There comes a time in each day where my brain says "you know what? you're done."  And just refuses to focus any more. It's 4:30 in the afternoon and my brain? Has reached that point.

I, um, am kind of looking forward to cleaning my apartment.  Like cleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaning it.  Like pulling the crap out of the cabinets and scrubbing out the insides of the cabinets and then washing all of the cabinet contents (the stuff that can be washed anyway, I'm pretty sure I won't be running Pasta Roni boxes through the dishwasher) before putting everything back cleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaning.  If I wasn't completely positive that I am absolutely not pregnant, I'd swear I'm nesting.  Of course, having a month's worth of visitors kind of, um, inhibits…anything that could happen to cause a bun to begin baking in my oven.

Most likely the urge to cleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeean comes from the Fios installation yesterday.

The installer awesome, which was a good thing because he was here for over four hours.  People, when you order Fios and they tell you that it can take up to six hours to install everything correctly?  They are not kidding.  The reason it took so long was because we had to install new wiring in three different rooms of our apartment.  This involved us pulling everything away from our walls so that he could drill holes and run cables and then secure those cables with covers so that they'd blend in to the walls, which? They totally do.  Also? Anyone who says "this process is so much easier now that they let us use stud finders" and then passes the machine across his own chest and then says "yep.  It works!" is cool with me.

But yes, everything got pulled into the middle of or moved into different rooms.  And then we bought and put together a new television stand for the living room. Which means that the old one got moved into the bedroom. I've been slowly putting things back in order since yesterday afternoon.  And inhaling mass quantities of dust.  Mass quantities.  My housekeeping skills apparently completely suck.

None of that matters though because now we have cable in the living room and the bedroom, super fast internet all over the house (that doesn't get slowed down by the wireless router thank you very much) and seriously? FioS rules.  RULZ.  I've only been playing around with it for a little more than a day but holy crap.  All of the television!  The faster internet! I'm sure the phone works well too! Yay!

I have to admit that I got kind of a perverse joy out of calling Comcast this morning and telling them exactly why I was cancelling their service and that, no, I did not want to have a technician come out.  I was perfectly polite and the person I talked to was perfectly nice, but it still felt really good.  I kind of wanted to be all "because you suck! You're expensive!" but the customer service agent was so nice and so apologetic and, really, it isn't her fault that our service sucked so why would I do that to her?  Our dissatisfaction was noted and that's good enough for me.

Tomorrow will be spent catching up on the work that I didn't get to yesterday or today because of all of the moving stuff, installing stuff and putting things back.

Yay! Fios!

Dammit.

The FioS person is supposed to be here between 8 and 5 today, so I got up at 7:30 to shower and finish clearing stuff away from the outlets and stuff.  Of course, now that I have that all done by 8:49 AM, the installer probably will not get here until, oh, 4:30 or something.  And if I had tried to sleep in, they would have been here right at 8.  It is the way my life goes.

Yesterday I had hopes.  I had plans.  I had been waiting for the Grey's Anatomy season premiere for months.  MONTHS.  I had planned to get a bunch of work done during the day (including doing all of that clearing away stuff for the FioS person) and then, during the commercials of Ugly Betty, change into my pajamas, get a blanket, make some popcorn and curl up on the couch with my cozy pajamas, blanket, popcorn and bag of chocolate to watch the Grey's Anatomy season premiere.  Will had plans to stay the hell out of the room so that he would not be tempted to make fun of it.  Sounds great, right?  Yeah, at about 1:30 some friends of ours from out of town showed up absolutely and completely unexpectedly because they were in the neighborhood and wanted to hang out with us while Will was on lunch (his lunch was at 2).  So we took them out to lunch and then I got back to work while they headed back to Roseburg–or so I thought.  They showed back up at about 5:30 after going to get new cell phones because they needed a place to charge their phones.  And then we ended up taking them to Hot Lips pizza.  It should have been fine.  We left at 7, which gave us two hours to get into Portland and back home with time to spare.  I could still do my cozy pjs, snacks, Grey's.  But then, after pizza it was "how far is Voodoo Doughnuts from here?" so then we ended up driving around for twenty minutes trying to find a parking spot within "walking distance" (which ended up being seven blocks away).  We got back to the apartment at 8:57.  No kidding.  No time for changing, no time for grabbing a blanket because they came in to use the bathroom and say goodbye.  No time for making snacks.  No time to enjoy my show without any disruptions because Will was clearing stuff out of the closet (where the FioS wires are) and asking me stuff about whether or not we should clear the boxes away from the crawl space and bringing things into the living room to get them out of the computer room.

I still got to watch the show, but it was not the cozy two hours I had been hoping for FOR MONTHS.  And of course, I got teased mercilessly because here I was all worked up over a television show.

It's a very narrow road.  On the one hand, I really like our friends.  I truly do.  I'm making them sound really annoying and they aren't (or at least they don't try to be).  I am very glad that we got to see them and spend time with them and talk about some of the specifics of one of them moving in here temporarily.  I like our friends. And it is hard to complain about the imposition of them without it sounding like I don't like them.  Because I do.

But…but… I'm getting really tired of it always being ME to drop everything and switch around my schedule and give up things I like to accommodate everybody else.  I'm tired of "oh you can work on that later."  or "yeah, but you aren't required to start working at any certain time, so you can take time in the mornings to do other things."  or "you make your own schedule so we knew you wouldn't mind the interruption."

I like our friends.  I love Will.  But sometimes, once in a while, I feel like going all "but what about Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee???"

Is that selfish?

At any rate, I enjoyed the season premiere, though I found Cristina's storyline a little… um… yeah. Also, Kevin McCloud or whatever his name is? The trauma surgeon guy who used to be on Journeyman? I. LOVED. HIM.  I want him to have lots more screen time.  I want him to shake up those holier than thou doctors.  Seriously! Oh I could go on, but I'm sure some people haven't watched it yet.  I know that once the Tivo gets moved into the bedroom and FioS is all set up, I'll be curling up to watch it again.

With all of the recovering going on around here I forgot to mention that it is finally fall! Yay! Fall! I love fall!

Honestly, fall is my very favorite season.  I love the weather.  I love fall clothing–even though my standard jeans/shirt routine rarely varies, I love the idea of the calf length skirts and knee high boots.

Side note: I've been growing out my bangs and I have on one of those grips headbands with the stitching designed to hold hair in place, only I forgot that I was wearing it and when I scratched my head just now I felt the thing and freaked out because I couldn't figure out how a giant scab was suddenly seared into my skull even though I haven't gotten off the couch in about an hour or so.  I'm better now.

Okay, fall.  I love the idea of the new school supplies.  I didn't have the money to go nuts and buy a year's worth of office supplies this year so you can bet your ass that next year I am going to go insane.  Because school supplies get better every year.  I love the idea of going shopping for a whole bunch of new clothes.  I love the idea of being in school even though I cannot afford it right now.

The air has a bite in it, and has dropped about fifteen degrees from where it was at the beginning of the month.  I love walking to the store in a t-shirt and thin sweater.

For some people the new year starts in January.  In my world, the new year starts every September when Fall begins.

Today I woke up in an infinitely better mood than I did yesterday.  In fact, I'd almost say that I woke up in a good mood today and that? Hasn't happened in quite a while.  It probably had a lot to do with going to bed at a reasonable hour and waking up to a home devoid of guests.  See, I have to bask in it now because I do not know when we will be invaded again.  It could be tomorrow, it could be months from now.

Okay, it will be Friday but I'm actually looking forward to it.  On Friday our home will be invaded by…a Verizon FioS installer!  We finally decided to make the leap over and try the service out for a year.  Will is excited about the super fast internet and I am excited about the 200 channels of TV…of which I will watch about 5.  But knowing that I could choose from 195 more just makes me happy.

Today's good mood could also have something to do with the two hour Heroes premiere last night.  Mmmm. Heroes.  I like what they are doing with the storyline.  I like that we will be questioning some of our character's morality.  I really liked the periodic Weevil sightings.  IMDB only lists Francis Capra in the first two episodes though.  I hope it's wrong.  I really like him.  I have to say though…was the writing always so…I mean getting it on in the loft? Seriously? And how is she still alive?  And is he really invisible or is the other guy suddenly schizophrenic?  And did her face get flatter? See how I can ask these questions without totally spoiling things?

Tomorrow night has me torn.  I can't decide between Bones and Knight Rider.  I am, however, looking forward to the premiere of Lipstick Jungle.   Then of course is Big! Thursday! Grey's! Anatomy! Premeire! Yay!

They say that the first step to recovering from an addiction is admitting that you have a problem.  I must be well on my way to getting better, because not only do I admit that I have a TV problem, I'd probably wear a propeller hat and wave a little flag declaring my addiction…if they made those.

Yesterday, after a fantastic morning of sleeping in and then sprawling on the couch to finish the fourth season of Grey's Anatomy on DVD, Will got an instant message from Bryan's wife asking if they could come up and stay with us for "not very long, but a few days so that Bryan could start job hunting in Portland."  And I? couldn't even think "hey, it isn't the end of the world" before I started bawling.  And I don't mean boo-hoo, I mean, toddler sized "some big kid just pushed me down" bawling. I couldn't even make it out of the computer room to pretend I wasn't having a massive nutty.  I just…burst into tears. Because that's what happens when you've spent a month sucking it up and being nice to everyone and haven't had a full night's sleep since the middle of August and it is a certain time of the month.

I believe my response to this question went something like "but we were supposed to have some time to ourselves I don't want any more company I have so much work to do and can't play tour guide and they'll think I'm rude and we were supposed to watch Heroes together and everything premeires this week and I won't be able to watch any of it if they are here and I don't want any more company and we haven't been able to relax in so long and I can't deal with it anymore and why are we the only place that they can stay and seriously, Bryan knows how rough this month has been why would he even ask and we only wanted to help them out a little why can't they see they're taking advantage of us and I really really really miss spending time with just you and…..wait….isn't Bryan's wife allergic to cats?"

Problem temporarily solved.  Thank goodness.  Of course, now that I have posted this they will probably show up after all.

Oh and then? Will stayed up until after one o'clock in the morning playing WoW.  I? Tried to go to bed at 11:30 but couldn't fall asleep because Will kept promising to come to bed "in just a little bit."  My mood this morning? Is not so hot.

Also, my brain is currently fighting the: "I need to talk about this friend's job hunt and how it will directly affect my life and my home but talking about it would mean talking about someone else's problems on my blog and that is just not cool" battle.

Maybe Will is right.  Maybe I should go back to bed for a couple of hours.

Normally I am not an advocate of doing my laundry on the weekends.  Okay, so I'm not a huge fan of doing laundry period, but because I work from home I try to do my laundry during the times when most of my neighbors are working or sleeping, like eight o'clock on a Thursday morning.  That way they don't have to fight with me and I don't have to fight with them over washers and dryers–or do anything neighborly like talk to them when we end up in the laundry room together (apparently I am the only person in our entire half of the complex who does laundry between eight and noon during the week).

Today, though–today I was faced with a dilemma.  Because the hamper could not take any more clothing.  I did laundry last week–a couple of loads while Bryan and Eric were sleeping.  Other than that, though, most of the laundry has gone undone while I've been playing hostess and trying to get sleep and just not feeling like dealing with household chores.  So I spent about fifteen minutes staring at the hamper before I decided to just go with the flow and start the laundry.  I figured that if the neighbors started wandering in, I'd just quit doing my stuff until Monday.  Another factor in this? we were almost totally out of underwear and socks.  If there was ever a time to do laundry it was when I was staring in the face of old, nearly crotchless underwear and toe-less socks.  Blecccch.

Apparently, people never like to do their laundry because I got four loads in before any of the other washers started being used.  Right now I'm waiting for the fifth load to finish drying.  I probably should have let the laundry stay at six and a half loads, but I did some stuffing so that I could finish it all in one day.

I also cleaned out the fridge and did some dishes. Now I think I am ready for a nap.

My Mom was our last visitor (hopefully, knock on wood if you have any nearby) for a while, and she left this morning.  I love my Mom and I was very sad to see her go (I may or may not have gotten a little teary after I shut the door) but at the same time, having people in our house for three straight weeks has been incredibly stressful for both Will and I.  We need the break.  I'm thinking that tomorrow, if Will doesn't feel the need to decompress in front of his computer all day, might be a good day to crash on the couch and watch the second season of Heroes.  An all day lounge fest.  Yummmmm-meee.

Today? Poppy and I spent the entire day by ourselves in the apartment and? It was glorious.  GLORIOUS.  I didn't have to watch the fracking Discovery Channel.  I didn't have to listen to video game noise.  I didn't have to listen to extensive conversations about video games.  I didn't have to keep the conversation light and fluffy.  I didn't have to worry about whether or not anybody else was happy, hungry, entertained or bored.  Instead, I sat on the couch all day and watched some Season 2 Grey's Anatomy on DVD while I got caught up on work. GLORIOUS.  I even took a tiny tiny nap.  JUST BECAUSE I COULD.

So.  The new television season is slowly starting.  Most of the shows I like are starting next week, but I did catch tonight's episodes of House and Fringe.

I've never been a follower of House but I like my main characters curmudgeounous and bad-ass, so I've been giving the show a whirl on Netflix DVD and I honestly really like it.  I have absolutely no idea what is happening in the character arcs, and the House Underling with H….soemthing bad I can't remember (this name totally made it sound like she's a diseased part of his genitalia) was really irritating, but I do like Hugh Laurie.  I think the show just might be a keeper.

I did like Fringe a lot.  I didn't catch the premeire, and watched this episode mainly for the Joshua Jackson factor (seriously! Pacey in Prime Time again! How can you not watch?).  It was interesting–it felt a lot like Bones meets X-Files and the part where the eyeball was cut out of the person's head and propped up on a stand so it could be attached to the camera? That was gross.  Also, could that camera thing really happen or did the writer's just need a convenient plot driving device?  I'll probably keep watching this show just because its on after House and I won't have to change the channel.  Of course, I can't remember what the other networks will be playing at the same time so we'll see how I feel next week.

Dennis Miller? Was awesome.  I don't agree with some of his politics but I love his presentation style.

Also?  For this five minutes I am alone (okay, okay, the cat is here too) in my apartment! Holy crap! I'm all alone in my own living space! It's a miracle!

I should have gotten to work immediately after Bryan and Eric left this morning but instead I decided to lie on the couch, watch a few tivoed episodes of the Daily Show and marvel at just how much crap my sinuses can contain.  Seriously! I'm not a big person and I think I've blown twice my body weight in sinus gunk out of my nose in the last day or so.