Howdy!

Just got back from Charleston, where my son’s Cub Scout pack spent the night at the Charleston Aquarium. You read that right – we actually spent the night INSIDE the aquarium! It was a lot of fun, and I know Cootieboy had a great time.

We were allowed to roam the entire aquarium and pick where we wanted to sleep. CB opted to be right in front of the biggest tank, which was actually cool because even with all the lights out there was still just enough lighting from emergency exits and such that you could still see the giant fish swimming in front of you.

Last week, in other Cub Scouting news, CB and I attended the annual Mother/Son dance. Photos were NOT taken, thankyouverymuch. We went last year and at some point I was abandoned once the boys all got a big conga line going. So this year, before we even got there, I warned him that if a conga line starts, I’ll be starting the timer and we’ll be leaving after ten minutes. Last year the conga line started about 20 minutes into the deejay starting his set. This year? Maybe two minutes. And boy is there a lot of crap music out there, people. I cringe at the idea of my daughter’s wedding reception being filled with electric slides and all that other nonsense. But apparently line dancing is all the rage when middle-aged women come together to dance. Because those women LOVE to line dance, believe you me.

Denis and I went out to dinner and a movie this past week. We had tapas and then saw “The Artist,” which was quite good. We went to a national owned theater with a indie flavor. This was fantastic because 1) I had coupons for a free ticket and free small popcorn thanks to having a rewards card from that national chain and 2) it wasn’t crowded at all because it was showing two non-mainstream movies. The seats were horrifically uncomfortable (while being chain-owned, it has not been chain-updated), but I think we’ll be keeping an eye on future movies playing there so we can go back.

During said dinner Denis and I laid out a rough timeline for getting our house ready to put on the market this spring. We have a lot to do, and if we want to put it on the market in April, we need to get cracking. First up: identifying all the things in the current house that need to be repaired/replaced. Tomorrow when we arrive home from church we’ll be spending a couple hours going through each room in the house to make up a list of things we need to do. And then starting Monday I’ll be bringing boxes home to start packing up the non-essentials. Rather than fill our attics with boxes, we are going to go ahead and rent a storage unit and place things in there. This way if the house sells quickly and we have to move into an apartment while the new house is being built, we won’t have to move everything that is packed and stored in attics – it can just continue to stay in storage. While packing up stuff we also plan on going through the boxes already stored in our attics and garage and do some serious purging. I’m sure I have stuff that I don’t really need to keep, and Denis does to. We don’t want to move/keep anything we don’t have to.

And so it goes. I think in 2012 this blog is going to have a LOT of posts centered around packing boxes, upgrading things around the house, floorplans, and homebuilding. Exciting stuff!