around the house during vacation

Most people relax and enjoy themselves over vacation by reading books, sleeping in until 9am and do some plain old sitting around. Nope, not me. I worked on a bunch of projects like:

1. I repainted our downstairs bathroom. Right now I'm staining the wood trim because the previous painters painted on the trim and then painted over their mistakes with paint to match the wood trim. *not going to say anything bad, not going to say anything bad*
2. Swapped the living room and study. Sergey came over the other day and helped me move all the furniture around. Now we have a much bigger living room and I think it looks awesome.
3. I took the scrap plywood that I dumpster dove for over the summer and installed that in the attic over our garage to make the space usable to store Christmas decorations and other stuff we'll only use once a year, if that.
4. At the direction of my wife, I insulated the all of the outlets and switches on all of the outside walls in our house.
5. Bought and installed faucet covers for the water spigots outside.
6. Insulated some pipes in our basement.

And with all this I made about 4 trips to Home Depot. Speaking of Home Depot, ever since AKM3 mentioned that their Home Depot sold hot dogs, which they voted to be the best hot dogs around, I've been secretly hoping that upon my next trip to HD that I'll find a hot dog vendor dressed like a circus clown with a 3 wheeled cart selling hot dogs. I continue to be let down each trip.

Speaking of food, I just posted a comment on Steak n Shake's website and asked them to build one in our town. I love Steak n Shake!

Bambi almost bit the dust....

About 2 hours ago we were coming back from my grandma's and almost killed Bambi. That little fella is one lucky bugger.

So we are driving home along a 2 laned state route through areas that switch between woods and farmland and I have the cruise control set somewhere between 55 and 60 mph. Bambi decides to amble out in the road right in front of us and stop. The next three seconds go something like this....I slam on the brakes and begin slowing down. "OH SH*T!!", I exclaim (which then requires a deposit to X's swear jar). We are slowing down some more and Bambi just stares back at me with the same blank expression any hoofed creature has before it meets it's maker. "OH SH*T!!", I exclaim -- with increased urgency (and of course an additional deposit is now needed). We keep slowing down and finally Bambi decides to start moving. Again, "OH SH*T!!" -- ever the increasing urgency (that's 3 deposits now). Bambi, in his or her finite wisdom decides to start running. That's good. The bad news is that Bambi is running in the same direction that we are traveling. At this point we are essentially chasing Bambi down the road. Bambi finally gets up to top speed as we are coming to a halt and for a split second we are clipping Bambi's rear legs with our front bumper (about 3 to 4 Bambi strides). Thankfully I only thought "Move your @ss you stupid deer!!" and didn't say it, otherwise I'd have a 4th deposit to make. Finally, finally, finally Maxxwell comes to a halt and Bambi skeedaddles his or her arse off to play chicken with Chevy's another day.

So then everything is well and I begin laughing hysterically over the whole thing. We pulled over at the next gas station and Bambi didn't leave a mark so all is well thanks to the big guy upstairs. Whew!

lemme get a ...

...UPGRADE!

Don't you love my Beyonce reference? Amanda hates it when I sing that. Anyway...I know a guy who has a rental property and there is a huge back story of my friend the landlord getting hosed out of 8 grand and the tenants trashing the place and moving out with 3 days notice. It's a sad story, but on the upside the tenants left some junk in the house that my friend let me take. So we've now UPGRADed to a newer computer desk and added 2 10 pound dumbbells to our gym downstairs.

Now as I use this nice "new" computer desk I like it! What a nice UPGRADE!

And I'm off work for the next 2 weeks!! Whoo-hooo!

We took X to get his picture taken with Santa today. We'll post that later. Did you know Santa drinks Starbucks? He does.

sprucing up the bathroom

My little helper X and I started work on the downstairs bathroom. You can see the evil outhouse with cats border in the background that we scraped off. X wasn't as much help as I'd hoped he would be. I had to carry a bib in my back pocket because he kept drooling. The sling makes him drool for some strange reason.


But we got all the crummy border off and I took off the toilet tank because I hate seeing that part of the wall unpainted. I was thinking of taking the bowl off, but I don't want to mess with the wax seal and I don't know how to get the water out of the bowl. I'm not desperate enough to try siphoning.


I also took all of the wood trim off because a hasty painter before me didn't tape off the trim and got paint all over it. Well, in taking off the trim and sanding the paint off I realized that the fool went and bought paint to match the trim and painted over the paint on the trim. I'd like to wring their neck.

But I got the ceiling painted and tomorrow after work I'll tape off the floor and ceiling so I can paint the walls.

This ain't no Keebler family

This holiday season, we're doing our part to combat war, poverty, hunger and global warming by spreading the Elf joy.....

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1343876569

travel complaint

I just went to Baltimore on monday and tuesday of this week. Do you know what annoys me about traveling? Well, to state it plainly, it's the people...however I'll be more specific and not such a Ted Kaczynski.

Have you ever flown into an airport and had to take a shuttle bus to get to the car rental agencies? At BWI you have to...it's no biggie. The shuttle buses are nice and user friendly. You just wait for the shuttle bus, get in, set your luggage on the rack and sit down and enjoy the ride.

This is my complaint: people get on the bus, put their luggage on the rack AND STAND RIGHT IN FRONT OF IT. What's wrong with you people! Are you afraid someone is going to steal your crummy underwear? Are you going to get cooties from sitting on a bus? No, no, I'm too cool to sit down. I have to stand here and look cool and talk and text on my cellphone because I'm a big shot.

Alright, enough complaining.

First snow

So, did anybody remember to buy a snow shovel now that we are moved into our new house?

Umm, nope.

I borrowed the neighbor's and broke it. D'oh.

a morning of shopping

Yesterday we went to a rummage sale and picked up some great stuff. I can't believe all the stuff we bought for 19 dollars!

Check this out...from left to right we have:
1. Blue flower pot
2. 4 books (on the flower pot -- 2 Tom Clancy, 1 Evanovich and 1 woodworking)
3. picture frames
4. party lights
5. a set of silly pictures for the kitchen
6. a food grinder for Xander
7. a bread maker
8. a heater
9. we also bought a vase, but I forgot to put that in a picture.


We then went and picked up a treadmill we found on craigslist for 25 bucks. We couldn't believe that we found a working, electric treadmill for 25 bucks. I'm still amazed by it.

When we were picking up the treadmill, Amanda said "I bet I could play Zelda and walk at the same time."

"If you do I won't make fun of you for playing Zelda anymore" I responded.

So here you have it...Amanda walking and playing Zelda at the same time...and me not mocking her and her video game exploits.



How's this for irony: We were so excited by our treadmill purchase that we celebrated by going to Steak and Shake and ordering milkshakes. Some people like fancy wine or a trip to a seafood restaurant...naah, not us. Regular, chocolate tree bark for me, regular white chocolate for her.

Man, writing this has made me hungry for a double steakburger with everything minus the mayonnaise. Mmmm, steakburger....aaaaaaa.

Finally, the Silver Hammer is home...

I FINALLY got my truck back from the body shop today. It's been 22 days. Of course that was extended because of Veterans Day and the Thanksgiving holiday...so it really shouldn't have taken that long, but I'm thankful to have it back. The quality of work looks good too. I'm glad I picked a good shop to take it to because I randomly selected that shop from the yellow pages. Whew.

Having two wrecks within two months of each other increases my paranoia whenever I drive anywhere. I hope I get over that soon.

But anyway...be careful when you tell people 'surprise me'. The wife takes me over to pick up my truck this afternoon. She's leaving the body shop and offers to pick up a movie for the night and asks me for any suggestions. I really didn't care, or I should say, I really had no preference because there's nothing that stood out in my mind that said 'ooh ooh ooh, I really want to watch ____'. So I tell her "surprise me".

Then she laughed and told me my opinion didn't count and I told her I wanted a comedy.

Well, sure enough, she did as I bid. I was surprised and laughed. Our movie selections were 'Labyrinth' and 'A Night at the Museum'. Museum was funny, it had it's moments...overall it was good. Who knew Atilla the Hun was sometimes bilingual? Labyrinth however....let me just say that I missed it when it came out in 1986. And back then I would have more easily forgotten the images of David Bowie in tights. Now as an adult, the image of David Bowie in tights is burned onto my retinas and it just may give me nightmares tonight.

why yes, that is a REEL lawnmower

So today, the day after thanksgiving, I cut the grass. I feel like one of those loon's obsessed over my yard and how it looks, but really, I limit my obsessive compulsive behavior to other activities. And for all of you nay-sayers, who said I'd be giving up my reel lawnmower by Memorial day or by the end of the summer, I'd just like to point out that it's the day after thanksgiving and Rocky's calling it an end to his first season. As of right now, Rocky is brushed off and stored in the shed and at some point this winter I'll take him apart and sharpen his blades to ready him for season 2.

And I've figured out where I want to plant my tomatoes this spring, which means I'll have to get rid of what's there now. So, does anybody want these shrubs? They are free of charge... and if you are nice and bring me a 6 pack of fancy beer, I'll even dig them up for you.



I think I'll try and find a good salsa recipe, because I want to plant tomatoes, green peppers and maybe some jalapeños. What else goes in salsa?

hitching a ride

I'm still without the Silver Hammer. I talked to they guy at the auto body shop on Wednesday morning and he was just starting work on it. 2800 bucks worth of damage. I'm glad I called the fuzz and didn't just convince the other driver to let it go like I was trying to do. Maybe now I'll learn to be more patient while driving. I think I have. So for now and through next week I'll be hitching rides home from co-workers and borrowing the wife's station wagon.

politically correct is thrown out the window

**Disclaimer** I take full responsibility for the content of my blog, however, there are times when I'm telling a story that I repeat the low level comments of others I interact with throughout the day. These comments are not my own are only repeated for the full affect of the story. I in no way intentionally insult anyone on my blog, except for those who spread ignorance in the form of email forwards. (Ha, my disclaimer has a disclaimer.)

pre-p.s. - you'll know when to apply this disclaimer to my story.

Version 1, from Amanda:
Once upon a time I was driving to work and recalled how stunningly beautiful my wife is and I failed to notice the short bus in front of me, then crashed into it.

Version 2 of my morning commute, from another source:
Chicks was driving to work and is a gomer and zoned out and hit the short bus in front of him full of window-lickers.

Version 3, what really happened:
I was overly excited to get to work this morning, ahem, tailgating a local transportation agency's small bus (which is actually a Ford F-350 that has the van front end and holds about 15 passengers) and the other guy decided to turn as I was looking at the scenery and I crashed into him.

Nice.

Yea, and it's been 7 weeks and 2 days since my last wreck, 'cept this time I'm the bozo that gets cited. It's easy to remember since Xander is 6 weeks and 2 days old and I crashed a week before he was born. There are so many irritating things about this:
1) I'm still going to the chiropractor from my last car wreck
2) The stinking ticket is 110 bucks, plus a 500 dollar deductible
3) we just met with our financial advisor last night to go over where we should be allocating our funds --namely saving for Xander's Catholic education and here I go hosing up the works.
4) I'm just pissed off at myself for wrecking my truck (this is my first accident citation ---my last ticket was in the summer of 98...almost a whole decade)

Good things:
1) maybe now I'll learn to drive like a jerk and stop tailgating
2) I'm fine, the short bus driver is fine and so is the kid who was on the bus (he's just some HS kid).
3) Again, no one was hurt and hopefully the lessons will stick this time.

The Silver Hammer isn't really drivable because the bumper is buckled in and rubs on the tire when I turn left. I could just make 3 right turns instead, however sometimes turning left is necessary. I was able to force it back a bit with a pry bar, but I have to wait on the adjuster to look at it on Tuesday then hopefully it will get fixed shortly thereafter. So we are down to one set of wheels.

The whole version 2 of my story was killing me today; some folks were really ribbing me in a good natured way. For me there were only 2 ways to deal with it, curse and swear at the ribber or just let it go and laugh at myself because I'm only out 610 bucks and in the end it's only money and completely trivial. So after two temper tantrums at ribbers I was broken down and learned to laugh at myself for being a gomer and zoning out and rear ending a short bus with a caring driver and a considerate young teenager.

That whisker

So I'm going through my yearly farce of trying to grow a beard. It's going pretty well. I set the bar above poor and below mediocre and have successfully achieved mediocre. So keep this in mind as I tell this story.

So Amanda and I were cleaning up the house yesterday before her parents showed up. We were in a jolly old mood teasing each other, so I asked her to light some candles.

"Hey, go light some candles."

"You go light some candles."

"It's your stinky kid that we're covering up."

"Nuuh-uh."

"Here, chop chop." As I had her the aim in flame.

Then she points it at me and says, "I'll light THAT whisker on fire."

It was pretty funny.

Browns win!!

Can you believe it, the Browns have won 3 in a row! I have no idea when the last time this happened. What a great way to end a sunday evening.

We had a pretty relaxing fun day. Went to church, where Xander continues to be a good baby and not cry. He does a little grunting and some whimpering, but nothing that isn't solved with a pacifier. I wonder how long this will last?

We got some coffee and a muffin and took our sunday drive around town trying to learn the area. Yup, we are a couple in our 20's with a kid and we take sunday drives after church. Just aimless drives with no destination and the only limit we put on it is to be home in around 30 minutes.

Organized a couple of closets under my CFO's supervision.

The in-laws showed up and we hung out and had some fun. A's dad and I puttered around the house with me and we connected the water to the fridge so now we have an ice and water dispenser that works, just in time for the winter season!

I keep looking at the clock and thinking I had better hurry up and get to bed since it's so dark outside now.

Forwards kill me

So I get this email forwarded to me today. It really frustrated me. Read it for yourself.
**************************************

How ironic is this??!! They don't even believe in Christ and they're getting their own Christmas stamp, but don't dream of posting the ten commandments on federal property?

REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of PanAm Flight 103!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the military barracks in Saudi Arabia!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the American Embassies in Africa!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the USS COLE!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM attack on 9/11/2001!
REMEMBER all the AMERICAN lives that were lost in those vicious MUSLIM attacks!

Now the United States Postal Service REMEMBERS and HONORS the EID MUSLIM holiday
season with a commemorative first class holiday postage stamp.

REMEMBER to adamantly and vocally BOYCOTT this stamp when purchasing your stamps at the post office.

To use this stamp would be a slap in the face to all those AMERICANS who died at the hands of those whom this stamp honors.

REMEMBER to pass this along to every patriotic AMERICAN you know

*****************************************
Here are a few of my thoughts on it. Where did they get the idea that this is a Christmas stamp? It was released in September of this year.

All of the MUSLIM BOMBINGS. Muslims didn't commit the crimes, people committed the crimes. That reminds me of the homily from this past weekend (Luke 18:9-14). During Mass our priest concluded his homily to say that you should hate the sin, love the sinner. This email reminded me of that homily and I thought why not, hate the sin, love the sinner, respect the religion.

The USPS is doing the right thing.

We really bugs me about people and religion is the fact that people believe that their way is the only way. What do I say to that? Get over yourself!

I will not tolerate Muslim bashing for 1 second.

Practicing Christianity isn't a prerequisite to being a patriotic American.

I think I'll buy a book of these tomorrow. I'll see if they have any with menorahs on them and use those two stamp books for our Christmas cards.

compost

I just finished reading 'A Storm of Swords' by George Martin. It is a pretty good book, quite long too. It is full of good sword fights, which results in plenty of killing, scheming and deception are quite prevalent as well. It's a less flowery version of WoT (in my opinion) and the people don't have as so many magic powers and it is much more graphic. However, the downside to this book is that it is the 3 book in an unfinished series. And that is annoying....and now that RJ died and didn't finish WoT, I'm stuck reading another unfinished book series. Book 4 is written and book 5's release has been pushed back since 2006, so I'll hold off on book 4 and hope this author doesn't die before finishing the series.

The city we live in here doesn't have a free leaf pick up service. Where I grew up (and every other city I've lived in except for here), everyone raked their leaves to the curb and the city came by and picked them up. They do it here, but for a fee. They also offer to pick up bagged leaves, but that is for a fee as well because you have to buy approved bio-degradable bags. Both options are completely out of the question for me...I refuse to pay to get rid of leaves. It's free compost from God, so I'm not paying for it. Instead I built myself a nice compost pile. It also serves as a nice place to get rid of our rotten pumpkins that we carved for Halloween that were nasty and moldy 10 days ago. I was so happy to get that done and thought it was something cool to blog about but it just doesn't come out that way... :)

I signed up to help with RCIA at our church. I get matched up with an inquisitor tomorrow night. Hopefully I will be able to be a good example and a source of useful information for someone else's journey into faith. No pressure there. I shouldn't worry about it, whatever happens happens.

pretty fall colors and closer to the sun

So this weekend I was out and about. On sunday I was out in the sun for a good stretch of time and ended up getting sunburned on half of my face. I was wearing my sunglasses so I have the reverse raccoon look here in mid-October in Ohio. I look like Richard Dreyfuss from 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'. It's fading now, but monday I was teased alot at work. My boss couldn't even look at me and keep a straight face, which made it tough to have a meeting with him. Tuesday it was still there, just faded a bit. Also on tuesday one of my coworkers was teasing me and asked if I "was on another planet, or something, closer to the sun...on Mars or something?".

Yup, I was closer to the sun on the planet Mars. Mars is further away from the sun than Earth in case you forgot your My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas -- although Pizza is no longer a planet, but that's beside the point. The point is, somebody tried to tease me and it backfired. Ha! That's what that jarheaded Marine gets!


This is how our backyard looked when I came home today. Pretty nice, huh? The red leaves are really lit up because of the sunsetting on them which made for a great picture.

weekend wrapup..

Went back to visit the in-laws this weekend and it was a good time. It was the first trip to grandma's house for Xander. He seemed to like it well enough. Amanda and I only held him long enough to put him in his carrier, feed or change him and take him out of his carrier. The rest of the time everyone was fighting over holding him.

Just us boys went to church this morning. Amanda wasn't feeling well. I think that might have been our first boys only trip out.

I finished my compost pile today. Now the tree and bush trimmings are housed in a nice little box and don't take up the entire area between the shed and the fence. Lesson learned from this building experience: make sure your screws are long enough. Now I have to find a use for that compost.

yup, still here....

So what should I do this weekend?

Work at the office? Work at home? Work in the yard? Man, the days have been really packed lately. Never a boring day anymore.

Work has been quite busy lately. I've been made the system engineer on a project and I've never done that before. Boy there is a lot of paperwork to do. It's been tough learning how 'things' are done at our plant. It's going good though. I've only had 2 visits by the GM cheerfully reminding me of the deadlines next month. It's good. :)

I was thinking of painting our shed this weekend. Maybe I'll just leave it alone until next weekend. Or buy some paint this weekend and do that next weekend.

I've volunteered to be a sponsor for the RCIA group at our church. That should be interesting.

I gave blood last night through a blood drive sponsored by our church. Another benefit of lifting weights is that when I go to give blood, the phlebotomists love me because my veins are huge.

Amanda made a mean meatloaf yesterday and I think it's time for a snack!

what to do...

What a beautiful fall day! I don't know how to spend it....

Yesterday Xander and I waxed my truck all day. We each had to take breaks for meals. Now the 'Silver Hammer' (as I have named him) looks really spiffy.

How did I come up with that name? Well, Amanda named her car Maxxwell, so the first thing that came to mind for a name for my new rig was Silver Hammer. You know, from the Beatles song, Maxwell's Silver Hammer.

Maybe we'll watch some football and try and fix a ceiling fan.

back to work

So the newborn-vacation-time-off-of-work fun is over because I'm headed back to work tomorrow. Of course, this having a newborn is easier for me because I don't have to get up two or three times in the night to feed him. As it is, fatherhood is pretty good for now. Not any real ups and downs. It will be nice when one of these days when he can pay attention to me or look at me. And diapers aren't as complicated as I thought they were. Oh, and newborn flatulence is a hoot! Just out of the blue Xander makes the room shake.

The in-laws were here today and A's dad helped me take care of some rust on my new truck on the underside of the passenger door. Taped it off, sanded, primed and painted it. It's nice to have a supervisor. AND, even better news, he helped me get the garage squared away so that I can fit my truck in there now. There's about 6" at both the front and rear bumpers. We also hooked up a bobber that hangs from the ceiling so I know when to stop. It's fantastic. I realize though in a few years when tricycles and other things need room in the garage I'll be bumped, but it's nice for now and I'm going to savor it!

very sad, sad news

With all this happy news about bringing Xander home and what fun he is, it is with a heavy heart that I post that Robert Jordan has passed. RJ is the author of the Wheel of Time book series that Amanda got me reading. It's an awesome book series, just awesome.

The rest of this post will only make sense to Hugs, Julie, Rob and Mom.

Hugs came up and told me the news this morning and the first words out of my mouth were "May the last embrace of the mother welcome him home." I hope I got that right.

You know, there is so much I love about that book series. When I'm jogging and I really want to motivate myself at the end I chant to myself "wash the spears". I looked through the book once and looked on wotmania for more of the song and I wrote it all out, but I forgot it. I should do that again.

And, as I mentioned before, I really like the fight scene with Mat, Gawyn and Galad. I think of that when I'm trying to psych myself during a workout.

It would be really cool if at some point Rand and Galad realize they are half brothers and hug. Or at least don't try and kill each other.

I can't believe how lucky we got to meet his cousin at a wedding this summer. I sent that email and then his cousin sent me a print out of it with his signature on it. I really cherish that note now.

So those are just my random wot thoughts. I can't wait to find out what Harriet and his cousin know.

Golden Boy's Eulogy

Look at this stud!


I met my dear Golden Boy back in Toledo during my last semester around October 2002. He was everything I wanted in a truck, a Ford, 5 speed manual transmission, V6, extended cab and low miles. I still remember that first test drive and was so impressed with the power and speed (I was moving up from a Festiva...so I was easily impressed). Within the first two months of having Golden Boy he'd already proved his worth because I used him to move myself and Sergey. He came through and proved his usefulness time after time moving myself, Amanda, Sergey, Amanda and I (once we were married) and Trisha (sister in law) again and again. He even helped out at our church in Cincinnati and merrily moved mulch.

Golden Boy never left me stranded and was the test bench in teaching me how to install drum brakes, change spark plugs, change oil, change calipers, change fuel filters, rotors and flush and fill the coolant.

Not only that, but Golden Boy was great on vacations. He made camping trips fun and easy. Here is Amanda demonstrating how easy he makes packing supplies in his bed. Honestly, that was the point of this picture because this was our first camping trip with Golden Boy, it was great!


Here is one picture on our last camping trip as we are passing through Kentucky to Tennessee. On this trip we drove to the top of the Smokey Mountains with him.


So tomorrow when I go to the salvage yard to take off the license plate and remove the last of my personal affects that you are holding, it will be with a very heavy heart. Goodbye, Golden Boy, you will be missed.

Golden Boy is....

Golden Boy is dead. He is a total loss. I talked with the insurance adjuster yesterday and the estimate to fix him up was 6700 and they valued him at around 7200. The 500 dollar difference between actual market value and estimated cost of replacement isn't enough to warrant repair, so according to the insurance company, he is a total loss.

That is a definite bummer.

I could get a salvage title for it and take the check and have it fixed myself, but if I read the estimate correct there is frame damage. That doesn't improve my situation. Plus, if I got a salvage title for it, that would always detract from his re-saleability

So what do I do? Now surely isn't the time to be shopping around for a new car, not with Peanut about to hatch any day now. I'd rather spend my time elsewhere. I spent some time searching at autotrader.com for a vehicle friday afternoon and found some that I thought were worth a test drive.

As it ended up, I took one for a test drive last night after work and drove a couple more today and ended up buying a new (to me) truck. So much for a widow in mourning, huh?

It feels like such a rash decision, but I think we ended up with a good deal. I think this actually is a blessing in disguise, because with the amount of money the insurance company is offering for Golden Boy, we were able to buy something a bit bigger with room for Peanut. That is a big plus.

I won't write anymore about the new one until I post Golden Boy's eulogy.

so I go to flower shop...

So I miss a day of work because of the wreck and end up spending the morning on the phone. As it turns out, the trooper who wrote up the accident gave me a pamphlet with information on it about the cited driver and his insurance. I wasn't paying close enough attention to the name of the insurance company because my mind just wasn't too sharp at the time.

So yesterday I settled down to try and get ahold of the other guy's insurance. However, after a few minutes I realized that there is no such insurance company called "Great White Nations". I tried Googling different combinations of that name thinking it might be just a little off, but it wasn't. So that's a good thing that no Aryans or Crackers sell insurance in southern Missouri.

Sergey came through and saved the day for me because one of the pictures that I took with his camera had the company logo on it. So after a call to the company I was able to contact their insurance company, tell them my information, hopefully get my truck fixed sooner and get a rental car.

Speaking of rental cars, did you know that they actually run out of cars? There are 3 stores within 15 miles of our home and they were all out of cars. Do you think Dominos ever runs out of pizzas? Mushrooms, maybe, black olives, maybe, but not entire pizzas! Good grief Charlie Brown.

So then this accident has a few people giving me advice on what to do. Go to a chiropractor, don't go to a chiropractor. It's very annoying. I had a lady giving me the same lecture a second time on what to do and it was beyond annoying. I thought I politely asked her to shut it and thanked her for her advice, but it only caused her hair stand up and then she hissed at me.

Listen, there's only 1 woman on this earth that tells me what to do, sorry sweet-ums, but it ain't you. Thanks for your unwanted advice.

So then I thought I'd pick up flowers on the way home for the wife. I bought this deal that for 45 bucks I get a bouquet of flowers once a month. That's a good deal. So after work I went to pick up September's bouquet and the shop is gone. Empty. So my new complaint is that I have to drive to a congested part of town to get flowers for my baby momma. That's not going to happen during the evening rush hour.

So then I pull of the flower shop lot and am on the way home and I turn on the radio (Enterprise finally found a car for me) and I hear an old Nirvana song playing. I found it really ironic because the chorus went:
"Hey, wait
I've got a new complaint
Forever in debt to your priceless advice"

Now isn't that something?

death of Golden Boy?

Unfortunately, now I'll never have learned in a classroom setting how to care for Peanut for the first 3 months. I missed the first class last week because I was in California and today I missed the second class because I was turned into a sandwich on the highway.

I was merging on the freeway after work and the traffic in front of me came to an abrupt halt, I came to an abrupt halt, but the semi behind me didn't. The semi hit me, then I hit the guy in front of me, making a sandwich out of Golden Boy (my truck). The airbags deployed, which was nice, but stinky and smoky.

Golden Boy has seen better days. I'm nervous as to what the insurance guy will say, especially since the airbags were deployed, about what to do with my truck. I love my truck and wouldn't trade it in for a brand new one even if it was free.

I do feel bad for the semi truck driver that hit me because he was 2 weeks away from reaching his 150,000 mile safety bonus award. That's too bad, I hate to see someone miss their bonus.

I had the truck towed and Sergey showed up and took some pictures for me then dropped me off at the hospital so I could check in with the wife in baby class and get checked out in the ER. I'm just back from the hospital and everything is good, only soreness.

Please pray for Golden Boy to have a safe return to me!

silicon valley and adulthood

I spent monday through thursday of last week at a customer site in California for the delivery of 2 of our systems. While I was there I noticed some interesting things about California. First, there are too darn many people there. However, being that there are so many people out there, it is unbelievably diverse. It's great to walk down the street and not be surrounded by only whites and just see different people.

Second, forest fires are real man, Smokey isn't lying. Of course they are real, but in Ohio you hear about them on the news and they are always in some far off place burning x number of acres and y number of homes are in danger and the information just passes in 1 ear and out the other (for me anyway). Well, when we landed at SJC there was a forest fire just down the road about 10 miles. It seemed huge to me and we went up the road a couple of exits (away from the fire) to our hotel and I could see it from my window (along with Yahoo! and McAfee buildings--right there!). There was just this huge column of smoke that went up into the air. My first forest fire. Unbelievable.

Third, Silicon Valley. Here I am in the hotel lobby getting my breakfast in my doc martens that severely need shining, faded out Levi's, a button up shirt from Kohl's and my jheri curl still wet from the shower flopping whichever way it wants to flop surrounded by all these Silicon Valley hot shots with their shiny shoes, dockers, crisply ironed shirts, business suits and ties. I pointed this out to my co-worker and he said 'hey, we're silicon valley hot shots too!'. Who knows. It is what it is.

Sorry for the lack of an appropriate segue here, but one downside to having an adult vehicle that young adults in their late teens and early 20's don't have is that there is a lack of helpful information to be found on the internet on that vehicle. We've got a little brake light issue and I thought I would try and find a forum for our car, post my problem and some gear head who could type would tell me all I needed to know. That's what I do for my truck and what I used to do for Amanda's old car. So I find a forum that seems decent, register and post my question friday night. Well, in 24 hours there has been no reply. There hasn't even been another post since then and the most recent post before me was on wednesday! Good grief Charlie Brown.

furniture update

Here is an update on the furniture.

I finally finished the crib. Amanda's dad made some brackets for me to hold the spring base in place because the brackets that came with it didn't match. I think it turned out pretty good and everyone else thinks it's great, so I think I did okay. I should have replaced the screws too, so that they were all nice and shiney and all match, but I forgot. Maybe I'll remember next time I go to home depot to pick some up. Notice the I Love Peanut bumper sticker.


And here we have the current status of Peanut's dresser. It's completely sanded down and ready to be stained. I did make a home depot run and bought new handles and a trim piece for it because I didn't want to sand either of them down. The trim piece had too much detail for even Bob Vila to sand down, so I wasn't going to mess with it. The handles I would have had to sand by hand and they had a nice curve to them that I didn't want to attempt to wrangle.

The replaced trim piece is in my left hand. The replacement trim piece is attached and just under the tabletop. And I am covered in wood dust. Covered.



This dresser was built for me when I was a kid, and in the process of refinishing it for Peanut I've noticed the knots in the wood and the pattern it makes. It used to be more noticeable when I was a kid, but time faded it out. Now you can really see the knots especially in the top drawer. I think that's pretty darn cool.

Oh yea, we had our house warming party yesterday. I made a social faux pas and called it a house warming party, which implies you want people to bring you gifts. I didn't intend it to be that way, I just didn't know what house warming really meant and titled the email invitations as such. Anyway, thanks a whole lot to those of you who brought us gifts and thanks to everyone that came over and enjoyed themselves. We had lots of fun. And to those of you who cut out before dark you missed the smores!

Brutus who?

And so the most obnoxious time of the year begins in Columbus, Ohio. Why is that? Because the sun rises and sets over those college boys on High street that play football on Saturdays. I'm don't have a problem with the student athletes, the coaches and trainers. I have a problem with the people who have nothing else to live for this time of year and the ENDLESS media coverage. But hey, the sun's got to shine on a dog's rear end someday; and today the sun is shining on dog butts that are painted scarlet and gray.

Yea, so we are having a house warming party tomorrow. Silly us, not being on top of the football schedule--we planned our party on the same day as the first game of the season. I had to send an addendum to the original party invitation that I had sent out to my co-workers telling them that it's okay to stop by after the game. Unlucky for them because there is some big fight with the cable companies about who is going to carry the game, so they can't watch it at our place. The day I have to get cable to watch a local football game is the day I stop following football.

So today we cleaned up the house and got ready for the party. We also went to the store and bought a station wagon full of burgers, hot dogs and beer. I was going to get a keg, but not too many heavy hitters were RSVPing...the last thing I want is leftover beer. So instead I got some cases and a mini keg of Heineken. You better get here early to get the good beer!

Off to the movies with the wife! Rush Hour 3!

My coke experiment is complete.

I took the wheel's off of Peanut's crib and I soaked them in a can of Coca cola for about 2 weeks. Here is a before picture of the wheels.



Here is the after picture.


And here is a picture of the residue left in the tupperware from the 2 weeks of soaking. Yes, I threw the tupperware away.


I should have soaked them in some WD-40 for day or so, but I don't think we'll be rolling the crib from room to room upstairs so there is no need.

Work is going to become much easier for me (at least in the short term, for now) because tomorrow we will ship 2 systems that I've been working on for the past couple of months. That will mean an end to this project that I've worked on for the past 15 months. Wowsers.

And in case I forgot to mention, we are having a Labor day party this saturday and everyone is invited. We'll provide the keg, burgers and dogs; you provide the side dishes and yard games.

See you there!

you know, that famous author guy

So remember a month ago when we went to the wedding in DC? Well, as it turns out the bride's mother's cousin is married to a famous author that Hugs and I (and only 3 other people I know) really like. This famous enough author is Robert Jordan.

We were really psyched about the wedding (definitely more excited about the opportunity to meet RJ than the wedding) and were hoping to chat with him (more like sit on his lap and let him tell us stories) at some point during the wedding weekend. However, RJ's has amyloidosis and that prevented him from attending. When we first heard about plans for the wedding, the couple was actually thinking of having it at his house. We would have died if it would have been there.

Despite all that we ended up chatting with the bride's cousin and we exchanged business cards and I emailed her about a week ago. I couldn't think of anything cool to say, so I wrote this in a lame email:
***************************
"I would just like to say that I really enjoy the Wot series and I am looking forward to Memory of Light.

Maybe something you'll find interesting is that I started reading the books because of the cover art. My girlfriend in college (now my wife) would bring the books over to my apartment to read because I had to study (she was in education, I was in engineering) and I was fascinated by them. I think the cover art is great, and that calendar that came out a few years back with all of the covers is awesome.

I've only read all the books once (the first 4 twice) but my favorite part in all the books is when Mat beats both Galad and Gawyn in the practice yard in the beginning of book 3, The Dragon Reborn.

I can't believe how blank my mind is that I can't think of anything else I'd like to say, but I really enjoy the world that you have created with the books and I very much enjoy them. Thanks.

Again, I wish you all the best with your health."
***************************

So there was my one opportunity to say something to someone famous and that's how I spent it.

I exchanged another email or two with the cousin of the bride and she asks for our mailing address. A few days later a letter arrived that was a print out of my email that had written in ink at the bottom "I like that particular fight myself. --Robert Jordan"

So that's pretty cool, huh? I think I'll try and get a color photo of the cover of The Dragon Reborn and put that in a frame with the signature. Something else to keep me busy this winter.

I can't remember

I can't remember if anything bloggable happened this week. I worked a bunch of hours and didn't make much progress through the week on things around the house like getting ready for this kid that could show up at anytime.

However today I got some work done on the crib. I put the 2nd coat of stain on it and on the poster-board, so those are done. Although I have to come up with new hardware for the crib. I was hoping to get new wheels for it, since the current ones are old, wooden and don't roll. However, I decided that replacing them was going to be more trouble than it was worth, given my timeline, so I embarked on a science project to clean them up.

I grabbed a can of coke, some Tupperware and put the wheels in there. This is a before picture. I'm hoping it will get rid of the rust and the cursed yellow paint. So far, it's working.

When we arrived home from church today, this is what we found.


As you can see, Mom is mad.


Aaaah, Min and her toilet paper.

Bye.

Thunk, corpse, masters class, swarm, party, euchre nazis

Thunk. Thunk was the noise the morning dove made this morning as it crashed into the window of our back room. It made a nice grease spot on the glass which I'm going to have to scrub off. It didn't wash away with the hose.

Corpse. The poor little morning dove became a corpse after it bounced off our window.

At work today I took a cable off of a part, handed it to technician #1 and said "This one isn't labeled." He turns to me and says "What do you call that DUMMY!" and points at the label. Technician #2 says "They problee taught him that in master's school."

I work with some real wordsmiths, true master's of the English language.

Swarm. As I was in the garage working on Peanut's crib, Amanda notices these black things swarming in our neighbor's front lawn. There was a dozen little black things with wings circling about 3-5 feet off of the ground. I walk over there and it's dragonfly's. I've never seen that before and it was quite strange. The neighbors were a little weirded out as well.

Party! I think we are pretty set for our Labor Day Weekend Bash. It's going to be saturday from noon until whenever. I think. I just want to double check one more time at work that I won't end up having to work or travel that day and we'll send out email invitations.

Work is going pretty good. The project I'm on right now is pretty...intense/important/crucial. So 3 times in the past 2 days our President/GM has come back to the lab to check on me and see how things are going. No pressure. I think I can feel my hair falling out.

Today we had a brown out at work so while we were waiting for the power to come back on we played Euchre. Did you know that it is against the rules to deal the cards one at a time? Yup. You must deal them 2-3-2-3, 3-2-3-2, or 1-4-1-4, 4-1-4-1. If you don't and you are playing with some super-dupers Euchre Nazi's they jump all over you...which is what happened to me today.

Next time I'll deal them 0-5-0-5, 5-0-5-0.

Sometimes some people just don't grasp the realization of the situation and completely overreact. Dude, this is just a little brown out euchre...nobody is here for money. Let's all just take a deep breath.

All together now. In through the nose.

Now exhale. Out through the mouth.

Aaaah.

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happy anniversary

So yesterday we celebrated 4 years of marriage. Wow, I can't believe it. To celebrate we went out to eat (thanks for the gift certificate Ikkin!) and rented a movie. We had our hearts set on renting Alien, but Blockbuster didn't have it.

Why Alien? Because I guess there is this whole alien birth thing that happens in the movie, so we thought to prepare ourselves for the real thing, we'd treat the movie experience as a primer. So after more than 30 minutes at Blockbuster, we finally settled on Cape Fear. Wow, that was an awesome movie.

cake compliment

So Amanda made a cake and I took it to work to share with my co-workers. Everyone raved, of course, but some of the memorable statements were along the lines of:

Coworker 1: "Hey Chicks, tell Mrs. Chicks her cake was guuuud."

Coworker 2: "[I'm too full from lunch] Hey, save me a piece!"
Chicks: "I ain't cho wife, get it yourself!"
Coworker 2: "Shut up before I pimp slap you."
Chicks: "Go get it yourself."
Coworker 2: "I swear to God I'll slap you so hard I'll knock the curl out cha hair."

So yeah, the cake went over very well.

what have I been doing?

Now that I'm finished with HP7 I hope I quit having HP dreams. Each time I'm Harry Potter and all the spells that I can manage are "stupefy" and "avada kadava" but they don't work right. It's like one of those dreams where you are late for something but can never get moving and time keeps flying along, but in my case I just can't make any spells or curses work.

I'm making some headway refinishing the furniture for Peanut's room. I have a bookshelf complete and I'm in the process of sanding and stripping a shelf and the crib. It's going slower than I thought it would. That's okay, it only makes this-kid-is-going-to-be-born-soon-and-I'm-not-prepared for it paranoia increase.

I didn't want to mess around and try and get all the layers of paint off of the crib with just sandpaper so I bought some stripper and rubber gloves. My hands became so sweaty while the gloves were on that when I raised my fingertips above my wrist sweat poured out. It was funny, but really gross.

bye,

C

finished HP7

I just stayed up tonight to finish HP7. It was great. Very fitting. Rowling weaved everything in just beautifully.

Remember the movie "The Money Pit"? It's this old movie with Tom Hanks and some blonde lady. I've never seen the movie but I guess the whole premise of it is that this house that they buy costs them loads of money. Well, our house isn't like that, but Home Depot is for us. It never fails, every time we go there we drop a load of cash and today was no exception. We ended up buying a bunch of power tools for me. It was cheaper to buy them in bulk. They are all the Ryobi cordless brand which means that the drill, reciprocating saw, circular saw, sander, flashlight and wet-dry vac all run on the same battery. I'm pretty impressed with it so far.

I have dire need of the sander for my furniture refinishing projects for Peanut's room, my drills been needing replacing for some time and the rest of the stuff fell under the category of "I could have used that then, so I'm sure I'll need that again."

Anyway....HP7 was great.

D U N

D - U - N done. I think this looks much better than the John Deere yellow that it was.





My next project is to sand down Peanut's hand-me-down furniture that consists of a dresser, corkboard with trim, crib, nightstand and bookshelf.

There is nothing more manly....

There is nothing more manly than this competition....

Next year, vacation in Maine! I would try it this year, but with the whole baby being due the same month as the competition, that hoses the idea. Darn kid.

I told Hugs about it. Here are excerpts of our email conversation:
***
C: we are doing this next year....vacation in Maine baby!
http://www.sundayriver.com/summer/wifecarry.html
Hugs: Well, I suppose that gives me a year to get down to a competitive weight,
practice spending time upside down and getting used to getting my head
bumped into logs.
C: No, I think I have an idea of a different hold for us. Think T. Plus I don't think you'll be as likely to vomit.
Hugs: And I wouldn't have to sniff your butt. I know how much you fart when you
run.
***

I sure would like to do that. The competition.

Anyway, Hugs took off for the weekend so I'm a bachelor again! Boooring. However, this will give me time to get alot of crap done around the house...like paint Peanut's room and sand down the furniture and stain it. If I don't, Murphy's Law says it'll be a premature birth 2 weeks from today. If I do, Peanut will be 2 weeks late.

Oh, and the answer to the important question.... we are painting it 'Lemon White'. That's light yellow for my male readers.

C

I went golfing last friday with a bunch of people from work. I did pretty well. This is what everybody else in my house thinks of golf.

I think that too. It takes too much effort and money for me to take it seriously. I like free hobbies like frisbee golf, watching star wars movies over and over and weightlifting.

My mom came into town friday and stayed until sunday. Saturday my uncle and his wife and kids came over and we had a cookout. My cousins (13 years old) then ravaged the pond in our neighborhood. We missed the sign that said no fishing. It was worth it since they caught the "Mother of all Bluegill" and the "Granddaddy of all Bluegill".


Then yesterday we bought our first family car.

It's just accident, but the light green shirt does match the light green car. We looked all day sunday and found this one.

I did some reading online on how used car dealers try and hose you and the first dealership we stopped at used all of the tactics. He talked up the car we were interested in, he called it "our car", talked down our trade in ("what's that engine noise? It seems loud."), said that they had already had it sold to someone else for a higher price and he actually held up the calculator to show us how much money they were losing with our opening offer.

Oh, I'm sorry, like I care if you lose money. If you had it sold to someone else for the higher price, why is it still here?

Of course, he wouldn't give us enough for our trade in, so I said "fine, no deal" and we left. I felt so empowered. It may be a lame thing to feel empowered about, but we weren't falling for it.

But anyway, we found this snazy little Malibu Maxx at a little dealership in town, however they were closed on sunday. Amanda went back on monday, drove it, talked numbers with the guy and got it for under what we wanted to spend. I am very proud of my wife's wheelin' and dealin'.

The car is nice too!

So now we have not only a 4 door family car, but a wagon to boot!

weekend update

I've got myself a new workout partner now.


Ainsley likes to come downstairs with me in the mornings when I workout. Lately she just seems to be the happiest cat ever and chirps and purrs away with me every morning.

I also discovered that this mild mannered cat that is very easy going and very innocent is all just a show.....I was in the kitchen the other morning and a little half grown bunny hopped up onto our deck. I thought, "geez, I wonder if (sweet, little, innocent) Ainsley will chase a rabbit".

Dumb. Dumb. Very dumb. I should have stopped right there. I didn't think through both forks of that decision.

I grab Ainsley and very silently unlock the back door and shove the cat out onto the patio where the bunny is about 4-5 feet away. Wooosh! The rabbit bolts. Shwooosh! There goes an orange streak right behind the rabbit.

"Oh sh*t!!" Now I have to catch the cat. So now I take off into the backyard and make it to the fence at which time I see Ainsley "The Orange Lightening Bolt" racing across the neighbors backyard. So I hop the fence and chase after her thinking "oh crap, Amanda's going to kill me." I get around between the neighbors houses and see her sitting on a rock between the shrubs and the front porch of the house behind us. I have no idea what happened to the rabbit. I think the rabbit might have lost her and she just stopped to hang out.

I picked up the cat and walked home laughing the whole way.

Just got back from Sean and Elizabeth's wedding in the DC area.


We made a road trip out of it and we (Hugs, me, Scott, Mandy and Nikki) all had a great time. Nikki was great and drove us all there in a rented minivan. So I really had no idea where I was going or what I was doing all weekend until I was told I had to dress for this or that. It was a great time.

scott free---lucky SOB

4 reasons my 4th of July kicked butt!

First of all, I had the day off of work, which was a nice break from last week.

Second, we went up and visited my Grandma and had a good time. My cousin showed up and we went and got a bucket of chicken and taters (sometimes deep fried foods are just delicious) and went to a park and had a nice picnic. Then we went back to her house and kicked it and chatted. That's a nice change of pace for sure.

Third, we left my Grandma's and went and got Toft's ice cream in Sandusky. Toft's is the best ice cream in the whole world. Graeter's and UDF can just stay at home. Baskin Robbins, paaah. All you DQ's, Chilly Jilly's and any other soft serve ice cream shop can just keep themselves seated on the couch. You can't compare and aren't even in the same league.

I had a medium 'Howly Toledo' and it was awesome. Not only was it awesome because the ice cream tastes so great, but if you measured how high my ice cream was piled on top of my cone....I swear it was 9 and 1/2 inches. Nothing beats Toft's. I scarfed it down in about 5 minutes too.

**sidenote: The mean age of the employees of Toft's was 16 years. Teenagers are annoying. At one point business had slowed down and one girl was telling a story to 3 of her minions and she used the word "whatev". No, not "whatever", that last "-er" is just too much these days.

Fourth, so we are headed out of Sandusky and I ask Hugs what time it is...7:20pm. Crap! That means we won't be home until around 9:20. D'oh! So I put the hammer down as we are headed out of town from the last stop light, as I pass a state highway patrolman headed the other direction. D'oh! He does a u-turn and follows me. Double d'oh!

So I slow down to 55 and get over in the right lane, like that's going to do me any good--he's already got my number. Sure enough, he hits his lights. Well, I knew this was coming so I turned my signal on, pulled over, turned on my hazards and stopped quickly. I then hurried up and got out my liscence and insurance card out and was holding them out the window before he even got out of his car. Of course I'm laughing the whole time. Just then Amanda's mom calls and leaves a voicemail on her phone.

So the fuzz comes up "blah blah blah"..."yea, it's been a while since I've been through here"..."blah blah blah"..."yea, that's my address"..."blah blah I'll be right back". D'oh!

"Here's your warning, have safe holiday and keep it under the speed limit."

"HOLY SMOKES!! Are you SERIOUS??!! Sweet, thanks!"

A quarter mile down the road, "THANKS GOD!!".

I'd like to know how the heck I didn't get a ticket. I think it's because I don't argue and just whip my liscence and insurance out promptly. I'd it's the good looks but I never get pulled over by women.

Yea, and the voicemail from Amanda's mom..."I was just calling to make sure everything's okay."

Queue up the Hitchcock music.

Sympathy

Last weekend Ukie came over to hang out and we watched his sister's movie "Sympathy". It was a pretty good flick. It was like a cross between Kill Bill with the amount of gore (but x2 or x3) and Reservoir Dogs with the surprise ending where the truth is all unraveled and leaves the audience totally shocked. Some of it was a bit drawn out and the movie could have been sped up, however the dialog was pretty darn funny in some parts too. But that might be because I laugh at stuff other people don't.

The premise of the whole film is that his sister's character "Sara" is kidnapped by a bank robber and they are holed up in a hotel room. Then this other guy escapes from prison and holds the bank robber and Sara hostage and it ends up being a power struggle between the three of them over who really is in control and who is really hostage. That aspect of it was quite interesting. And it all takes place in a hotel room.

At certain points during the film I had to stop and remind myself that it's just a movie. I was getting worked up and thought I was going to have to kick somebody's butt for hurting Ukie's little sister.

Here is a review of it:
http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/film/1680

I heard it is supposed to be playing in Ohio sometime...if it does I'm going to see it again!

just me and the cats

It's just me and the cats right now. Hugs is off in the boonies of Wisconsin for her cousin's wedding. It's way up there in no man's land...a little north of East New Jesus and south of BFE. I guess the wedding was in a bass boat and all the guests were on pontoon boats. I really don't know if that's exactly right but I haven't had too much time to interrogate my wife on all the details.

Yes, so I missed the wedding. Why? End of the quarter milestones that had to be met at work. It was a heck of a week. I ended up working 87 hours from last sunday to today (saturday). Eighty-seven. Yup, 2 weeks worth of work in 1. I still like my job, so everything is cool....and we met some of our milestones...and that's even better.

I really can't comment on anything else that's happened this week...caffeine is my friend and I'm now on a first name basis with the janitors at my workplace (they work from around 7-10pm).

Tomorrow is looking good too...no work and I get to kick it with the Ukie.

C

work work work

A lady in a silver beamer tried to make me wet my pants today. I was creeping up the left hand turn lane at a red light (about 25 feet from the stop bar) when this blonde makes a right turn really, really wide and nearly hits me head on.

The look on her face was "oh, what. did you need something?"

Whereas mine was "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuggggggghhhhh!!!"

Then after a quarter mile I realized god was testing my patience and I laughed it off.

I've been working alot...therefore no blogging time. I racked up 73.25 hours last week. My new record. It's good though, much better than unemployment and I'm learning tons and that's always nice.

I just finished reading "A Game of Thrones" by George Martin. It's really good. It's like WoT, but no Aes Sedai and it has a plethora of graphic violence and crude sexual content. I think quite a few of the characters are rather dumb and I swear I could play the Game of Houses better than they could. I forget the title of the next book in the series, but that's next on my to read list. I've got some time, so I bumped it up past "What to Expect the First Year" since Amanda bought that from the used book store.

it's a picnic

I bought our first picnic table on the way home from work today. It's been sitting at a garage sale through the weekend that I pass to and from work. It can comfortably fit 4 people on each side. I don't know what other 6 people are going to join us for dinner...but it's available!

When I brought it home it barely fit in the back of my truck. I had to ask some teenager walking by to help me carry it around back. Within 5 minutes of parking it in our backyard we were eating dinner on it.

Oooh it's nice. It just needed to be pressure washed and stained. I'll get to that eventually....

last post when??

Well, I guess I've been busy. The house finally has pictures hung on the walls. Our goodwill/garage sale pile keeps getting bigger. It's funny because I've been dragging this stuff around for years and I'm just now getting tired of it.

A few more things to do in the basement. I need to arrange my manly testosterone area in the basement and get that all neat and orderly. Then onto finishing the spare room and Peanut's room. I'm looking for suggestions on closet organizers. Any ideas?

The house is awesome.

I've been really pleased now with my reel lawnmower.
The good points:
-no gas
-much quieter
-the yard looks very neat (I've found myself taking pains to cut in a different pattern each time)

The bad points:
-don't let it go for 2 weeks
-when there are small areas to finish up, it takes longer because you only cut when pushing forward, whereas with a gas mower you can pull it backwards and still cut

Overall, I'm happy with the purchase. Yes, it is more work to push it forward. Yes I will have to sharpen the blades. However, I view those as easy obstacles to overcome because of the good points mentioned above.

Rob, you mentioned about a bumpy yard....I've got a few bumps, but bumps are bumps regardless of your style of push mower.

Work has been busy too...end of the quarter deadlines...arrgh! It's good though, really good. And I have an office all to myself again because they are hiring a new guy to do the same tasks as my old office mate, so he moved out and will share with the new guy. Now it's just me and my giant Darth Vader Pez dispenser.

Goodnight.

yard day

I was busy yesterday working on my farmer's tan.

I spent the morning unloading some free lumber from a co-workers demolished swing set. He bought a used one for his kids off this family that lived in a huge 1.2 million dollar home. The co-worker already had a swing set for his kids, but apparently it was rickety or something, so he hacked it up with a saw and piled the timbers in the yard. So I helped him transport and reassemble his new one, and I got his old one. That's really weird, my kid isn't even born yet and I've got a swing set for him (or so the dr says its a him) already. I didn't assemble it though. I grabbed it mainly for the free lumber which was in great condition. Treated lumber too. I took all of the hardware out of it and stacked it all up nicely in our shed.

It was strange though, the millionaire family that my co-worker bought the swing set from, the kids were maybe 6 years old, and the guy mentioned that his wife was pregnant. I just don't understand why they were getting rid of it. It certainly didn't fit in with the landscaping of the home.

Then I spent the afternoon trimming up some unruly bushes and started a compost pile behind the shed, since we don't have a refuse bin. It's a pretty huge pile of debris.

What's weird though is some of our neighbors. I guess that's one of those differences between apartment living and home living. I wasn't outside working for 10 minutes and the neighbor lady comes over with her toddler in tow and chews on my ear for 10 minutes or so. Then I get back to work and the DINKs (dual income no kids) across the street chat with me for about 15 - 20 minutes. All the neighbors are very nice, friendly and helpful. It's quite a difference from apartment living though.

So today, my arms are pretty sore so I'm milking it and trying to find the motivation to edge all the flower beds. I might just wuss out and unpack the last couple of boxes.

Moved

All moved in and lots to do.

The move went great. I was a little taken back by the movers when they showed up, they looked a little...shady. However, they busted their butts, didn't break anything and were personable and easy to talk to.

We spent the weekend unpacking and we are 90% done. The tough part is going to be hanging all of the pictures. It's quite a circus when we hang pictures.
"Is it straight?"
"I can't tell."
"Well step back and look."
"I don't know, I guess it's straight."
"You're no help."
"I told you I can't tell if things are level."

There's just about an hour's worth of work left in each room. Put this here, put that there...boring stuff.

The best part is that I spent tonight putting things away in the garage and I am able to fit my truck in there. Aaaah, that's great. Unfortunately, there is about 10" of room past each bumper. I put a wire rack between the front bumper of my truck and the front wall to act as an idiot bumper. I wonder how long that will last. I've thought of hanging a rubber ball from a string from the ceiling. Maybe I'll try that next week as a more accurate judge of parking.

But everything is great, more than great in the new place.

I'm still here.

We are gearing up for our move this weekend. It's going to be hectic. And of course, things are starting to gear up at work for me for the end of the quarter. So, as it seems, I might not to get to spend as much time as I would like around the house the first month. That's alright. As it's scheduled I've got 359 more months (and hopefully then some) to spend tinkering around.

While packing, I had to bend my wife's arm backwards to get her to throw out her Vanilla Ice tape. I think her exact, heart-broken, downtrodden remark was "...well, I guess." *sigh!!*

food poisoning

I got a wee bit of food poisoning yesterday. It was not a good day.

Today I'm feeling much better, but I'm having a hard time deciding if the grumbling of my innards is what's leftover from the sickness or hunger? I only ate breakfast, rejected my lunch and had an apple juice and a granola bar for dinner. And anybody that's seen me eat realizes that that amount of food is very, very small!

California is full of extroverts. The weirdest of weirdos would fit in here. Yesterday on the way to work I saw a woman on rollerblades with a coffee in her hand. Can't you wait until you get to work to have your coffee? Doesn't exercising in the morning wake you up a bit and get your heart racing--at least until after lunch and then have a little pick me up? Goofy people.

The Ocho!

Tag, I am it. I have been given a challenge of posting 8 random things about me. It's awfully odd that my last post for my birthday was 100 random bits of information about me, but hey, I came up with 100, what's another 8? Nuttin!

However, the difficulty lies in what subject area those 8 should be...should I follow my nominator and talk about scars? Her hubby followed a similar suit and Hugs went her own way.

8 random bits of _______ about me:

1. I wish I could spout movie quotes all day long that people understood. It's just that I'm the only person on Earth that quotes Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, E.T. and Another 48 Hours.
2. I think a life where you don't meet at least 3 people from 3 different foreign counties is sad. Especially this day and age. In knowing them you learn so much about what life is like for non-Americans. For example, did you know that in India they don't use toilet paper? Nope, they think it is gross. Instead they keep a cup next to the toilet, fill it with water from the sink and pour it on their... you know. According to my source, it is much more sanitary. Of course, that might just be his opinion, but I'm just telling you what I know.
3. The most tv that I watch in one sitting is 1 hour of Americas Funniest Home Videos. Or 1 hour of Cops or Dateline. However that's not all in 1 week. If I were to add all my tv watching time up for 1 week I think it would be around 2-3 hours. Oh, that's until football season.
4. For as much as I love watching football and considering my stature, I've never played a snap. Not even in high school. Oh, I played a bit of the neighborhood ball, but nothing regular. My mom wouldn't let me play for an endlessly inexhaustable number of reasons, but I think I'll be happy with that when I get older and my knees still work. However, whatever "knee years" that I may have gained by not playing high school football, I think I've destroyed by weightlifting. I would attribute 99% of the grinding that causes my wife to grimace to the squats and deadlifts that I regularly perform.
5. I don't get bored with weightlifting. It's just me, in my basement, sweating away. I think I'm the type of guy who isn't easily bored by repeatative actions. I can jog the same path or on a treadmill and not get bored.
6. I can't remember the last time I purchased a compact disc. The last compact disc that was purchased for me was Pearl Jam's last album that came out in May of 2006. Before that, I just don't remember.
7. There is a part of my cellphone that is held together with electrical tape. It's been like that for about a year now. I could get a new one for 20 bucks, but I'm too cheap and I'd have to sign up for another year of service.
8. Scars
8a. My first set of stiches came when I was 5 from walking into a chair that someone was carrying when we moved.
8b. I have a puckered up patch on the inside of my left ankle where a kid threw a piece of glass at me when I was in the 7th grade.
8c. I've got a nice chicken pox scar right in the middle of my forehead. Well, it's a little to the right.
8d. According to Hugs, I have a blue spot on my back. No idea, ask her. It's just something she checks on at random intervals and updates me about.
8e. The nail for my left index finger is moved a bit to the left because it hit it with a 32oz sledge hammer when I was 20.

There's my 8. Oh, and of course, I nominate dobre vechir to carry on this 8 bits of randomness.