Scott Chester

I finally got Sib over here tonight. It nearly involved kidnapping her, nevertheless she came peacefully. We started talking about ideas for painting and she realized what a big job it is going to be. With dinner and then being rushed to go home teaching, we didn’t get anything settled, so we will have to finish it up another time.

Work went well today. Time seemed to fly and I can’t really pinpoint what exactly I was able to accomplish. My desk is still a mess…

Sister Dowden, Larilyn, Kenny and I went to the temple Tuesday night. I hadn’t been in a really long time - I think she the last time I went with Sister Dowden a few (two-three) months ago. It was good and so was the Cheesecake that followed. I got home way too late though and have been having a hard time getting up all week. I’ve barely made it to the office on time and haven’t had the leisurely time in the morning I like to have. That also means I haven’t had a chance to dive deeper into scripture study.

Larilyn was over last night and made cheesecake. Lauren and Michelle came and helped us eat the ground beef tacos that needed to be gone ASAP. Again I was up too late.

I was thinking tonight on the way home from home teaching that I could get to sleep early. Then I decided that this was my only chance to carpet clean Geoff’s room before he moves in, so I decided to do that. Then the hallway outside the garage. After the third time I filled the machine up, I decided it was time to call it a night! I’m glad I did it though because it appears that it pulled a lot of dirt out of the carpet. I need to work on doing a room a night or something so I can get the whole house done.

Geoff is moving in tomorrow, so my peace and quiet may be gone. I’m thinking that maybe I’ll start actively looking for more roommates once I’ve got him settled in so I can bring in the cash to keep working on the project list. Sib told me tonight not to get married, just so I could keep both sides of the closet! Oh the joys of sharing…

I’ve got dinner plans with the family tomorrow night and am hoping to get some family history done at the same time although I understand Tom won’t be home. Then I’m hoping to get the first movie night in this week and we’ll see what fun projects the weekend brings.

I was happy with the turnout today for the housewarming party. There were some notable people that didn’t show. I’d still say there was about 50 over the course of the day. It was great to see Taugher, although I didn’t really get to find out anything about her - and also Hauser as I haven’t seen them in a long time. Ron & Kathy made the drive down which was great, and we didn’t get a chance to talk either! I’ll have to start having random people over once a month or something for a get together a little of the quieter side.

On the bright side, I got to try out my new carpet cleaner tonight. We managed to get chocolate on the carpet just outside the kitchen where there were already some spots. I ran the cleaner over them and it all seemed to come out just fine. The water was really disgusting, so I’m thinking that the carpet really needs to be cleaned as I had originally planned. I think I figured out that I could do a room before I went to bed and although it wouldn’t be the best time to clean it, it should give it enough time to dry out overnight and then I would barely be on it before leaving for work in the morning.

Geoff expressed some interest in renting a room tonight and we are going to talk about it tomorrow. I’ll have to start developing the rules for housemates so everything is clear from the get go. It certainly will be different with permanent house-guests, but I really could use the money to put toward the other projects - like landscaping - that really need to be done. Dean said we need to do the next BBQ here and Taugher said she’d drive up, so I guess I need to get started on something out back and a BBQ.

I was also really looking forward to seeing Lauren P, but she didn’t make it. I called her on it and she said something came up. She suggested a movie next Saturday. I’ll have to see if I can make that work and actually get her up here.

My plan of taking the day off to get the house ready for the open house tomorrow really didn’t work out. Not only did I have to go in for payroll this morning, but after coming home in the early afternoon, I had to go back after regular hours to meet a customer. I did get some baking done and some cleaning, just not the huge scores I was originally hoping to get done. I should be able to accomplish the vacuuming that should be done tomorrow morning and I would love to clean the rest of the windows if possible.

There really isn’t much too report from today. I talked to Ryan for the first time in a long time today and he actually came over this afternoon to check things out since he may not be able to make it tomorrow. I finally finished Fools Gold tonight as I was eating dinner (at 10 o’clock mind you). I thought it was pretty good - I don’t know exactly why no one else wanted to watch it.

Well, I think I’m going to call it quits there and see if I can get some sleep tonight. I’m not sure that it is going to be cool enough to have the a/c off tonight, but I’m going to try it. In the worst case, I’ll just get up, close all the windows and turn it on, right?

P.S. I don’t suggest doubling the dot’s blondie’s recipe, unless maybe you do it in a really large pan as it gets too think to really cook well. It still tastes good though, just extra gooey!

I had fun today cleaning floors. I got a steam cleaner to do the carpets, and it also said it did hard surfaces. I ended up spending the afternoon cleaning all the hard floors in the house. I didn’t think it was doing that good of a job at first, but I noticed the water was fairly dirty. Later I realized walking around that the floors felt really clean. I don’t know what that is worth, but I had been noticing that my feet were getting really dirty walking around the house. I’ve vacuumed so many times that I figured there was just dirt that didn’t want to come out of the carpet and such so it needed a deep cleaning. I got the only Hoover model that they had at Best Buy, and used my 10% off coupon for moving on it.

The family came over for dinner tonight. Well, they came over to eat Papa John’s pizza. I have a feeling my dad really likes having a place he can come and eat it and I think I’m going to be seeing them every three weeks. They also brought some stuff from the house - as I figured they would - that I promptly threw away most of. I can’t figure out if the Apple posters are worth anything. I tried searching online for ipod lisa poster and such regarding the 2004 remake of the 1984 Lisa poster/ad and couldn’t find anything on eBay or really much talking about it. I guess if I make an Apple museum I’ll want to keep at least one of them - and if I put them all in one container they wouldn’t take up that much room.

Kenny and I watched Definitely Maybe tonight. I thought the movie had a good premise and liked the story telling of his life, and the interactions from the daughter. It kind of reminded me of Princess Bride with the story telling. While not a fan of some of the things they did in the movie, I thought it was funny how intertwined the lives of these women were and how you supposedly couldn’t see what was coming - and definitely didn’t know who her mom was. It was clear early on how the movie would end, as with most. It was enjoyable through the end though and that is what matters.

I discovered the other night that I have a broken sprinkler line. I’d like to say the neighbors probably did it when they poured concrete, but i can’t be certain. I picked up the stuff to start digging today and maybe can get out there and get going on Monday night. I need to start working on a food list for the housewarming party next weekend so I can start doing some form of planning ahead.

Not too much of any interest to report today. I spent the morning cleaning - I got all the window sills cleaned downstairs and most of them upstairs. I also vacuumed the living spaces of the house which is a large accomplishment of its own these days. I can tell the house is getting cleaner, I really need to now start on actually unpacking some more of the boxes and find real homes for things.

I went shopping this afternoon. I was going to head up to the outlets to get some kitchen stuff, but wasn’t really feeing motivated to go do it by myself. I ended up just going to Home Depot, Lowe’s, the office and Vons. I started looking at all the things that I really need to hurry up and eat in my fridge and pantry and discovered there is a lot more food in the house than I thought. I’ve had some lunch meat sitting in the fridge for a full week now and the strawberries were hours away from death so I made smoothies with what was left.

I watched Underdog tonight. I wasn’t expecting much; it turned out to be a cute movie.

I picked out some ceiling fans today so they can be installed next week. It will be nice to be able to cut down on the air conditioning a little bit as I’m sure my first bill is going to be outrageous! Too bad I won’t have a full month to really see the difference between fans and no fans, but I’m sure I can do the math and get a good idea of how quickly the fans will pay off.

I’m thinking about having the housewarming party on the 2nd of August, three weeks from now. It’s a Saturday, I’m thinking we’ll start in the late afternoon and just let people come and go as they please up till about 9. That can be my motivation to keep unpacking and getting projects done and can also be a promotion for rooms for rent. So, mark your calendars and plan on coming or let me know if we need to change the date.

Wow, things got kind of crazy last week. We didn’t end up closing until late Thursday, as I kind of imagined to begin with. I’m still not happy I signed something saying I would be in Tuesday when I didn’t get in till Thursday, but this is all past now and I should move on.

Batch and Bouse helped me move Thursday. I was all packed up and ready for them when they came and we knocked it out in under two hours. Bouse did a great job loading the truck and we could have fit everything in a 14 ft box van the way he packed it all! We did some shopping, worked on getting the garage fire door replaced, ate and some other misc stuff while we waited, hoping it would cool down and for someone to confirm that we had at least funded, if not recorded yet. We finally got the funding notice at lunch and got the call that we had recorded just as we were getting ready to unload the truck.

The first night in the house was interesting. The AC upstairs didn’t want to work. I had Gardner Co. come out and take a look at it in the morning and of course it worked fine. He thinks that maybe it is something wrong with the ball bearings in the fan on the compressor. It seems like it doesn’t want to work when it is hot. Well isn’t that when I need it to work? That made the first night interesting, but it has been working great since then.

I became a locksmith when I had to essentially disassemble the front door to get the new lock on. I’m glad I was finally able to get it to work because at one point I couldn’t get the dead-bolt off and I’m sure I had broken it beyond the point at which it would have functioned. Once I got things figured out, I was able to do the other two locks in a matter of minutes - although they functioned like they were supposed to instead of not wanting to come apart like the front door did. I did decide to drive to Hemet to get the Medeco locks, and I still have my front door one on order due to a custom color issue.

I’ve been to Costco at least three times to get stuff. I filled up Bouse’s truck once and my car twice with stuff. The pantry is getting stocked slowly as well as the fridge and freezer. The fridge came on Friday and is beautiful. I had a heck of a time shopping at Albertson’s - actually just the self checkout was a hassle. I don’t think I will do that again with a full cart. To top it off, I forgot to type in my phone number for the preferred card savings which means I got totally ripped off on what I bought!

It was great having a five minute drive to church this morning. As I was getting ready to walk out the door I remembered I hadn’t read yet and decided to search for something to read. I ended up at Mormon 9, reading about worthiness. A few minutes later when I walked into branch council, President Mattson asked us to turn to Mormon 9! That was kind of interesting. I started getting antsy towards the end of priesthood this afternoon. I haven’t been sitting for that long for a few days now and while it felt good at first, it was starting to bother me.

I’ve been cleaning like mad. My hand hurts from vacuuming, washing surfaces, mopping and killing ants. The house is starting to come together. Some of the boxes have been emptied, there are clothes in my closet, food in the pantry, dishes in the cabinets. I couldn’t find my silverware after moving and it also seems like I am missing some of my glasses. Either we lost them in the move, didn’t bring them or they were stolen out of the shed with the mower a few years ago. I’m starting to lean towards the stolen aspect, although they could easily have been left in the shed and covered up with other items. I went out and bought some new silverware, and will probably need to get some more glasses and flatware soon.

It has been kind of quiet around the house. I’ve had music going almost nonstop, but that doesn’t take away the loneliness. I almost feel like I need to be listening to the radio or something so I at least can hear another human voice that hasn’t completely been prerecorded. I think I’m starting to understand why people have pets.

Hopefully my new sectional couch should be coming tomorrow. I can’t decide if I should try and get it reversed from what they are probably sending me so the longer side can go down the wall instead of across the back or if I should just take it. There are advantages both ways. From looking online, it looks like it is also a sleeper, but I didn’t know that. I guess I should just be happy that I won’t be carrying it in as I paid for in house delivery. It sounds like my kitchen table won’t be in for a few weeks though. I’m hoping to order furniture for the rest of the house soon - at least the dining room and probably living room this week. Sister Rodriguez has some catalogs I can look through to get stuff at close to wholesale cost. I think Mandi said she would be available tomorrow to look at furniture, so we may just have to see. I do need to get some (office) work done tomorrow, but maybe can make it a half day or something.

I’m still not sure what to do with the upstairs bonus room although I am leaning towards theater. That will take away the hassle of pulling wires downstairs which will be nice. I’m definitely calling about the ceiling fans tomorrow and hope that I will be able to get them installed late this week. In addition to the fans, it will be nice to actually have light at night instead of relying on lights from adjoining hallways or bathrooms to work. I’m trying to decide where to put the fans and am almost thinking of just asking him (the electrician) to go to town and prewire all the rooms. I might not need one in the living room as I think that would just look strange.

If I never have to sign my name again it won’t be too soon. i think my hand still hurts from having to sign all those documents! I signed all the closing escrow docs today. It took almost an hour and a half to go through the ream of paper. She made me sign everything with my full name which I never sign either, so that added extra confusion to the ordeal. The docs I signed seemed to indicate that escrow would close Monday and I would take possession Tuesday. That seems a little fast for me to believe, but I won’t complain if we close early.

I think the ham radio class went well this morning. We didn’t get through all the questions, only about 3/4 of them so either I need to talk less or we need to extend the class. I wouldn’t really want to go much longer than we did, but maybe it could turn into a two day class with the exam on the second day after we finish up and so forth in the morning. I was also thinking about offering the class at my house instead of the stake center so we could do lunch there and maybe be a bit more comfortable. I could argue it might be too comfortable, but it could save me the effort of lugging things to the church and maybe they could actually see a bit more in the house situation.

i came home and worked on continuing my packing & cleaning. It still continues to amaze me how much stuff I have kept for years that should be have disposed of a long time ago. I also found it interesting how much easier it is to throw things away when you’re moving than it is on a regular basis. When you have to think about packing, moving, unpacking and continuing to store something, it suddenly seems a lot less valuable. I am slowly making progress, although it seems like a task that is going to take forever. I’m sure once I actually have a date confirmed or as we get closer it will start really coming together.

I’ve been spending time cleaning up each night, or at least as I have been able. Sometimes it amazes me the things that we save. Obviously at the time it made sense, and I would probably have done it again, it’s just that I should have come back years ago and thrown away the tissue paper order forms for float a handful of years ago. I probably also didn’t need the class competition standings or all the raw calendar information for 2004-2005 and other years.

I was looking through a file of stuff from BYU-Idaho at one point tonight. It seems that the story I’ve been telling doesn’t quite match with the dates on the letters I have and it really wasn’t just before the semester was going to start. There was probably ample time for me to get things in order and move to Idaho. At the time it must have seemed like it was next week; maybe I had just registered for classes or something at CSUF.

Not to play the what if game, but of course this lead me to pondering (not that I don’t do this too often already) how things would be totally different in my life if I had gone there. I doubt CBC would still be in existence. I’d probably be married and have kids by now! How scary is that? I probably would have continued in IT or accounting and not be out here on my own doing whatever the random task of the day is. I’m not saying I would have rather done that, just pondering how the smallest decisions in life can have such huge consequences.

I’ve been stressing myself out lately over choosing a refrigerator, washer and dryer. I thought I had it all figured out from Consumer Reports and then I went into Pacific Sales. They didn’t sell Samsung, so i started looking at other refrigerators and then the guy turned me onto this washer and dryer combo that costs more than what I was going in there thinking of buying. Some of the features (and the ratings) are good. Is it worth the extra money though? Then there is the problem of what will really fit in the laundry room. Some things sound great on paper, but yet I wonder how they would really function in the available space.

Oh, I went to WinCo tonight to pickup some milk on my way home. I had an idea since they took over the old Costco building that it wasn’t going to be your typical grocery store. It’s pretty much a cross between Costco and a grocery store and probably not my first choice of somewhere to shop. They probably have some good deals, I’m just not that good of a comparison shopper to know. The milk was priced weird. Most places are more of a 2 for the price of 1 deal, while Winco seemed to just have a lower price per gallon and no incentive to buy the second one. P.S. They don’t take credit cards, so I had to actually use some of that cash I collect and never use to pay the $6 bill for bread and milk.

I put another offer on a house today. I’m a little afraid almost to actually get this one. It is the floor plan I want, same as Longbranch, with the change that the space of the tandem garage was added to the downstairs bedroom, so it is big and has a nice walk in closet! It would be prefect for renting, and really the room above it would work well too with a private bath and good size walk in closet. I think we have a good chance of getting it, which would be good. I wish it had some of the upgrades: flooring and kitchen. It is pretty much your stock home, but it does come with the faux wood blinds throughout, pretty much what I would put in which will save me some dinero there that I could use towards upgrading the kitchen down the road. I think first step would be putting in tile (there is linoleum) in the kitchen. I’d love to do granite or whatever the next big thing would be as well, but that is all cosmetic and can easily be done down the road. It’s a fair price, it’s just too bad that the extras don’t factor in. The backyard isn’t done at all, so the upside is that I could do what I want with it, if I ever came into a windfall of money that is!

Work was pretty crazy today. I barely got through payroll and some of my email between meetings and looking at this house. I had to go back this afternoon after trying to look at it this morning since we couldn’t get in. We think the previous agent who was there changed the code on the box so no one else could get in to look at the place and make an offer. Of course, that is just speculation.

I came home at a reasonable time this evening instead of going to FHE. I wasn’t sure what time FHE was at, and I didn’t feel like sitting around waiting for something, or nothing, to happen. I was able to get some things cleaned up at home and found some inventory we thought we had lost in the shed when looking through the stuff down there.

I woke up this morning and got right to work after breakfast and a quick relaxing session of cleaning my room. I’ve been thinking about doing it for some time now and have had the attitude: what’s the point in cleaning it, I’m going to move soon. It finally hit me that in order to move, I need to clean! So, I started and found it a heck of a lot easier to clean with the attitude that either it gets thrown away or I move it to the new house. And I don’t want to move junk to the new place just to throw it away the next time I move.

Surprisingly, it doesn’t seem like I threw all that much away, yet I was able to clean up quite a bit. I still have a long way to go and will probably start bringing boxes home from work shortly to start packing some stuff that I don’t need. Then again, if I don’t need it, maybe I should dispose of it!

I guess the party at the Batchelor pad fell apart, and I didn’t make it to the Mattson’s. It was 3 o’clock or something when Megan called me which was about when I realized it was past time to be there if I was going to be there. At that point, I was in the middle of a horrendous mess, so I couldn’t just jump up and go and I figured that by the time I got there, it would have been about time to come home for our holiday dinner here. So, long story short, I was lazy and didn’t leave the house at all today. I did want to spend some time curled up with a good book after I woke up to it raining this morning, but that never seemed to happen other than my brief daily reading in the Book or Mormon.

After dinner, I decided to make cookies for two reasons. One, I didn’t want to sit around and do nothing, nor did I want to continue cleaning and two, Tara mentioned cookies, so i figured it would be a good birthday present. I was going to make chocolate chip cookies when Susan showed me a recipe she just pulled out of the paper for something similar to a pizookie. I decided we’d give it a try, hoping for the best. I think they turned out OK, but I’m not sure if they are really supposed to be as gooey as they are inside. I put them in the freezer tonight to see if that will at least help solidify the gooey goodness. I also made snickerdoodles so we’d have a backup in case things feel apart completely with the new Dot’s pizookie wannabe.

That’s about it for today. I was thankful to have a day off after having to work Saturday. I’m hoping this short week goes well and we can get some more of these tentative things booked and move on.

The offers are supposed to go to the bank tomorrow, so let’s hope that I have the high offer and will be a homeowner in thirty days!

I feel like I’ve accomplished stuff today. Actually, really just this afternoon, but I’ll start at the beginning. I was uber tired this morning and got a bit of a late start. Would it be fair to blame that on Shelly who was text messaging me way past my bedtime last night? Probably. The office phone was ringing before I even left the house so I stayed around to cover the phones until people got in the office and then headed there myself. I kept myself busy most of the day without letting more than a handful of messages accumulate in my inbox. It is so weird (and incredibly nice) to have no messages left to deal with and I’m finding great success with marking messages for followup on certain days and then filing them.

I left work a bit earlier than normal, after putting in a full day to come home and go for a bikeride. I was having second thoughts as I was getting close to home. I knew I needed to get out there and go, so I made it happen even though I didn’t want to at times. I had a good ride and got to see some cute little baby birds going for a walk. It was nice to take a break and just enjoy nature for a few minutes. Maybe I need to do that more often.

Once I got home, I started cleaning out my closet. The boys mentioned that it would be nice to have another shelf unit and discovered that I had one still at home. It was giving some organization to the closet, but also accumulating junk so I was half happy to see it go. It gave me a chance to clean some things out and rearrange. I think I have a few things that I need to throw away, some to give away and one or two to try to sell. In the process I cleaned up a corner of my room and while it isn’t perfect, it is a huge improvement over what it was. I keep thinking about cleaning, but then tell myself that there is no point if I’m going to move soon and have a whole house to clutter up! Maybe I can get through the stuff on my desk tomorrow night.

I was getting restless in the office this afternoon. I don’t know if I was there too early or if I just spent too much time reconciling credit card statements, but I was definitely done around 4 o’clock and couldn’t figure out what to do to be productive. I ended up cleaning the office. I went through a bunch of stuff on my desk, then started cleaning surface and after closing got out the vacuum cleaner. I really wanted to get out and do something, but with institute tonight I knew there wasn’t really anywhere to go.

I’m still feeling somewhat restless, so I’m not sure that I am going to get a good night’s worth of sleep, but I’m going to try so I can get up in the morning and babysit the office tomorrow while everyone is gone.