be my valentine

last night, scott informed me that he'll be making an atm withdrawal today for a certain dollar amount, and that i'm not allowed to ask any questions.  with valentine's day coming up next weekend, i'm intrigued!  (since we keep all of our spending money in a joint checking account - and thus any debit purchases we make are visible in our online banking - our solution to gift buying is typically to pay in cash.)  i'm trying not to think about it too much, though, because i don't want to get my heart set on the idea of him getting me anything in particular and then be disappointed.  i love the anticipation of knowing that a surprise is coming!

(by the way, men: valentine's day is february 14.  same date every year.  this year it happens to fall on a sunday (next weekend), but while the day changes, the date stays the same.)

our valentine's day tradition is to watch a chick flick of my choosing, with no complaints or snide comments from the peanut gallery.  this year, scott took it upon himself to research chick flicks on rotten tomatoes and prepare a list of suggestions*.  so helpful, right?  while i did appreciate the effort he went to, i pretty much nixed all 5 of his suggestions from my mental list of "valentine's day possibilities" and added them onto my "movies that i want to watch and could maybe talk scott into on a normal date night" list.  do i feel a little bit devious doing that?  well, yes.  but come on, they're all well rated chick flicks that my husband implied that he'd be interested in watching ... how can i not take every advantage of that?  as i was pondering my options for valentine's day, though, i first had to come up with a list of criteria for the movie, drawing on personal preferences and past experiences:

1. must be a love story: because it's the only time of year i can convince scott to watch a lovey movie with me. 
2. must have a happy ending: because i am an optimist.
3. no affairs or divorce: because why is that romantic?  that's sad, in my book.
4. preferably no sex scenes: because they're awkward and unnecessary.
5. preferably funny: because i like to laugh.

with those in mind, i sifted through some options and came up with the winner: the 1996 version of emma, starring gwyneth paltrow.  strong competitors included fireproof and the 2005 pride and prejudice, but i opted against them since i've already watched both of them with scott.  the rest of our valentine's date includes a heart shaped pizza from papa murphy's and a bottle of chianti.  yes, the dinner was totally my pick, too.  scott lucked out, i tell you what.

* - in case you're curious, scott's suggestions were: junebug, paper heart, all the real girls, 500 days of summer, and definitely, maybe.

sportsfan

i am sleepy today ... we went to the suns v. nuggets game last night, and while the original tip off time had been 7:00, it got pushed back to 8:30 so that they could televise it.  8:30 start time meant that we didn't get home til almost midnight.  thus, now sleepy.  it was a good game, though - suns won 109-97!  and we got to meet the guy that goo is dating, which was very fun.

an insurance adjustor is coming out next tuesday to look at the roof.  when he called, he offered that we could have our contractor out for the appointment also if we wanted ... not entirely sure what to do with that.  on the one hand, it seems like it could be helpful to have a guy who's knowledgable and sort of "on our side" at the appointment; on the other, he's the only roof guy we've spoken to, and while we really liked him, i don't want to feel completely committed to using him if we need to price compare.  we need to decide soon, though, so that we can get it on the roof guy's calendar if we do decide to have him at the appointment.  (and the roof guy did offer that if the first adjusting appointment doesn't get the result we want, that we could request a second adjustor to come out and have him there also.)

we're hanging out with some friends to watch the superbowl this sunday, and since dips are apparently the official food of football, i'm making both queso and spinach/artichoke dip to bring to the game.  the spinach artichoke dip because i had bought frozen spinach to make some like three weeks ago, never got around to it, so it's been sitting in my fridge and i want it gone.  the queso, because i like queso and have a handy small crock pot just perfect for making queso, so why not?  not to mention, i found this super tasty looking queso recipe - velveeta and rotel, yes, but also cream cheese, cheddar, chorizo, and black olives.  oh my!  (although actually, i decided to make queso a week ago and just found the recipe five minutes ago when i subscribed to the pioneer woman's tasty kitchen blog so that i can enter her cooking gear contests again.)

on another unrelated note, depending on the cost of this whole roof situation, i have a tentative brilliant idea for a long weekend getaway with scott later in the spring.  thus far it's a surprise (the destination, not that i'm thinking of planning a trip - i would feel super guilty spending that much money without getting at least a general consent from him), but i did tell scott that it would involve plane tickets, and that it's not to chicago.  i'm trying not to get my hopes too far up, because if we have to pay a lot out of pocket for the roof i think i'll have to dash the idea for now ... but it's definitely simmering in the back of my mind.

the hail state

well, we had the roof guy out yesterday, and things didn't go quite as planned.  we showed him the flashing in the back, but as we had also asked for an estimate on the whole roof, he set up his ladder up front and started looking around.  i think he'd been up there less than a minute before he came down, knocked on the front door, and asked if we knew that we had hail damage.  um, i'm going to go with no on that one.  well, apparently we do.  the good news is that that's the kind of thing homeowner's insurance covers, so i'm going to call them in the morning and find out what we need to do to get that process started, getting an adjustor out and all that.  apparently in addition to the loose flashing, though, we had some loose nails higher up that were likely letting in water, so there's a large-ish area of the roof that might need some work done ... yikes.  we have our fingers crossed about insurance panning out, but nothing's guaranteed yet.  (did you know that colorado is one of the biggest states for hail damage?  california has earthquakes, oklahoma has tornadoes, and colorado has hail.  sweet.)

as the roofer was on top of the house, scott and i were inside talking, and found the situation quickly escalating.  we had him out to look at a piece of loose flashing, and it looks like we may need a whole new roof.  scott pulled out the piece of wood we had meant to cut down and paint to replace a missing slat in the front shutters, and i mentioned that you can actually buy new vinyl shutters for less than $40/pair at home depot.  we were discussing the merits of that when scott asked if the color match on paint would be close enough ... which led me to mention that we really need to get our trim re-painted at some point, as it's, well, ugly in general, and really peeling on the gutters ... oh, and by the way, the gutters leak, so we'll need to think about replacing them at some point.  and, by the way, the soffits are looking a little bit worn, so i'm not sure if we need to replace them or just sand them down and paint them.  in my mind, i'd been pondering these things for a while, but in scott's he knew we needed the flashing nailed down, and suddenly found himself looking at a new roof, new shutters, new gutters, getting the trim painted, and replacing soffit board.  he wasn't very excited about the possibilities.  (which i get.  i really don't love spending money on house projects.)  the roof guy happened to also mention all of those things when he came down to talk about next steps and give us an overview of the roof situation.  we'll see.  the talk with the insurance company needs to happen before we make any other plans.  and regardless of what happens with the roof, i'm going to be so nervous every time we have a hail storm - i remember this summer's hail storm (particularly because i was at home alone in the basement when it hit) and watching the news with people out in aurora shoveling hail off of their driveways like snow and lamenting broken windows.  i had no idea it might have actually done anything to our house!

anyway, so that was yesterday morning - after roof guy finished up, we bought me snow pants and headed up for night skiing.  it was fun!  i did six runs on the bunny slope before deciding i really needed to do a real run.  scott took me on a blue, which was much better than last year, but i still fell twice.  then i sat out for a while to watch kinley while mike and maura skiied together - kinley and i made like five trips up and down the stairs and the "ella" - elevator - then played in a water fountain for a few minutes, during which she got very wet, whoops, then hung out in the bathroom for literally like 15 minutes because she was enamored with the enormo handicap stall.  oh the things that can fascinate an almost-two year old, who knew!  they came back and found a change of clothes for their daughter, and scott took me back out for an illicit green run.  for whatever reason, the resort has the greens closed during night skiing, but since it's right next to the blue, scott found a little trail through a break in the trees that we could use to get onto the green ... for the most part, there was enough light from the giant full moon and the blue run right next to it, but there were a few spots that felt a little bit eerie.  i could see the overall slope of the hill and knew that i was moving down, but i couldn't specifically see the snow or the grade changes, so i just went down slowly, enjoying the stars and the quiet and the amazing view and hoping i didn't fall.  i liked the green much better than the blue.  we all stopped for pizza at hernando's in winter park on the way home, so we didn't get home until close to midnight ... needless to say, i've been a little sleepy today.

as it were, though, i need to stop typing and go do dishes.  we had small group over for dinner tonight, and even though i tried to do dishes as i went, we inevitably have a counter full.  (on the menu for tonight: hot & sweet drumsticks, normal italian breadcrumb drumsticks, herbed basmati rice, broccoli, and brownie squares for dessert.)

handyman

i love our new handyman service.  they were at the house for precisely 4 hours and 15 minutes on wednesday, and charged us for the exact time.  the one guy was able to do tile/drywall, plumbing, and electrical, and the few things that came up that he wasn't able to figure out immediately, he told me right away.  (like the flashing issue on our roof - he took a look, found that the board underneath is rotted, and suggested we call a roofer since they'll have to pull up some shingles and whatnot and would be able to do it all properly.)  plus, the guy was very professional-yet-friendly, prompt, and seemed to be working hard and quickly the whole time he was there - no standing around or taking his sweet time.  i was impressed, and happily put their little magnet on the fridge for the next time we need them.

on that note, i found a roofing company through the same referral list online, and they're coming out to do a free estimate on the roof repair (and a roof replacement, since our inspector guessed we had about 5 more years out of our roof when we moved in almost 2 years ago - this way we'll know what we need to save) on saturday.  another company i called did not do estimates on repairs, they just wanted to charge $250 for the trip fee/first hour, then $95/hr after that.  maybe that's reasonable (yikes), but i have a hard time paying that much money not knowing what the final bill is going to be.

as this is friday (hoorah!), tonight is date night.  what fun and exciting plans do we have, you ask?  shopping for snowpants for me.  sounds thrilling, i know.  scott had bought me a pair of snowpants for christmas that came up approximately three inches past my bellybutton, which is just too much in my book so we returned them.  apparently snow pants for women who are short, actually have curves, AND don't want to spend $100+ on a pair of seasonal pants are hard to find - go figure, right?  tomorrow is night skiing, though, and scott told me i'm not allowed to wear his old fleece-lined wind pants as snow pants anymore (which makes sense since they're really not that insulatory, even with my long underwear underneath), so shopping it is.  with maybe some tivo'd lost afterward since we never finished watching last season and the new season starts on tuesday!

pride of ownership

when we were looking for houses, one of the big things i'd see on house ads was "pride of ownership" - it makes sense, where renters may be willing to let things slide, owners are going to take care of the home better because it is their investment, their property, their future.  and, dare i say, because as the owner you're going to live in the neighborhood long term and don't want to be known as the slacker neighbor who leaves their shutters broken and bushes scraggly and untrimmed.

on that note, i called a handyman service today - they're coming tomorrow morning.  my list of things we need to have fixed, not necessarily all tomorrow:

• patch drywall/tile in master shower where our plumber had to cut in to replace the leaky handle
• fix our leaking sink (scott clogged the pipe with potato peels that our garbage disposal didn't like, and in the process of  undoing the trap and all that, we discovered that a seal under the non-disposal side of the sink seems to be leaking)
• a piece of flashing on our roof needs to be nailed down, and the area needs to be checked out for water damage (fingers crossed)
• our shutter slat needs to be replaced because we are those slacker neighbors who haven't fixed their broken shutter since they moved in 18 months ago and i'm tired of feeling guilty whenever i see the front of our house.  this one we can probably do ourselves, we just need to do it.
• our gutters might need a few small patches where they're leaky - or we may just need to replace them with something newer that doesn't leak and doesn't need to be repainted
• we want to get estimates on what it would cost to add a few extra outdoor lights on the back of our house (1 next to the garage back door, 1 on the patio for night grilling purposes) and to get an exhaust fan installed in our master bathroom
• oh, and we need to do a radon test to see what the radon level is - when we had our place inspected, they said the level was moderately high, but recommended retesting before we do any remediation.  (apparently radon is the leading cause of lung cancer for non-smokers!)

yikes.  i think tomorrow i'm just going to have the handyman do tasks 1-3, and estimates on the lights/fan.  i'm pretty sure pride of ownership is actually a nicer way of saying "i pay too much to keep this place up that i'd darned well better have some pride in it."

the handyman said it'll take him about 4-6 hours tomorrow, so i'm just taking the whole day off of work.  i've needed to get an eye checkup for a few months now, but put it off because we need to find a new eye doctor near our house - i was able to find a place near us that takes our insurance and has an opening tomorrow afternoon!  i was very proud of myself for economizing my day off.