super quick update

- Sewer fixed.. we hope
- Got a new, bigger christmas tree with some led lights for nerdy flair
- 1 week until doug and helen's baby arrives
- 2 days until my parents come for thanksgiving
- Sun came out today for the first time in awhile and instantly gave me a headache

That Was Fast

We officially feel like homeowners, and it only took a month and a half!  We finally got over the fact that our plane tickets to Austin weren’t going to come down in price any more and just bought them.  We accepted it, and moved on.  Leighann went to cook dinner, and I went to take care of the cat litter and get the trash out ( side note, Seattle has ridiculous trash and recycling rules - http://www.seattle.gov/util/Services/Garbage/GarbageatYourHouse/WhatsAcceptedasGarbage/index.htm ), so I headed downstairs to find three inches of standing water in the basement.

It turns out our lovely flat sewer line backed up, just like we thought it would.  We had really hoped to get more than 6 weeks out of it.  We got a plumber out to clear the line and the water all drained away.  A few hours of cleaning and a few hundred dollars later and it’s back to how it was.  Isn’t owning a house fun!?  We don’t really know what caused it, but I’m willing to wage dollars to donuts that it had something to do with the fact that this has been the 10-day forecast for over a month now:

neighborhood gossip on the internet

It's an excellent concept. We've been following the My Ballard blog since we moved in and we're loving it. There isn't a local paper just for Ballard and not much media attention is given to it, so it's great to know what's going on around us. For example, tonight we heard a really low flying plane that gave us a scare. I spent years living within a mile of airports and had never heard anything like it before. Within minutes the forums were alive with activity of other people hearing the same thing. Without the blog we would have just shrugged it off. Same with when we saw all of the emergency vehicles in front of Matador. The blog was the first to report the stabbing and I'm not sure if the newspaper ever ran a story on it. Thanks to the internet we don't have to go out into the 40 degree rain to talk to our neighbors to stay up to date on the neighborhood news. =)
In other news, we're making progress on the house. We've painted the entry and the living/dining room. Did I mention we're horrible painters. Not good at staying in the lines... Anyway, we have a contractor coming tomorrow to see how much it will cost to get some trim work done and the wood floors refinished. We're not handy people.