hot-blooded, check me and see

The annoyance with our landlords continues. Sigh.

I emailed them earlier in the week (when I was laid up in bed with maybe-food-poisoning) to ask that they have a technician come out to revive our swamp cooler for the season. The beauty of the high desert is that you can use a box that consists of a simple fan, a water pump, and a wood-pulp pad that absorbs the water to keep your entire house cool for a fraction of the price of A/C. We love our swampy, but those things have to be winterized because the water will freeze in the line, pump, or reservoir, and it WILL be a mess. And they have to be de-winterized, of course, so that you can use them when the weather warms.

No response. None. It’s not like it hasn’t been 80-something degrees here and close to 80 in our room at night. (Adobe is cool during the day, but puts off all the absorbed solar heat at night.) It’s hot and so hard to sleep. Spouse is going to send a followup email to ask what in the actual hell is going on that they can’t respond to our emails within 72 hours like responsible grownups. We never can seem to get them to be responsive or helpful, but they sure expect a lot of us.

Then, I received a call late yesterday afternoon from a realtor wishing to bring a client by our house this morning. They are required to provide us with at least 24 hours’ notice (as stipulated in the MLS), and so I flat-out said no. If our landlords were cooler people, I might bend over backwards to help them sell their house quicker. But to be honest, this place is not our problem after the middle of May, and I can’t be bothered to give a shit. I’m so tired of fielding calls from realtors and spending my weekends and evenings bringing the house into presentable condition. Our house is usually pretty clean, but there’s a lot of putting up our stuff for both aesthetic and security purposes (jewelry, medications, etc.). To say nothing of the dog hair and desert dust that pervades everything. We tried to get out of our lease early so that we wouldn’t have to deal with this, and it’s every bit as annoying and inconvenient as we feared it would be.

6 days to closing…15 days until we move…repeat until calm!

whoa

Picture the scene: A pleasant Monday evening in Albuquerque. Your Burqueña and her esposo are dropping by a local brewery to pick up a couple of bombers of a new IPA and grab some BBQ sandwiches to go. They enjoy said beers and sandwiches in the comfort of their home. Your Burqueña then proceeds to do laundry, pack some more stuff for the upcoming move, and generally hang out before hitting the sack around 10.

Nice, right? Keep reading.

A couple hours later, I wake up in a torrent of sweat, feeling like someone is simultaneously wringing out my insides and stabbing me in the gut. I could not run to the bathroom fast enough! I’ll spare you the details. This sequence repeated itself a number of times through the night, including one instance where I projectile vomited on the bathroom floor because I couldn’t get up to find a more appropriate destination. Lovely.

I felt pretty much like hell the entire next day, barely leaving the bed. I couldn’t even hold down water, ffs! My fever ran between about 100.4 and 101.4. The mere sight of food nauseated me (must rethink following so many food blogs). I finally ate some applesauce later in the evening and held it down. Miraculously, I went to work the following day, although I left about an hour early because I could barely stand upright. Today isn’t much better, but I’m hoping a trip to a nearby deli for a piping hot bowl of matzoh soup will cure what ails me (or chase out whatever the hell is making me feel so awful).

It will be a long while before I can stand to eat anything barbecued or smoke-flavored, for obvious reasons.

ear candy

I’ve recently been digging on a band from my home state, St. Paul and the Broken Bones. At dinner last week, we were idly thumbing through a local weekly paper and found out that they were playing in Santa Fe next weekend. Hell yes! We immediately bought tickets and so psyched to see them play live in what may be a very cool venue, just steps from Santa Fe Brewing.

 

My goodness, how could you not love these guys?

 

 

 

because i know none of you have anything to do

At a weekend barbeque, I was turned on to the comedic wonder that is Amazon reviews for Haribo sugar-free gummi bears.

My life will never be the same.

go west

As we read more about places we want to go on our trip, we’ve modified our itinerary somewhat. This is perfectly fine, as we have almost a month before the trip. We initially planned to stop off at Mesa Verde on our way up to Utah, but our most recent conclusion is that we skip it for now and make it a weekend trip in its own right. So now, we’re looking at something like this:

 

• Day 1: Drive to Moab, perhaps see some of one of the national or state parks in the area. (Sunset at Islands in the Sky?)
• Day 2: Arches
• Day 3: Arches/Canyonlands/Dead Horse Point
• Day 4: Drive to Zion National Park
• Day 5: Zion
• Day 6: Zion
• Day 7: Zion
• Day 8: Drive to Bryce Canyon National Park, see a bit of it (Zion and Bryce are close, and we want to get to Bryce early to claim a campsite)
• Day 9: Bryce Canyon
• Day 10: Drive home

The coolest thing about this trip is that we are not staying at a single hotel/lodge/B&B. We will be sleeping in our awesome tent the entire trip. Before we moved out here, we dreamed of a vacation where we would sleep under the stars every night, and it looks like we’re getting that. It also makes us feel less guilty about the hundreds of dollars we spent on camping equipment.

I’m also super excited to do this hike, even if I am approximately 2% chickenshit when it comes to heights. I think I’ll just have to get over it!

 

house-buying hijinks

The appraisal report came through with flying colors, so that’s really the last obstacle for us in buying this house. We had a minor shit-fit when we read that the house in fact did not include a refrigerator. However, our panic quickly resolved when we concluded 1) We could afford to buy a new fridge and 2) We kind of hated the fridge that was in the house. We took a little field trip last night to a couple of big-box stores (insert uppity white-person groan here) to scout out our options. We were able to quickly identify a perfectly nice, basic refrigerator for less than we thought (feared?) we’d have to spend. We also selected a washer/dryer set that will be efficient, durable, and effective for a similarly good bargain. For us, bells and whistles and looking cool are not important, so we can find deals. Once you start insisting on this setting or that feature (or God help you, stainless steel), you start paying some major pesos. We don’t need a huge fridge, as we tend to buy things fresh and cook them quickly. You won’t find weeks upon weeks of lord-knows-what in our fridge!

Three weeks to closing!

new perspective

A lot of the burnout in my previous career can be attributed to my perceived need to be always on, always available. My worst nightmare was that a student didn’t get a sufficiently swift answer from me and went to my department chair to gripe. So I checked email all the time. If I got up in the middle of the night, I checked email. Out for a night on the town? Checking email. On vacation? Checked my email (even when I swore I wouldn’t). I prepped for class and then prepped some more. I applied for jobs like it was, in fact, my job. I created all kinds of tests and quizzes, and then graded them. Oh, and how about one more article/conference paper/book chapter? My CV was just never good enough.

I know I was hardly unique in these habits, as many of my academic friends and colleagues were like that. We were all glued to our devices, talking shop, and leaving early to grade or prep. I swore that once I left academia, I wouldn’t do that. When my husband had his accident, I felt compelled to send my work email to my phone so that I could be accessible at all times. The guilt I felt for my wonky schedule was assuaged (kind of) by the fact that if my boss emailed me at 10 PM (and he occasionally did), I’d be on it.

Today, I read an article about how the French are fighting this mentality with a mandate that forbids workers to check their work emails after hours. I think they have it completely right. Work is work, life is life, and jamais the twain shall meet. In honor of this, I un-linked my work email from my phone. I imagine that my evening and early morning hours will be much more pleasant without the near constant dings alerting me to some new email pulling me here and there. I’ll work as hard I can during working hours, and then leave it all behind when I go home. I imagine that my life will improve at least somewhat by this one small gesture. We’ll see.

adventure

We’re planning a trip for later next month (in conjunction w/ my day off for Memorial Day) to a few of the major national parks in the Southwest. Nothing is set in stone yet, but our itinerary will look something like this…

 

• Day 1: Drive to Durango, spend the night there.
• Day 2: Visit Mesa Verde, then continue on to Moab
• Day 3: Visit Arches National Park, stay in Moab
• Day 4: Drive to Bryce Canyon
• Day 5: Visit Bryce Canyon National Park
• Day 6: Another day at Bryce Canyon, then drive to Zion National Park
• Day 7: Zion National Park
• Day 8: Zion National Park
• Day 9: Zion National Park (or, drive down to Arizona  to split the drive)
• Day 10: Drive home

Seriously, how could you not be excited to hike somewhere like this?

 

relief

As luck would have it, the seller has agreed to pay for all of the requested repairs. All of them! Yay! It seems that we were reasonable in our request, and the seller is eager to get out from under the house. Because the seller lives out of town, we’ll just get money at closing to take care of the repairs, and that will be that. I think I’d prefer to have a lot of control over these projects, so this works perfectly. We may not be able to move until slightly later in May, but that’s just as well.

It’s been an extremely busy and somewhat stressful few weeks for us, so it’s nice to finally have something resolved and look forward to something great in the very near future.