This year’s Oscars marks the 10th anniversary of our 3rd date. I can’t remember when our first 2 dates were. I remember what they were and where though! The first two times we met were times out with mutual friends to “evaluate” both of us. They were basically in various bars in Philly. This was of course because we met on Match.com. I know we met right after Valentines Day in 2002.

To be honest, neither of these three were really dates though. Our first real date was when he asked me out to dinner, which he insisted on paying for, because he wanted it to be a real date. Sadly the restaurant we went to, Astoral Plane, is no longer around.

But this photo is one of the first I think I have of the both of us. It’s from December of 2002, the first Christmas we had together. Ahhh, the lack of grey in my hair, and in his soul patch . . . .

Literally . . . not figuratively. Since he’s on break from work, John has had some ants in his pants. He’s channeled that into some much needed housework, much to my delight. So far he’s ransacked the basement, and it looks so good! Make no mistake, it still needs a lot more work. But not only can you walk down there now, it doesn’t look like an episode of “Hoarders.” We had so many cardboard boxes we had saved after buying various things (computers, electronics, kitchen gadgets) and empty kitty litter containers down there. It was NUTS!

We still house way too many things of people who don’t live here. I’ve threatened before to have an ebay sale, and I still might. He says once I do that, they’ll show up for their things . . . but he doesn’t have their numbers to call them to come get their crap either . . . . Their loss! This isn’t a public storage, they didn’t sign a contract . . . sue me 🙂 These aren’t things that have been down there a few months either, we are going on a decade at this point. Yeah . . . do you think they remember? Once we can get their crap out, we can actually get some more shelves put in, and organize our own crap better.

The other major project I’ve been itching to do for almost two years now is to redo our two guest rooms on the first floor. Unfortunately we probably (i.e. we will) need some room in the basement for that, as things need to be packed up and moved down there. Oh make no mistake, a lot of stuff in these two rooms also needs to be junked! Then we need a few new pieces of furniture, namely a desk (as one room will be a study/office space with a pull out sofa for emergencies). We also need a new dresser for the other room, as the old Ikea ones are falling apart and take up too much space. I admit, they house a lot of my crap right now, and I need to go through and trash a lot of it. I am going to try to slowly work on things with the hope of having both rooms fairly set up by summer. The first order of business is cleaning out the closets in both rooms, as they can become good storage space.

One day soon, our house will be how John I envisioned it always could be 🙂 🙂 🙂