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.