Busy busy spring break

Well, today was the first day of my spring break and it was definitely a busy one. Scott and I started off the day by driving to his soon to be new job to pick up the drug testing form, then drove to the testing lab so he could prove he was drug free (mandatory for employment for management level). His new store seems like it will be a million times better than what he had in the past. The store is large, clean, has a full management team and does a good amount of sales. The other managers also seemed very nice and the customers weren't the same brand of crazy as the ones he and I have dealt with in the past.

Then we high-tailed it to Leesburg to meet with our loan officer, hopefully for the last time before we closing. He was stuck in traffic but his processor helped us with the paperwork. Stan had actually faxed all the necessary papers over to us earlier, so everything was filled out. I'm getting far too efficient at filling out this paperwork and I sincerely hope I don't have to do it again for another 10 years at least.

We also talked about home insurance and I got a quote from USAA. I still think it's incredibly bizarre that we pay twice the amount for the first year (pay the entire year in advance, then pay a monthly fee on top of that) but there's nothing I can do about it so I will try to keep the complaints down.

Then we drove back home and picked up my parents to go see the Terra Cotta Warrior exhibit at the National Geographic museum in DC. While it was very cool seeing terra cotta statues and bronze artifacts that were over 2,000 years old, I left the exhibit feeling very underwhelmed. The archaeologist in me understands why they would not want to ship more than 10 statues from China, these are irreplaceable and incredibly fragile after all, but I left the building wanting more. You could not get an appreciation for the magnitude of the find just by looking at a few individual statues, and I felt the pictures were far more impressive.

We came back early and decided to hit the Home Depot with my parents as a way to kill time and wait for traffic to die down a bit. We came out with about 50 paint swatches, ideas for landscaping the yard, and some neat ways to replace the counter top in the kitchen with granite tiles to cut down the cost, but still have a granite counter top. That project won't be happening for quite some time though, we're still working on the packing phase!

Scott also found 2 black cats hiding among the potted trees! We asked a worker how they got there and he laughed and said they lived here to keep the mice down. It reminded me of a book store in my college town where there was always a black and white cat sitting in the window. We would go in there just to play with her.

We did get some colors more or less figured out there. The army green dining room is going to turn into two shades of darker blue. The kitchen will go a lighter and brighter shade of blue, while the adjoining living room and hallway will take on a white with blue tint color. Our bedroom is a steel blue/grey, and my bathroom is looking like a very slight purple tinted white. The nursery/ guest room is a toss up between two very very light shades of green. My sewing room/chinchilla room is currently veering towards a sandy honey color, or possible purple if I can find a purple hue that isn't extremely bright or Easter egg pale. I still haven't figured out what to do with the main entrance way/staircase, so that will be next on the swatch list. I think we are going to do most of the house in shades of white with a smidge of tint to be on the safe side. We'll worry about the downstairs later.

I also had fun watching a family picking out paint for their rec room. There was a father, mother, 8 year old boy and 5 year old girl. Naturally the girl thought the room HAD to be pink or purple, while the boy wanted nothing but blue. I couldn't help laugh as two minutes later Scott came over and said "let's do the house in blue" and I responded "But I don't want everything to be blue, it's a boy color."

Some things never change...