Power Outages

I have lived in NH since January.  And now we have lost power twice.  Last time, it was out for days.  Days.  And it sucked.  The thing is, we didn't even get that much snow! 

Tonight, we have lost power once again.  Leaves are still on the trees and now the snow is making them even heavier.  So they are falling everywhere and taking power lines out with them. 

The worst part is that my husband and I were supposed to complete the move into our new house tomorrow.  But right now, we don't know if there is power at the house since it is on the other side of Merrimack NH.  I guess we will just have to wait until tomorrow to find out what our plans will be.  I am a sad panda right now. 

Luckily, the house we are in now has a generator to power certain parts of the house.  So if we don't have power for a few days, then we can just stay here.  But it is definitely sad.  We were so excited about getting into the new house.  But with a baby and no generator at the new house, there is no way we will be moving in with no power.  Oh NH.  I so do not like you right now.

Keys and Locks

I've been thinking about locks and keys today.  My husband and I just bought a house recently and we are not quite moved in.  But after the closing, we went to check the house out and start cleaning.  The seller's agent gave us the keys to the front door and told us where to find the rest of the house keys.  In a drawer in the kitchen, we found more keys than we knew what to do with.

The problem was that some of the keys for the house were still missing.  We had 6 keys to one door, 4 keys to another door, etc. and then no keys to other doors.  It was ridiculous.  So we decided to start by replacing all the exterior doors - doors to the backyard, the front door, exterior doors to our breezeway.  We went to Lowe's and picked up a set of 2 locks which will get us started.  Then we have to pick up 2 more locks and get the re-keyed so that we will have the same key for everything.  Because as it is, we have like 10 keys to the house.  Not cool.

How did the previous owners keep track of so many keys?  I'll tell you.  They didn't.  That's why we are missing so many keys!  But we want to make sure we can have the house locked up when necessary and not need a million keys to do it. 

And if anyone else goes through a situation like this, here is some advice: get your new locks at Lowe's.  Home Depot charges $5 per lock to re-key.  But if you buy the locks at Lowe's, then they only charge you $5 total to re-key.  The woman told us she doesn't like to go nuts overcharging people because it is unnecessary.  Lowe's = win!

The Walking Dead

I decided to check out The Walking Dead today since it was available On Demand.  So far, I really like it.  It reminds me so much of playing Left 4 Dead.  Besides having the "special" zombies of course.

Basically, it's the typical story.  There is a virus that is spreading and a group of people sticks together trying to find safety and a possible cure.  The characters are interesting and each episode so far has had a pretty good plot (besides the obvious "don't let the zombies eat me" plot). 

I didn't get to watch the first episodes, but I did find out that it is available on Netflix streaming.  So I plan to look into it.  If you like zombies, you should definitely check it out!

House Update

Yesterday was furniture move in day.  It actually went really well.  The difficult part was that we had to pick all the furniture up in Lynn, MA and bring it to Merrimack, NH.  So we needed movers in each place.

That having been said, our friends were absolutely amazing.  We had several friends in Lynn helping and the majority of them (everyone who was available for the rest of the day) came to NH to help.  Plus, we had friends that came to help in whichever area was closest for them.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, we are so lucky to have the friends that we have.  They are the best!

My parents also came to help with some things that needed to be done: cleaning, furniture assembly, some painting, and helping take care of Kaylee so I could tell the guys where the furniture had to go.  They have been absolutely amazing throughout this move.  And to top it all off, they are coming back next weekend to help us paint the master bedroom and the living room. 

We still have some smaller furniture and some boxes to move in, but the majority of the bulky stuff is now in the house.  Next weekend, we will move our bed and Kaylee's crib and that will be it.  We will officially be moved into our new house!  And just in time for Halloween!

Our First House

Well, we did it!  This morning, we signed all the papers and we now own a house!  Our first house!  Watching all that money disappear from our bank account was admittedly scary, but it was worth it.  The house is so beautiful and we cannot wait to move in!

Today, I cleaned the kitchen, scrubbing every drawer, shelf, and appliance until they were squeaky clean.  My husband started replacing the outlets in Kaylee's room and the room that will be our office.  A lot of them were not grounded correctly. So since he was going to be messing with them anyways, he figured we might as well put in tamper resistant outlets.  It's just safer for when Kaylee starts running around.

Mike also had Comcast come to get our Internet going.  That way, he can get started wiring the house with ethernet, since he wants to have hardwired connections in several rooms and he wants it done correctly without it costing an arm and a leg.  Which is yet another reason that my hubby is amazing.  He can do all this stuff himself.  He's smart like that!  And he has ridiculously amazing friends, most of whom know a little something about everything.  Combined, they are a serious force of nature.  We are so lucky to have them.  And so lucky that they are all amazing and willing to lend us their expertise in improving our home.  It's so great saying that.  OUR home!

We have had a hectic, but awesome, day and this weekend will be more of the same.  My parents are coming to NH tomorrow to help us clean and to help take care of Kaylee.  Furniture move in begins on Sunday and we should be officially and completely moved in by Halloween.  So exciting!

Lunch

Today I took Kaylee to see Mike at work in Manchester and we went out to lunch with some friends.  It was so great to see Mike during the day and I think he really enjoyed getting to see Kaylee. 

I know that it makes him sad to be away from her all day, which is why he goes into work so early.  That way, he gets to see her for a long time in the afternoon.  He is so amazing for doing that.  Also, it is awesome that his work lets him do that.  Companies are getting so much better at working with their employees, striving to achieve a work/life balance that is the best for everyone involved.  Mike is able to adjust his schedule, for the most part, to fit our life and our family.  In turn, he is a happy, efficient employee who does amazing work, which benefits the company.  It's a win-win situation.

Grooveshark

First, there was Pandora.  I used to listen to music on that all the time.  Pick a song you like and Pandora would play songs that it believed to be similar.  Great.  I loved it.




Then, there was Slacker.  Pick a station and songs of a certain genre would play continuously for your listening pleasure.  There was an occasional 30 second commercial, but it wasn't too bothersome.  You could pay a small price for the year to have those pesky commercials taken away if they really bothered you too much.  Also, you could skip through songs if you didn't like them or tell Slacker not to play them anymore.  Favorite them if you really loved them and they would play more often.  But unless you paid for the service, you did not have the ability to skip an unlimited amount of songs.  It could be annoying if you really had some specific songs in mind that you wanted to hear.

Now, there is Grooveshark, which my husband recently introduced me to.  Like Slacker, you can pick a genre and those are the types of songs that will be played.  You can also pick "Popular Songs" and you will get almost 500 songs on one playlist, able to work your way through them and never hear the same song if you don't want to.  The difference with Grooveshark is that you can skip as many songs as you want, create your own playlists, search for absolutely any song you want to hear, share your playlists with people, and so much more.  It's pretty awesome.

The more I think about it, it's actually a lot like iTunes.  Except you have access to an unlimited amount of music.  And you don't have to worry about having your music imbedded with DRM (Digital Rights Management), like the majority of iTunes music.  Of course, they offer some DRM free songs now because they have realized that Amazon is so much better.  My point is that with Grooveshark you get all the awesome things about iTunes without having to deal with all the crappy things.  Sweet deal.