9/9/09!

I just wanted to make a post for today. Not much has been going on with my home, no construction, no new furniture, or anything like that.

It was extremely hot last month, but has cooled down this month. Really nice weather today for 9/9/09. I think next year for the summer months we should install some sort of solar powered air conditioner. I mean it only makes perfect sense to have something like that. Use the sun's own energy to cool our house. Seems like an awesome idea to me. And something that Toyota has already implemented into their new Prius, which is just pure genius.

Anyway, nothing much to report. Just wanted to wish everyone a happy 9/9/09!

New gate for the new fence!

Our fence was put up last month, woohoo! We probably won't live here the next time the fence needs replacing, but who knows?

I'll have to find the pictures I took, which wasn't very many. Didn't really feel like taking pictures like I did when they put in the new floors.

Anyway, we've got some friends putting in a new gate. We told the people who were putting up our new fence that we wanted to keep our old gate. So they did that, but now we're putting in a completely different style of gate. It's like a swinging door style, but it doesn't look like saloon doors.

I'll have to take some pictures of it once it's put in.

Finally getting our new fence

After a few years of our fence starting to collapse (it's being held up on both our side and our neighbors side by whatever we can find to support it :P), we're finally getting the a new one put in this week!

We did get one part of our fence redone before when it completely blew down (thanks to the Santa Ana winds), but that was with different neighbors who are only our backyard neighbors. But now I'm really excited for what's going to be put up in the next 2-3 days because it means our gate will finally work again and not drag on the cement when we open/close it.

They're starting tomorrow by tearing down the old fence. Yay!

Been quiet lately...

It's been really quiet here since early this month because the owner of the cockatiel we were watching finally took her back! I thought we were gonna end up being stuck with her forever.

No more "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh!" in the mornings anymore. Nice and quiet. It was too quiet at first which was weird for a few days, but I'm so glad she's gone and things are back to normal.

Time for me to have a "Clean House"

I've been catching glimpses of those Clean House shows on... what is it the Style network or something?

How do people's houses get so messy? Geez, it's like they never even open any boxes that they get.

I can kind of see my own house turning out that way if I continue with my pack rat behavior of never really getting rid of anything. So I think it's time for a major spring cleaning here. I need to throw out anything I've never even looked at for the past few years. Easier said than done though because once I start looking though stuff, then that's when I start making up excuses to keep it. Maybe I should do my cleaning blindfolded.

The best thing I've bought this year!

So, it hasn't been that long into 2009 yet, but I have been so cold in our house since we got these wood floors. We should've gone for the radiant heat, but the sales person said we didn't need it since it never gets cold in So Cal... yeah, right!

We used our heaters a lot in December and ended up with a huge electric bill. So we started using them a whole lot less, basically not at all.

So I started shopping for an electric blanket/throw. I wanted one that was soft, not stiff, had a decent length cord, and would keep me warm, of course... and had good reviews. Seemed like the place I usually buy all of my stuff from, Amazon, was out of stock on most of their electric blankets... I guess other people have been buying them up too. The decent priced ones that got good reviews were all out of stock and everything else was starting to get more expensive.

I looked around a little more and found a throw on JC Penney's website and went ahead and ordered it. It came faster than it would've taken for Amazon to even ship out the one I wanted from them. I ended up getting something similar to this. Same brand, but mine doesn't have 10 heat settings, it only has six.

I'm loving it so far. Keeps me nice and warm and uses a lot less electricity than our heaters. Next time, I'll probably go with something a little bit bigger, but this does the job. I hope it lasts for a while.

Are all cockatiels like this?

We've been cockatiel sitting for someone while their house pretty much gets rebuilt (busted pipes flooded their whole house). So, we've had the cockatiel since around October.

She's so odd. At first, we thought that her eating every time she saw us was just eating because she was stressed out about being in a new place. Turns out that's not really the case. When we moved her into the garage while our floors downstairs were being worked on, it seemed like she barely ate much at all!

She only eats when there are people around. Seems pretty weird to me. And, man, is she a real attention seeker. All kinds of loud shrieking sounds if you just leave her sight for a few seconds. I really think she's just one really spoiled bird.

Another weird thing is that she likes sitting on people's shoulders, but when you open up her cage and stick your arm in for her to climb on, she seems so freaked out about going out. Once she's out she's fine.

Such a weird bird. Anybody else have cockatiels like this??

Back on the old mattress...

That mattress that we bought last year is back in the guest room. It was too soft for me and hurt my back to sleep on it because it made everything in the middle of the mattress sink lower than anywhere else.

I slept on my old, firmer mattress last night and my back felt a lot better in the morning. So today I swapped mattresses again. The guests can have the pillowtop memory foam mattress. I'm happy with my old one. It is kind of weird though since I feel so low to the ground now since the pillowtop one was a lot thicker, but I'll get used to being this low again.