In one sense, that’s because, like dinner and evening plans, I’m really just not that picky over it. I want a house that is modern, or at least close enough to modern that the inside can be decorated with a modern aesthetic and still match the house. I want a very nice master suite (I’d rather dump my money there because it’s been my experience that except when we’re actively entertaining company, we tend to spend most of our time in the bedroom). That’s my requirements, and that’s all my requirements. More or less if the house design meets those, I’m content.

Now, I’m not sure if TheBoyfriend™ is having a hard time finding something he likes in general or just a hard-time finding something he likes within the criteria I outlined above, but one thing I do know, if we don’t get the thing built ASAP, it is never gonna get done because he’ll never decide on one. When he announced on Friday that he wanted to nail down a house plan (by which I mean rough floor plan and structural shape, not architectural blueprints) to send on to some of the modular builders we’ve been considering, I was thinking he meant he wanted to go ahead and flip the floor plan (which we had decided would fit our lot better) of our third and most recent pick and email it on out. I didn’t know that he was looking for a brand new plan until he called me over to his computer saying, “What do you think of this?”

Well what did I think of it? It was beautiful aside from the $800,000 price tag!!!!! He managed to convince me that if we took only the very top story and made that the whole house, along with dropping the (nice to have, but unfortunately prohibitively expensive) ultra-”green” building materials, we might be able to knock it down to something doable financially, maybe; at least enough so to make it worth mocking up to send to the architects to find out. So then it became my job to take out all the interior walls of the floor plan and rearrange them to make one story of a multi-level house usable as an entire house (also, along with getting rid of the rest of the house, so thoroughly changed the plan as to make any copyright issues non-existent).

Now that it’s done I’m thinking I need to make sure I get it to a build as soon as possible or it will join the ranks of the last 3 plans that were (I thought) agreed upon, then discarded. On the other hand, since we’ll likely be there for a long time, I do want it to be a house he’ll be happy with so going through number of designs might not be a bad thing. Plus, stylistically, it seems time is on my side. The first house we looked at I thought was a good mix of our styles as it was kind of a modern take on a cottage. The second one was more of a Mountain Chalet style. The third was classic Mid-Century Modern. And this latest is quite Modern-Contemporary. With each new plan he suggests we’re moving closer to my preferred aesthetic, and since he’s the one suggesting them, I can only assume that means the modern look is growing on him.

Gryphon is the only one of the three who is able to get on top of the fridge (or at least he’s the only one who has realized that he can). So for now, that’s where his food bowl will reside. I think he’s a bit confused as to why all of a sudden he’s eating up so high and away from the other cats. We still have to pick him up and place him up there at meal time, but he’s knows his food is there and he does go back up on his own when he gets hungry to finish his leftovers. And most importantly, it’s out of Sigyn’s reach.

=^..^=

I’d initially planned on taking today off of work, but, it kinda crept up on me and before I really thought to get it done, it was too late. It would have been a good day to take off to as it was a pretty busy weekend. My dad came up on Saturday to spend some time with me and take me out for dinner for my birthday. Which was nice but it meant that I spent Friday night cleaning house.

Yesterday, an old friend of TheBoyfriend™’s was in DC for a conference so we took a day trip up there to see him. It’s so refreshing to just get a significant change of scenery every once in awhile, if even for just the day (and it’s nice to be able to hold hands in public). Strange thing about DC is that, having never lived there or in the immediate area of there, I always randomly run into someone I know when I visit. Yesterday was no exception. As we were just leaving, actually getting our Metro farecards for the trip out (we decided just to park in Fairfax and ride the Metro into the city), I hear my name called, and turn to see someone I knew in college.

That quote from the same article as this one:

Asked about the fest’s [his Hollywood 'coming out' party] rumored price tag, Combs smiles and responds: “It’s up there, but I can’t confirm it’s $4 million. It’s priceless.”

Now I don’t mind the fact that Combs a ton of money. He’s a big-time celebrity, they tend to have a fair bit of money. And if you’ve got it, and no financial worries, and you want to throw yourself a $4 million party, I say go for it. I really do. BUT don’t claim that that kind of expense can be classified as a “need.” You WANT a $4 million party (or even a $40 party), you NEED food and shelter. Though there was nothing in the article indicating so, perhaps his “cutting back” comment was intended to be tongue in cheek. Even still, it seems a little uncouth to be making jokes about cutting back when most of the population is having to cut back and some of the population really is having to cut back to needs only.

Also this weekend, TheBoyfriend™ picked up the game Age of Empires III which is way more my kind of game than his, but that pretty much means that he got it so I would play it WITH him (and kick his ass at it, just sayin’). Of course, he got the PC version, and the Mac version was no where to be found. Not a big deal though since Leopard comes packaged with Boot Camp. I don’t actually have a Boot Camp partition set up. I run VMFusion for what little bit I need to jump into a Windows environment, and while not powerful enough for gaming, it has served my purposes well enough, PLUS if I set up a Boot Camp partition, I can share that installation of Windows between VMF and BC, so I can use it both on top of and separate from my OSX installation depending on what I’m needing it for.

I’m fairly proficient with computers and I’ve installed Windows on PCs more times than I can count, but I did something terribly, terribly, terribly wrong while trying to set up Boot Camp. I’m not sure how, but when I was done, not only had I erased my entire hard drive, but I’d completely wiped out all formatted partitions leaving me with nothing but useless space! Did I mention I had a couple hundred dollars worth of completed but not yet submitted freelance work on the hard drive I’d just erased? It was time to see if Time Machine lived up to it’s hype. I inserted the Leopard disc and partitioned and formatted my hard drive back to the way it originally was. Then, sure enough, it was as simple as clicking “Restore from backup,” selecting my Time Machine drive, and the date I wanted to restore to, and then heading off to watch TV for a couple of hours. Upon coming back, the Mac said it was ready for a reboot so I did, and from that point forward it was as if nothing had happened. I am a Time Machine believer!