Samantha Ling

We started noticing that the dryer was taking forever to dry our clothes and I mean, forever. I thought that there might have been a kink or an obstruction or something in the dryer vent hose. The internet is great for all sorts of things, including how to clean our a dryer vent hose (which you’re totally supposed to do once a year, maybe even every six months! Well, we’ve been in this house for about three years and we never did it. But I’ve lived in several houses with washers and dryers and I never cleaned those vents either and I lived in those houses for like three to five years. So I didn’t know you needed to do it. And the dryers worked perfectly fine. Nobody told me, how was I supposed to know?

But anyway, I totally thought like a big ass rat or something had climbed in there and died (except there was never a rotting meat smell). It couldn’t be lint. I mean, the lint trap is pretty good at getting all the line. So the internet we went and read through a bunch of websites on how to clean the dryer vent hose. The internet has all the answers for everything. (Some answers might be wrong, however, but you can pretty much find anything on the internet).

Chris muscled the dryer out of the dinky little nook that our washer and dryers were in. (I had originally bought a washer and dryer that I REALLY wanted, only to have it delivered and find out that they were WAY TOO BIG. WTF. So I ended up with these Whirlpool one’s, still front loader, but much smaller and barely fit. And I mean barely. We can’t close the doors. But I’m meandering here.)

So Chris muscled the dryer out of the dinky nook and discovered that the dryer vent hose was A)way to f’in long and B) FILLED WITH WATER. WTF again!

Of course, I’ve forgotten to take photos of everything as I was concerned about the water. Chris read that you can get tetanus and a staph infection from stagnant water. So I donned on some gloves and poured the water carefully into a bucket (of which now I have to bleach in case of staph.). So what happened was that because the hose was so long, it had lots of kinks and in those kinks, water had accumulated in this u-shaped kink. Because this is a cheap ass hose that the installers had placed in, it started to stretch, thus making the u even longer and thus more able to hold water. And because there is water, the lint was just getting stuck in the water, thus making allowing more water to accumulate, thus more lint until eventually, you’ve got about a gallon of water and lint in that hose.

Here is the hose after we’ve detached it from the dryer. Look how effin long that is! Also notice that the outlet has a crack in it. How come those installers didn’t tell me they put a goddamned crack there? MF’s.

After you get rid of the water, you’re supposed to let that dry. If you don’t, you could get mold in there. Dude, how am I supposed to know if I’ve let it dry completely? You know what? No. So we just went out to buy a new dryer vent hose. And a nicer one to boot. This isn’t one of those flimsy hoses you use to make robot arms for your kid’s Halloween costume. These are some ridged tubes that won’t dip nor expand without some muscle. And then we installed it.

How did I get out of there? It involved a stool and some arm muscle. Those machines are as tall as my shoulders. We got risers for them so Chris wouldn’t have to bend down so much to put stuff in and take stuff out. It also meant that they are difficult to climb over.

So far, everything is working. The dryer works, the hose has stayed, elbow thingies too. So Chris is going to try a load of laundry tomorrow. Hopefully, nothing blows up!

Crossposted to Samantha Ling, Dreamwidth and Livejournal

There’s a lot of stuff that happens in this house that I’m not permitted to share because Chris says that nobody wants to know that. He says nobody wants to know about the boogers on your face, but I think you do. If it’s funny, right?

It falls along the lines of TMI, but I think it’s hilarious. But because he is a much more private person than I am about these things, I won’t share them.

His mom calls this “mystique”. She tells him that you’ve got to keep the mystique! Don’t let anybody know you fart. Even your SO. But everybody farts! And sometimes when you do, it’s so bad that people wonder if a biological warfare has been waged. And sometimes it’s so bad it’s funny and I think it’s worth sharing. But Chris says nobody wants to know that!

I think JJ calls it “sparkle points”. Like every time you say something gross, you lose sparkle points like you lose stars in kindergarten.

I like to share them because it gives you little snippets of my life. Like you could have been there. But maybe you don’t need to be there for all that happens. What do you think?

Originally published at Samantha Ling. You can comment here or there.

Originally published at Samantha Ling. You can comment here or there.

We’ves just returned from the clusterfuck that is David’s Bridal. There were too many brides with too big an entourage there that just getting someone to help me was just beyond impossible. The fact that it was the only David’s Bridal for 120 miles probably doesn’t help with alleviating any of that madness. But I got in and out of there relatively quickly considering the massive amounts of people there. I’m glad that I didn’t try finding a wedding dress there. I would have never made a decision on anything. There were just too many dresses. But I was there to buy a bridesmaid dress and buy one I did. It’ll arrive the first week of December, which is pretty much when it needs to show up because the wedding is December 23. I’ll need to get it hemmed. Hopefully there will be enough time for that.

As for Project Runway, I’m glad Leanne won, although there were a lot more things I’d wear from Korto’s line. And there just wasn’t any way Kenley was going to win, especially since there was a second dress that looked like another designer’s. I’m still convinced that if the finalists from last season’s show were to show up in this show, they definitely win. It’s just too bad that they got picked the year too many people were qualified.

And since I have nothing more to tell you, here’s a photo of Chris battling the pantry monster.

It was a fierce fight, but with a couple smites and an instant heal or two, he was able to bring it down. Sadly, the only phat l00tz it dropped was a roll of toilet paper.

So Chris and I went to the Clerk of the Courts today to get our marriage license. There was a hellacious drive, but that's neither here nor there. So here's the thing. Before you can get married, they make you read this pamphlet. So I was thinking it's a pamphlet on how sacred marriage is and how difficult it was and what you need to do to keep it going. So we got there, and there's this fancy kiosk. It's a touch screen, and you pick get a marriage license, pay ticket, or get passport. And then it spits out this fancy number with the time and date that you were there at. Anyway, that's not the most interesting part.

Ok, so we get this pamphlet that the nice security guard handed us to read while we were waiting our turn. And you know what was in the pamphlet?

Two pages of how hard marriage was and fifteen pages on how to get divorced. Oh yes, it was all about divorce. How property is divided, what happens to the children, alimony, child care, and how to file. Seriously. It's required reading before you can get a marriage license enacted into Florida law some years ago. It's expecting that you'll get divorced even before you get married. There's some absolutely wrong with that somehow.

The wind and rain has died down since last night. There wasn't anything except some banging that came from one of the trees by the house. It woke me up a couple of times during the night, but it wasn't anything that kept me awake the whole night.

The tropical storm is currently off the coast and will most likely gain strength. They're thinking that it'll hit land again, but it should swing up towards Jacksonville, so we won't be in the eye at all. We'll most likely get more rain and wind. It may or may not turn into a hurricane. It's hard to tell. I can see why people get complacent with tropical storms. There are so many that come through here without becoming a full blown hurricane that they don't really get to the store until it's too late and there aren't any more supplies left at the store.

The wedding plans are all set. The only thing that needs to be done is the Saturday before the wedding. We had planed on having things to do for the out of town guests. The problem we're running into is finding places to eat. We've got about 24 people between the family, bridal party and their guests. Unfortunately, the places that we've talked to all want us to set a menu and do the whole contract thing. We just want to be able to eat somewhere and have people choose what they want. The two places that we'd spoken to before suddenly want us to do that at $30-50 a person. So we're a little bit at a loss as to where to take people for lunch. I wanted to take them to places where they can't go elsewhere, but it doesn't seem like it's going to happen now. We'll probably end up at a chain that you could go anywhere. So we're still searching. Anybody have any suggestions?

So I was talking to Ben today about an old story that I had that I was going to post on here so that people could read it. It had made some rounds and I'd misplaced the information about where I'd sent it, but I remember that it had gotten returned to me at some point. I mean, I still like the story and I want people to read it, so I was going to post it online as a free read. But he's like, you've got to try sending it elsewhere. Then he proceeded to give me a list of places to send it to. (They were, unfortunately, all closed to submissions at the moment.) But it gave me the push to send it to yet another place, so I found one that wasn't closed that might be amenable to that kind of story and I sent it off today.

And since I lost my submission list, I decided to look at submission trackers and found Sonar, which I like a lot. So I don't have to write my own. Why bother when someone else has done a perfectly good job of it? And it's portable, so you can stick that puppy onto a USB drive and take it with you.

I have also posted the whole of "Waking Chang-Er", so if you've ever wondered what that story was about you can read the whole thing.

Several weeks ago, after one of the many summer rains, Chris and I went out for a walk. We discovered over three dozen baby frogs wandering the sidewalks. The tadpoles in the conservation area must have made it big enough to leave the pond. One of them has decided to take up residence next to our front door. Whenever we leave the house, we see him hopping into the grass. He's gotten quite large since then. Chris has named him Benny.

Friday after work, I had an appointment to get my eyebrows waxed. I get them done about every three weeks. If I let them grow, they'll grow all big and unruly and eventually, they'll plot to take over the world.

So as I was about to leave, Chris walked me out the door, gave me a kiss and said, "Goodbye, Bacon."

I am used to Chris and all his various nicknames for me, but bacon was a new one. It stopped me from leaving, because really, bacon? That's not the most endearing, you know?

He explained that he was just thinking about bacon and how great the bacon was that we got at the hotel over July 4th. And how much he'd like to have some bacon. He also said that he was thinking of how much he liked me.

You get the picture.

He hasn't called me bacon since then, but we have gotten some bacon for him.

Have you had a slip up like that?

Because it's Friday and I know you aren't working...

We have neighbors that we don't know, but we see often and say hello to.

A few doors down is the pot house guys. They're college students that drive cars twice as much as mine. One night, we found a stray cat that had run out of their garage, so we thought it belonged to them. Before I even got to the door, I could smell the stinkweed. And when the guy opened the door, it felt like a wave of smoke exploded in my face.

There's The Brood house, a family that seems to have eight children of various ages. The children, whose oldest can't be more than twelve, are allowed to play outside at all hours of the night. I understand that we live in a gated community with security cameras at the front gate and a security guard in the evenings, but still, that won't stop bad people from hurting your children. The kids are also playing in the street. At 11 pm, I'm sure it's not safe to do that even if I was watching them. They should seriously be in bed by that point anyway.

Then there's the bachelor. I have no idea what his name is, but I do know that he own's a boxer named Sadie who is very well behaved and adorable. The large dogs in my immediate area are well behaved. There's a rotweiler across the way that obeys her owner without challenging him. And she never barks. Now the little mini-dogs bark when They see me, which can get annoying.

So the bachelor used to let Sadie run around without a leash. Florida has a leash law. So he had to get a leash whenever he took Sadie out. Instead of letting her run around, he has to run around with her. And since we have a communal backyard, I see him out there every day. And the funny thing is, I think he's gotten skinnier from all that running around.

The bachelor used to have a girlfriend though, but that doesn't seem to have worked out. He's been single for a while now, but I do know he has a huge flat panel tv. I know because his back window, which spans the length of his condo faces my front door.

How well do you know your neighbors?

How it was supposed to go was this:

On Thursday, we were supposed to go to Animal Kingdom. We would spend a wonderful day there as I took photos of several animals. And when I was particularly engrossed in taking photos (he says when we were in front of the lemurs, which is wear the tree of life is), Chris would get down on one knee and ask me the big question. We would then go to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. It would have been lovely and romantic.

How it really went down has more to do with impatience.

I had gone with him to pick up the ring, which in retrospect, was a bad idea. Because once I saw the emerald perched atop those diamonds, I wanted to wear it right away. But Chris said, don't you want to have something romantic? So I said, ok. Yes, I want something romantic.

Then as we were driving home, a good fifteen minutes later, I just couldn't wait. I said, "Ask me know! I want to wear the ring!" So at the stoplight, he turned to me and asked me to marry him. And ta-da! I am now engaged.

And I know so many of you want to see the ring, so here it is

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