Picture Post: Swansboro

Birdy in the water



View from Swansboro Dockwalk



View from Swansboro Dockwalk



View from Swansboro Dockwalk



This tree used to be part of the kindergarten playground at the old Swansboro Elementary School where I started school.



This used to be Swansboro Elementary School. Now it is retirement condos. Note the creepy graveyard that we had to walk past every day on the way to school. I seem to remember there were several ghost stories about it, but can't remember what they were.

First-Time Painters

Before: Fireplace



Before: Close-up of wallpaper border



With the help of a vinegar and water solution and a putty knife, the ugly border comes down. (The lovely assistant you see is my mother).



The yellow's not so bad without that border...



...Except when you see the fireplace.



All taped up and ready to go.



Painting begins.



Artistic shot of our paint and crappy brushes.



Using the rollers was fun (but still hard work).



Artistic shot of our rollers and paint tray.



Contrast between the blue and the yellow against the fireplace. My grandmother noticed that the way the light played on the blue made the room look much bigger.



Painting continues.



After: Fireplace



After: Window

Waiting is no fun.

Still haven't heard anything from my interview. It's now been a week since "the end of the week." I think I can pretty much give up on that one...

Registered for a couple recruiter sites/temp agencies last night and have a couple more to do today. Keep your fingers crossed.

Weekend Update

We finished painting the living room in the new house this weekend. I hope to post a pictorial of that later tonight or early tomorrow. Matthew put mini blinds up everywhere except over the kitchen sink and we took a few things down there to leave. It's really starting to look like someone lives in it again.

We took the dogs down for the first time this weekend. They did ok for the most part. There was a thunderstorm early yesterday morning so Brogan woke me up crawling into bed with me because he was scared.

Matthew's parents came to visit and see the new place yesterday. It's a much longer drive for them from Rocky Mount to Jacksonville but they seemed to like the area. Matthew's dad helped him cut a hole in the fence so that we can use the circle driveway again. (For those that don't know, there is a fence running down the side of our yard on my grandmother's property line that was erected to keep the renters in their own yard). He has a lot of work to do to add the hole so we can use the sidewalk between the two houses. We may tackle that this coming weekend.

Yesterday, we drove down through Emerald Isle and Atlantic Beach up to Morehead to eat at the Sanitary Fish Market and then we drove through Beaufort to see all the pretty old houses. It was pretty stormy yesterday afternoon so we didn't get out to walk on the beach or anything.

We had put Brogan and Angus in the storage building to wait for us until they got back (They're developing a nasty habit of trying to stand up in the windows to see out which scratches the windowsill and hurts the new blinds -- one piece in the kitchen is broken already). When we got back to the house, we saw that Angus was out of the building and Brogan's head was peeking out from under the sliding door of the storage building. My grandmother had seen Angus get out so she went out to keep him in the yard (he had just gotten out as we drove up and was barking at her). We went to see how they got out of the building and they had dug a hole underneath the door (dirt was slung everywhere). Next time I think we'll take down some extra crates so we don't have this problem...

Hopefully this week will bring a fixed door for the master bedroom that is coming out of the last renter's deposit and also a load of gravel to fix some nasty holes in the driveway. I'm not sure what we'll start on next in the house and there is a lot of yard work to be done as well.

On the job search front, I've heard nothing from my interview. Hopefully, I'll hear something today. As far as my current job, I'm training my replacement. She will take my desk full time starting tomorrow so she can do the day to day stuff with me watching over her. (This also means that I will not be available much during the day for a little while). I've found a couple other job leads that I've applied for. I'm hoping to hear something from someone soon so I can move on since I'm running low on vacation days to use for interviews...

The Waiting Game

I had my second interview yesterday. It went fairly well, as best I could tell. The president, who interviewed me, was nice enough but hard to get a read on. He told me that the job was basically between me and another candidate at this point and he would let me know by the end of the week. So, now we are playing the waiting game.

On another note, this past weekend, before I went in for the interview, I had to take a personality test online. You had to choose, between four given words, which most and least described you. This was hard on some of the questions because two words would strike me and I'd have to pick one. Turns out (got the results yesterday) that I'm a perfectionist who likes to calm down agitated people...

Interview Update

My interview on Friday went well. The person I interviewed with was very personable and we had a nice conversation. At the end of the interview, he asked me to come back on Wednesday to interview with the president, whose assistant I would be. He also told me that before he called me in for the first interview, he had narrowed it down to 6 candidates and was narrowing it down to three for a second interview. I feel pretty confident about it but please wish me luck for Wednesday.

Updates

Finally got our taxes done last night. I had kind of been putting it off (well, because I'm lazy) because we sold some stock last year and put that money into a savings account. Luckily for us, we are actually getting money back this year. Enough to buy our new king-size bed!

I have been applying for jobs in the Jacksonville area for the last 6-8 weeks and had only heard back from one place that apparently didn't pan out. I applied for an Executive Assistant position last week and heard back from them today. They were even willing to interview me on Saturday! I told the person that e-mailed me that I would be in town Friday so I will be interviewing with them at 10AM on Friday. I was even told not to worry about being late or early since I was having to drive in from out of town. Hopefully it pans out. Wish me luck!

House Plans: 4/11 - 4/13

I'm planning to go down to Jacksonville with my mom on Friday and stay all weekend. (Matthew has to work all weekend doing inventory). We are going to try to get started on some of the bigger projects, like painting, and I'm going to get the water turned on since I have to go down in person to do that.

Right now, the living room is painted a butter yellow and has a wallpaper border around the top (beige with yellow and green ivy). This is the room with the white brick fireplace. Let me tell you, white brick + butter yellow is a bad combination, indeed (I'll post before and after pictures next weekend). I'm going to paint it a bright sky blue that seems like it will offset the fireplace quite well. Neither my mom nor I have ever painted a room before, but I'm confident we can figure it out.

I think we are going to paint the master bedroom a darker, more electric blue of this same color group to go with the red wallpaper in the master bathroom. The guest room that used to be my bedroom will be an emerald green and the third bedroom is going to be a bright lavender. I'm not sure what color to paint the hallway as it has to go into all our brightly colored rooms as well as the brown bathroom and the orange, gold and green kitchen wallpaper. Maybe I'll just leave it off-white. I don't think we'll get to these next weekend but they'll have to be painted soon because of the spackling on the walls.

We'll probably also paint the trim on the vanities in the two bathrooms next weekend. They are white with copper trim but the copper has started to wear away and needs to be redone.

Beyond those two painting jobs, we'll probably just try to clean what still needs to be cleaned. We have to get the mildew off the ceiling in the hall bathroom and off the shower in the master bathroom. Plus, we need to try to remove cigarette burns from the sinks in both bathrooms and some tarnish from the sinks in the kitchen.

First Weekend in the "New" House

I spent my first weekend in our "new" house. (Well, I drove there and back to Clayton on both Saturday and Sunday because Matthew was not able to go Saturday.) We didn't do a whole lot of work, mostly just inspected and planned.

There is a bit of damage in the house from the most recent renters and from renters past.

• There were some scuff marks and scratches on the wooden cabinets and doors but we oiled those and used some scratch remover where necessary.
• The kitchen floor was not laid correctly and it is now torn. That will have to be replaced. Hopefully this is something we can do ourselves to save a bit of money.
  
• There were lots of nail holes (in weird patterns and places...we were dumbfounded) and bumps in the wall that I spackled yesterday.
  
• There are cigarette burns on both bathroom sinks (I think the sinks are fiberglass or plastic -- not porcelain) and I'm trying to find some information on how to fix that without replacing the sink.
  
• The door frames and baseboards all need to be repainted as do most of the walls (lots of scuff marks plus all the spots I had to spackle).
  
• For the most part, the wallpaper looks pretty good in the kitchen and the master bathroom. The hall bathroom is in kind of rough shape but it's serviceable for a year or two until I can get to it.
• The master bedroom doors appears to have been kicked in and hidden in the outbuilding. That will be replaced by the realtor at the charge of the renter because Matthew didn't think he could fix it.
• The fan cover(s) in the bathroom(s) will have to be spraypainted white because they are discolored from cigarette smoke.
• The hall bathroom ceiling is covered in mildew. I think we are going to try cleaning it with a diluted Clorox solution.
  

There are some other things that have to be repaired due to old age such as the roof of the out building, the ceilings will need to be painted, some metal light fixtures and the fireplace insert need to be painted because they are rusted and some trim on the bathroom cabinets needs to be repainted from wear. Also, there's a lot of cleaning to be done even though the renters and the realtor has been in to clean.

Overall, I think it was worse than I expected since my parents had a realtor handling the renting process and the cleaning but it's not as bad as it has been in the past. We are planning to repair the damage and make changes a little bit at a time as we move in.

A little bit at a time.

This is the part I'm having a hard time with because I'm excited to have this project and keep coming up with new things to do...

Update!

Work

We interviewed three candidates for my position. None of them are what we were looking for, sadly. From what my boss told me on Wednesday, it looks like they are going to do some shuffling within the department and have the current temp do most of the data entry and reporting that I do and then spread out the other duties like uniforms and salary administration to other people. I am supposed to start training people ASAP.

I still haven't found a job in Jacksonville. I applied for a few more things last night that looked somewhat promising. I am trying to get Friday, April 11 off so that I can go down and get the water turned on (not being able to do things over the phone FTL!) and I'll probably hit some of the "apply in person" places.

The House

The house is open as of this past Tuesday. The people left mostly everything in good condition and the realtor had the house cleaned per his contract. My mom and I are going down Saturday (Matthew has the defensive driving class for his "passing the bus" incident -- court date 4/10) to start seeing what needs to be done and start taking measurements. Then, Matthew and I are planning to go down Sunday because I'm not sure he has ever seen the house.

If I do get next Friday off, I will probably be spending the weekend down there working in the house since Matthew has to work to do inventory (boo!). I figure I can spend some time with my grandmother and I can most likely do the painting of the living room myself. I have a nice beachy theme forming in my head to go with the blue I've decided to paint the room. I'll be sure to post lots of pics.

Matthew

Matthew has been having some pain in his lower back that he thinks is in his kidneys. He went to urgent care last week and they found no sign of infection and sent him to a urologist who is having him take an Iodine Contrast X-Ray to pinpoint what is wrong. Matthew said the doctor mentioned it may just be a pulled muscle...so, we'll hope for that.

Crystal Coast Pagans

I've decided that when we move, I'd like to get involved in a group and make some friends and do somethings outside of home and WoW. So, I've been looking at groups that were available around Jacksonville, on Witchvox, and it looks like the one I was most interested in has disbanded and moved to Ohio. *sigh*

So, in an effort to get things rolling, I created a Yahoo group called Crystal Coast Pagans (for those that don't know, the Crystal Coast is Emerald Isle up to Atlantic Beach which is really close to where we are moving). And, I've started to advertise that on Witchvox.

If you build it, they will come, right?