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Posted by Johanna on 7th July 2010
3

All moved in

Hello July! It was long and very tiring 1½ weeks but now it’s all in the past. This move was by far the toughest and biggest we’ve ever done. Apartment was so dirty that I honestly can’t understand how the pair who owned this before could bring up a child in this environment. Kitchen cupboards were black when I arrived and after cleaning them FOUR TIMES they are a bit cleaner and whiter. Oh yeah the previous owners, argh! When we made the deal, signed up the conveyance (sp?) and paid for the apartment, it was then and there when the ownership of the apartment was ours. We already had few boxes in our car so we could get a kickstart with the move. We get the keys, leave the bank and arrive to our newly purchased apartment just to realise that all the cupboards are still full of their (previous owners’) stuff! I couldn’t believe my eyes! I immediately rang to the real estate agent and he was as baffled as I was. He rang the previous owners and demanded that they clean out their crap from OUR apartment that night. Eventually they did clean out most of the cupboards, leaving few bits and pieces there but the backyard was still full of their stuff. I had to ring the agent three times (in a week’s time) before he could get previous owners to come and get their crap. Unbelievable. But at the same time not really, I’m not usually quick to judge on people but their appearance oozed the “I don’t give a damn” attitude. They haven’t really taken any care of the apartment or the surroundings of it, apart from installing new floors. They were very young (around 23 yrs give or take) and they had a small 14 month old kid and they were already divorced. They hadn’t paid their electricity bill for a year and maintenance charges were dragging 2-3 months behind. This was all told to us by the real estate agent and of course we didn’t have to pay for their bills, they had to take care of those when we signed the contract for the apartment. But hopefully we don’t have to deal with them anymore.
We now have inside of the apartment pretty much done with (except some stuff we need to get, like new sofa and bedside tables) and now we can start renovating the backyard and front. Patio is scrubbed and painted once (though there’s huge holes in it, but there’s nothing really we can do about them, expect get a whole new patio but that isn’t really an option at the moment), we need to mow the grass, clean the clogged rain gutters and get our patio furniture + grill outside. Otherwise I’m very happy to live here now. I’ve always dreamed of living here, in a row house, with sauna and patio and now I have it. Pure joy.

Oh and about the job interview! I think I’ve tweeted about it only. I applied for a e-commerce sales secretary for this local domestic appliance store which is opening this month. They’re also gonna have an online shop and I applied for the job, without really knowing what it’s about but I got called to come over for an interview and it sounded just like the place I’d love to work in. They haven’t decided yet which e-commerce application they’ll be using, they promised to phone me in few days, but I called them first. They still hadn’t decided about hiring anyone for the job, cause they had some problems with the e-commerce app they were suppose to take. They said that they’ll need another week to decide. So week went by and I called them again. Still no decision (ugh, just my luck) about the hirings or the application. They said that this is gonna take more time than they thought (I was already getting ready for the blow that they wouldn’t hire me) and they gonna need at least 2-3 weeks. They are negotiating with a software company where I was as an apprentice, so I know their apps/system/stuff well so if they take the application from them, I’ll be #1 choice for them. But it’s all if and but at the moment. They haven’t ditched me, they made that very clear though. I just HATE when this happens. This is for a third time already. I apply, get called to an interview, get all excited about the job and then something like this happens.. they have problems with something or they decide that oh, we’re not gonna need any new people right now. I’m not gonna give up on them, I’m grabbing them with my both hands and won’t let go until I hear that “you’re hired!”.

And I still haven’t been able to go and watch Eclipse! That is going to be set right this Friday!

Posted by Johanna on 14th May 2010
3

Going gaga

I can’t believe it really was +30°C today in the sun! I was forced to put on just my t-shirt and capri pants and we could go to my mom’s by bike! Insane! And later when I got back, I had to wear a skirt. Whaaatta heck! It’s May, why the heck do I have to suffer from the heat in May. And yes all you summer lovers I know how much you like when it’s hot but I don’t! I don’t  handle heat well, I can’t stand it. If I’m out in the sun for too long I get a head ache and feel nauseated. My feet especially don’t like the heat, they swell right when it hits over +20°C and they hurt (I can blame the family genes for that). So that was my dose of too much information of the day.

I’ve kept myself busy with my mom’s reborn babydoll site, had to take photos of the dolls and come up with a decent but simple layout, I also made some flyers for her so she can promote herself, created a facebook page for it and my mom is very happy about all that, even though I’m sure she doesn’t understand even half of the things I did for her (website/fb wise). Oh and the dolls, I don’t know how she got so crazy over them, but she took a course last spring where she learnt to do those dolls and she hasn’t stopped going on about them since.

I also got another website project ready for another client.. rant coming up and you have been warned… and I just have to say how infuriating it is to do almost free websites for some people, just because I’ve known them for some time and they expect that I do (even though it was just a revamp and e-commerce added)! Plus I do some proof reading and typing for the same client, cause she is utterly clueless when it comes to computers or any electronic gadgets (she doesn’t even know how to add new numbers to her telephone). She wanted a simple revamp to her site, which I did. I made a few PSD-files for her to choose from (and of course gave her several opportunities to request any changes to them before I start coding them) and she also wanted an e-commerce/online shop for her books, which we chose together (and I installed and took time to learn it by myself how to use it) and I did all that, did a new layout, installed the shop, created Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn-accounts for her. When we republished the site with new layout, she was so happy with it and proud of the new online shop she has and the social media accounts. But when she realised that she would have to learn how to use all of them, it all got just crazy. She wanted all those new bells and whistles for her site, but she didn’t want to be bothered to learn how to use them (I think she was under the impression that I would run her site, online shop and all those social media accounts for her, for free of course), she is just that scared of computers. When we first published the earlier version of her site with a blog (which was oh so wonderful thing that everyone has and she just has to have one too, even though she had know idea what is was and kept referring it to as “clog”) I teached her how to publish new blog posts and she was cool with it, but when I went there for the next time, she had a pile of papers for me to type and she just said “please type this to my blog”. UGH. Why do I even bother to teach anything to her when obviously she has no intentions to learn them! When I tried teaching her how to check the online shop admin for new orders, she stood up and left to the toilet in the middle of my sentence! I really felt like smacking her right then and there. In the end, she decided against having an online shop (which I spent hours in building and learning) cause it was just too difficult for her to understand. I ended up restoring the old order form to her site, which she wanted to call.. can you guess it? Yes. Her Online Book Shop. Oh and one more thing – the layout. It was all ready and approved by her but all of a sudden she gave me a paper (A4 size) filled with text and said “can you please add this to the frontpage” O_O I tried explaining to her that there was no room for it, it’s not good to have to so much (useless) information at the frontpage and her response: “what do you mean there’s no room for it, theres lots of white space next to that sidebar!” *headdesk*. I just love it when people who don’t understand anything at all about creating websites or web design or what is a good layout or why that huge 800×600 pixel image can’t be added to the frontpage try to tell me how to do my work.

Congrats if you got this far, now I still got few episodes left to watch before I go to bed, so I’m off.

Posted by Johanna on 25th April 2010
1

I need sleep!

Needless to say a weekend on the run (and at the in-laws place) makes me very tired. Not sleeping on your own bed and all that jazz isn’t really the best option, but I thought heck it’s only two nights and I can sleep them on a stick if I just put my mind to it. Funny how just a 2 hour drive makes you feel all scruffy and messy too, even if you had just took a shower in the morning, I felt like I needed another one when we came back home. Weekend was all around nice, tried to search new shoes and trousers for me but no luck. It was a “strange” city and I didn’t knew what was where and the shops just felt so chaotic to me and not to mention we were up and running right after 10am! We visited Jari’s mom who is hitting soon her 90s (and I don’t mean the decade) and I was a bit shocked to see how downhill she had went (considering physical health, her head and mind is still working 100%) in a short period of time. But I guess that was almost 90 years worth of living does to you, no matter how much you try to avoid it.

Now I’m cleaning out my inbox, gonna watch a few episodes of FlashForward and Fringe. I do have 2 websites on “To Do” list at the moment but I just don’t have the energy to focus on them right now, so they have to wait until tomorrow. Hopefully clearing out my camera’s memory chips too, I realised I haven’t uploaded any decent photos to Flickr! for ages! Tomorrow (besides website projects) I have my walk with my aunt, start to prepare mead for the upcoming Walpurgis Night next Saturday. I’m also thinking of applying for this digitalizer job (typing/scanning old paper documents to into digital form), not really 100% about it – it’s almost 20 kilometres away from where I live now, I would have to get up at insanely early hours to get on the only bus that goes there early enough and if/when we move (most likely even further away from it then we are now) I would have to end up spending up to 2 hours a day just getting to work and back home. I would so need the money, but not sure is it worth all the stress and insanely long work trips. Oh and before I forgot, Jari had a job interview this Friday just before we left town for the weekend, he was very hesitant to apply for it at first (it was vacancy via these “rent a worker” agencies and only for 1-3 months during the summer) but I sort of insisted he’d apply (extra cash! bills!) for it and boy aren’t we glad he did. The person who interviewed Jari had another long term vacancy available (with more demanding work which is a plus) and said that Jari was too smart to for the original short term vacancy he applied for. Jari’s info was forwarded to the company with the long term vacancy available and they were interested immediately and promised to get back to him next week! Only downside is that the job would be 50 kilometres away, but Jari has a car so it wouldn’t be that big of a deal (his earlier job was 30 kilometres away from our home). I really really hope he’d get that job!

Posted by Johanna on 25th April 2010
5

Comment o’ randomness

Leave me a comment o’ randomness; your favourite quote, the best sandwich in the world, a good song lyric, what colour pants you’re wearing and I’ll respond with five questions you can answer in your own blog leaving with them an open invitation for other people to give you comments o’ randomness. Then you can ask them questions and before you know it we’ll all know everything about everyone – even if we’ve never met!

Posted by Johanna on 23rd April 2010
2

Fast forward, please!

At the moment I’m stuck in this “waiting” phase and if you didn’t know yet, I hate waiting! The apartment is currently on the market by a real estate agent. I tried to sell it myself but I got so fed up and annoyed by all the constant calls (now I understand why there are real estate agents..) all though most of them were from real estate agents, fishing for a new client. The one we chose was the cheapest, but still insanely expensive I think. It’s been 2 weeks now this Sunday and we’ve had one official apartment viewing (we weren’t present of course). Real estate agent phoned us after the viewing and said there was a fair amount of people there and one was extremely interested, but what else we can do right now except wait. I’ve teased myself by searching new possible apartments, even though I know most of them are gone in few days but I keep my hopes up that there will be some left when we do get our apartment sold.

I’ve got few job applications out there at the moment, so waiting for them to clear/react as well. Waiting for the pre-assignments for the Visual Communication entry exam. Waiting for the weekend to pass, mandatory trip to in-laws this weekend. Not that excited about it :/So yeah, my life seems to be a lot of waiting these days. Jari has a job interview tomorrow, it’s a 1-3 months summer job but if it pays the bills, we’ll take it.

I have to say that I’m happy that spring is coming, it means I can finally take my camera outside without fearing it’ll freeze there. Continuing our usual walks with my aunt, it gives us both a chance to vent, gossip and someone to chat with – other than our spouses that is. It’s refreshing for the brains and my health as well.

Ah yes, chatting with friends – it’s the one thing I miss about school the most really, you’d see your friends on a daily basis, keep in touch more often than now. It’s a real shame how I haven’t kept in proper touch (other than the odd Facebook comments) with the few good friends I have. Though I don’t want to be always the one asking “Hey, how’s it going”. Has keeping in touch virtually via social media come too easy, so we forgot how nice it was to actually have a friend physically there and talk to a human being instead your computer screen. I don’t know where these thoughts are coming from. Maybe it’s because I’ve had few people online treating me a bit odd, whom I considered as friends, first being all nice to me and then all of a sudden giving me the cold shoulder and removing me from their friend lists. But I guess we’re too different at the end, one similar interest isn’t enough, or maybe I’m too boring and old since I don’t go goo goo and ga ga after each cute thing/fandom/or whatever is hip at the moment. But still I find it quite rude. Or maybe I should count my blessings and be thankful for the current true friends I have and forget the fake ones?

It’s almost 1am now and I was suppose to rebuild my fanlisting collective but ended up blogging instead and listening to Villa Nah. In case you haven’t noticed Ice Pearls.Net is no more and all things can be found at tintedhalo.net – the move is still very much “going on” there so all members/affiliates haven’t been informed yet. Okay, now I’m gonna sign out, check out Frasier and head to bed before this blog post is all over the place.