raelle_the_owl

First 2 signs that your mom is one of those creepy religous freek moms.

1.  Homeschool
2.  No Cable

I'll tell you next month what the third is.


I'm pleased to announce that I have voluntarily chosen to terminate my services with cable.

We just received our vonage box today for our phone service and finally after months of me talking about it, I called the cable company to shut off my services.

They wont go down easy, apparently they wont turn it off until I swap out my internet modem with the phone jack included for a plain modem and the digital box for the cable.  Also they asked many questions like "what are you going to do for television services?"  Which of course my answer was, "Well we just wont watch it."  and "NO! We don't want to watch tv anymore"

So long old friend, I'll try not to miss your brainwashing powers over me and my family.  Goodbye to all of the fights my children had over what they want to watch in the evenings.   Most of all goodbye to those overpriced bills for the privilege of watching ads and marketing on those 2 channels I actually watched.  How silly is it really to pay 50 dollars a month to watch a couple programs and have to sit through comercials as well?  I started asking myself questions like "If I had a million dollars would I want to pay that much to be able to watch those couple programs?"  The answer is no.  That's more than I pay for my childrens online curriculum, and wich is the greater value?  

I called my mom and told her right away that I was canceling it.  She was confused (tivo addict) People just dont understand how we can live without it.  I said the kids will adjust, we'll spend more time as a family doing things.  Maybe lose some weight and save some money, its a win-win.

We of course are keeping our internet but it is quite possible that we will be switching to DSL, I wont take that off the table just in case Timewarner wants to spike my rates for canceling my other two services.

Sadly the only program I will miss watching is one of my son's favorites, Yo Gabba Gabba.  Any kids show put to techno, ska and ragae is cool in my book.  But hey... my old friend YouTube will be there when I need my gabba fix.  Its only a matter of time before Nick Jr puts them on DVD anyway.

So I went to my 10 year reunion.  All went alright, I got to see my best friend in high school whom I've lost contact with.  Otherwise I really wished Xis could have gone with me.  I felt so out of place without him.

I had a strange dream about MFM last night, that I was there and somehow became an instant celebritry.. and I saw Hali across the court and as I approached He ran as fast as lightning, not away from me but just in a different direction.  

My dreams have been plaguing me lately and that one was a refreshing change from the gruesome ones that keep I seem to have more often.

I'll get some pictures of the vacation up in the next couple of days.

http://www.drum.army.mil/sites/postnews/blizzard/blizzard_online/news.asp?id=7

Such a big problem affecting so many people and I'm surprised I havent found anything else on the subject. 

... for being an army wife. More specifically Xis' army wife.
well first off Xis did lose his promotable status when he put on a few pounds while staying in temp lodging eating fast food and anything that can be cooked in a microwave. He was informed he'd have to go through the entire Board process again...

After some research, I found this for him in AR 600-8-16

A 1-11. p c). "If the Soldier's final report is closed with "other" (applies to Army Weight Control Program, the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT), and the ASAP) and he or she would have been promoted while suspension of favorable personnel actions was in effect, provided otherwise eligible, he or she will be promoted. Effective date and DOR will be the effective date of the removal of suspension of favorable personnel action.

So in English... Xis will be getting his promotable status back.. he just might have to have someone argue it for him.

Yay!

30 mins north of here they have an anual festival, Pirate days, where pirates invade the shore of the bay by sea. Hmm I wonder if I can walk around town dressed up as a Wolfpirate..

http://www.faires.com/EventRecord.php?Id=441

I've settled in, Xis is done with his EO class (equal oportunity) we've unpacked about 50 percent of our stuff, we have a basement full of boxes and a house full of furniture, and finally got our cable connected.

We still have snow and hopefully we'll see the last of it go. I cant wait to see spring and flowers.

Other important news... Our wedding invitations will be sent out shortly. September 1st is our date and we'll be having it in our back yard.

We put in our offer, its accepted, have our inspection and all that other good stuff all set up. Now we wait and try not to go broke between now and closing.

Xis is leaving us in Maine on thursday and he'll come pick us up after the house is all settled on.

Just a few more weeks... then I can start planning the big wedding day.

We made it to Drum. All in one piece, safe, and urr cold :)

Lots of snow. Missing Nashville already. Tomorrow we're looking at houses, hopefully we'll find one we like and run with it.

My aunt from Saskatoon is going to be in the area in March, hopefully we'll have a house to put her up in.

Counting down... 2 days before we hit the road to the beautiful Adorondack mountain area of Fort Drum. We have good news. We have heat! Turned out to be the Temperature actuator, it was an easy 60 dollar fix.

Since a couple of unexpected "expenses" (I was stupid enough to own a paypal account) came up, we're doing all we can to save some money. Meaning more work for me. I've taken on the job of repainting the house. There is a mandatory cleaning bill, but I talked to the office and they told me I could take on that job myself as well and reduce the cost from 245 to 45. So that added to the cost of repainting we'll be paying close to 400 less on monday. Since I'm repainting the house anyway.. there's not much left to clean.. the refrigerator (that they make you clean anyway) the oven (I'm not looking forward to that one) would be the bigest jobs. The floors I'll have to take the charge for, since they require them to be stripped and buffed, and we're missing floor tiles upstairs due to plumbing/flooding issues. Today I painted most of the downstairs. It looks so much nicer, better than when we moved in. I'll leave the yardwork up to xis.

Our stuff is all packed up on the truck, our house is pretty empty now. We've got an air mattress, a card table, a couple folding chairs, and our luggage (I feel like we're squatting). Everything went pretty smoothly. All that's left to do is...

Take the van in to have the temperature actuator replaced - a 30 min job that's going to cost us under 100. Take it in and have the fluids checked, oil changed and so on for the big trip. Clean it out, wash/vac fill it up with gas and have it weighed. (the military helps pay to move the car and whatever we pack up in it)

Wash the floors, and touch up some paint, rake the lawn, and a few other small jobs around the house.

And Xis has a few spots left to go to on post so he can get his papers stamped proving he doesn't owe anyone money/stuff and pick up our medical and dental records.

We're out of here on the 29th most of this stuff we could probably finnish in just one day. So the hard part is over and I'm a happy little birdie again.