The Housechick Blog

Lasik yesterday, back to work today.  Thanks to all for the good luck wishes.  The surgery was extra creepy, but painless and fast, and I’m seeing nearly 20/20 today with very little irritation or discomfort.  Many thanks go to the good folks over at Hodges Eye Care for taking excellent care of me during the whole process.

Oh, and I scored these sweet goggles. 

Tres chic, no?

Forgive me if I am difficult to reach in the next day or two.  I’m having Lasik performed on Thursday, and am told I’ll be up and running again quickly, but I just want to warn you now that it might take a day to get to the pile of email I expect to accumulate. 

I talked to a bunch of people before deciding to go through with the surgery.  It seems that nearly everyone has had Lasik or has a friend who has done it.  Mostly good stories, is what I hear.  I’m excited, I’m terrified - I’m getting lasered!  I’ll be back in a day or two with new eyes, WOOT WOOT!

You know Spring has sprung when the pecan trees start blooming.  There’s a couple on the side of I-10, and a large grove of them further outside the city in several regions.

Do you say “pe-CAN?”

or “pe-CAHN?”

Most people around here say “pe-CAHN.”

But if your grandpappy is a bolo-tie wearing, good ole Southern boy like mine, you call them “pe-CANS.”

We’ll go back to real estate tomorrow.  Just a little spring diversion.

Sorry, couldn’t resist.  I was in Oro Valley last week with some clients and ran across that statue in a shopping center parking lot.

And this is what Oro Valley looks like in your sideview mirror.  That’s Pusch Ridge you see there.  When people talk about mountain views in Oro Valley, it’s usually of Pusch Ridge, on the back side of the Catalina Mountains.

See, I’m in this little contest sponsored by the Virginia Association of Realtors.  It’s a Blog Brawl, and we’re down to the Sweet 16.

It’s kind of silly.  I don’t believe there are prizes at the end, merely bragging rights.

At this point, I’m two rounds away from winning Zone 2.  If I win Zone 2, then the Phoenix Real Estate Guy goes down in flames to a Tucson blog, which is the goal at this point.  He’s a well-known U of A hater, and for that reason alone, should be voted off the Zone 2 island.  Also, I will teased mercilessly by the Phoenix contingent if he beats me.

If you, dear readers, can get me through this round, I’ll almost certainly face the Phoenix dude next.  Let us stop him in his tracks.

Tucson blog readers, unite!

Head over to the Blog Brawl Round 3 Voting here.  You have to vote all 4 Zones, just be sure to check MyTucsonBlog in the second group of Zone 2.

Also, you can only vote once from each IP address.  You can vote multiple times, as long as you do it from different computers.  So you can vote at work AND at home.

Go Team MyTucsonBlog!

Been a light week of posting this week, my apologies.  I’ve been having laptop issues.  Seems it likes to just shut off, randomly.  Very oddly, the clock on the laptop stops when the machine turns off, so when I come home, find it off, and reboot, the clock is wrong and has to be reset.  I’m open to suggestions here, but have taken the weekend in the meantime to check my backup (Carbonite is a beautiful thing) and now have cleaned this machine down to empty bits and rebuilt.  It’s a long process, but so far, so good.

Since posting was going to be difficult without a functional laptop, I started a photoblog, where I can do everything from my phone.  Now, I know you’re all dying to see all the little bizarre things I take photos of with my phone.  I’m still finding my stride there, figuring out what I like and don’t like on the photoblog.  We may move it over to one of the other domains, but for now we’re using a free Wordpress platform, mainly because I could set it up and get running in 5 minutes or less.  Be gentle, eh?  A work in progress, at http://housechick.wordpress.com.

And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

February 29th - it’s Leap Day!

Seems like as good a time as any to finally figure out why, exactly, we go around adding days to our calendar.

- The length of a solar year, on which our calendar is based, is 365.242 days, which is about 11 minutes shorter than 365.25 days.

- To compensate for the extra .242th of a day, we add one day to the calendar every 4th year, so every year divisible by 4 becomes a leap year.

- Except: Since the solar year is 365.242 days, and we’re basically making each year exactly 365.25, we’re adding a little extra each year.  In fact, adding a day every 4th year adds about 3 extra days over 400 years.  So only every 4th century year is a leap year.  The year 2000 was a leap year, but 2010 will not be, and 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not leap years.  You can determine which century is a leap year if it’s evenly divisible by 400.

Don’t you feel better now?  I know I do.  Go enjoy your extra day.

Perhaps I was a bit hasty on my hammock installation…

And then there’s the snow…

I’ve been tagged not once, but twice.  Usually, that’s a bad thing involving spray paint, but not so in this case.  It’s just the latest meme, making rounds online.  I’m fairly sure no one really cares to know this much about me, so we’ll follow this quickly with something more on topic.  Avert your eyes if you’re not interested.

This one is 7 things about me.  It took me a while to find 7 things about me that might be considered, you know, interesting.  But let’s begin.

1. If you haven’t read the ‘about me’ page, then you don’t know I’m a classically trained ballerina, although I didn’t have the facility to go pro.  In fact, most of my friends from ballet have or had professional careers with highly respected companies.  Training of that caliber means you spend between 20-30 hours a week, 6 days a week, at the studio during your teenage years. Which may have been a factor in #2.

2. I didn’t drink a drop of alcohol before my 21st birthday.  Honest.  Who had time for such trouble?

3. Another thing that staring into the ballet studio mirrors for 20-some years has taught me is that I’ve got one leg that’s longer than the other.  The femur on my left side is somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 inch longer than the other.  If you told me to walk in a straight line and I did it with my eyes closed, I’d just walk in a big circle.  I’m a human compass. 

4. One of my biggest pet peeves is when my name is misspelled.  There’s two E’s in both names, people: kEllEy koEhlEr.  Ironically, my middle name is pronounced ‘lee’ but is spelled “Leigh.”

5. I’ve been known to tear down walls inside my house while hubby is at work and without prior warning.  Some folks call that ‘initiative’ or ’starting the remodeling project.’  Turns out, others just call it destroying the house.  Who knew? 

6. I don’t have my ears pierced.  In fact, I don’t wear any kind of jewelry, except occasionally my wedding ring.  I don’t understand the point of jewelry.  It makes no sense to me, I can’t imagine wanting all kinds of extra stuff hanging off me.

7. I’ve caught air in my car with a client riding shotgun going over a railroad track at night.  Honestly, he should’ve been wearing his seat belt regardless, but he snapped it on pretty quick once he landed in his seat again.  In my defense, it was a pitch black night, and there was no warning of the huge drop-off in the road on the opposite - and again, not visible at night - side of the railroad tracks.  On the other hand - the Infiniti FX?  Good shocks.

So there you go.  And now back to our regularly scheduled blog.

Except for this:

I’ve trained all my in-person friends to not send me chain email, little friend quizzes, or other survey-type things, because I do not, as a rule, answer any of that, or forward it on.  There is one friend who occasionally defies my exhaustive training, and sends me those things, but I like her anyway.  Because of that, I tag only one person.  Bobbi? 

I have no idea what that means.  I spotted that bumper sticker on an old Toyota Tercel that I was stopped behind yesterday.  Ideas, anyone?