My weekend, albeit three days long, was like something out of a certain Judith Viorst book. Where do I even start?

Saturday morning Jenn and I woke up at around 5:30a. Not of our own volition, mind you, but because the neighbor’s alarm clock is pressed up against our common wall and went off at 5:30a. It turns out the neighbor didn’t want to get up at 5:30a, either, so he hit the snooze button. Again. And again. The alarm went off every nine minutes for two and a half hours.

We took the day to drive around to the nine or so different properties that our realtor had sent us so we could weed out the ones we just weren’t interested in. You know, to save time on Sunday actually walking through these things. We whittled them down to two houses, one of which we loved in the pictures.

Saw a sign on our travels at a jewelry/pawn shop that said: “Stay out of the doghouse wit bling.” Is that even English? What is the world coming to?

Sunday we went out with the realtor, who is not our usual realtor, but his partner, and she had come up with another house for us to visit, which was good because one of the two houses we liked had an offer on it so we couldn’t go in.

We went to the other house we had looked at on Saturday and, while we liked it on the outside, the inside would need some serious work to bring it up to our standards. No, thanks. Not for that price, anyway. Plus, the floor plan just wasn’t what we were hoping for. Usable space wasn’t so prominent… lots of “walkways” and things.

We started off toward the house that the realtor had found, but not only was it pretty far out from where we wanted to be, but it was right by train tracks, which is not something I need to be a part of. So the search continues.

Looking at the real estate listings, it seems that I’m going to have to raise my spending limit for houses. The stuff we’ve been looking at doesn’t fill our requirements, but the stuff that fills our requirements is just slightly outside our price range. So ramen noodles may become a staple at our house, but it will be our house, so I guess that’s the price you pay.

We figured we should enjoy eating out while we could still afford it, so we went to the mall and ate in the food court. Yeah, it’s not high class, but it’s reasonable. Plus, I love the Cajun Grill. (I also picked up a couple of cheap PS2 games - Space Channel 5 Special Edition and Beyond Good and Evil. Both are pretty cool, but I have to admit I’m entranced by Beyond Good and Evil. I can’t not play.)

When we got home from house hunting there was a message on the phone. It was for Jenn, from the bus driver who would be the only witness to the front-ender Jenn got into (thus, would be the person who could vindicate Jenn and bring out the truth that it wasn’t her fault): He doesn’t remember anything.

That’s not going to be so helpful, methinks.

Monday we figured we’d paid our dues, so we decided to return a couple of movies we had rented, drop some stuff off at our storage unit, and then come home and relax.

We went into the kitchen to get some breakfast and were greeted with a huge puddle of yellowish liquid in the middle of our stove range. The vent over the stove somehow gets water in it when it rains and it runs down the pipe, collecting grease, and deposits itself on the range. We filed a maintenance ticket for that, but apparently that never got fixed. Mental note: go to the office.

We sat down to eat breakfast in the living room and discovered that our friend the woodpecker is back enjoying himself with our chimney, happily pecking out his machine-gun rhythm for all to hear. Mental note: while at the office complaining about the stove pipe, complain about the woodpecker.

Finishing breakfast, we left to go down to the storage unit and drop off some stuff. We got there to discover that someone broke into it and thrashed everything. Stuff that was nicely stacked was out of order; things that were in boxes weren’t anymore… it was insanity. No actual sign of break-in, so they must have jimmied the lock or something. And what did they take? One (1) glass top to a hurricane lamp (not the bottom, mind you, just the top); two (2) Santa Claus candle holders Jenn got from her parents at Christmas (I wasn’t too fond of these, so I don’t miss them, but the principle of the thing still holds). That’s it. They might have gotten some McDonald’s Happy Meal toys I had stashed in a box, but I’m thinking I moved that stuff to a box in our apartment, so maybe not. Even if they did, the total they took was less than $200 worth of stuff. Oh, they did manage to break one of our Rubbermaid storage boxes, so we had to replace that. More of an inconvenience than anything, but give me a break already.

Got home from the storage unit (and grocery shopping, and replacing the Rubbermaid storage container) to find the cat had knocked all of the clean clothes out of the basket on top of the washer and into her water bowl. More clothes to re-wash.

Went down to the office and found out they looked at the leaking stove vent and there’s “nothing they can do about it” - that’s just the way the vent works. Million-dollar idea: Come up with a stove vent cap that’s wind/water-proof but not airtight. You’d think they’d have thought of that by now, but apparently not.

Got home again and realized I forgot to mention the woodpecker.

Now it’s this morning and I went to cut up one of the apples that I bought at the store - I found some awesome, huge Fuji apples that I liked the look of - and it turns out they’re too big for my apple cutter so I have to cut them up with a plastic butter knife.

Oh, and my back hurts really bad because of the lifting and moving of huge boxes of books yesterday in the storage closet, so I think I’m going to have to load up on the Advil.

Things just keep getting better.

I think I’m going to move to Australia.