This weekend we finally started to watch Battlestar Galactica. If you don’t hear from me for a while it is because BSG has sucked me in and won’t let go until I finish the series.

Holy crap.  I should have listened to all of you sooner!

I put this on Twitter this weekend as well, but I think it is worth repeating here (plus here lets me use more than 140 characters):

I had just gotten out of the shower and was putting on clean clothes so that we could go buy BSG at Frys (you try waiting for three days for the next 3 discs to be delivered after starting that series) when…

Will:  You know?  You smell kind of like a bicycle tire.

Me: [FLABBERGASTED AND APPALLED LOOK]

Will: What? What’s wrong with smelling like a bicycle tire? ……What? ……it’s not.. it’s not a bad smell.  It’s just…. what’s wrong with smelling like a bicycle tire?  …..are you mad? It’s probably a very pretty bicycle tire.

I did not end up cooking last night.  I lost the urge around seven or so when I asked my husband if he was hungry yet (we had big lunches) and he said “not even a little bit.”

Meet my husband–the man who has the digestive system of a snake.  The dude could eat a tic tac on Monday and still feel full on Friday.

I wasn’t about to make all of that food just for myself (especially since I don’t actually liked mashed potatoes and was only going to make them because they had been requested).  So the chicken went into the fridge to be kept until tonight.

And that’s okay because I didn’t really read the directions for the Pioneer Woman’s recipe until late yesterday afternoon–and the first thing it says is to marinate the chicken in buttermilk overnight.  Oops.

So tonight we will be making the Better Homes and Gardens fried chicken recipe (because I kind of did not have time to set up a marinade for the chicken before I left the house this morning), corn on the cob and mashed potatoes.  Maybe.  It depends on how this afternoon and evening go.

In other news, I am downtown for the third time this week.  Monday was planned.  Tuesday was a whim.  Today is annoying.  I’m not here because I particularly wanted to be.  I’m here because Will ran down the battery on his phone super early today and needed his charging cord that was sitting on his nightstand and because I am one hell of an awesome wife.

Also–if you get a chance, stop by Pause || Comma.  It’s a brand spankin’ new blog started by one of my old high school pals who finally decided to join the blogosphere.

I had a blog post mostly written out but then Will and I spent forty five minutes texting back and forth about whether or not we should go to a friend’s house for dinner and now the “hey that reads pretty well” has turned into “what was I thinking?”

I hate it when that happens.

Do you ever not blog because you have too much to blog about?

So it’s been about a week since my last post and I have to say that the week has been a full one.

I spent almost all of Saturday and Sunday and all of Monday and Tuesday playing catch up with work stuff because I managed to get really terribly far behind.  We’re talking ten thousand words (or more) days.  For four days straight. But! I am all caught up on work and I cannot begin to tell you what a relief it was to take last night off and just veg on the couch with some Sex and the City on DVD and my yarn.

And then there were the money issues.  Between me being behind in my work and a client paying me late, I couldn’t pay all of my half of the rent this month and had to ask Will for help (which I hated doing and which he suprised me by  giving gladly and without chastising me at all).  And then the bank deducted an automatic payment early and kept a deposit holding for an extra day which left me with thirty six dollars in my bank account so Will had to give me a check to cover my (lessened) rent check just in case it came out early as well, which mean that Will covered ALL of the rent this month.  And can I just say? He has been marvelously supportive about it.  When I discovered the early deduction and was crying into the corner of the couch and calling myself an idiot, there were no words of “well, you should have planned better” or “I guess I’ll be managing the money after the wedding” (which would have been the case at this time last year).  Instead he was hugging me and saying “don’t worry, I’ll cover it.  This is part of being married, we support each other.  Everybody makes mistakes,” and trying to make me feel better.

And can I just ask one question?  How come the time it takes for a deposit to be processed is measured in business days but the time it takes for a withdrawal to be processed is measured in calendar days?  It hardly seems fair. What’s up banks? Why so bastardy?

Finally there has been family drama.  Until this past week it was mostly on Will’s side and surrounded his parents and who would and would not be invited and who was and was not making a big ol’ fuss about it.  This past week it was my family with the drama and the issues and can I just say that while Will’s family is all “this will suck if you do it this way?” and “I’m going to throw a tantrum if you don’t do what I want?” my family is far more “YOU will suck if you do it this way” and “YOU are a jerk if you don’t give me my way” and seriously, it is a lot harder to deal with.  I can handle tantrums.  I don’t like them, but I figure that if a grown person wants to scream and yell because he/she does not feel that he/she has been given the proper ammount of accolade or attention then that screaming and yelling is more of a reflection on them than on me.  But when someone (especially someone you care about) tells you that YOU are the reason they are unhappy or that who you are as a person is what makes their world suck? It is a lot harder to deal with.

Especially when that judgment includes phrases like “ruining the illusion of a beautiful bride” and “ruining our chance for a happy family.”  (Incidentally those phrases are not from the same person–just putting that out there for the record.) (Also, neither of those arguments was with Will who has been nothing but comforting and supportive through everything.)(Perhaps I will elaborate at another time that is not right now and is after the wedding because I cannot take any more wedding related drama.)

Also? My house is a sty.  I haven’t been doing any cleaning or straightening for days (too busy, too stressed) and Will tends not to notice a mess until it reaches nuclear-holocost-only-the-cockroaches-have-survived levels of chaos.

And now WordPress is acting weird.

Oy. What a week.

I had a whole entry almost written about going to Grant Park yesterday with Wendy, Katie and Patty (who I cannot link to because she does not have a blog) but then the Jackson 5 version of Rockin’ Robin came on my iTunes and I could not stop myself from rocking out a little bit here on the couch and doing some serious and…energetic (there might have even been a tiny bit of flailing) couch dancing and internet? Will did not notice.

It is official: my fiance is completely and totally used to me.

I knew there was a down side to this whole spending evenings in the same room most of the time thing.

Ladies and germs, we have an officiant!

Both of today’s meetings went really well.  So well that I would very much like to be friends with both of the people I met with and kind of hope that ends up happening.

Our officiant, Heather, is just a few years older than me and we have tons in common.  Our whole meeting was spent nodding and totally getting each other.  I feel absolutely comfortable putting our wedding ceremony in her hands–mostly because she already feels like a good friend, which is quickly becoming a theme for us.  I chose our venue because the ladies who run it are awesome and easy to get along with and would be people that I would actually invite to the ceremony and to the reception.  One of my good friends is doing the photography.  Will’s Dad offered to do the food.  I am loving that our wedding is starting to feel more like a bunch of fun people hanging out together and less like a Big Event in which I am In Charge and Must Coordinate Everything.  It is helping me relax quite a bit!

So yay! We have a venue, we have an officiant, we have a photographer (thanks Jen!), I have a dress and a seamstress to help make necessary alterations (which is what you need when your butt is a size four but your boobs are a size zero, hello pears I feel your pain).  Next up is figuring out the cake and then finding something for Will to wear.  Will by the way is very scandalized at my Docs and knee socks idea and wants me to promise that, at the very least, the shoes will be white.  I have not yet made this promise because the more I think about it, the more I love the idea of the brown Doc Marten Mary Janes (or the cheap version in the same style).  I am not sure if this is just my stubbornness kicking in or what.

The mortgage guy, Gary, was also very helpful and at no point during our meeting did I feel like I was being sold to or that he was trying to make promises that he couldn’t keep.  He was very big on the “take your time and go one step at a time” approach, which I really like and made me feel quite a lot better about my credit situation (which, I am not afraid to admit, is abysmal).  He offered to help me put together a definite road map to getting us “mortgage ready” in the next year or so.  He was also very emphatic that if it takes longer for us to feel comfortable about starting the loan process then that is okay.  I truly felt like he cared more about helping me than earning a commission.  Case in point: I am not paying one single cent for his help and won’t unless we decide to do our mortgage through him which, at this point, I would totally be willing to do someday.   He also gets major points for making me feel like much less of a loser than I did when I walked in (seriously, I was really stupid in my early-mid 20s).  I walked out of our meeting (during which, in addition to talking credit and mortgages and interest rates we also spent a fair amount of time comparing iPhone apps and talking about rural life -vs- urban life) feeling so much more confident about the whole process.

In other news, today Will left to spend a long weekend geeking out with his friends over in Bend.  It’s a repeat of last year’s WoW-apalooza but this time around most of them barely play WoW anymore.  I feel like I should be revelling in the “all mine! I can do whatever I want! No video game noise in the background! No having to figure out what to do while he plays Knock Out on the Wii or waiting until he’s ready to go to bed! All my stuff all the time!”ness of having the apartment to myself until Sunday evening but you know what?  I am in a complete and total “okay.  I have watched some Sex and the City on DVD.  Now what?  I’m bored! I miss Will! I’m turning into a total girl! Waaaaaaah!  place.

I cannot decide what to do: crochet, read, knit, play We Cheer, eat something (and if so–what should I eat?), watch TV, re-watch the second season of Sex and the City on DVD (the third and fourth seasons get here sometime tomorrow along with the third season of The Closer), watch the seventh season of Friends on DVD (it was on sale at Target) or just go to bed early.  I think I have too much freedom.

First, the backstory:

Earlier this week Will had an interview for an internship out in Troutdale.  He ended up getting out there with a bunch of time to spare so he drove though the town to see what it was like and fell hard.  Will?  Now loooooooooooooooves Troutdale.  We’ve become fairly certain that he didn’t get the internship but Will? Is still totally in love with the town.  He wants to move there someday (or somehwere exactly like it).   This? Has me concerned because, as we have well established by now, I am not a small town girl.  Just like Will gets claustrophobic in crowded grocery stores (or doing any activity that was not originally his idea but that’s another blog for another time), I get claustrophobic and restless in towns with no library, no movie theater, no bookstore, few sidewalks… you get the idea.

But?  Last night we found ourselves sitting on our couch at 7ish moaning about being bored.  I suggested going for a walk, which was quickly shot down (by the man who keeps complaining about how he needs to get more exercise but again, a post for another time).  Will was so bored? He didn’t even want to play WoW.  I suggested driving out to the beach.  It’s only about a ninety minute drive out to the coast from here and I figured we could drive out, hand out while the sun finished setting and then head back in because? We were that bored.  It was after the beach idea that Will suggested driving out to Troutdale so he could show me why he liked it so much.

So! Off we went!

Troutdale is pretty.  The “downtown” area is very quaint–a bunch of antique shops all in a row that have been refurbished on the outside.  The town also looks like it is growing–there are quite a few new townhouse and condo units in the surrounding hills.  For the most part, though, the charm of Troutdale is solely in it’s natural setting.  It is twenty minutes from Multnomah Falls and the Sandy River runs right into it and around it.  There are quite a few scenic overlooks that seriously? Felt like we were driving by a green screen because they were almost too pretty.  We ended up taking the scenic road out to the Falls and it absolutely lived up to its name (and that road? Is TERRIFYING).

Will hadn’t ever been to Multnomah Falls before.  I think he was surprised at how beautiful it is there.  He tried valiantly to get me to hike all the way to the top, but I was about to pass out by the time we got to the bridge (Will’s version of hiking is walking super fast while taking super big steps which means that while Will “hikes” I “jog” to keep up) so we “hiked” back down.  Will also tried to get a good picture of the falls on his camera phone but I doubt that any of the shots really do the falls justice.

Yeah–we weren’t smart enough to bring the camera with us.  When we left, we figured we’d go for a quick drive, no muss no fuss.  Now? The rule here? ALWAYS bring the camera!

So, for the life of me I cannot remember if I blogged about Rent coming to Portland this month and whether or not we would be going to see it.  I feel like I did.  I feel like I wrote a big long post about the show and our financial situation (we were able to afford the good turkey sandwich meat at Safeway tonight so I have renewed faith in us) and being a grown up when I realized that we couldn’t afford to go see it.  But you know, I don’t know if I actually wrote that or if I just thought about it so hard that now it feels like I wrote it.  It is also possible that I talked about this with someone (most likely my Mom) instead of blogging it.  That happens a lot.

At any rate, as it turns out we ARE going to go see Rent, barring any unforeseen circumstances that keep us from physically being able to go.

The backstory: Me love Rent.  Me love Rent more than a person probably should love a musical. Rent is kind of special to me.    A few years ago when the movie came out I forced Will to go see it with me and then forced him to promise that, should we ever be in the vicinity of a live show that we would go see it.  No exceptions.  Imagine how thrilled I was when it was announced a few months ago that Rent would be performed at the Keller Auditorium here in Portland in June!  Imagine how disappointed Will was that he was not going to be able to get out of seeing it after all (musicals aren’t his bag).   Now imagine how disappointed I was when I took a look at our finances a few weeks ago when tickets went on sale and realized that I had a choice between seeing the show and paying bills and doing all that other grown up stuff.  It sucked but I shook my head and told Will “we can’t afford to go.”  Will did not do a very good job of hiding his relief at this news, though he did try. Sort of.

Here’s the thing:  I know that there will be other shows.  Heck, I have the DVD of the show’s final night on Broadway.  I can see it “live” whenever I want to (haven’t yet opened the thing but will probably do so soon).  And even though it made my inner theater geek ache, I tried not to get too down about the fact that I was actually being a responsible adult for once in my life.  I think I did a pretty good job of not getting to bogged down in the “but I wanna go-o-o-o-!” feelings.

Then comes last night.  About a half an hour after posting that blog entry, Will goes: “okay, I’ve picked out three finalists for your birthday present but you have to do the final choosing.”  (My birthday? Is a week from today)  And warily I said “okay…..?”

Choice A) An XBox 360 (hello, this is so not actually for me but an excuse for him to buy one for himself)

Choice B) One of those holy crap super cute itty bitty laptops (which I really really want but seriously, I’d rather we buy food and pay the power bill)

Choice C) Tickets to Rent.

After telling him that no, seriously, we couldn’t afford any of those things and I didn’t need presents on my birthday and being told “it is your birthday.  It is not for budgeting, it is for making you happy. So just pick one.”  I chose the Rent tickets.  Obviously.

So I AM (barring unforeseen circumstances) going to get to see Rent when it comes to town.  Will bought tickets for Saturday, June 27th’s evening show so that we could do a late birthday celebration as well as do a “monthiversary” celebration because the last few monthiversaries have gotten bogged down in busy schedules and lack of funds (not that we ever did anything super huge for them, but acknowledging them has always been nice).

So… Yay! Rent! Woooooohoooooooo!

And Yay! for my fiance.  A man who said “I’m pretty sure that I would rather eat live spiders than see this show in person but you love it and I’ll love watching you love it, so eff the budget.  Your birthday is more important.”  Okay, he really didn’t actually say that, but his actions did and that is what really matters.

And Yay! for the man who, just as I was about to write a big ol’ mushy “why I love him” paragraph suddenly let out a lengthy paint peeling belch and then ran for the bathroom saying “that made me need to pee!”

So.  The grill got put together.  And Will graciously gave me the “inaugural grill” so I made chicken.  I have never grilled anything in my life (I’ve only been on the eating end of this particular style of cooking) and you know what? They turned out super awesomely good.  So good.  Oh my god we are going to grill all the time.

Except we already broke our “okay, except for my birthday we are going to try not to go out to eat anymore.”

Wait! Let me explain!

Will is pretty good friends with one of the cashiers he works with.  We have gone out with her and her husband before so when she asked Will if he would help them move this weekend of course he said yes.  That is what we spent Sunday doing.  Okay, technically Will helped them move.  I was brought along “for company” and to keep people entertained.  I did no heavy lifting whatsoever but Will and the rest of the guys? They moved two U-Haul loads full of stuff across Hillsboro.  And some of it was incredibly heavy and both locations had stairs.  I? Sat in the kitchens of both places with our friend and her best friend (who is now my friend too–I like making new friends!) and wrapped dishes and talked story and made jokes.

Can I just say?  I am absolutely without a doubt three hundred percent jealous of our friends’ new place.  They managed to find a house in a new subdivision that was renting for less than a thousand a month.  It’s has two floors, three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, a small bonus room (den/formal living room/whatever else you can do with a 10×10 open space) downstairs, a laundry room with a washer and dryer already in them, a ton of storage space and a two car garage.  If there was a public transit stop even remotely near the subdivision I have no doubt that Will and I would be finding ways to justify the expense of moving there.

As it is…well, you know how it goes.  When you help someone move into an awesome new place you start daydreaming about how you would arrange your furniture in there and what you would do for decorations.  And because you don’t have any money at all and cannot afford to even daydream about moving any time soon, you start to daydream about ways to improve your current location…and, of course, all of the new improvements cost money as well.  So there is a lot of frustrated daydreaming going on over here.  But it helps us talk about what we want in a new place and where we hope to relocate to (we both really really love our neighborhood and hope we can find a nicer place in the same general location when we are ready to move again).  And, of course, we keep catching each other looking at local real estate listings.

*Sigh*  So many fun things to daydream about.  So little money to make any of the daydreams come true.

After spending all day helping our friends move, none of us was in any shape to actually go home and cook, so we all went out to Red Robin together and kind of stayed there until the manager told us that they were closing.  And? It was really nice to just spend a few hours hanging out and “chillaxing” with friends.  And? Every time we come home from something like that we talk about how awesome it would be to have something resembling a social life and people to get together with and in a few days we’ll be back to our usual “I just want a lazy weekend” selves.

Today was spent hanging on the couch.  We turned on the TNT Bones marathon and I got a bunch of writing done while Will played his game.  Will grilled steak for us for dinner (yummm).  Hopefully tonight we’ll get to bed at a decent hour because tomorrow is an early day.

So yeah–we have “we want a new place!” stars in our eyes and we already broke our “we won’t go out to eat” promise but still? It was a good weekend.

I cannot remember how it came up yesterday but somehow Will and I got to talking about our finances.  It is no secret that we are not the richest kids on the block.  We are okay with this.  We don’t mind shopping at WinCo for the cheaper stuff or opting to stay at home all weekend instead of seeing a couple of movies or going on a road trip.  We like to daydream about winning the lottery but at the same time we’re glad that it hasn’t happened because of all of the greedy bastards that would come out of the woodwork asking for loans.

At the same time it sucks to hear about friends who go out and buy a new car like its no big deal, or to talk to someone who says “it’s only a thousand bucks” like a thousand bucks isn’t any sort of huge amount of money.  And that stupid green envy monster rears its head when I read about all of the fun other people are having while I sit at home and hope that my automatic Netflix payment won’t come out until after a client’s payment has made it into the bank.

Oh yeah and we have this little thing called a wedding to pay for (but that is a whole other post).

Anyway, Will and I were sitting around the house yesterday talking about how nice it would be to be able to afford to do cool and fun stuff… and how we both want to get in shape.  At some point we started talking about how we need to grow up and not give in to the urge to go to a fast food joint because we are too lazy to cook for ourselves and how we should start eating healthier food and exercising instead of sitting on our asses on our days off, etc.

And somehow this led to the decision to purchase a grill.

Yes, I know, we have a balcony but (until last night) had no barbecue or grill?!?  What kind of Americans are we??

We were talking about how the best way for us to save money right now right here is to stop going out to eat because we’re too lazy to cook and at the same time we both started bemoaning our lack of grill status.  Will was unhappy about not having a grill because he actually likes to grill and prefers the taste of grilled food to fried or anything else (I suspect that the playing with an open flame might also have something to do with it).  I was unhappy because the weather is (finally) heating up and the idea of having to spend the hot season cooking over a hot stove and oven was wholly unappealing.  It’s why we ate out so much last summer, because it was too damn hot to cook.  Seriously, who wants to stand next to a 375 degree oven and a boiling pot of pasta when it’s 95 degrees out?

Solution?  We needed a grill.

Yes, we solved our “I wish we could afford to go shopping for fun stuff” woes with going shopping for something fun.

We gave ourselves a budget of $200 and then spent an hour driving around and drooling over the bigger grills (the three and four burner grills) that came in at $199.99 but ultimately decided on a smaller size with the agreement to “upgrade” when we moved somewhere with more space and actually started having something of a social life.  Why buy a huge grill when we never have anyone over?   We ended up at Fred Meyer.  The store was having a sale on grills and we chose a small propane grill (that I have just now decided to name Chuck which makes Will scared of ever letting me name our kids) with two burners.  It is the perfect size for our balcony and us.  It was also a good $75 cheaper than everything else we were looking at, which left room in the budget for barbecue tongs and brushes and stuff.

Also?  Everything we bought was on sale and I found a store coupon that gave us an extra 10% off of everything, so we ended up buying the grill and the utensils and the cover for $120.  I am kind of proud that we did use the entire budget that we had allotted ourselves.

Also also can I just tell you that the Fred Meyer by our house has the most god awful customer service?  E-gad with the slowness!  I didn’t know that the “oh crap a customer” attitude went beyond the borders of their deli!  When our cashier took our grill slip thing and called to the back she ended up having a big ol’ conversation about future sales before getting around to asking about our particular grill model.  Then she said “okay he’ll bring it up” when what she meant to say was “meet him at the merchandise pick up in the back” (I found this out after standing at the front for a while and not seeing a single employee come anywhere near us).  Then when we went to the back, we had to wait for the guy to sloooooooooowly wander around the back room and scan a few different grill boxes before telling us that all of the boxes with our particular model were out on the sales floor, so we had to drive back around and meet him in the sales area and it just took forever.  And nary a “sorry this took so long” to be had.

But! We have a grill!  It is sitting in its box waiting for Will to put it together and then tonight we are going to have grilled chicken and salad for dinner.

Our grill is not without some consequences.  The only way I could justify spending the money was to put a kibosh on the eating out for the summer (except for my birthday).  Our goal is to go the entire summer without going out to eat more than once a month.  Will wants once a week, but I want to recover the cost of the grill.  Do I think we will be able to do it? Probably not.  But it is good to have a goal!

Our other goal is to really get the most food and stuff we need for our money.  I have two shelves in our bedroom closet that are empty–those could be used to stock up on non-perishables when they go on sale.  I also kind of like coupon cutting and hunting for deals so I am going to do that more often (and try to actually remember to take them to the store).

I’m also thinking that we should try an experiment with our shopping.  Usually we just go to WinCo.  It’s a mile from the apartment so we figure that the money we save in gas not driving all over the place is made up for in WinCo’s regularly cheap prices.  It’s also convenient to not have to drive to three or four stores to get all of the grocery shopping done.  I’m wondering if we really are saving money that way.  I wonder if truly shopping the sales wouldn’t more than make up for the cost in gas to get everywhere.  I don’t know if I can convince Will to take part in this experiment, but it’s worth a try. Admittedly, this would be easier to do if I had my driver’s license (but more on how lame I am later).

Plus, you know, all of our new found frugality (provided we don’t toss it all to the wind in a week) will make for good blog material.

But the point is: We have a grill!