clumping

well guys and dolls, we've got some catching up to do. we had a long but productive weekend, and with some happy successes along the way. 

when we last left our hero & heroine, they were about to embark on a weekend of scrubbing walls & floors, yard-work, and appliance hunting. also, they'd just had a mason's estimate come back and were waiting on another mason, a roofer (possibly 2) and a new plumber to get into the bidding. so lets see what happened!

friday.

so friday we heard back from the 3rd mason. and wow! we are glad we did. he called me up when he was at the house to make sure he was seeing everything and we discussed the various things i wanted taken care of while he could see them. so just a quick run-down to refresh you guys [& dolls] we've got the brick wall thats in pretty bad shape from water damage from the busted box gutter above it; theres also a chimney above that wall that needs to come down because its falling apart and is no longer being used; theres a second chimney on the back of the house thats in the same situation; and then theres a couple of spots where some bricks are just going bad and need to be replaced; and some various spots that need tuck pointing. okay so ballpark for all that work + materials he says we're looking at about 2-2.5g's... what?! thats amazing! thats a quarter of what the other guys are estimating! so the catch. he cant do it right away, hes booked for the next 2 weeks. bummer - good enough though. so he said hed do a little pricing on materials and get back to us with a written estimate early this week - awesome. he also gave me the name of a roofer he works with and he knows does good work for a fair price, so i tried calling them, but it was already 5 when i got off the phone with the mason - no answer. but overall im hopeful!

after work i discovered that karen had gotten a line on a stove on craigslist and we were going to pick it up. sweet. 50 bucks - you cant beat that. so we drove out to where the stove was... it was a little scary i'll admit. we we're deep in the suburbs and surrounded by "mccain/palin '08" signs in every single yard. it was very frightening, we were skurred. anyway, so we got there and the guy was really nice, showed us the stove, and we loaded it up and headed out. it just so happened [as it often does in deep deep suburbia] that we passed a home depot not far from his place and given that we needed a few things for the weekend's yard work, we stopped off to pick em up.

so after a half an hour, we left home depot [our second home as of late it would seem] with a new trashcan for the yard, a new chainsaw [hell yeah!] some hedge clippers, and a few other smaller things like extension chords and what have you. 

well again as it turns out [just...so...shockingly...] theres a red lobster next to the home depot and i grin at karen mentioning how tasty the cheddar biscuits are. and she stares blankly back at me. huh? im sorry, i dont care who you are, you cannot deny the tastiness of red lobster cheddar biscuits, thats like blasphemy! so i ask her what the deal is and why she isnt eagerly and excitedly agreeing with me - shes never been to red lobster! what kind of island dwelling crazy person did i marry!? totally cut off from the deliciousness of cheddar biscuits. its tragic really. so i decide to end her suffering and make her go to red lobster for dinner and resolve this travesty once and for all. [haha, dramatic much? who me? never.] so we had red lobster for dinner, it had been years since id been, so it was quite delectable, karen was mildly appeased, hardly impressed [ugh, shes such a food-snob! if it doesnt come from the island its just not good enough for her highness, bleh.] but admitted my biscuits were good. [lol!] so after that we were pretty drained, but went home and changed quickly from our work clothes and unloaded everything at the house before calling it a night. 

saturday.

well we got up early and checked craigslist for appliances again and found a fridge for 125 bucks, sweet! it looked fairly new from the picture, and it was certainly well taken care of so we called em up. a half hour later [after a trip to the atm] we arrived at what turned out to be an estate sale and a jolly middle-aged man greeting us on the front porch. long story short here, we got the fridge for 75 bucks [score!] and had to take the doors off of it to get it out of the house. however, somewhere in the midst of everything we managed to lose or forget the center hinge that is pretty much the integral connecting piece of the entire set-up [although we didnt discover this till later that night]. so we took the fridge to the house and got started on our work for the day. 

saturday we spent the entire day in the back yard. i got to use the new chainsaw [and it was quite joyous!] and karen fell in love with the hedge clippers. i have never seen anyone have so much fun with a pair of those things, lol, but she just got into it man. so throughout the day we did mostly cleared out the brush [and obviously fixed that felled tree situation] and cleaned up the yard in general. in the process of doing so we discovered a wealth of large rocks, bricks, and chunks of slate just below the surface of the yard [odd, but cool] and that we had a network of serious roots from some small plants that were growing through our fence [that we seriously could not dig up despite our best efforts. these little buggers are crazy! the plant is like a half an inch diameter through the fence, but the roots are like 3 inches in diameter! insane!] 

also, we have these weird bushes [i guess is what they are] that are clumps of stems that are long and tree-like individually and are just overgrown everywhere trying to get sunlight. well, when i was in denver i saw a grad project [possibly a thesis, not sure] that was about wrapping trees. it made a good argument that wrapping trees didnt hurt them and actually created a habitat for wildlife within the wrapping [like for birds to nest in and the like] that they wouldnt normally have. so this led me to suggest to karen that we wrap these things in tighter clumps to maybe encourage them to grow more vertically, and also to wrap some of the clumps together. well when i mentioned that to her, she loved the idea and told me that she knew something about binding oleanders [i think is the bush she told me about] and eventually the stems will actually grow together into a tree trunk. sweet. so we decided to give it a shot and we wrapped/binded all our bushes/trees while we were clearing out brush and digging up the dead, mostly dead, or somehow intertwined in the fences, plants. 

oh! and i forgot to mention! karen was all ready to go on scrubbing the inside of the house until we realized we dont have any plumbing, lol! kinda hard to clean without water. so we nixed that for the time being. ;]

heres a few before and afters for you on saturdays fun:

sunday.

so sunday morning we did whats become our normal routine:

church followed by a trip to home depot, lol!

church was good, a bit much, but i wont go into that now. home depot is always fun, lol! so upon discovering late saturday night that wed misplaced this hinge, we decided to see if we could get a replacement one at home depot as well as some replacement handles [the ones that came with this thing were just plain ugly with no hope]. also we looked into what it might take to repair or replace the door jambs and door hardware that were partially destroyed at the house right now, although we really liked and wanted to salvage the doors themselves. they were actually in good shape - its just the jambs that were messed up from someone kicking in the door at some point in the past. 

so we did some shopping and actually ran into our new neighbors at home depot which was fun. ive always wanted to run into my neighbors at home depot, haha, i know its silly but its very mayberry and for whatever reason i like the idea of that. although, running into the neighbors just isnt the same without their enormous dog feigning for attention, lol! i dont know what kind of dog this thing is, but its a friendly monster!

so after 'the depot' we went back to the house and got started on our new projects for the day. somehow [lol] i just assumed that installing new door hardware was going to be no big deal. heh, i was wrong. it probably took me 3 or 4 hours to install the first deadbolt having none of the proper equipment, lol! all i had was my drill and my largest bit is a 3/8" so you can imagine it took forever to bore out the 2"+ holes necessary, and to keep them clean for that matter! however, ive gotta say, i did pretty damn well considering. to look at em, youd never have known i didnt have the right equipment :]

so the first deadbolt took forever, but once i figured out some tricks with what tools i did have, the doorknob took like a half an hour, lol! when it was all said and done, it took most of the day, but i got one door mostly finished and all the hardware works properly. [and it only took one re-do on the deadbolt, lol!]

meanwhile, karen had taken on some projects of her own to keep her busy on sunday. while we were at home depot we discovered we were up $h!t creek [so to speak] as far as the fridge hardware was considered, so we were looking to improvise. the big stores dont carry all the little parts [or even the big ones] for fridges, so we decided to look in the general hardware section to see if we could be creative. well we didnt find anything that would work for the hinge [thats a pretty specific part that we were just going to have to re-order from the manufacturer] but we were pretty successful with the handles. as far as we're concerned, handles are handles, whether they be for doors, cabinets, fridges, cars, chairs, whatever. and we were looking to put something cool on our fridge that really spoke to our more fun & eclectic style. i wont spoil the pictures and tell you what we found, but we were very happy with the results! also, when we were looking for the handles we decided we were going to need some spray paint and we got some appliance enamel stuff. this is where karens projects came into play. as we were looking at the spray paint she got an idea for some fun and thats what she spent the day doing. again, pictures to follow - and keep in mind shes not quite done with the appliances yet, so these are just a taste. 

heres the sunday before and afters:

so over-all it was a very successful weekend and we're excited to get out to the house again and see what else we can accomplish!

we miss you all, hope you had a good weekend too!

charged

happy friday!

so yesterday ended up being a good day for the house. 

we finally got the energy guy out and got both the electricity and the gas turned on and it didnt cust us a dime. awesome. the guy even switched on the furnace for us and made sure it was running before he left. 

on the subject of furnaces, heres our story. in most of the houses we looked at the furnace was ancient and in questionable shape at best. but. this house was different, we actually got really lucky with this one and the furnace was installed in 1998 and appears to be in great condition. it works, i can tell you that from feeling the heat when we walked in the door yesterday evening after it had been on for a couple of hours, however we do need to have it serviced. some of the pipes arent installed properly and they arent venting right either. so just to be on the safe side we're going to have it serviced and we also need to install a digital programmable thermostat [or two or three, lol].

also, we got one of the masons estimates back [the one that was technologically challenged, heh]. it was a little odd to say the least. he only gave us prices on the labor, they seemed to be a little random on their pricing [it costs 250 to take down one chimney but 6-800 for the other one??]. so the fact that he didnt include any materials or equipment and that the labor was as high as it was to begin with, makes me hesitant [to say the least] to take this estimate seriously. not to mention he wrote in there that he wants a 3rd of the money upfront and the remainder after which there is no way im doing. ive had a number of people tell me not to pay anything upfront because youll ultimately get screwed. and if this guy doesnt have any kind of official invoices or anything anyway... nah. ill use someone else. hopefully ill have another mason and a roofers estimates pretty soon.

additionally, i finally got that other plumbers information today. i called and gave them all the information and now im just waiting on a call to confirm a date and time to have them out to get the estimate. i gotta say, this process is starting to get a little frustrating, especially when these estimates arent as low as id like them to be. but we've gotta get the work done and it IS a learning experience, so we're doing and well and having fun. hell id say we're doing really well, im sure its not near this smooth for a lot of people to get estimates for work. this whole contractor thing is just hit or miss and it really sucks. i dont understand what happened to honesty and integrity and just plain good business practices. until the last couple of years of experience i never would have imagined that people would agree to give you an estimate and then never answer or return your calls again. or that a firm would just never respond to a job inquiry. seriously? how does a large architectural firm [or dozens of them for that matter] just never respond to multiple inquiries from an interested individual. i understand that times are hard, but common courtesy people! if someone sends you their resume, you at LEAST say "sorry, but we dont have anything available." at the very least... thats just common courtesy, have we lost even that?

anyway, im not going to rant on that business today, just happy thoughts about the house for me, haha! so this weekend, we're going to do more house work. karen is planning to completely scrub the entire interior of this house and make it immaculate. ugh, sounds like a lot of work. additionally, we're going to get a chainsaw and some hedge shears and do some more yard work [a large part of that being the removal of a felled tree in our backyard that is currently destroying a section of our fence - apparently there was some damage from ike at our place after all]. between those two, im sure we'll have more than enough work on our plate to keep us busy, but we're also looking into getting some appliances for the house to try and get it up to livability. there are no, zero, nada appliances in the house right now, so we're looking for all of it. stove, oven, fridge, washer/dryer, grill, you name it - we need it. so we'll be looking on craigslist to see if we can find anything [we've already spotted a few items that have caught our interest] and if we dont make any progress there, who knows. re-sale shops, rich neighborhoods garbage, lol, we'll see.

well anyway, thats your daily update. any thoughts or advice on any of the above projects is welcomed [as always] and i wish you all a happy weekend!

post.script: ive been addicted to a couple of friends blogs for a while now, and it might just be me, but i love getting to be part of their lives, thoughts, ideas, experiments, or whatever else they share. if you havent already checked out my linx section, do so - you might find something you like.

justin's blog - an obituary for mediocrity - is filled with a lot of insight into the current state of disrepair our country has let itself slide into both economically and more specifically on a city-planning level. he asks some great questions [and i usually add a few of my own] that hopefully we can eventually answer and make strides of change and hope in our futures. 

claire's blog - two c's in a pod - just awesome, awesome stuff. claire and chance love to "dish" about their favorite restaurants, pets, and local hotspots back in austin,tx as well as a lot of really great results theyve had with crafty stuff like furniture rehabbing. its just fun and intelligent to read and often has fantastic photos! [did i mention claire and chance are awesome photographers?] not to mention shes got a list a mile long of awesome links to check out if youre into that crafty stuff. :]

kim's blog - running in circles - just a friend back in denver sharing some current events as she takes a leap into marriage and just takes on life in general. shes got a great sense of humor and sarcasm and a playful appreciation for life and the fun little aspects of it that many of us enjoy. 

"theyyyr grrrrrrrrrreat!"

in.my.house

just a short one to keep you all up to speed.

wednesday was a fairly successful day as well. we went to work as usual and did our whole work thing up until lunch time. i worked on more leed stuff, i assume karen did her usual as well. at lunch time we actually both had a lunch & learn. 

ill deviate topics for a moment here - have i discussed lunch & learns?

in our little industry, theres the overarching organization which most registered architects choose to be a member of - the AIA [american institute of architects]. well as a membership requirement you pay dues like so many other professional organizations, as well as various other little requirements - one of which being the AIA's commitment to continuing education even after professional registration. i can't speak to other professions on this one because i honestly have no idea, but the AIA believes that as architects we have a responsibility[and really just the need if we're being honest] to stay informed on current trends in our industry and all those related [which is a LOT] if we're to be the best at our jobs and id say if we're to stay relevant in the world in general. so what this means is that members of the organization have to fulfill x number of points of continuing education each year to meet the guidelines and stay in good favor or what have you. as a result, pretty much every architectural office out there [im speaking specifically of u.s. based, obviously] has regularly scheduled "lunch & learns." this is where some product manufacturer, distributor, or other professional relevant to architecture and its related industries [take door-knob manufacturers or software developers for example as options in this realm] come to the office during lunch time [so as not to waste valuable billable hours], provides lunch, and gives an hour long seminar over whatever the topic is. [so if the guy develops the software from my previous example, he gives a seminar on the relevancies of different software types in the industry, what trends are occurring within the profession involving software vs. traditional methods, and ultimately slips in briefly how his software is a better fit for our office's needs than all his competitors] in return, we get a couple of points towards our c.e. quota, and this guy [yeah, i know im not being pc, get over it] gets the option of having our office spec his product, service, etc.

so during the lunch in learn [or "l&l" for short, or "cell" as its referred to in my office - continuing education lunch & learn] karen got a call from a blocked number and excused herself to answer it, didnt get it in time, and there was no message or callback... weird. we assumed if it were one of our people they'd try again and ignored it. about 5 minutes after my l&l ended i got a phone call from the plumber scheduled that day saying hed be at the house in about 20 minutes, so i coordinated with karen and she met him out at the house. 

from what i can tell it went well, but the guy either didnt know how a high-efficiency water-heater works or was just trying to pull a fast one on us, because he told karen that the current water-heater was venting through the wall instead of the normal through the roof and that he'd have to install a "special fan" to correct this when he installed the new water-heater... the reason its venting through the wall is because its a high efficiency water-heater [be it old and in need of replacement, probably one of the first models] and they vent through the wall... thats how theyre designed. so either the guy is ignorant of his profession, or thinks we are. [im betting on the latter, or maybe just hoping, lol!] 

so she got that taken care of, we'll get his estimate in a day or two. [speaking of, we got the other guys estimate later after i blogged, and it was almost double the first plumber! what?! not to mention he was trying to get us to install new waterlines and venting for the laundry that we already have and look like theyre in perfectly functional condition... is everyone going to try to ef us? seriously? what happened to honesty and integrity in your craft?] so we we're looking good, now we just had to get the energy guy out to connect the electricity and gas, and we'd really be in business. 

well karen picked me up from work as usual and my first question was "what happened with the energy guy?" turns out he never called her... weird... so she called them. the blocked call she missed in the l&l - yeah, that was their guy. so she had to re-schedule that for later on this week. possibly today [thursday] or tomorrow, i cant remember which now. but i do know they gave us a smaller window this time around, 12-4, so thats cool. 

so yeah, thats the update on the contractors. 

hope youre all having lovely days. holla back!

post.script: happy birthday kimber!

post.post.script: daft punk is playing in my house, in my house. 

that is all.

contractors.galore

so today has been a busy day... i wont bother with the topic subtitle/section business, its all about the house these days. :]

monday.

so monday morning the first thing to do on our list was to figure out this barricade situation. the woman i had talked to on saturday said we could go to the city buildings & inspections office and that they would give us the keys to the locks since we were the homeowners and we had the right to access our property. thats good news, right? lol! so apparently they were supposed to open by 7:30 and we figured wed just stop by there on the way to work, get the keys, and then one of us could meet the electric company guy we had scheduled at some point between 8 & 4 [really specific right? freakin energy companies...] out at the house to let him in. no problems right? haha, its never quite that easy.

so we get to the city office at around 7:45 and ask the receptionist to see the guy who id tried calling a few times. she sent us on our way, and after waiting upstairs for someone to fetch him, we met dave, and he was a really nice guy. he walked us through everything we were going to need to do to obtain permits, what we needed to do to get the house up to passing inspections, you name it, the guy was a wealth of great info. except the keys, lol, he forgot all about those until he was about to send us on our way and i was like oh, one last thing, could we get those keys? haha, he laughed and went and talked to a lady who came out to tell us the bad news. the contractor who was out over the weekend doing all the work still had them. so we discussed our options and we decided to swing back buy tuesday morning before work to get them and she swore shed have them for us. so... close enough. whats one more day?

so later on i ended up making a number of phone calls and talking to a variety of contractors. first, i scheduled 3 different plumbers to come out and give us an estimate. all three are local and i just found them using a google map search for the closest to our area, and these are the guys that popped up. one of them even had some ratings on google and they were encouraging, so i felt good about it. so i called all these guys up, gave them my info and scheduled them all for as soon as possible. so we ended up getting one guy for tuesday [today] between 8 & 10am, one guy for tuesday but we didnt get a time frame from the woman on the phone, and the last guy for wednesday between 12 & 4pm. additionally i contacted the new mason [the friend of the window guy] who was very happy to hear from me and said hed love to come out either tuesday or wednesday morning to check it out and we could go from there, and then i called the roofer again who promised he hadnt forgotten about me and would try to be there by wednesday to have a look, thursday at the latest. meanwhile, karen was calling the energy company to try and re-schedule them to come out on a day when we actually had access to the house, and she made that for wednesday as well [although still the really specific time frame of 8-4...]

so all in all we had a pretty successful day i thought. i felt good about how things were going, and even more so how smoothly they seemed to be going even with a few hiccups.

tuesday[today, for those of you keeping score]

so this morning we got up early and got over to the city office at 7:30 and great news, she had the keys! so we were in and out of there in no time flat, just a copy of my i.d. in case anyone wanted to dispute who had the keys, and off we went. so we're headed back to the house and karen is on the phone confirming what time the first plumber would be there, ah... 30-45 minutes. crap. now what?

 so we decided to turn around and id take karen to work [because her office is anal about starting at 8am sharp] and then id meet the morning plumber, take her the truck, and then shed meet the afternoon plumber [hopefully on her lunch break]. so, i dropped her off, turned around, and arrived at the house at the exact same time as the plumber and another truck with two guys who got out and walked towards the house as well... masons? yesss! score. so now i had not only a plumber on time, but also a mason who showed up at all, and i had the joy of juggling both to get an estimate at the same time. well it went just fine. the masons had a look around outside, the plumber did his thing in the basement and when it was all over with i had an estimate in hand from the plumber [nice guy, by the way] and the mason [also a nice guy but technologically challenged] promising to drop off an estimate at the house either wednesday or thursday. sweet. things are lookin good. 

so i took karen the truck and then went to work [only an hour late after all this, not bad at all] and did the whole work thing. right now at work im working on getting leed credits for 6 different schools we're working on, and its a good learning experience, but tedious as hell. for those of you that dont know, LEED is a certification that a building can achieve for designing and building sustainably and efficiently and is a program sponsored by the USGBC [united states green building council]. its a good thing for all new buildings to get, and is a great start in driving our nation to thinking about energy efficiency and what we can do to reduce our impact on the environment. anyway, ive been working mostly on daylighting points lately, but thats not really the point of this post. 

at about a quarter to noon i get a call, its the other plumber, he'll be at the house in about 20 minutes. so i called karen and off she went to meet him. i dont have any gory details of their exciting meeting [lol] but i know it went well, and the plumber should email us an estimate by wednesday afternoon at the latest. 

now. 

so after a long day, we're doing great i think! tomorrow weve got another plumber coming, the energy guy, and potentially a roofer. so house repairs are looking up at the moment, and hopefully they stay that way! honestly, if all wed gotten done today was gaining access to the house id have been pretty happy, but in my opinion we surpassed that by leaps and bounds! 

well, i think thats it for now. if you havent already noticed, look carefully at the blog layout and see if you can find what i changed today, lol! i know, i know... im a nerd. but i cant help it, its who i am. [and i love who i am, heh]

"catch you on the flip side yo"

[for 10 awesome pts in chris' book of awesome, email me and tell me where that quote is from. no cheating, and dont post it directly on the blog to spoil it for everyone else. and seriously, no cheating. just whatever knowledge youve got locked away in that head of yours. hint: potatoes]

post.script: lcd sound system is rocking my world as of late. lovin it. 

post.post.script: http://www.shapeofamerica.org/ [get inspired!]

sore.shoulders

hello hello all! :]

so a little update action is in order i think. 

house.

the biggie obviously is the house. thats really all our excitement these days. 

thursday - thursday after work and still bubbling with the excitement of the new house i dropped karen off at class and went straight to the house to check things out. excuse me, OUR house. hehe! well when i got there, to my surprise i found a notice in the window from the city. this wasnt the first time this had happened, you may remember the condemnation orders we found once that the sellers neglected to tell us about or do anything about, so here we go again. this time its a barricade order. great. since the door still hadnt been repaired [after we told the seller a number of times] the city had come by and found it open to trespassers and given that its also considered a safety hazard in its present condition by the city [and no one wants to get sued...], the city issued orders that the house either be secured from trespassers or else theyd barricade it themselves, the seller had 3 days to comply. um... yeah those orders had been issued long ago, i was shocked they hadnt already barricaded it. so i immediately called the numbers to find out who i needed to talk to and what i needed to do, etc. got no one. the guy im supposed to talk to is only in the office from 8-10, m-f and the rest of the time hes out in the field doing these inspections and such. fantastic. guess i'll try again tomorrow...

friday - so friday i went to the house to meet with a new window guy. [for those of you that remember, a few months ago we got initial estimates on a lot of the work we're going to have to do, i.e. the brick wall, the roof, & windows being the 3 biggest jobs] so i was supposed to meet him at 4, and i got there at roughly 3:50. i had tried calling the city again in the morning to no avail and had left a message for the guy i was supposed to talk to. i hadnt heard back, so i tried calling again while i waited for the window guy. no luck, they were gone, it was basically an answering service i got hold of. even better... what now? no clue... 

well the house was still open, luckily, so the window guy arrived at 4pm, right on time, and damn he was a fast talker. it seems a lot of these contractor, subcontractor types are. or maybe its because im in yankee country and im used to texans talking nice and slow, lol, i dont know. but i had to listen pretty intently to keep up, lol! so we walk through the house, he takes a look at all the windows, we discuss my options, and then he gets busy measuring every window in the house. 

now for those of you that remember from last time we got an estimate from homedepot and it was a pretty decent one we thought. $225 per window installed, an extra charge for those on the second floor and again for the finished attic. the windows were very nice, but on all of our huge windows on the first level we were going to have to do some shimming [for lack of a better term] to get the window openings down to their maximum size. but overall we were pretty happy with the estimate they gave us. well this guy, man, what a deal. no only did all of our windows [save the two floor to ceilings in the front room that are just ridiculously large] fit within their maximum opening size [so no shimming!], the windows were even better [welded corners this time around], there was no extra charge for any windows on any upper levels, and they also had an option for a trim treatment in which they encase the window trim all the way around in a vinyl casing to protect it from the elements and save us the pain of having to paint trim every couple of years. we havent decided for sure on that, it adds 50 bucks per window, but we're definitely considering it. oh and the windows are pretty much the same price installed as home depots base price - these are $235 each with the lowE + argon insulated glass. 

so we're really happy with this guys quote. he's willing to work with us in phases if we need to and overall he was just really friendly and offered us a great deal. so we're most likely going to go with them. [thanks mom-in-law for the recommendation!] and on top of that the guy gave me the name and number of a mason friend of his who he says does great work, very dependable guy, whos currently looking for work. sweetness, another mason! so far we've only gotten one quote on that damn wall, and its a little high we think, so im definitely looking for more options. [ill be calling him later this afternoon]

saturday - saturday morning we decided to get up and go to the tile place near our apartment to see what options we were going to have to work with and start formulating some plans for the work we want to do in the bathrooms and such. after that we were headed over to the house to measure doors to see about possible replacing or at the very least new door hardware in order to secure the house and hopefully avoid the barricading. 

well the tiling place was really cool. there were so many more options than we'd expected! we'd looked at homedepot briefly when we were there for the tiling seminar and their selection was fairly limited, to say the least. but this place was like a tile paradise! they had everything you could imagine, and a lot of stuff you couldnt. we found a lot of what we were looking for there and a lot we werent looking for, lol! overall it was a very successful trip and we're definitely brainstorming about our options now. 

after the tile place we went straight to the house, although we'd spent more time than originally anticipated at the tile place, it was now 11am. yeah, you guessed it, when we got to the house we found that the city had already been there and barricaded - boarded up a window, the back door, and put a pad-lock on the front door. we were stuck. locked out. crap. 

well... i called the city, to no avail, no one works on saturday in the offices that could help me. so we were screwed till monday morning. at which point we'd have to go to the building & inspections office to see about getting a key to our house. well, we were planning to go to homedepot anyway, so instead of doing door stuff we decided to get stuff to do yard work - push brooms, rakes, yard bags, etc. 

after a few hours and trips to not only homedepot but also walmart and mejier, we finally had most of what we needed, including a haircut for chris [oh man did she ever butcher my hair... ugh...i miss you christina!!!] and a few groceries we needed as well. however, it was now about 3 oclock and we hadnt eaten since 8am, so we decided to head home for lunch. after lunch, haha, we didnt want to do anything, we were full and sleepy after all the running around, so we stayed in and watched a couple of netflix, leaving the rough stuff for tomorrow [sunday].

sunday -  so sunday morning we did our usual. a little breakfast, and then off to church for a couple of hours. after church we headed home to do a little research on some remodeling equipment we're thinking about getting [more on that at a later time] and then had lunch before heading over to the house. we got there at about 1:30pm and unloaded the truck of our newly acquired supplies, ready to do some house work!

so we started by raking in the back and then sweeping some, and uncovered that theres actually a concrete slab in the back where the back door is stretching out under the entire stair case. who knew?! it was covered in leaves and a thick layer of dirt every time we were there, so we thought it was just dirt, lol! [not to mention there were a few trees growing through some cracks in the slab, leading to our deception] next we decided to do some maintenance that our neighbors could enjoy and moved to the front and side of the house. we did more raking on the side initially and then the front yard and sidewalk in front of the house, and then came back with a push broom and finally a regular broom for detailing and got all the dirt and dust off the porch, and walks, and it looked sooo different. i thought we could always see the concrete on the side of the house but we pulled 2 trash bags full of dirt and leaves and trash out of the side and we could actually see the sidewalk for the first time! we even uncovered a drain that we never knew was there, lol! so after a few hours of raking & sweeping & bagging we had about 7 bags of crap wed picked up and the house looked great in the front. 

in the process we'd actually met a couple of our neighbors whod been out walking their dogs and noticed us working and decided to say hello. the neighbor directly across the street from us [in one of the newly built houses] was so friendly and a wealth of knowledge - she gave us at least a half a dozen names of people to get in contact with for trash, recycling, a neighborhood e-newsletter, and other various neighborhood related things. shes really nice, and seems excited to have some new neighbors. we probably talked to her for at least a half an hour and she made a few trips inside her house to get us numbers and email addresses, haha! very cool. shes very soft spoken and calm and for some reason her mannerism's and the soft spoken-ness really reminded me of jay, haha! [miss yah roomie!]

so after what had to have been a good 4 hours of the raking and sweeping, we decided to tackle the stairs in the back. they were rotting, because i assume they were never weather treated, and the whole thing was just built very shotty to begin with. we wanted to keep the top deck if possible because theres a door onto it from the house and we'd like to modify it into a nice little balcony off that door in the back. so we climbed up very, very carefully and swept off the decks and stairs to get a good look at what was underneath. after a lot of discussion we decided that the decks were in pretty decent shape, but that all the stairs were pretty rotted and would all need to be rebuilt if we decided we wanted them, but would need to come down for sure. so we started the fun part of remodeling - demolition. 

haha, and it was fun for the most part. there were a million nails in this thing [whoever built it's justification for such a terrible structural design i assume] so it was a serious pain in the ass at first. however, at some point i just decided to hell with pulling nails and started ripping up the pieces with my hands. [thank god for work gloves, im far too impatient when it comes to destruction, lol] so after so many jerks here and there with my massive muscles, *wink wink* i tore the top stairs out without too much trouble. so we chucked those down to the ground and surveyed our progress. 

we were feeling pretty good and started in on the railings on the second deck. those came off alright, with some persuasion, and we decided the 2x4's under them were actually in decent shape. on to the bottom stairs. so i took out a few nails at the top of the bottom stairs while karen made her way to the ground [these stairs were built as one "solid" element on the ground and then just hoisted into place and toe-nailed into position with a handful of nails to secure them... lord...] so then i got down on the ground and we attempted at first to de-nail a few pieces that were connected to the posts, but after i got impatient with that, i just started doing it my way. i grabbed the whole stair element and started jerking on it until pretty quickly i yanked the entire left half completely off and we lowered it to the ground for dismantling. then i jerked off the second half and we did the same. however, in the process we discovered that this thing was built even shotty-er than we had originally concluded. 

the posts went from the ground all the way up to the top, but at the ground level were encased in what appeared to be a concrete footing. having poured a number of concrete footings with dad in my life time, i just assumed that the person that did these had dug out a whole 1-2ft deep and had filled with concrete in roughly a ft diameter up to where we could see it capped off, and that they were pretty securely in the ground - probably entombed in a few hundred pounds of concrete. ha. nope. during my *ahem* careful dismantling *ahem* of the stair elements, we discovered that the posts were simply resting on top of these little concrete mounds and just appeared to be encased in them, and every time id jerk, theyd pop up and then back down. good lord... who built this thing??? so now we've decided that the whole thing is going to have to come down and be rebuilt if we want a balcony - which we do. luckily some of the wood is salvageable for re-use [mainly the 4x4 posts and some of the structural 2x4 members that were most likely treated lumber to begin with.]

so after all that we were beat. especially me after my impatient ripping destruction, lol. that thing must have weighed a few hundred pounds, but with my adrenaline going i barely noticed, haha! [man i love adrenaline] so we did a little clean-up in the back and decided to call it a night. we'd been there about 5 and a half hours, and things we're looking really good. 

the pictures probably dont do all the work justice, but trust me, the transformation was pretty unbelievable for just one days work. and now hopefully you understand the title of this post, lol! right now my back and shoulders are pretty sore after all that sweeping and deconstruction. but it was a lot of fun, and we're pretty fired up to get some more work done. 

well kiddos, thats all ive got for now. tip your waiters, and drive safely. you dont have to go home, but you cant stay here! ;]

post.script: currently listening to apocalyptica's new album, its pretty amazing!

day.five

house.

so... its official!

we closed this morning!

we're proud homeowners!

if you want to see some pictures, click here!

this has been a serious roller coaster, but now, we've got it! thanks to everyone for their support, now the fun [hard] part starts as we begin renovations. 

detox diet.

we're done. we decided 5 days was enough. ive stayed steady at having lost 10lbs.

yesterday was the same menu as always, but for dinner we decided it was time for a little dressing on our salads to celebrate the end.  and wow, salad dressing [even the fat free kind] is amazingly rich in flavors! ive definitely got a new appreciation for the taste of food now. 

however, we're not totally abandoning this idea of eating healthier. we intend to stay on a healthier foods diet for the foreseeable future. yes, we'll incorporate some of those foods we gave up back in, but in much more moderation than before. we've got a general plan for how we're going to take it from here on out, and we're excited about the prospects of incorporating real food into our diets again! :]

so thats really all i have to report for now. today is the first non-raw foods diet day, and im actually excited about eating lunch again. this morning i even made some egg beaters for breakfast and they were delicious! ive definitely noticed that im eating a lot less, so thats good. i think the detox was good for minimizing my appetite a little. yesterday we worked out as usual and we ran a full 1.25miles without stopping, so that felt pretty good. and then last night we watched the debate - and i think it was finally a decent one. they actually talked specifics about the issues for once.

well yall, i gotta get to work now, just wanted to share our excitement!

miss you all!

day.four.part.two

so we definitely had some exciting news yesterday with the closing finally scheduled, but we were still on this dumb diet. and still are...

breakfast - fruit

lunch - vegetables

dinner - vegetables...

im so ready for this to be over. we discussed quitting thursday and going to dinner to celebrate the house and having real food. but karen has class, so we'll see how that goes. 

for now it seems my weight loss has plateaued at the 10lbs. it hasnt really moved from there yet. but we also havent worked out in two days now. one - because i didnt have any strength, two because of karen's class schedule. she has class immediately after work on tuesdays and it makes it really difficult for us to make it to work out before hand, lol. and then well, by the time shes done its already 8:30 and neither of us are in the mood to go work out. 

instead, we went to the grocery store last night and bought some more vegetables... 

so anyway, today is wednesday and we're just starting day 5 of the detox. i dont know how healthy i do or dont feel at this point, but i know im craving real, warm food.

well i hope everyone is doing well out there.

thanks for all the emails and comments you guys are leaving, i really enjoy them! :]

update@4pm: you guys didnt wish hard enough, we're getting the house for the original 33k we offered. heh, thanks for trying though! we close tomorrow morning at 9am and we've got everything ready, we're crazy excited! ;]

day.four.part.one

we finally heard back from the title company and the realtor and the seller today!

they have the title,and we're clean!

we've finally set a new closing date!

thursday morning at 9am!

we're still waiting on the final price, but keep your fingers crossed for 25!

ahha! this is great news!

post.script: we've already decided that soon after we get the house we'll be having a "before party" and all our friends that are near by are most definitely invited to come over! [before as in.. before we rennovate the hell out of it, lol!] more on that when we have specifics, but keep it the back of your mind! :]

day.three

this wont be a long one. 

thanks you guys for your encouragement, i really need it right now... 

yesterday was not fun.

we had fruit for breakfast. 

there were vegetables for lunch. 

after work i was so drained and felt so weak that i just couldnt go work out. 

karen understood, she's not feeling as bad as i am, but she understands. 

for some reason this diet seems to be affecting me more psychologically (and physiologically) than her, not sure why.

we're pretty much idiots in my book for thinking we could quit sodas, meat, breads, dairy, spices, and sweets. all at the same time. all cold turkey. stupid. i dont think ill make it the whole week, im really loathing meal time. its like, "oh. raw fruit and/or vegetables. again. kill me..." so yeah... we'll see what happens. 

oh and did i mention vegetables for dinner. surprise right?

bleh.

side.note: ive lost 10lbs in 3 days. that cant be healthy...

day.two

so about an hour after blogging last night, karen and i both started getting some pretty serious hunger pangs. she ate some cucumber but i just ignored it and we went to bed. and then a few times in the middle of the night the hunger pangs woke me up, but again i just ignored them and slept it off. 

this morning we were both feeling a little better as far as hunger goes. we were just kind of normal, so we got up and went about our usual sunday morning routine. for breakfast we had an assortment of fruit - cantaloupe, pineapple, strawberry, & grapes. not exactly following the diets plan, but eh, close enough. fruit is fruit. 

then we ran some errands and went to church. after church we came home and had lunch. lunch was another salad, though this time we were allowed mixed greens [ooo, different kinds of lettuce...] and a few almonds with our orange. when it was over i was still feeling pretty hungry, but i just sucked it up and occupied my mind with a movie and working on the house model - meanwhile my AMAZING wife ironed some work shirts for me for this week. love her! :]

after all that we went to go workout again and this time i was seriously wrecked after the run. i was feelin very dizzy, light headed, and faint. so we walked a few laps and then did a light workout before heading home. 

once we got home we got cleaned up and then did dinner, we actually just finished. after my little spell at the rec center im convinced that we're definitely not getting enough protein to sustain our workout schedule, so we cheated a little at dinner. we werent supposed to have olives till tomorrow night, but we had some tonight and then we added some black beans to the salad for protein - which were definitely never mentioned in the plan, but eh, screw it. i think over all we're still doing really good even if we are feeling extremely hungry most of the time.

its the weirdest feeling being stuffed full of food, but feeling so empty and unsatisfied at the same time, just bizarre. i think mentally my health is not quite what it should be. i used to get excited about eating, and now it just depresses me to think about food. meal time is turning into more of a torturous experience than a happy one. but im sure i'll survive. meanwhile, the only thought that is clearly on the fore-front of my mind all the time is this new triple steak burrito from taco bell that we saw a commercial for when we were working out yesterday. just thinking about it now makes me salivate. it looks so delicious.... ugh. diets suck. 

well thats all ive got for now. karen and i are about to go see burn after reading at the local theatre. it looks pretty funny and its got a pretty all-star cast from what i know about it, so hopefully we wont be disappointed. 

all-right kids, play nice. 

tune in again same bat-man time, same bat-man place. 

post.script: have you guys checked out google chrome yet? im giving it a test run right now and so far i dont have any complaints. check it out.

day.one

so for those of you who didnt catch last weeks blog, heres a quick recap of whats going on and then we'll get into the real meat... well, coconut meat i guess. or maybe citrus meat. anyway.

house.
we didnt close yet, we got delayed because of the title search. no update there really, we heard from the title company and they dont actually even have the deed yet from the seller, so we're just waiting it out. oh and we're not being charged the fee for delaying the closing because its not our fault, so thats good.

job.
karen and i are both working, karen is just sustaining from day to day mostly, and my work has been a bit slow to start. this week things did pick up though and i was fairly busy most of the time with mundane tasks that were just... time occupying i suppose.

other. [heres where the fun starts]
karen and i decided we were going to go on a detox diet after some inspiration karen got from my friend claire's blog. [thanks again claire.] the idea is to just do a general cleanse [and it can result in some pretty nice weight loss as a side effect] but i think karen and i are really just more concerned with feeling as healthy as we can, so we're going to give this thing a shot.
well, we couldnt start right away because we did start looking into all the different options for a detox diet and theres some preparation involved - obviously youre significantly changing your normal diet for any of the ones you can find out there. so, we had a lot of food that wasnt going to be on the diet that would go bad if we didnt eat it before hand, and a lot of food we were going to need to procure in order to do this thing. so we spent the week trying to empty our fridge of all our meats and breads and dairy that wouldnt last till the end of a 7 day detox.
we eventually found a detox diet that we decided we were going to try and it basically consists of nothing but raw fruits, vegetables, and a few nuts & seeds. so... no cooking, no spices, nothing processed, and as i previously stated - no meats, grains, or dairy [which is like 75 percent of our normal diet]. so yesterday we went to the grocery store with our massive list of fruits and vegetables listed on the diet and got enough for hopefully at least the first 3 days. we were afraid to get everything for the 7 days at once, because with everything being fresh & raw, if we didnt get to it in the first couple of days we certainly didnt want anything to spoil. plus, we really didnt need to get as much food as we'll need all at once, its a lot.
so basically we found a couple of sample weeks on this website that lays out your meals for the day - one winter/fall week and one spring/summer week. we decided that we would try and follow the food options per day [theres a progression of specific foods youre allowed to have each day] but mix and match between the seasons. for example: day one breakfast from summer, lunch & dinner from winter. if youre interested in reading it yourself, click here for the outline of our detox diet.

day one.
so all that to get to today. and its been an interesting day. well this morning i got up earlier than karen [she hasnt been feeling good for a few days - im afriad shes getting sick...] and had my breakfast. i did a summer option and had a lot of watermelon. it was quite tasty, i hadnt had watermelon in quite some time and it was really really delicious [but as a side effect you have to pee a LOT]. karen skipped breakfast because of how she was feeling.
lunch came around and we did kind of a combo of the winter breakfast/lunch, we experimented with cracking open a coconut and eating the meat of it and drinking the water + i had a spinach salad with half an avocado and a bunch of orange slices [and i added a little cilantro because i LOVE cilantro]. it was really good once you get used to how relatively dry the salad is without and dressing. but quite tasty. the combination of all those flavors really complimented each other very well.
after lunch we decided to go workout, which ill admit was a bit draining [okay, very.] considering the lack of protein and grains we didnt have today that we're used to. but we got a good workout in. we're now running a solid mile before every workout without stopping [which is a HUGE accomplishment for me! when we started i couldnt even run a half mile without stopping and by the end of the half mile i was so out of breath i thought id go into an asthmatic coma.], we ran about an 8 minute mile, and im only mildly winded afterwards. [we've been doing the solid mile for a few days now, twice we actually did the mile before and after the workout - wow thatll wear you out!] then we worked out for about an hour and were so exhausted when it was over we just went home ready to pass out.
but we didnt. we were starving, haha. so we decided to do our dinner. for dinner we followed the winter plan [im not going to talk about the seasons anymore after this post, lol] and had a large spinach salad with cucumber, tomato, half an avocado, and lemon [and again i added cilantro, hehe]. again it was really delicious and very dry. luckily im already starting to get used to the full yet un-satisfied feeling you have when these meals are complete. but the salad really was good, and it looked great!

[and i may have added just a few sunflower seeds on top, but shh! dont tell!]

so now, here we are. ha, just finished dinner and we're thinking about watching a movie or something. but it was a pretty decent first day - and we're hoping they get better.

cheers!


post script: if you havent already noticed, i did change all the images on the left side of the page. they were all just random images i found online of cincy, but instead i put up a bunch of pictures i took during out adventures in house hunting. the first one is THE house we're buying, and yes - i did dr. the last one a little for the fun of it.

post post script: im about to work more on the house model and i thought id give you a little update on where it is at the moment, enjoy. [door detailing at the request of the wife.]

a.short.one

house.
so for those of you that havent already heard, we didnt actually close today like we were supposed to. there was some issue with the title search taking longer than normal and they werent finished by this morning, so we have to delay in waiting for its completion. other than that, as far as we know, everything is in order and we're ready to close as soon as possible. so keep your fingers crossed that itll be very soon, we're hoping this week for sure.

work.
work is going well. ive got enough going on to keep me busy most of the day and the office is slowly getting used to me being here. its an interesting culture though, the architects/project managers in this office dont naturally or instinctively hand down work to the underlings [which took me a few days and a few conversations to really understand] and instead prefer a lot of the time to do the work themselves that someone in my position would normally do. [what we in the industry refer to as the b!%*&-work, lol] so what that means is that where im used to having a handful of project managers eagerly doting upon me the mundane tasks they feel theyre too busy to do, i now have to circulate the office each morning asking each individual project manager if they think they could find something for me to do today. [which is definitely a lesson in humility - i hate asking for b!%*&-work...] however, after a conversationi had this morning, theres a possibility that i'll be getting to put one of my biggest strengths to use [organization! woohoo!] and help the office by giving their project storage system and drawing standards some much needed attention. more on that as i know more.

karen.
karen is good. shes been enjoying her classes as far as i can tell, and work is... well, work. shes still um, frustrated, with her office environment and the work shes doing is beyond mind-numbingly-dull, but its a job and it pays better than mickey-d's, so she tries to be happy with it. things between us are great, we seem to be adjusting to our living situation and this whole marriage thing better than some half-glass-empties anticipated. ill admit i feel inadequate at times as a provider, we havent yet been able to live solely on my income when little things like truck repairs or me getting laid off pop-up, but she loves my in spite of my faults and hopefully someday soon we'll get there. getting the house should help significantly so we can stop throwing money away on rent and storage each month, although the other obstacles with the house are definitely going to be a financial burden for a little while...

im learning to thank god for obstacles he presents me with. ill keep trusting that theres nothing coming my way that i cant handle, and while its extremely frustrating at times and im never clear on the purpose behind some of these hurdles, im trying to be patient. wisdom, strength, patience. thanks...

family.
everyone in texas seems to be doing better. things are slowly getting cleaned up, everyone has power as far as i know. theres still ridiculous devastation that beyond anything you could possibly imagine, but theyre making it. dad just got back to saudi and hes fine. long trip, and uncomfortable next to a rather large woman all the way to amsterdam, but hes there and safe. other than that, i dont have much new information to report on the family, ive been a little out of the loop for whatever reason.

last weekend.
karen and i mostly just tried to catch up on little things weve been getting too busy to stay on top of. we did laundry, we cleaned the apartment, some shopping, catching up on the daily show and the colbert report, some little repairs around the apartment... on saturday morning we went to a tiling class at homedepot and learned everything we'll need to know to do tiling projects at the house - oh yes bathroom-suite, you are mine! it was actually very fun and informative and if youre interested in learning hands on how to do home improvment type stuff, i definitely recommend going to homedepot things. they usually do them every saturday, check your local on for specifics. saturday evening we went to a little dinner party at a friend of karen's and had a nice time. some home-made pizza, a little wine, a lot of laughs, it was nice. we're hoping to get together with some of the people again to have a debate-party for the next presidential go-around. [and speaking of politics. i wont go into it now, but in the near future im going to post a little rant of my views on the current situation...] the only other thing worth mentioning from this weekend was that karen and i decided we're going to go on a little detox diet [thanks to karen getting some inspiration from claire's blog, lol! thanks claire] starting next weekend. we've done some research and theres a bit of planning we'll need to do before hand so hopefully we can be prepaired by next monday.

well "ya'll," thats all ive got for now.

tune in next time...

[for stew: currently listening to p86-rival factions]

your.average.update [+tiny.rant]

well, its been a little while and i thought i should probably update you all on how things are going here.

house.
things are looking good for the house, finally... weve heard back from the realtor that our contract was approved by the bank that owns the property and we're now officially in this thing. our closing date is set for october 6th, [and for those of you about to check your calendars, thats next monday] and everything is looking good. we've talked to the insurance company about things and we're continually touching base with the realtor to make sure we're getting everything we need, so hopefully we wont have any surprises pop up.
additionally, i spoke with one of the architects at work today who deals with contractors and remodelling on a daily basis and he had a lot of good advice for me. he thinks the original bid we got for the brick repair was pretty high and that we should get another quote. and in so saying, he gave me the number of a brick guy he uses very often, guaranteed he'd give be a better price, told me to give the guy his name, etc. very cool. and the more we talked about it, the same situation arose with the roofer, gave me a guy, etc. he says that on any work we do we should get at least 3 estimates on the work and that we should never pay anything up-front. if they want you to pay up-front and wont take no for an answer, say thanks for your time and walk away. so all in all, he's been extremely helpful and hopefully we can get some good work at a fair price. overall, things are going very well with the house and we're getting pretty excited about closing in 5 days! :]

work.
so i officially started my new job on monday and i gotta say, i like it here. things are going very well, everyone is very friendly and accomodating, and im getting into the stream of things pretty quickly. the first 2 days things were a bit slow for me, just doing hr paperwork and getting settled in. i got a computer and desk and got everything set up and customized, got my email working, got introduced to everyone in the office and had the tour, didnt really work on anything, but it was a good day.
the second day i really just kinda hung around waiting for someone to need me to do something, did a lot of the same stuff as the day before and additionally i started putting together some drawings of the house and a 3d model. theyre estimates based on rough exterior dimensions from the city auditors info, but given that this is what i do and i have a pretty good photo archive of the house online to work off of [to visit my online photo albums click here.], i put together a fairly accurate set of plans id say. and i think the 3d model is coming along as well. wed like to use the 3d model to kind of test our ideas about remodeling as far as where we want to move things, what details might look like, different paint schemes or surface texture ideas, etc. ive already got a 3d model in revit of the house thats as accurate as the plans are, but revit really just isnt optimal for doing the sort of multiple idea testing that we're wanting the model for.

anyway, so today the big boss in charge apparently wasnt happy with my not having anything to do and sent out an email to everyone to give me work, so after a short time this morning i was inundated with projects in my lap, lol. its been fun though, ive worked on 3 or 4 different things and ive been kept pretty busy most of the day. also, i talked to kind of the architect in charge of the techy stuff around here and hes really excited about my technical knowledge of computers, software, etc. and i get the feeling ill be involved in a lot of tech support when things pop up. [which is always cool, im a huge nerd and i eat this stuff up, haha!] and not only that, but eventually the office is planning to make the transition to revit and it appears im the only person in the office with any kind of revit experience or knowledge so theres also a very good [or definite, lol] chance that i'll be heavily involved in everything to do with that transition. overall, id say ive got some job security, lol! so im feeling good about things right now.

other.
life at home is good. karen is taking 2 night classes this semester and she seems to like them both. it gives me a little freetime in the evenings to do whatever i want [mainly watch tv shows shes not into, lol!] while shes in class. on and speaking of which, whos watching the new season of heroes?! wow its been crazy so far, im lovin it! and has anyone checked out fox's new show "fringe"? karen and i have watched the first two episodes of that one and i gotta say, im hooked. theres really nothing about this show that i dont love. im eating it up and i cant wait to get home tonight and watch the 3rd episode! [all of which im watching on fox.com since we dont have tv, lol!] id say between fringe and house, fox has got some killer primetime this season and are going to bank on it, but thats just my opinion.
in other news, we renewed our memberships at the rec center this week now that weve both been paid and have a little cash in the bank. we've been going all week and it feels really good to be back in the gym.
along with that something kind of weird happened over my little week off and i guess because i had the option i was eating a few more times a day and as a result eating a little less each time. well whatever the reason, my metabolism has speeded up pretty good and im hungry like every 3 hours, lol. but thats a great thing because my metabolism is actually working and im trimming down a little because of it [and the working out] so if you want my advice [and obviously you do], the only real way to loose a few extra pounds is to eat more times a day in smaller portions and to excersize. [and the best excersize to burn calories is definitely running!] and i dont care what youve heard and from who, i know for a fact [classes, reading, and personal experience] you HAVE to build muscle to burn fat - if you wunna lose that tummy, you gotta build muscle in conjunction with eating better and cardio. so do those crunches and add some weights to it! haha, i think thats enough non-requested personal trainer rant for now ;)

well kids, thats all ive got. feel free to comment right here on the blog or you can always email me [if your fortunate enough to have my email address] with any questions, comments, or just to say hi.

thnx!