everything will be alright

Off to finish my last-minute packing (as per usual) then off to the city, where I'll sleep tonight so I can make the eaaaaaaarly flight tomorrow morning to go and see believeitup. I will write again from the other side! :D

So, today it was finalized, at least with the haggling: we came to an agreed upon amendment to the price of the house. The inspection on Monday found a bunch of things that needed work, a lot of them relatively minor - it is the inspector's job to point out everything, no matter how big or small - and a few big things that had to be addressed. At first the vendors were being stubborn and insisted they wouldn't go below what they'd offered, which wouldn't even cover the materials needed, but we managed to get them to a more reasonable figure today. I was a little worried; the agent said yesterday when she called with the vendors' position that they would not bend from it, and when I called the agent today (we had someone else look at the place today re: part of what needed to be done and got an estimate) with our numbers, she was pretty sure they'd reject what I asked instead. However, she called back a few hours later and they accepted our position, so yay! Like I told her, I'm not trying to rip them off or to be an idiot, but I can't buy a house for a nice amount like that and then turn around and spend thousands more on repairs that should've been either done beforehand or adjusted for, so that was that. And it worked out ok. :)

All that's left now is to meet the broker again tomorrow to finalize that side of things, and then it's just a waiting game. Pretty exciting stuff, omg. :D And speaking of exciting, only 3 more sleeps until my trip to believeitup! I have a trial in the morning, so off to bed as soon as I type this up, and then the afternoon free to catch up on paperwork, then it's off to the city tomorrow night for court on Thursday morning in there, then back out for a short matter in court in Hr. Grace, then aaaaaaaall the way back to the city for Thursday night since my Friday a.m. flight is at 6:25am, very early indeed. I'm very excited, though, it's almost here! Going to be such a nice break, and well-deserved, too, if I do say so myself, heh. I've been feeling more overworked lately than I did before Christmas even, and this time Sara actually gets a nice bit of time off, well-deserved by her I might add, and we get to go back to Boston. So perfect for what's almost our first anniversary, I think. :)

Alright, off to bed with me, to dream of my impending travel. :D :D :D

At the office now, worked with Christine for ~4 hours earlier until she went home. Then I snagged some take-out (shh) and am now finishing up a few letters I want to fax out, and then printing out e-tickets, reservations, and the like in preparation for Friday's departure. This is going to be an awesome trip, omg, and relatively busy, at least by our (believeitup and I) usual standards. Not that we don't ever do anything; the trip to NYC where we got engaged was omg so busy, mainly due to some good-intentioned-but-crazy-as-heck friends who were uber busy trying to cram as much into their first trip to NYC as possible, haha. Which was fun, don't get me wrong, but near the end of that trip my then-fiancée and I sat out most of their events, especially the ones that took place before noon. XD

This trip, though, we've got a busy week in Boston: we get in via train on Thursday afternoon, and the convention starts on Friday afternoon. That will keep us more than busy (so much to try and attend - here's the schedule for example) until Sunday afternoon. Then on Monday night we have tickets to see the Boston Bruins destroy play the Buffalo Sabres, and then tickets to see Vampire Weekend in concert on Thursday night. Ok, there are a lot of days in between the game and the concert, but still, this is a lot of pre-planning for us. XD We're staying at the Hilton, I think, during the convention, which is nice and handy to the event location, but the last three nights we're staying at a swanky hotel to relax, which will be nice. It was originally two nights, however, once I saw that Vampire Weekend was rocking Boston that Thursday night, we extended it for one more night. :)

Then we train back to Philly on Friday morning and have the rest of the weekend to decompress from our big trip, and I fly back on Monday - it's Easter weekend so our office is closed, allowing me to stay for all of Sunday and to get back on Monday instead, which is a nice little bonus. :)

So, yes, back to work for me, shouldn't take too, too long to clue things up here, then to print my other things and back home. It's such a beautiful day out, it's a sin to spend most of it inside, but at least it's nice out. The extra hour doesn't hurt either, even if it's a pain when it actually jumps ahead at first, heh. Because I wanted to be in here this afternoon it meant me going to bed last night earlier than I have been some weeknights lately, haha, although that being said I've been better the last few weeks about that. Which only speaks volumes about how bad I was before, but shh, like I said, better now. :)

So, wow, I forgot to post here earlier this week when the big news came down, but yes, we've got an accepted offer on a house down here in NL now. :) The home inspection is being done on Monday, so hopefully the place is as sound as it looks, and then the closing date's April 30th, omg. :o I need to meet some more people to get everything lined up but, unless the inspection reveals things that our own look through and the listing / agent overlooked, we will own a house by the end of April. x.x

Other than that, there's a lot of work on getting the house straightened away, and I'm packing to go see Sara again on Friday omg. Also trying to get lots of work done so I can actually get away, heh. Which should be ok. :)

Wow, I haven't made an actual, non-meme post here in ages. Since last year, even! I've been meaning to make one for awhile but haven't been able to bring myself around to until now, apparently, and even so this probably won't be as in depth as I'd like it to be.

Christmas vacation was fantastic, it was so nice to be back with believeitup again, not to mention her awesome roomie onlyonechoice and samzimmerman too. It was a nice, long trip, too, 16 days or so, and while I was there it didn't fly by or anything, either. It was great, the only sad thing about it was that it had to end, of course. I woke up this morning and realized it's officially been a week since I was last with my wife, and thinking like that always bums me out, boo to that. The next time I'll be down that way will be in March, we've already booked passes / hotel rooms for a convention in Boston, so that'll be awesome, and we once again reviewed some paper work re: immigration so things are moving forward on that front, too. It's just hard to deal with in the interim, but then again it always has been, so I'll be ok. Eventually, and that time's getting closer, it won't be an issue. :)

I won't go into detail over Christmas presents and whatnot, mainly because I have a bad memory and unless things were laid out in front of me (actually my still-as-of-yet-not-completely-unpacked suitcases are on the floor to my left >.>), but I was very happy with all of my gifts, and thank you all again for those that gave them, if I've forgotten to thank you already. Which I hope I haven't! So many new DVDs to watch, games to play, books to read, CDs to listen to, wow. I'll be kept busy well into 2010 for sure, if not into 2011 and beyond. XD

Other than that, not much else to report. Been back to work since Monday, after starting after lunch that day since I didn't get home until almost 6am Monday morning due to delays in Halifax flying back last Sunday. I also took a half sick day on Friday, and was pretty much drained energywise and had zero motivation to be back at it, ugh. That carries over to this week, the latter anyway, hopefully my energy levels will get back up. Just before Christmas I visited the doctor and got put on B12 pills, little tiny ones you dissolve under your tongue, to take each day for, well, likely the rest of my life. I had some blood work done that showed a B12 deficiency so he gave me a prescription and I have to check back in with him in a few months' time to see if they've helped any. I can't really tell if they have been, mainly because over the holidays I was bad and didn't take them daily, oops, but I have been since I've been back and still have lowish energy, but we'll see as I get back into a regular pattern if they improve anything. I sure hope so, I hate being tired all the time.

That's about it for now, not sure what else to add, though I'm sure as soon as I submit this something'll pop into mind. All the more reason to start writing here more regularly again, though, right? XD

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For most of my life I didn't really have any challenging aspects, other than worrying over what gifts I would get omg (when I was much younger, of course), or potentially worrying about exams and the results of the same. Two years ago, it was not being with my then-girlfriend, believeitup, which sucked. Last year I was with my then-fiancée, so that was fixed, but my poor dear had to work through most of the holidays, so that was hard to watch her go through. Harder for her, yeah, but still. This year, well, it'll be more of the same, I'm afraid. Thankfully I'll be there again to help her as much as I can, and I leave in just 4 days, which I cannot wait to arrive, omg.

Oops, I've been lazy of late and have been letting the newly-resurrected LoudTwitter doing all of my updating for me.

Not too much to report, really. Work has been pretty crazy and as usual has been the major source of frustration for me lately. The boss is currently still on vacation; he left before last week and returns this Wednesday, so he'll have only been gone for like 1.5 weeks, but I had to cover a trial for him during that (unexpectedly no less) and had a few other small things to mind, which added to my already busy schedule. Add to that the fact that Christine, my assistant, was gone on vacation all last week too and things are backed up, oops. We've been busy, and she's been tied up almost constantly with real estate which means she can't be helping with lists of documents and other things I need to get done, ugh. It's frustrating; we have (when all are healthy and not on vacation, anyway) six legal assistants, yet I only get one to do work for me. And if Christine's too busy I can't rely on anyone else for help, not with bigger things or anything more than a quick hand with something, which is very frustrating. Yeah, the boss has more clients and does more work overall than I do, but I do a nice chunk too and certainly should have more than 1/6th of the total resources there. It's frustrating and we'll definitely be having a talk when he gets back, see if we can figure things out, because it's at its worse now with real estate being so busy.

It'll be ok, though, getting back on track I think, which is good because I'm leaving to visit my wife in less than two weeks now, omg. :D We're planning on visiting Washington D.C. for part of the trip, I think, and the next time I hit the city I'm going to look up some books on tourist-y things to do there and places to stay, attractions to see, etc. Should be fun! :D

So, what a week this has been. So much drama, with work, real life, LOTRO, everything. I won't delve into too much detail, but some of it has been resolved, thankfully. I even managed to (hopefully) settle one of my most contentious files today, which was awesome. I qualify that with hopefully since an offer was made to us, and we have court on Monday to set a trial date if we don't agree, but after talking with my client after the meeting it looks like we'll be taking the offer. It was a stressful and annoying afternoon in meetings but it may have been well worth it.

Not much else to report, really. This week was easier with my court schedule, and next week should be along the same lines, thankfully. Monday is actually a civic holiday, but since I have court in another town and in the city on Monday I won't be getting the holiday. Well. Not the full one, anyway; I'm thinking about sticking around the city after my 12 noon court appearance and catching a matinee of Funny People that afternoon if I can. We'll see though, not gonna worry about that now. Looking forward to getting a lot of sleep and some gaming in this weekend, as it's an Aion beta weekend and there's always things on the go with LOTRO. Though... without getting into specifics here, there's a lot of kin drama lately that I don't know what's on the go with, to tell the truth. I'm hoping to talk to believeitup about it a bit over the weekend, as well as a few others if I can, but I really don't know people that well in the kin yet to talk about these things. We'll see, I think things can be ok in time, but for now suffice it to say that a lot of backs are raised and things are still a little ugly, heh. I've seen it happen in so many other games before; end game content brings out the worst in people.

I got to play guitar tonight for a bit, which was nice, and by guitar I mean I broke out my Strat and cranked it up for awhile. I was never that good to begin with, but I was preeeetty rusty tonight especially, heh. Thankfully I mainly played things with lots of power chords and didn't embarrass myself too much. I get self conscious since with the AC unit in my window things that loud can be heard on the street below, and while we don't get a lot of traffic, there is a little. There was no booing (that I heard) or rocks thrown, so that's a good thing. :D

That's about it for now. Time keeps on a-rollin', and soon I'll be visiting my darling wife in PA once again, I can't wait. And things are still developing in the employment field, which is a good thing. I've just been feeling lately that... I dunno, that I've been spinning my wheels in general, and a fresh start to a new life is exactly what I need. Here's hoping the chips all fall into place and things can start shaping up in the very near future. :)

It's been a pleasant weekend so far, and things seem much, much better than they did since my last post, heh.

I had a nice, relaxing Saturday, which saw me make a car rental reservation for my pending September trip to Philadelphia, yay! On top of that I managed to get a really, really good deal on a top of the line GPS system to use when I'm traveling. Last time I used a program on my BlackBerry, which cost a lot more than I thought since I had to pay for 'net usage time, and also my phone kept randomly restarting too, so that didn't help. This new unit, a Magellan 5310, should last for a nice, long time, and will be way cheaper in the long run. So yes, lots of progress on the September trip already, which is great news. :D

After that, believeitup and I got to do some raiding with our kin in LOTRO. Which... it was fun, overall, but we didn't get as far into the raid as we wanted. As in we didn't even beat the first boss, d'oh. Things just weren't working for some reason, but that's the way it goes, sometimes. Tonight we're going back in again, and hopefully it'll be better. After the raid!fail, we grouped up to do a few runs in another, small instance, and both of us logged out in the wee, small hours of the morning. It was a nice, busy night in LOTRO, which doesn't happen all that often to me lately, so that was a good thing. :) Next week is Aion time, so it was good to get in a lot of LOTRO this weekend since there won't be as much next weekend. The only downside to the night was my stupid computer acting up and locking up on me twice. I also lost my internet connection too, but I restarted the modem and that was fine. I played with the settings a bit in game, and it seemed ok after that, so here's hoping it stays fixed.

Today I got to catch up on sleep and when I got up I downloaded all the new drivers I could for both my video card and my sound card. I tried to update the drivers for the headset / mic, but apparently they're already up to date. Hopefully that and the tweaking I did in game last night will prevent my computer from locking up again. So frustrating because it's a brand new machine, and also because so many other people are waiting on you when you get booted, grr. But yes, we'll see how it goes tonight. Other than that, I've not done much all day. I meant to clean up a little, oops, but instead I've watched tv and puttered around online. It's been nice and relaxing, though, which is the whole point of a weekend, right? Right. And the best part about it is that this is a long weekend, so I get to do more of the same tomorrow. :) I do have some plans, though; may go into the office in the afternoon to catch up on some desk work, and if the boss is there I can talk to him about a few things too, plus I have a few other plans that I won't go into here, but I do plan to be at least a little productive tomorrow.

So, yes. That's my weekend so far, I hope everyone else is having a good one. :D

So, I just cashed in virtually all of my Aeroplan points, but I now have a date certain for travel back to Philadelphia to see my wife. I even added a new ticker to my profile to commemorate the occasion. Call me silly, but having a fixed date in mind makes me feel better for some reason. Maybe it's because I have an exact idea of how much longer I have to wait before we're together again or just having a countdown helps, I don't know, but it just does. So that's that.

Other than that, I took a half sick day this morning because I was worn out, but I'm back at the office now and as I spent a good bit of time already booking the flight and calling to confirm everything (still have to pay the taxes and fees for both flights, which is now done) I should actually devote the rest of the afternoon to, you know, working. :)