I never said I was a great correspondant....

..but almost four months between posts is ridiculous! I have no good excuse other than sheer laziness...that and I hate the way blogger posts photos, and it usually irritates me enough to delete my post anyway. So I will try to be better! I'll give some updates of what's kept me so busy, but I have no idea when they happen--I can't even remember what I did last week...

Furniture shopping...Erich and I were under some strange impression that we had this wonderful discount at NFM for furniture through Home Real Estate, so we scoured that store at least four times looking for bookshelves,living room sets, entertainment centers, tvs, deep freezes, kitchen tables, hutches...you name it, we looked at it. And we could not find anything we liked, and by the end of the visit everything had merged into one big lump of data; my photos and notes taken throughout the trip looked like another language. And almost every trip ended in us bickering and leaving upset that we couldn't agree on anything. So, upon our last trip there, we found a table we liked. After speaking with a salesperson we found that the deal would be equal to free delivery, which they were already offering...Le sigh. So, we left. On the plus side, that night we got to meet Ava Rose Stubbe, and had earlier had dinner with the Wollens, so at least the trip wasn't a complete bust ;) A couple weeks later we decided to check out the furniture store in York; Erich had worked there in college and so the owner loves him. And his family. And lo and behold, we found a couch and chair and a half that we loved. It was like, bright lights shining, cherobs singing, look here! look here! We were very excited that day, especially since they do free delivery, and had everything been available, they were willing to let Erich take the delivery truck back to York (silly people!). We are very happy with the couch and chair. The couch is more than long enough for Erich to stretch out on, and the chair is a great place to find Abbey and I reading or napping. The one problem with the furniture, which why anyone would think of this before is really beyond me, is that they are on round globes of wood, so they are elevated about 2-3 inches from the ground...just enough room to constantly lose your tennis ball and then whine about it. Abbey was so creative she came up with a new whine just for the occasion. Very, very frustrating. We were lucky the set came with so many throw pillows, they make a great barrier along the bottom of the couch.

OK, even though posting those two pictures of the couch and chair thoroughly irritated me, I am going to power through!

The Cutting down of the tree: When we moved in, the first thing our next door neighbor told us (or rather, Erich's brother & parents) was that technically, his fence didn't encompass his yard, so about a foot on our side was his. OK, he waited to tell us this until Erich was pouring cement for fence posts (luckily we just needed one for our gate). So, in return for "letting" us use his side and put in a post on his side, he asked Erich to cut down a tree that was too close to his fence (and of course, on our side). We had talked about removing it anyway, so it didn't seem like that big a deal. So, today was the big day. Some friends came by around 9, and the first limb came down fairly easy. The rest of the tree wasn't. In the end they had ropes tied around the trunk, which Erich handled the chainsaw--for the first time. It was both comical and scary at the same time, especially when he was getting dangerously close to his legs, but couldn't hear anyone yelling at him until he shut it off. But, down the tree went. They chopped the wood, bundled the branches and had the yard clear within a hour. The neighbor guy was supervising throughout this. Some of his more awesome moments was when he saw the guys using a 6 foot ladder, and about 30 minutes later asked if his extension ladder would work better. Huh? You think? And then he stood by and watch the event from about 30 feet away. I guess while the guys were chopping the bigger stuff, he was throwing the smaller--I mean, twig sized stuff--back over into our yard. Did I mention he's rather anal about his yard? On the plus side, no one was hurt, and we have one tree down. I really hope this doesn't mean more are coming down. Erich is determined to get rid of our crab apple and black walnut trees. I saw leave 'em alone! From what I can tell, the birds are already pissed from the tree that's missing; they keep circling the ground around it. Poor little guys...

True Blood: OK, this is one thing that has taken up a lot of my time. True Blood is a series on HBO that stemmed from a series of books by Charlaine Stackhouse. I started reading the books in January, before I knew there was a series. So, my sister and I have pretty much been crazy readers and finished the series of 8 books, and are now waiting on the 9th one to either go into paperback or become available at the library--I am currently in 60th place for a book. So, about halfway through the series I found out there was this show on HBO. A friend of mine was telling me about it, and she just thought it was great. My sister watched a couple episodes, and just couldn't get into it--too much differs from the book. So, ever since then I've been waiting for the series to come out on dvd so I could check it out. I saw about half an episode at my sister's, so I was interested to say the least. I got the dvds last Tuesday, and had finished them by Friday--it was only 12 episodes, not a huge feat. I thought they were great; it was very HBO, a lot of sex--I believe there was maybe 3 episodes where they weren't sexing it up. So, the premise of the show is well, complicated. You can read Barnes and Nobles description of the dvd here, so combine that with sex, sex, and more sex.

Well, I think that's good for a while. It's certainly not everything, I still need to talk about our housewarming, Erich's 30th, outsourcing at work, many fun topics to cover in the future!