, new door.

Now we just need to fix the siding and stuff.

Construction progresses

I'm already tired of fixing things. Brian finally paid me almost all of the rent he owed but I still think he's an ass for letting the place be a trashheap and attract roaches and mice and spiders and crap. All he had to do was ask to fix things and keep it clean and it would be cute enough for 450 a month including utilities. Anyway...whatever. Now we have work to do.

So far we have ripped all of the carpet out and some of the carpet tack nail thingies. The linoleum/ vinyl flooring in the bathroom has been ripped out. We got a window put in and the whole wall is re-sheetrocked. Travis even put in a phone nook shelf thingie where Brian had punched a hole in the wall.

Next in line is a new front door, a pocket door in the bathroom, rip the walls out of the bathroom and clean clean clean.

Tiny House Construction Day 1

So I cleaned the tiny house last weekend to a point where it was no longer grody to the max and only lightly skeevy. Yes, skeevy. Maybe it isn;t a word but I'm using it anyway. We bombed the place with bug bombs a few times due to the insane number of roaches that attacked Travis one night. But last night was better- real progress. We smashed a whole wall out and threw out all of the drywall and the gross moldy insulation. I'm still itchy but the new wall and window will be fantastic! The top photo is what it looked like when I went to bed. Note the extreme water damage under the window. Never let your air-conditioner drain into the wall. Never.

Oh, and if anyone knows Travis give him a hug and tell him he's AWESOME!

Good times

Sorry for the angry post yesterday but it was necessary. I've decided this comic is awesome for today and I hope you all enjoy it. I am going to throw glitter in Brians eyes. Its my new secret weapon. If that is still too negative, I am going to post this picture of a Tom Selleck birthday cake just because it is awesome. You must go here for more cake fun! I love that site. Oh, and my sweet sweet Lanie is home. She looks good in red. I'm just disppointed that I don;t get to see the drain and its icki-ness.

Tiny house of disaster

Now, we all know Amy Winehouse is a disaster. But some of you do not know that I have a tiny house that is currently filled with disaster. Put the two together and the world is over.

So, I have a tiny house behind my house. I would like to chastise all of you renters who have ever dicked over a landlord or ruined their things or not told them about repairs. You are bad people. See, I made the mistake of renting to a friend. The first two friends did me right. They asked for few repairs, they were understanding that I was not made of money, and we respected each others things. This last tenant, I won't call him friend, just violated so much trust. I now know why landlords are a-holes- they have to be.

So every six months or so I would ask how things were inside, did anything need repair, was the roof leaking etc. Little did I know he was hiding a deep dark secret. See, while Brian Grayshurt is very fashion concious and pays attention to his appearance, he is a disgusting dirty trashmonger. I don't think he took the trash out for like 2 years. There were about 20 bags that he took to the curb in 2 seperate cleaning sessions. Then I got to drag his nasty stained futon mattress and about 8 more bags to the curb. So after getting the crap out, I got to clean the spider webs and their spiders. I got to bleach the walls and trim. The bathroom has to be completely ripped out, partly my fault for having a faulty gutter and partly his for not telling me that the pipes don't work. Seriously. They don't.

Did you see the picture right there? Well, asshat had his airconditioner draining INTO THE WALL. Thanks for telling me. I hope your girlfriend dumps you and you have to live in your car. Obviously I'm mad. We could have fixed a lot of this stuff earlier for a lot lower cost, but thanks to neglect and rude disrespectful people I will now spend every single extra penny on making the tiny house a home for someone. And that someone will sign a kickass lease and I will do regular inspections and I will be the crazy landlord ready to evict.

Tonight I get to rip a wall down. Tomorrow night I get to rip a floor out. The next day maybe the dissolving window. Sighh......

Alien 4 minus the alien

Real live alien 4 happened today. Maybe its 5. I don't know how far the movies went up to. Anyway, as lots of you know, Lanie had surgery over a week ago. She's been doing great, enjoying her clean teeth and her new svelt figure from having a tumor removed. So the tumor was in the muscle so they had to really work to get it all. She had a fluid pocket, much like swelling after lots of surgeries and a lot of staples. We went to the vet to get her staples out Friday and she was such a champ. They got her to lay down and slowly pulled them all out. One by one and then they brought her out to me. She was so frisky and happy to see me and she jumped up, gave me a kiss, and then shook it all out. You know, like when they get done with a bath. She was so happy to be free of her cone head and shook shook shook. during this shaking is when IT happened. Her wound burst open and exploded gore all over the floor of the waiting room/ lobby. It was like a can of tomato soup was dumped everywhere. It was sick as shit. All the people (and there were a lot) in the waiting room had looks or horror, terror, or disgust. Then we had to rush her and her new pocket to the back and she spurted every time she took a step. I got to keep her calm while the doctor tended to her. We put her up on the table and they squeezed the rest of the tomato snot gore goop out and then stitched her up. She was so good and my little angel deserves a medal even though she was oblivious to the excitement or grody-ness of the whole situation. Than GOD that didn't happen in the car!
So, then Sunday Kevin calls and says she tore a stitch out. He neglected to say you can see the muscle and silverskin stuff and should go to the vet ASAP. So I get home, hang out and then notice the gaping wound. Back in the car we go. On the way to the car she exploded again! All over the sidewalk. So the vet wrapped her up real tight light a little burrito and we redid the bandages Monday. So today she is back to the vet getting a drain put in. Apparently the weight of the fluid buildup keeps dragging her down and ripping that thing open. BLECH!

By the way, for some reason the computer won't let me turn the pink burrito picture around.