super.quickie

just a really quick update on some random productivity of mine the last couple of days...

[new giz gate done monday, this one is a little over an inch from the floor and is 3'-6" tall... there will be no jumping over or crawling underneath, heh]

[bathroom progress, one coat done yesterday to surprise the wifey when she got home from school. she was pleased.]

epic.blogging [three]

post intermission two...

[again, if you havent read the previous two posts, there may be some spoilers in this one..]

so for the final post im going to discuss the other pretty big news in karen and my life over the past 6 weeks. honestly its been a pretty drastic change in retrospect and has been quite life altering. however, i cant say its a negative change...

well, enough with the stalling, the topic of this post is our new addition to the family. no karen isnt pregnant, so if thats where youre mind is going... stop it. karen and i are not in a place to have a kid and neither of us wants to right now... [if ever?] however, since before we even bought the house karen had been hinting [and pretty blatantly] that she wanted a dog. well, we finally got one.

after months and months of karen mentioning she wanted a puppy and us going through the cycle of her looking for them online and visiting the local spca, at the beginning of september the stars finally aligned. we were in bed and both tinkering on our computers before calling it a night [kind of the modern version of the couple reading books together in bed before going to sleep, lol] and unbeknownst to me, karen was yet again searching for puppies. well she happened to come across a little black pug for 25 bucks and she just melted at the sight of him. she quickly had me look at him and even i had to admit he was pretty cute, so i seceded and said she could have him. she quickly emailed the guy selling him and said we were interested and then 15 minutes later he emailed her back. sorry. he had already sold him... so karen went to sleep rather upset that night at the loss of her perfect puppy.

as the next morning came i had already forgotten about the puppy but karen was still upset about it. so we went to run errands for the day and in an attempt to cheer her up i insisted that you just never know. anything could happen, right? what if he didnt like the person that was supposed to buy him? so she cheered a little at that thought, and i shrugged the whole thing off expecting to just go back to normal for a few months until she came across another pup she just had to have. well little did i know, that all too often im more right than i even know....

a few hours went by and we were working on some project and not really thinking about it at all when suddenly my phone rings. i answer it and of course, its the guy selling the puppy. he wants to know if we're still interested because hes had two people now that lied to him and never showed up and the puppy is ours if we want him. so i hang up and before i can even tell karen the good news, shes already over heard the conversation and practically tackles me to the ground jumping into my arms to hug me. apparently shes still interested....

so we go get the money and drive over to the guys apartment to meet the little puppy and karen falls in love instantly. at this point, its official, we have a new member to the family. well his back story [because ive been asked every single time, so i may as well tell you] is as follows... his original owner flaked out and randomly moved to california. in the process she totally ditched the poor little guy with a relative. well the relative hasnt heard anything from the original owner and doesnt expect to and lives in an apartment that doesnt allow pets and needed to get him into a new home. his name is gizmo [definitely not our choice... at all...] and well, he knows his name, so we cant change it. he was about 11 months at the time and is now about a year old. and lucky for us this was a package deal. for the 25 bucks they were asking he came with a huge cage, the kind you have to get for big dogs that dont fit in the little crates, he came with a chain for outside, a retractable leash, and a really nice harness that goes around his neck and legs. and if that wasnt enough, he also came with some puppy bath stuff, a pillow, a bag of food, food bowls, and a number of toys and such... so basically... we had everything we were going to need for him, it was a hell of a deal!

well its been a little over a month now and giz has definitely become part of the family. at first he seemed really confused and a little apprehensive about being relocated yet again, but he quickly got over that. hes extremely friendly and to be honest, a bit nuts at times, lol. hes pretty well house-broken, although it seems he still has a number of accidents - but we're working on it. hes pretty stinkin cute and i have an album on the photo site that has a ton of pictures of him, and we're constantly adding to them. overall he seems to be pretty well quite at home and we really enjoy having him. [although karen more so than me, heh]

so things are pretty normal with him around now and we've gotten him into a routine so to speak and things have been going pretty well so far. in the most recent news, this weekend we decided to do a little much needed yard work after church and as a result decided to try and seed the yard again [i think i mentioned this yesterday...] well, along with seeding the yard we've noticed that a lot of people around here put hay over their seed which does something or other to help the grass grow. honestly, id never heard of this before and i have no clue how it works, but we decided that all our other attempts to seed have failed miserably and its worth a shot. so we went to the depot and got the smallest bail of hay they sell and when i was done spreading it over our fresh seed we still had basically the entire bail left and nothing to do with it. so as brilliant as i am i suggested we just leave it in the yard and maybe get some pumpkins and call it fall decoration. well karen seemed to be fine with the idea and we got a few pumpkins...

now then, how this relates to the giz... [did i mention we have like a million nicknames for the little bugger? everyday it seems we come up with a new one, but just a few are as follows: the giz, gizzard, gizmodo, gizmotron, gizmotronic, gizmatic... and so on... ] well i had never carved a pumpkin before and it was a pretty beautiful day out so i decided to try my hand at it. and as i pondered what kind of jack-o-lantern i was going to create the giz was looking at me as quizzically as usual, completely befuddled as to what i was doing with this huge round orange thing in my lap, and it suddenly seemed obvious that i was going to have to make a giz-o-lantern.

well after a quick sketch on the pumpkin with my unable-to-sit-still model, and a couple of hours of trial and error pumpkin carving i eventually conquered the task and resulted with a pretty decent giz-o-lantern. obviously hes way too cute and cuddly to be a scary halloween decoration, so i had to embellish his ferociousness a little, but alas, here is the result...

i think he turned out pretty scary anyway ;]

in other recent news... as we were carving the pumpkin and sitting out on the porch i happened to notice that giz appeared to be crying and mentioned it to karen. after looking at him a little closer we decided he must have just gotten some dust blown in his eye or something and didnt really think much more of it. he wasnt crying or whining or anything so we quickly forgot about it and moved on with our day. well... the next morning i got up and took him out and when we got back and i took him in the kitchen i noticed that his eye was still watering, that it was a little gunky, and that it appeared to be swollen about halfway shut... well, being the good father that i am, i quickly located the nearest animal clinic and gave them a ring and explained what was happening. they said it was probably a good idea to bring him in, that a lot of pets develop allergies this time of year and its better to be on the safe side... so... i got karen out of bed and we quickly dressed and loaded him up and headed over to the clinic.

well long story short, over an hour later we left having spent 50 bucks for the supposed 22 dollar visit in which they stained his eyes[16 dollar test procedure] and discovered that he had a small corneal scratch, and were prescribed some ointment to put in his eyes[10 dollar prescription] 3 times a day, daily. however, we also needed an e-collar [the big cone things] so that he didnt scratch it more and they were out so we had to go to petsmart... again... 50 dollars later... we had an e-collar and a new travel bag for him so that he can ride in the car and not completely spaz out the entire time or if we take him on a trip or something... well when we got home i decided to put this stupid thing on him and since then, well... hes pretty much made it clear that he hates my guts... and looks at me with complete loathing for making him wear the dumb thing...

[thats what i call disdain...]

however, he seems to be healing pretty well, his eye seems to be opening the normal amount again today, so i guess its worth it. not to mention, well, hes just a puppy and we took it off him last night to let him eat and drink in the kitchen, and 10 minutes later he had his head in my lap looking for rubs and scratches and all was forgiven, haha. gotta love short term memory. ;]

well... i guess thats about it for now. youre all pretty well caught up on the goings on of our lives in recent history, and you even got a few pictures out of it. hope you enjoyed the updates and that all is well with you, wherever you happen to be. know that we miss you [especially texas for me!] and love you and hope to see you soon.

epic.blogging [two]

well now then, post intermission one...

[spoiler alert::if you havent read part one of this series yet, you may want to find it now and do so...]

hopefully youve all had a restroom break and a leg stretch at least [i know i did...] now lets get back into it all, shall we?

so the next part of this series that i was intending to post about was what other things ive been doing in my newly acquired "time-off." well... for those of you who can remember back that far, you may remember that karen had only just gotten back in town when i last blogged a little over a month ago. well needless to say this getting laid-off thing was a bit of a shock to my beloved, but she has been pretty strong and mostly pretty encouraging throughout the last month. i know shes trying to be patient and i know she wants me to be happy, but she would also like for me to be going to work every day and be bringing home a paycheck...

at any rate, karen had just returned home from her excursion in san francisco and if you dont know what im talking about, well... im not going to repeat it now. and now that she was back from cali she had about a month off before her classes started back up [so for those of you doing the math, ive actually been unemployed roughly 6 weeks and she started back to class about 2 weeks ago...] so we had everyday together at home. for the first couple of weeks i was pretty dedicated to re-doing my portfolio and applying to as many places as i could possibly squeeze in, but after about the first 3 weeks went by i definitely calmed that down a lot and i am now only applying to 5-10 per week id say. well i was dedicated for sure, but i definitely didnt work from sun up to sun down on work stuff, so there was always time in between or breaks or a day off here or there that karen and i spent together working on things. what things you ask? well they fell into two categories, one being house, two being karens art.

so we'll start with karens art because its a much shorter topic and involves no pictures. karen as part of her other mfa [master of fine arts] grad program, has to continually be working on art year round. so as soon as she got back to cincy she hit the ground running. i cant really put it all in a time period, but there have been a myriad of tasks involved with karens art and shes been sweet enough to let me help out some and feel like im contributing. on the list includes things like going to pick up supplies, materials, etc around town - specifically donated furniture from craigslist free-be ads that she needed a little muscle for - and also resulted in our new bed and a little extra cash from selling our old one on craigslist, haha! also, there have been some labor intensive art projects that shes let me help out with when she needed a break and needed some extra labor to step in, or when she needed help with a particularly difficult task that required more hands or more muscle. and then a few times shes even let me help out with the actual construction and design of things like frames for certain pieces or mounting, you know, the fun guy stuff. =] so thats all im going to say about karen's art for now, but for about a solid month she kept me fairly busy in my in-between time acting as her artist's assistant.

now then, for the longer topic, the house. well, now that we had all this "free-time" on our hands, there were certainly a ton of things that we could get done around the house now that we had the time to do them. a lot of our projects were overlapping because frankly, we can never focus on just one thing at a time, but the chronology more or less starts with the second floor bathroom. for those of you that remember the second floor bathroom from pictures a million years ago, it needed a lot of work. it was in pretty bad shape and the people that lived here before us had some pretty terrible decorating tastes, but it had a lot of potential.

as you can see, there wasnt a lot there to begin with, but some really tacky border around the ceiling. what you cant see is that the entire bathroom is floor-to-ceiling wall paper that has been painted over white - and not well at that. theres more pictures of the progression on my pictures website if youre interested, but im just going to show before and where we are now on the actual post. so from this picture, when my dad was here he changed out the light fixture in the bathroom so that theres something a lot nicer there now. and the black shelves you see were covered in this disgusting dust and grime stuff and while the moms collective were here over the summer my wonderful mother-in-law was kind enough to remove all of those from the walls as well. so when we first started in on the bathroom some of the hard stuff had already been done, but there was still much left to do.

well first things first, we had to get rid of all that wall paper... and if we'd known how much of a pain it was going to be... well... we might have decided to just leave it, but we're trying to do things the right way when we do projects here, to the best of our ability anyhow, so the wallpaper was coming down. thus began the arduous process of removing the wall paper. i am not exaggerating at all when i tell you this took days and days in a bathroom thats not even 100sf... the first step to removing wall paper is to decide on the method by which you will attempt [note: attempt...] to do so, and we were in no hurry to mess with toxic chemicals so we opted for the steam and scrape method. in this method you use a little hand-held disk that has two serrated spinning wheels on the bottom and you roll it around the wallpaper in excessive strokes to perforate the wallpaper there-by allowing the next step, the steaming, to get behind the paper and melt the glue.... well thats how its supposed to work anyway, and then easy-peasy the wallpaper comes sliding off the wall like limp noodles... riiight.... well no one told us this, but when the wallpaper has been painted over god knows how many times by the idiot previous owners, this method doesnt exactly go as smoothly as it sounds... we found out the hard way that we essentially had to do the entire bathroom twice over. once to perforate and remove the layers of paint on top of the wallpaper, the second time to remove the wallpaper itself. so for the first couple of days we did this until we'd removed the majority of the wallpaper within reach - and laboriously at that...

then i went through the chore of shutting off all the water valves and removing the various fixtures from their respective homes. well some came off better than others and there were definitely some water issues... not to mention we discovered that the toilet was so old that the screws that held the tank on had completely rusted out and were impossible to unscrew. whereby making it impossible for us to remove the tank without uprooting the entire toilet - not a matter to be taken lightly, nor one i was interested in pursuing for this little project - and in the end we resolved to just remove as much as we could as tight to the tank as we could and then just paint over the rest, haha.

so after getting all of the fixtures mobile, we proceeded to remove all the rest of the wall paper in those hard-to-reach areas and rearranged the bathroom a dozen times as necessary. next [still while karen was working on wall paper] i started to remove and replace the old two prong outlet and the old light switch with newer electrical and then while the sink was out anyway, worked on replacing the old faucet with a new one we'd gotten for that bathroom as well. now i say new... however we're on a strictly no spending budget here, haha, so all of the projects we've been working on have involved us only using any of the supplies we'd already bought long ago to do these projects with and had just never gotten around to. so anyway, eventually we finally got all the wallpaper down and the faucet and electrical changed out and the next part was my favorite of course... patching and prepping...

so we went around the entire bathroom and anywhere we needed to, patch a hole, or a piece of drywall that came up with the wall paper, or caulk around trim, you name it. we patched and sanded and prepped the entire bathroom. then, after letting that dry for a day, we finally were able to get in there and put on not one, but two coats of primer to all the walls, ceiling, and trim before we temporarily finished with that project. at this point its been as we left it - ready for the actual coat of colored paint and then for all of the fixtures to be put back together - for a couple of weeks now, but as you know, we're easily distracted.

it may not look like much, but to us its a vast improvement over what we started with and soon we intend to paint some color in there. and then if we had the money to do it [maybe someday....] we have plans to potentially re-do the tile on the floor and theres a fairly inexpensive wall treatment that i came up with that we'd really like to try out as well. other than that we're going to put up some shelves i have that will really go well with the wall treatment and hopefully we can get a new faucet and some shower accessories for the tub as well and really turn this thing into a functioning bathroom, lol! onto the next project...

well other than the bathroom weve worked on a variety of other little projects, some more minor like putting up some decorative shelves and getting a new sofa for the dining room [pictures on photo site] to finally cleaning up the yard for the fall and attempting to seed grass for the umpteenth time...

to our other really big project - the kitchen. now if youve been keeping up with this blog for long you'll probably know that we've already accomplished quite a drastic transformation in the kitchen from what it originally was and ive got tons of progress pictures up of the transformation so far on the photo site.

[the.before.shot]

however we decided it was finally time to take it to the next level and clean up the clutter. now i dont know how well you could tell from all the old pictures but that island you see in the before shot is a bit of a monster and really ate up a lot of space in the kitchen. well karen and i have been wanting to get rid of it for a long time now but it was really useful for storage purposes because as you can also see... theres not much cabinet space to speak of. well we'd discussed at length many times over the different options we had for the kitchen - from going with all new cabinets and getting exactly what we wanted to making do with what we had and everything in between. well eventually we decided the best option would be to get additional cabinets for a reasonable price to supplement the ones we already had and hopefully gain enough space to eventually rid ourselves of the beast - which karen wanted moved to the basement to use in her art workshop, but thats a whole other story...

so while karen was gone for the summer i decided to try and be sneaky and get started on the cabinets by myself before she got back... well, i didnt get too far. on the one hand i did get a fantastic deal on like 7 cabinets on craigslist that very closely resembled the style of our own for only 50 bucks! however, i was so excited by the deal that i didnt really look them over too closely and just figured id clean them up when i got home, and well... when the time came this summer that i wanted to attempt to re-finish all the cabinets i soon discovered that it was going to be a much larger task than i had anticipated. now originally i had planned to sand down and then either stain or paint all of the cabinets, inside and out, including the original ones in the kitchen. however when i finally got around to inspecting my newly acquired cabinetry i found that it was mostly particle board and in need of a good deal of repair. well... you cant exactly re-finish particle board and if we were thinking of going that route we were going to have to essentially re-build most of these new cabinets of everything but the face trim and doors and well frankly, i was not up to the task... and so when karen arrived back from her summer trip she was delighted to find the new cabinets that shed wanted for so long, however not so much at my evaluation of the re-finishing situation... so after a little mulling it over we decided to just not worry about re-finishing them and to just clean them up and salvage them the best we could and then just put a coat of paint over everything. and so thats what we did.

after cleaning them up we found that they were in better condition than i had first thought, and seemed to be sturdy enough after all. so we started to put up nailers to hang them on and everything seemed to go pretty quickly at first. the first night we worked on them i managed to get all of the nailers in place and 3 cabinets in place before we hit our first snag. well, the guys that installed the cabinets that were existing had to work with the same crappy, uneven, nothing-at-all-square-about-them, walls that ive mentioned all along, and when they installed the corner cabinet they had to do a lot of shimming to get it in there and lined up with the cabinets flanking it on either side. as a result, the cabinets all kind of warp and pitch in a multitude of different directions and needless to say... nothing is square. so now that i was attempting to install new cabinets on top of the existing ones i soon discovered that the corner space was in no way square and in fact was twisted in a few different directions making it all but impossible to "fit" a cabinet in the space - and to add to the fun, the cabinet we were going to put in the corner space wasnt actually a corner cabinet anyway and we were already dreading having to custom cut some pieces to fill the spaces between the cabinets... but in the way that this thing was shifting, it just wasnt worth the effort. so instead, we came to the conclusion that we would just custom cut some open shelves that fit the space in the corner and put more decorative bowls and such on them for display and less for storage. seems reasonable enough anyhow. however, that part of the project will have to wait until we have the money to go buy new materials because we dont have any wood that we can work with for the time being to make those shelves.

so after deciding what to do about that snag we then began the long task of removing all the doors and door hardware and then painting, well, everything. the painting went fairly quickly considering the area we had to cover, however everything we painted needed at least two coats and in some cases three before there was sufficient coverage. so it took a number of days before we finally got finished putting 2-3 coats and dry time between on all the doors and all the frames and were able to reassemble everything and attach hardware and such. additionally... as i said before we were using only the supplies we already had at the house and when we originally bought paint we didnt buy the right kind of paint for this application. so instead of a semi-or high gloss latex or a nice enamel finish paint, what we had was a flat latex paint. so we used what we had for the time being and it looks great! but it scratches or gets scuffed up pretty easily, so at some point we're going to have to come back with a finish coat over everything to really do it right.

so there were a few more snags along the way with shelf supports and re-organizing all the cabinets, but eventually we got finished and we're terribly excited with the result! [oh, and i also took apart that beast of an island and moved it in pieces, make that HEAVY pieces, down to the basement for karen as well. so its totally out of the kitchen now!] and we hope you like it too!

[the.dramatic.after.shot - complete with decorative vase in one of the extra-spaces]

as you can see theres still some work to do on the cabinets, and obviously theres a lot of work to do in the whole kitchen but we're just happy to have made such a huge change and really taken things to the next level. we now feel like were a lot closer to being finished with the kitchen which makes the rest feel so much more manageable!

so, other projects we've done around the house that are worth mentioning [because they happened in the last 6 weeks as well] but we dont have any pictures of yet... we finally moved our bedroom down to the second floor and out of the "penthouse" which was a pretty big deal. basically during the summer when karen got back it was just sooo hot that the window ac unit we had just could not cool down that huge attic space and we decided it was finally time to move down to the intended master bedroom space that was significantly smaller [but still pretty huge, woohoo!] and self contained, so that the window unit might actually have some effect on it. and as it turns out we were totally right, it made a HUGE difference and we slept much cooler for the next 5 weeks.

however, last week the temperature here in cincy started dropping and well, fall is most definitely upon us. the weather has stayed pretty well in the mid to lower 60's for a while now and looks as though itll stay that way for a while yet and then start dropping even more. so we've now retired the ac and after getting the fore-mentioned new bed [for free!] weve since re-arranged the bedroom to less of a makeshift arrangement to more of a permanent situation and we're getting ready to start re-doing it in the near future as well. also, in the bedroom we decided that it was finally time to move the tv upstairs and out of the more "formal" parlor space. so its in a corner in the bedroom now by the fireplace - and looks much more at home there, i must say.

and in stride with the big move to the second floor, we started officially moving our closet down to the intended master closet space as well. not the most exciting project, i know, but for us its a pretty big move. after hanging new rods and shelves and re-arranging the current storage situation so that the space was actually functional as a closet, i think we've discovered that theres less space on the second floor than there was in the penthouse and we're still trying to remedy that obstacle. right now 90% of my clothes have been moved down and most of them are put away, but only about half of karens have made it down and almost none of hers are put away as of yet, lol! but just getting things moving in the right direction is a big step as far as karen and her clothes go, so i'll taken what i can get for the time being. its easy for us to close the door and pretend that mess isnt there, so it might take a while to get it how we want it, but im okay with that for now. =]

oh and lastly, as i mentioned, karen is turning the basement into her artist's studio. so we spent some time down in the basement recently cleaning it up and rearranging it and making it more hospitable for her to play in. it was pretty disgusting but we actually managed to get all of the existing shelves cleaned up and wiped down and the floor cleaned up and then got all of our boxes and junk organized and arranged on them in a much neater and more appropriate fashion. so now theres actually a ton of room down there [or was before she got started, haha] for her to work on stuff and do whatever art experiments shes doing. it still needs some work, but "cleaning the basement" is a chore that no one really wants to tackle and im pretty proud of us for making some serious headway on it.

and well... with that... i think we've about concluded part two of this little saga. and since ive been working on this for the last 4 hours or so, i think i might need to take a little bit of a break before i keep going on the third part. also, i think the wife may be planning to come home from school at some point in the near future and we'll probably eat dinner, so... part three might not get done till tomorrow. hope thats alright, this has been a lot to get down and its taking more time than id anticipated... although i knew it would, haha. and so...

...intermission two...

epic.blogging [one]

so its been a long time. a really long time. and i know this, ive known it for some time now. and i am sorry. to be honest, ive been quite selfish and have been wanting to just keep things to myself for a while now and i certainly didnt want to burden any of you with my issues. whats the old saying? "if you dont have something nice to say..." well, i decided not to say much of anything. but its been well over a month now, and i suppose its time to come out into the light. im warning you now, i dont know how long this is going to get, but theres a good chance its going to be quite a doozy. however, i should be able to include a number of pictures for your viewing enjoyment, so hopefully thatll make it a little easier.

so first things first i suppose... the big nasty ugly truth must come out. on august 21st [yes, the day AFTER i last blogged about nothing new happening in my life... irony? cruel mistress indeed....] i was laid off. it was friday at about 11:30 and i was discussing with a co-worker some things i was going to work on for the rest of the day to help her out with some things when i noticed the boss heading our way. he asked if he could see me in his office and of course i jumped to attention, sure thing and all. so he leads my into his office and closes the door and for the next 15 minutes discusses with me how hes letting me go and blah blah blah... the whole thing is still kind of a blur for me. i wont go into specifics, but the thing was not handled well in my opinion, at all. call me crazy, but i thought it was pretty customary for there to be at least one other person in the room, like an hr rep or something, for the sake of witnessing the whole thing and making sure everything went down legit.... maybe not. now im not saying things didnt go down legit, but my ex-boss definitely decided to take the opportunity to say some things that really got into my head. you can call that whatever you like, but this guy was in a position of power over me and i really just think the whole thing could have been handled better... but alas, time has passed, im no longer feeling any bitterness about the matter, it is what it is. he has to deal with his actions just as we all do, and if hes sleeping well at night, then good for him.

so after receiving this um... news... and having had some time to reflect on it since, ive come to some conclusions for myself that i feel are on the positive side. first of all, while it totally sucks not having work or any income, i've gotta say, i think this whole thing was a "blessing in disguise" kind of thing. the last few months at that office, work had been slowing down a lot - one of our big jobs got put on hold [the job id been working on the most] because of the economy or whatever - and id been struggling to keep myself busy a lot of the time [which resulted in way too many instances of the "walk of shame" - going around the office to every single project managers desk and practically begging for work... its so humiliating, i HATE the way things worked in that office. i should never have had to beg for work, there should have been some level of oversight among the project managers... some level of coordination amongst the entire office, but alas...] and i was really starting to feel quite miserable in my circumstances. things hadnt ever really been perfect there, but i had a long stent of complacency and i was just fine with that, work was work and i was DAMN lucky to have a job, right? i suppose... but like i said, those last few months... imagine walking into work every day wondering if that day was finally going to be the one. im sure ive mentioned this before, but i had been predicting that i was going to get laid off for some time, and every day i went to work my stomach was in knots with anxiety over whether or not it was going to happen that day. so in essence, at least now it was over, and i no longer had to feel that dread of not knowing when some impending thing is going to happen. so yeah, i was glad to be put out of my misery at last, so to speak. blessing in disguise.

secondly, ive been given the opportunity to really take a step back and re-evaluate where my life is going. at first i was obviously freaked out and i got the whole unemployment thing going because my parents convinced me it was what i needed to do. and that in and of itself was a whole other catastrophe, but finally as of a week ago, i received my first benefits and that was a very very good thing. but i digress... re-evaluation. so having to start the job search again, i finally had the opportunity [well i was forced to really, haha] to sit down and re-do my portfolio again, which was a really great thing. ive been wanting to start over since we moved to cincinnati and i started looking for jobs here, but i just never found the time. so now, with all of this starting over and getting back into the job search i was able to update my portfolio and have gotten it to a place where im pretty happy with it and its in a format [finally!] that should be pretty easy to just keep adding to as time goes on and i need to put new projects in to keep it current. so that was the first part of taking a step back before ultimately moving forward.

the second part of that was to re-evaluate what exactly i was doing and if it was in fact what i wanted to do. as i said, id been quite miserable going to work for a few months and part of it was definitely the feeling as if any day id lose my job thing, but there was another level as well. for some time i had really been feeling disheartened and unsatisfied with what i was doing at work and it was starting to eat at me. im at this point in my "career" as an architectural intern where im essentially in limbo. ive got my master's degree [which to be honest, more and more, feels like it means about, um... dick. in this industry. excuse my vulgarity, but it's to the point. in other industries, i feel like a master's degree just holds so much more value that in architecture. but in my field, its like, "eh, okay, whatever." like its the bare minimum or something. to any and all architecture firms out there, i stand up now and scream this to you on behalf of myself and everyone else in my situation. i went to school for 6 effing years! i have a mountain of debt so high from paying for 6 years of school that i will never dig out of it! treat me with some freaking respect! please! do you realize that my student loan payments are HALF what you pay me in a month?! ...sigh...]

so picking up where i left off some time ago... career, limbo, master's degree... right. so ive got my masters degree, which to me feels like it should be worth... something? ive got 2 years worth of relevant professional experience in an architecture office, but at the end of the day im still the lowest of the low. for some reason, theres this magical "3 years experience" threshold in architecture which moves you from the scum of the architecture industry category up a rung to the, well... he might not completely screw it up category. im not sure what im expected to learn in the next year that so far surpasses what i have in the last 2, but i am on pins and needles to find out.... so this whole limbo thing leaves me feeling extremely under-valued, under-paid, and under-respected in a workplace setting, and has caused me to do some serious reflection on what it is i really want to do with the rest of my life.

well the conclusion ive come to in that aspect of things is that i really truly think ive just not had the optimum work experiences in my field, certainly for what talents i DO have. i talk to friends and peers that are at different levels of their own architectural aspirations and i always get the feeling that somehow they have had extraordinarily different and better work experiences than i have at this point in my journey. take for example my friend manda. we worked together at my first job in cincy, a little over a year ago now. looking back on this experience, i honestly still have to say, it was one of the best office experiences i have ever had [certainly trumping the most recent.] i felt like the place was organized, there was a certain level of respect i felt from my project managers, and while no, not everything was perfect - when is it ever? - they really seemed to be trying to provide a work environment that was going to help me grow. they treated me like a real person, not just some other kid that can easily be replaced. however, enter manda. she worked at the same office, the same time period, and while she worked in a different area of the office [interiors] she had a drastically different feeling of the experience she got. in the grand scheme of her work experience, she felt that the experiences we shared, were not great, were not organized, were not respectful or challenging or rewarding, but were actually on the lower end of her experiences over all and seem to be more of the expected minimum for her... so how is it that we have such different views of the same place? i can only conclude that overall my other experiences must have been much worse by comparison for my best to be one of her worst... if that makes sense at all... i may be chasing rabbits here, so to get back on the trail.... ive decided that this most recent experience was just another in a line of not the best experiences [although i have had some good ones at some offices i really liked, and ive typically always liked the people i worked with, just not always the office environment, if you will...] and theres got to be something so much better still waiting out there. however, the wife also challenged me to consider the following... what is it that i would actually enjoy doing everyday that i had to go to work? she felt that obviously these architecture office jobs werent satisfying my day to day, and i always seemed to complain about work, so what was it that i wouldnt complain about?

well, after a lot of consideration i came to the conclusion that what ive always enjoyed doing was helping other people, and specifically helping them to learn. so it seems that the most rewarding path for me to take might be to teach. now this isnt totally out of left field or anything, ive always wanted to eventually end up as a professor, i just always assumed it would be sometime much further down the road, kind of an instead of retiring situation. you know that prof we've all had that was in his 60's or 70's and had had a long successful career before deciding to go into teaching to give back to the institutions that got him started? i wanted to be that guy. but the more i thought about it... life doesnt always take the path we want it to... and with this stupid economic downturn and architecture being viewed as more of a luxury than a necessity... well... maybe i should re-evaluate my time line. maybe i should think about getting into teaching now, and possibly pursue this architecture nonsense later on down the road... so with that, ive decided to start pursuing teaching more directly instead of on some indirect futuristic path.

over the last month ive applied for literally dozens and dozens of jobs in cincinnati. ive contact a ton of architecture firms, ive literally contacted every single homebuilder [even though i have such extreme qualms with the idea of spec homes and that entire industry...] in the greater cincinnati area, ive answered countless want-ads on craigslist or the half dozen career finder websites im enrolled in, and for a while there i even though maybe i could just jump over to the construction side of the industry and contacted a bunch of the big major construction companies in the areas as well. well... in that same last month my results are as follows... one. yes, one. one single, lone response to all of my attempts. and in this lone response i went in person to their office, filled out an application, was then interviewed with the most bizarre series of quizes and tests and questioning over a 3 hour period, only to in the end be satisfied that i was well qualified and as a result to offer me the most demeaningly low compensation i really could have imagined. i wasnt making a TON of money at my last job, or the one before that obviously - although i had been steadily getting a bump up in pay each time, but these people were offering me compensation for my level of skill and knowledge now that was on par with what i was earning a year and a half ago when i was still in my undergraduate work and only had a couple of summers work experience. to say the least i was taken aback a bit and asked for some time to consider the offer. then after having my wife act like i was crazy for not accepting ANY job on the spot, i eventually succeeded, called them back and said i was willing to accept... only to have them tell me that they hadnt completely decided on their needs yet and that theyd get back to me.... two weeks later they call me back and tell me that theyre really in need of a registered architect, and that theyre sorry.... a registered architect? seriosuly?? on the salary that they offered me - that she assured me was the most they could afford?? these people are obviously a bit out of their minds... good luck with that one...

so basically, i havent had any luck over the last month of unemployment and now im getting serious about this teaching thing. so far ive been doing a lot of research into the available positions, what kind of licensing [if any] will be required for certain levels of teaching, what requirements ill be expected to meet, what prospective teaching employers are looking for me to have when applying for these positions... and the list goes on. so far ive re-written and re-worked my resume specifically for teaching positions, and im beginning to work on cover letters and supporting materials [much like a portfolio] specific to each of the positions ive found that i think i may qualify for, and overall im making progress. but it is definitely a LOT of work and im still going to need some time before i really get deep into it...

so at this point in the blog, if you havent quit yet... well, im certainly impressed. and well, we've really only touched on one of 3 items i was intending to blog about in this post, so you might want to take a restroom break or grab a quick snack or a nap or something before getting settled in for whats still to come. [oh, and for your convenience, i've even decided to break this whole thing up into 3 parts as well, so hopefully it'll be a little easier to read. if youre planning to do it all at once, bear with me, im going to publish this first section now and then try to press on and continue with the other two and publish those as i complete them as well.] consider this....

...intermission one...

much.the.same

so karen arrived back in town safe and sound last wednesday. her flights were uneventful although being the smarty she was she decided it would be a good idea to go to the airport 10 hours early to try and catch an earlier flight... and didnt. so she spent a LOT of time waiting around in airports for her return to cincy, and after a short time of nearly unbearable hunger, the trip was over and she was back in my arms. since getting her home shes taken in all of the projects and changes and such and she seems quite pleased with the results. the day she got back i took off and our first "to do" on the list was the store and that night my wife decided to cook - and boy did she ever. it seems she was suffering a little in san fran with a kitchen about the size of a postage stamp and about as much space in the shared refrigerator. so when we got home she decided to make 2 different kinds of lentil salad, a carrot salad, pineapple bread, and we also made some home-made slasa that was just awesome. i took some pictures to share with the fam, but they arent very impressive and certainly not worthy of posting.

last weekend karen and i went to cleveland to attend a couple of friends of ours wedding. it was a really nice wedding, although pretty warm, but great times all around. it was a lot of fun getting to enjoy their day with them and see a bunch of our friends along the way. oh and did i mention the food? man i wish i had taken some pictures.... after the ceremony and before the reception there was a pre-reception party back at the brides parents and oh. my. god. they had some AMAZING food... apparently her step-dad owns one of the best restaurants in cleveland and boy did it show. everything was just mouth watering... overall it was a pretty exhausting weekend with the trip up and back and all the festivities and karen was totally jet-lagged most of the time, but we had a lot of fun and my wife looked incredible in her new dress ;]

since returning from cleveland things have gotten pretty well back to normal. ive been going to work and karen has been taking care of school stuff and doing different odds and ends around the house. shes started messing with wall paper and painted some primer here and there, but nothing super exciting as of yet. oh, one fairly significant change, we decided to finally move from the penthouse [aka sauna...] down to the second floor bedroom and things have been oh so much cooler. its about half the size of the upstairs room and theres the ability to close the door and contain the space, so the window air conditioner, while not the most attractive on the front of the house, does a much better job of cooling the space. we had about 3 nights of just absolutely sweaty sleep and had had enough. since then we've been much happier, haha!

umm... hmmm... what else...

well i cant really think of anything else to update you on. its only been a few days and sadly, as the title boasts, things are much the same as always. its definitely spectacular having the wife back [in oh so many ways!] and we're having a blast hanging out again, but life has a way of plateauing... much like working out does. although, my work outs are still gong well. ive skipped a few days with the wife around [and our shear exhaustion from the traveling and such] but ive also really pushed myself hard when i have gone and im feeling great about things.

well anyway, ill let you know when [if] something exciting happens, haha!

love+miss!

post.script: whos seen g.i.joe? how was it? want to soooo bad!

another.recap

so i know i havent been quite as faithful as id hoped and promised id be in the last post, but, eh, you know how it goes...

when i last updated we discussed a number of different things and i suppose the best route here would be to update you on the ones that need updating and then subsequently discuss any additional topics.

well first let me say happy brithday to both jeremy and josh [my brother-in-law and brother-in...blood] who've both turned another year older in the last few days. i dont know how old jeremy is to be honest, but josh is now 24 and well, taking stock of his accomplishments so far in life, id say hes doing very well for himself. hes finished school, gotten a good job that pays well and doesnt seem to be too affected by the economics of the present, just bought his first house with his new wife and theyre getting settled in... over-all pretty amazing for 24 id say. congratulations josh! jeremy is back over seas for the time being. hes working contract work out in iraq or kuwait or something or other and only gets to come home to kimber [sister] every so often. she misses him, but seems to be staying busy and doing alright. i hear rumors she might even be going back to school in the near future. so... i think that about wraps up family.

um... ah, yes. workout routine. well... for any of you that cared last time around and still care for an update, theres only good news to report. ive been disciplined and have managed to keep it up even despite having the "mothers collective" staying with me and distracting me, and other weekend adventures and such. ive been going about 4 days a week consistently, although i try to go more like 5 or 6 when i can, but sometimes i just need a day off to let my muscles repair themselves and well, just for sanity's sake i suppose, haha. for the first couple of months i didnt actually see any change in weight although my appearance was changing noticeably. i was getting much leaner, but it seemed the numbers werent really changing, i was just exchanging the bad weight for good weight. which is fine, whatever, the number is meaningless to me. however i got on the scale again last week because, i just hadnt in a few months and it turns out that somewhere along the way i actually dropped 10lbs, so i guess thats good. if you lose weight and youre working out as much as i am, then you know its only the bad weight youre losing, not the good stuff. =] anyway, the workout routine is going well overall. i have more energy and im making plenty of improvement from week to week in my actual workouts, and then theres always the much better mood after working out. so all in all, its all good.

hm, i guess we cant forget the "mothers collective." well when anne was here by herself she got TONS accomplished, the transformation was really just, unreal. but then my mom got here and as a team they accomplished even more. the yard looks pretty spectacular, honestly. i think i can pretty assuredly say that we now have the nicest yard on the block, well, in my humble opinion anyhow. additionally they got some painting stuff, some wallpaper removal, and a little organizational stuff done inside the house as well. overall id say they seemed to enjoy the trip and the result was definitely an awesome and appreciated one. thanks! =] oh and for anyone that wants to see pictures of all the transformation, theyre up on my photo site here and here.

lets see... what else can i update you on... oh, the competition. well we were able to get everything turned in just fine for the competition and then a few days later there was judging and they had a little banquet for the results. well, i ended up having to work late that night, and then just didnt feel like going, but mike (the partner) popped his head in at the end to see what was going on. apparently they had clearly marked a winner, and it wasnt us. however mike said that in talking to some people our project was definitely one of the judges top picks. according to the competition outline there were supposed to be 3 places in the competition, each with a cash prize but so far we havent heard anything about that. he said the winner was the only one marked and that in his opinion their project wasnt better than ours, they just had a "prettier" presentation. which is fine, i dont know that i expected to outright win this thing, especially considering that i wasnt sure how we were progressing a lot of the time. i emailed the guy running the thing after the banquet and he said that they would soon be posting all the entries online and the placements and whetever else but so far i havent seen or heard anything more about that either. honestly, from the way mike described everything its very likely that we placed in the top 3, possibly even 2nd place, and id really like to see the other entries and find out for sure! so yeah... still trying to be patient, but its been 3 weeks, so... im probably going to email him again today, haha.

hmm... what else.... oh, we celebrated mikes birthday on august first and that was certainly something for the history books, lol! he had was basically amounted to a themed party/bar hopping and most everyone dressed appropriately. and what was that dress you ask? well... hahahaha... well mustaches were part of the theme so most of the guys that could grow one had some kind of terribly tacky mustache, haha. i shaved mine into some pretty awful handlebars and it was all pretty hilarious. imagine a really bad 70's cop movie and youve pretty much got the gist of things. honestly, it was pretty scary for me, i hadnt seen my bare chin in about 6 or 7 years i think, and i wasnt sure what it might look like, lol! thankfully, its all pretty much back to normal now a week and a half later, lol! but we had a lot of fun and partied our butts off to bring in mikes #29.

hmm... what else... well this last weekend i took a trip down to tennessee to see my friend/ex-advisor from a&m, james. it was kind of a spur of the moment thing, and i drove down on friday and we basically just hung out all weekend. watched a bunch of horror movies [james is getting a phd in horror cinema or something of the sorts] talked a lot, just had some good fun. also...although im not sure i really want to even add this part...james is now a fairly serious photographer and well, hes been bugging me to let him shoot me for months now [i really cant imagine why, im NOT very photogenic in my opinion...] and so i finally caved and let him. i dont really know how the pictures turned out, ive only seen a couple and im sure nothing will come of it, but yeah, that was part of the weekend too. mostly, it was just nice to get out of the house and our of cincy for a little while, even if it was driving through kentucky and tennessee... [both of which have some of the WORST drivers ive EVER come across... geez...].

so, i guess thats about it. the only other news thats of any significance is that my estranged wife is FINALLY coming home this week. =] shes had a lot of fun out in san francisco, but i think shes starting to get home sick, and hopefully a little husband sick as well ;] at any rate, she flies back on wednesday night/thursday morning and i really cant wait to see her. not to mention, i know shes excited to see all the changes at the house in person! [theres probably one or two that we havent shown her pictures of yet, hehehe]

well, i know its not my usual epic blog post, and i know youre all terribly disappointed about that, but as you can see, the last couple of weeks just havent really had a whole lot to talk about. work is work, its very much the exact same as it has been for months now, nothing to report there. other than that, without karen around its just been working out and hanging out watching movies or tv or something to keep me occupied in my "spare" time... oh, i guess thats one other thing... i did go see the new harry potter movie a couple of weeks ago. honestly, it was a fairly decent movie, but i was pretty disappointed with the ending. and the more i think about it, ive been disappointed with the last 3 endings of those movies i think. they keep building up for the entire movie to this big thing, and then the climax is about 2 minutes long and then it just drops off leaving you feeling very unfulfilled... or me at least. i do want to go see the new g.i. joe movie, but im trying not to get my excitement up too high for that. it looks really cool from the previews, but these things tend to be a bit over-hyped.

alright, well i hope you all have a great rest of the week, i doubt ill be updating again before the weekend. just a thought, but if anyone ever had a suggestion or a request for a blog topic that theyd actually like to hear my opinion or perspective or experience or whatever on, feel free to leave me a comment, id love to entertain the idea.

until next time...

out.of.touch

so yeah, i have been. for a while now, and i am sorry about that. i guess the last time i blogged was probably over a month ago now... life has been hectic.

no, im not going to go back and retell all the stories of everything thats been going on in full vivid color, as i so often have the habit of doing. instead you guys will just have to settle for a brief overview synopsis of current events and a promise that i will try harder from now on.

so what have you missed?

well, on june 20th my brother got married back in texas and that was a whirlwind of travel and festivities for one weekend. CONGRATULATIONS JOSH AND CASSIE! i have a new sister =] the wedding was quite beautiful and a ton of fun. i even met some of joshs friends andthey were all really fun people! karen had already been in san francisco for about a week and a half, so it was good to get to see her at the wedding, but it was over far too soon and then we were back on our separate sides of the continent - with the 3 hour time difference, ugh.

after karen left i really really stepped up my workout and diet routine. not really a big event, but its helped to fill the hours with constructive activities instead of just lying around in a lump on the couch. im actually quite proud to say that after about a month-month and a half of consistent routine, ive gotten into better shape [at least i think so anyway] than i was a year ago when i got married. ive still got my goals set high and hope to see even more improvement and also i hope that this time around i can keep my routine up through the dreadful cold seasons... we'll see how that goes huh? [yeah josh, im skinnier than you again =P]

over the july 4th holiday i went to visit karen out in san francisco for a long weekend. all in all i was there for 5 days and we had a great time. we saw all kinds of cool stuff and i got to see her school and her apartment out there and all the stuff shes working on. not to mention, san francisco is a really amazing city to visit. the public transportation system was just awesome and it was so easy to explore the city and see everything it had to offer. its a very different life-style out there [one i could probably become accustomed to, haha] much more laid back than my seemingly overfilled to-do-list of a life here in cincy. anyway, it was a great 'holiday' and karen's parents even came to visit for a couple of days near the end of the trip so i got to see them as well. on top of all that, i got to see one of favorite people of all time, vena, who i hadnt actually seen since senior year at a&m and it was really fun to get to hang out with her again. shes such a fun person and it was nice to see an old friend again. =]

pictures from the san francisco trip are up on the picture site if youre interested.

the trip back from san francisco wasnt quite as enjoyable as the holiday spent there, it turns out i got food poisoning on my last day in town and had probably the most horrible red-eye flight across country in the history of mankind. [well... at least in my lifetime, it certainly seemed like it could have been the worst ever... yuck.] i definitely wont go into all the gore here, but suffice to say it was not a fun trip and i hope you all never have to experience anything like it.

since getting back in cincy its gotten down to the end of the line with the competition i mentioned sometime back. i hadnt talked about it much between then and now because honestly, i couldnt decide how things really were going as far as progress and i wasnt sure we were going to stick out to the end. however, after a LOT of work in my "spare time" over the last couple of weeks, and a lot of late nights the last two weekends, mike[my partner] and i have successfully finished our design and mike is taking over the final project later this afternoon for submittal. we made it. and it was quite an adventure... i'll post our boards as soon as he sends me the final drafts of them, which should be some time later this afternoon. it was definitely a trying, but learning experience, however im not sure id be willing to jump into it again. it just very very difficult to juggle everything going on in life and still have time to work on a competition project. we're happy with how it turned out and even if we dont win, or even place in the actual competition, i think the outcome was a good one. =]

and if all that wasnt enough, on tuesday of last week, my mother-in-law arrived in town for a visit. she decided that this summer she was going to come to cincy and embark in some landscaping projects that karen and i have yet to tackle, as well as to install all those beautiful stained glass windows i posted pictures of in previous blog posts. in addition to all those, there were also a few surprise stained glass windows and really they are all just gorgeous. since she arrived shes installed all of them in the various locations she designed them for and the house just feels more alive. and if that alone wasnt enough, she has been kick serious ass in the landscaping arena and the yard looks amazing. i dont know where she gets the energy, but shes worked everyday all day on the yard and the transformation has been surreal. i have a handful of before and after pictures ill post when i finish blogging here, but we'll have to make sure to get more as the visit continues. and speaking of the visit continuing, my mother flies in tonight to join the party. yep, thats right, me and two mothers at my house for the rest of this week... exciting? or scary? you be the judge of that one, im keeping my mouth shut. ;]

so when mom gets here they plan to keep working on the yard and then i guess theyre going to team up on some projects inside the house as well. i dont really have all the details, but im sure whatever they decide to do will be greatly appreciated.

and with that, all the big stuff has been summarized for you, and thats where we are at the moment. karen will be getting back from san francisco in a few weeks, august 12th i believe, and it'll be fantastic to have my wife back. then i know we have a wedding in cleveland on the 15th for our friends cae & emil [who i may or may not have mentioned before] and who knows what all other excitement is in store over the coming weeks and months.

stay tuned, and im sure you'll find out =]

losing.my.faith

someone please explain to me...

how is it that i am upwards of $130,000 in debt after attending a 4 year undergraduate program and a 2 year masters program to attain a masters in architecture and i now sit in an office everyday designing and drawing and planning and detailing entire buildings...

and yet, the guy with the g.e.d. and a can of paint with his ass hanging out of his pants who can barely construct a discernible complete sentence, makes almost double what i do to paint the building?!?

seriously, can someone explain this to me??

if i had this all to do over again, knowing what i now know... i really cant say id do it the same.

this profession is a f*@&ing joke.

bitter-much? you bet your ass.

and no, just to clarify, i dont think that i'm better than that guy, in any way, im sure hes a great guy. i just think there should be some kind of blatantly obvious correlation between education, skill, responsibility, and -wait for it - compensation!

but maybe im just out of my mind... maybe it's just me...

am i?? wtf are we doing here??

how can i be expected to be satisfied and happy just barely scraping by from month to month with my outrageous student loan bills and my meager [although completely average in my damned industry] salary?? am i going crazy here, or shouldnt the DESIGN of the building cost a little more than the effing floor tile??? shouldnt the guy that knows how to design the ENTIRE building make just a little more money than the guy that paints it???

ill tell you what, all us designers will quit doing what we do and we'll just see how it goes, okay?

you all want to live in houses that look exactly like the one across the street because the contractor/homebuilder uses the same 3 plans 6 million times, be my guest.

you want all your office, hospital, commercial, etc. buildings to be the exact same generic box, by all means, go for it.

i wash my hands of this society and their lack of respect for what i do.

chances are, i'll be laid off soon enough anyway...

may you all rot in your complacency and apathy.

the.prodigal.blogger

so yeah, ive been on hiatus for the last couple of weeks i guess. although to be fair, theres been a lot going on and not much of it was all that interesting. so why dont we play the catch-up game anyway, hm?

well the week after the parents-in-law left, we were pretty exhausted from the visit and didnt do much of anything. we just tried to recuperate and gear up for the upcoming holiday weekend... which holiday weekend you ask? well im glad you did... the 678 holiday of course ;]

for those of you that are totally clueless and are checking your calendars to try and figure out what the hell im talking about, ill try and make this as painless as possible for you. 678 = 06.07.08 = june, 7th 2008 = karen and i's anniversary. caught up yet? so anyway, the upcoming sunday was our anniversary and while we hadnt really planned anything spectacular i did have to play romance and prepare a little bit for the 1year milestone. well at first i had no clue what to get the wifey for our first anniversary so of course, i called the expert on "traditional" wedding/anniversary/other sappy stuff customs and rituals - i.e. mom. well she was excited that id even ask her opinion, but i had to start somewhere right? well she was not much help when it comes to the "traditional" crap because, well, karen and i arent very traditional and we could really care less.. however she did give me a tiny bit of inspiration and well, as moms do, plenty of shoving in the directions she thought was the best. she was just convinced that i needed to do some really sappy crap and was really pushing for it and as usual i ignored her and she has yet to let me forget it [i doubt she ever will] but we'll come back to that later. so after my twinge of inspiration for a gift the rest started falling into place and i quickly planned out all the steps id need to take to make my wife pleased with me. [which to be quite honest, doesnt take much... im loved.] so wednesday after work i went out and got her gift and it really couldnt have been easier. she had class from before i got off work till 9:30 that night and would have no clue what i was up to so secrecy was definitely on my side.

so as the weekend approached i planned a little more and shed been dropping hints about wanting to go on a picnic on our anniversary, so really... i didnt have to try much at all - shes easy to please. saturday night we decided to go out to dinner for our "anniversary dinner out" but really we just didnt feel like cooking and it seemed like a reasonable excuse to go out to dinner. it wasnt anything super spectacular, but we went to a little german/hungarian restaurant in town that we'd never been to and shed wanted to try and we had a nice little dinner complete with chocolate cake.

sunday, the real surprises all happened and it started bright and early in the morning. i woke up and snuck out of bed and went downstairs to get started making her breakfast. well luckily she apparently had no idea id even left, so i was able to get quite a bit of breakfast started and the coffee made before she popped in to ruin her breakfast surprise - waffles. now i dont want to brag here, but i make awesome waffles. thats really all there is to say on the subject, its always been a little something i was good at, and i usually reserve it for special occasions. well, just to connect the dots for you, i had snuck out of bed and made her waffles the first day of our honeymoon so this was just a little allusion to that. whether or not she picked up on that is irrelevant, she was definitely surprised and was still trying to figure out how id gotten out of bed without her noticing and was very pleased to see what id been up to. and, as it turns out, this batch of waffles was one of my best yet ;]

so while she was enjoying her breakfast i snuck upstairs and retrieved her hidden present and then snuck up behind her and presented the gift. well now she was just giggling with delight, she thought the breakfast was her gift, lol! so she opened her present and "oo"ed and "ah"ed at its contents - some new perfume and lotion and a little travel bag with travel sized goodies in it as well all from victoria's secret. well if you dont know my wife, she LOVES perfumes and well, really anything scented. her "scents" as she lovingly refers to them. so she was quite delighted by all her new goodies and a little bonus, the bottle of perfume i happened to get was kind of a throwback and had the old-timey mist pump on it - very karen - and she loved it. =] so i got plenty of hugs and smooches after that.

well, even though it was our anniversary, it was still a typical weekend, so we had already planned to run some errands before our picnic and that was up next on the list of things to do. after relaxing a little and then getting dressed we headed out to run our 3 errands for the day. first, i needed a haircut because i was starting to get a little shaggy, but mostly because brother's wedding was in 2 weeks and i needed to be trimmed and have time to let my hair get to a good length before the festivities. so our first stop was the salon where i got all prettied up and actually had probably the best haircut ive had since leaving my favorite stylist of all time back in denver... [miss you chris!!] anyhoo, so i was looking good and karen was all smiley with my sexy haircut and we made our next stop - the grocery store. if you havent been reading long, or just havent ever paid attention, we go to the grocery store every sunday, its just out little weekly tradition, so we were picking up all our usual groceries, plus a bunch of extra fancy goodies for our special picnic lunch. so we got some really nice bread and fancy cheeses and meats and some fruit, spreads, crackers, etc. all the stuff you have to have on a picnic of course!

well the more we shopped i could tell the wife was getting more excited, it had actually been a while since our last picnic and she loves them [not to mention they're one of our "things" you know? most couples have little couple-y hobbies they really enjoy doing together ranging anywhere from just hanging out watching tivo on a saturday night to date nights to extreme stuff like skydiving, and well picnics have just always been one of ours since we started dating. but i digress...] so after we finished shopping we quickly took care of errand #3 - the weekly gassing up the truck, and then we went home to unload and pack up for the picnic. well karen had only mentioned that she wanted to go on a picnic but hadnt really said where, so the last little bit of my planning was coming up with a fun place for us to go. cincinnati is known for having a few hills, im not sure how many - 8? - and a few of them have little parks on them. well the first picnic we had in cincy was at eden park which is basically on mount adams so continuing in that tradition i decided we were going to go to mt. airy park which is just on the opposite side of northside where we live, so not far at all. we'd discovered that the park was there on accident one night when we went exploring for the fun of it up mt. airy, and we'd been planning to go back at some point - obviously this was the perfect time to do so.

so we headed up to mt. airy and leisurely drove around the park exploring all the different little paths and picnic areas until we found one that was perfect. after quickly unloading and spreading out we started our picnic and enjoyed it for the next few hours. all our snacks were quite delicious and we'd both brought little things to read and relax and of course i had my camera so i took plenty of pictures as we just enjoyed our time together, some light conversation, a little napping, a little sunning, you know... picnic stuff =]

so a few hours later we were both sufficiently picnic-ed and decided to pack it up and make a quick stop at this park treehouse we'd passed on the way in and wanted to check out. as it turns out the treehouse was really cool and we both really liked it and i took plenty more pictures, haha. after the treehouse we decided to drive around the park exploring a little more and found a couple of little lodges tucked hidden away in the trees that were pretty cool and an arboreum that was pretty cool before we decided we were done for the day.

and well, that was about it, haha. i know its not really anything all that exciting but we just hung out together doing things we enjoy doing and it was a really nice time. i dont think it could have been a better first anniversary, it was just very us. =] oh and i forgot to mention, the thing i didnt do that my mother was so insistent about was write karen a love poem. soooo sappy... and after i gave karen her present i mentioned that my mom had wanted me to write her the poem and she agreed... really not her thing. so as it turns out, i know my wife pretty well afterall, haha ;] sorry mom! =P

well since then, on tuesday karen left for the summer. i think ive mentioned before that she was going to san francisco this summer, but just in case i havent let me quickly explain. basically in addition to getting a masters degree in architecture here in cincinnati, karen decided that she also wanted a masters in fine arts and at some point during her researching she found a program from the sanfran art institute [which is apparently a pretty good school for that sort of thing] that lets you get a masters and really works with you on the time thing. basically you only have to be at the school for 2 summers full time and then you can do the rest remotely so shes going to be able to do both degrees simultaneously. anyway, tuesday was her flight out and after a few tears and lots of goodbyes she flew out. she arrived in sanfran at around 11pm western time and has since gotten to her summer apartment and gone to a bunch of orientations and gotten pretty well settled in. so far she seems to love it out there. shes had some little issues with her computer, as it turns out her harddrive decided to completely crash but luckily she had most of her stuff backed up on an external. also, just a crazy coincidence, chance and claire our fellow bloggers and friends from austin [see my links list for their blogs], are vacationing in san francisco right now and apparently karen hooked up with them last night for dinner and to hang out a little, so thats pretty cool. =]

well... i guess thats about it for now. theres really not all that much going on here. just trying to keep myself entertained and busy with work for the most part. i dont have anything planned for this weekend so i dont know what ill end up doing, but im sure it wont be terribly interesting. next weekend however, is josh and cassie's wedding and im sure there will be tons of fun and festivities involved. for those of you i'll get to see at the wedding i cant wait, its been a long time!

alright, thats all ive got. hope youre all having a great week!

post.script: yeah i totally forgot to bring any pictures with me to work today, so i'll have to upload some later for you. sorry!

i.need.a.holiday...[part.three]

[monday | day.three]

so monday morning i was a bit groggy as i awoke to the sound of the sander going... i looked at the time and it was only 7:50, so its not like i slept in, but obviously the folks had to be leaving for the airport early and were ready to get to work. so i quickly got dressed and staggered downstairs to review the situation. karen was working on sanding the trim we'd gotten finished on the shelves the day before while allan was getting read to start cutting more trim and anne was already working on more crown touchup. maybe i had overslept...

anyway, i jumped into the action and soon allan and i had gotten back into our routine for measuring, cutting, and attaching the shelf trim. by this time we were getting pretty comfortable working side by side, holding boards for each other to hammer or screw in, anticipating what the other would need next... [this will come back into play later in the story... thanks for that mom.] well the day seemed to go by pretty fast in general. i dont know how long we were working on the shelves but it certainly seemed to fly by and before we knew it we'd finsihed the remaining trim and decided to get started on the doors. the more important being the backdoor in the shop. so we got all of our materials and tools together and made our way up to the shop to get started. first we had to remove the plywood covering the opening and then the much more difficult task of removing all the existing trim and door surround that was starting to rot in some places and was going to have to come out either way if we were going to fit the new pre-hung door into the opening. well after double checking we discovered that the masonry opening was only an 1/8 of an inch larger than the new door assembly so we took a sigh of relief and got started on the demo.

first we attempted to remove the door frame on either side of the door, but were having some difficulty getting it out. soon we realized the threshold was locking it in place, so we removed it first. the threshold came up with no effort at all - im still not entirely sure how it was even attached, i think we found one nail in the whole thing... after getting it out of the way we were able to pry the frame out on either side much more easily, however we were still running into some issues with the frame header locking them in place at the top. after trying a few different approaches we were able to pry them out on either side however we started running into some snags. as we pulled the door frame away from the masonry opening, the brick and mortar behind it was starting to just crumble away. apparently the door frame wasnt the only part of that opening that had gotten some damage over time...well there wasnt too much we could do, but we attempted to minimize the amount of brick we were loosing from the wall as best we could. by the time we got the frame out on either side we'd started a nice little pile of rubble, but the majority of the opening was still intact. however, at this point a new problem had arisen... how exactly were we going to mount the new door in this opening?? im still not entirely sure how the existing frame was attached on either side, again i saw no nails to speak of as we were prying it off, its almost as if the whole thing was just wedged in place. how secure... anyway, there were a few places in the opening where we found that there were blocks of wood set into the brick and mortar but they were randomly placed and pretty limited in size, not to mention about 3-4 inches inset from the edge of the opening as it were. those blocks of wood were our only real option as far as we could tell for mounting this thing, so we'd just have to figure out how to make it work later. at the moment though, we still had the header of the frame to remove and it wa being a royal pain in the ass.

it turns out after we started looking at this thing from the outside that this was definitely not the original door. in-fact, we could now clearly see that the original lintel for the door was much higher than where the frame stopped... someone had "shrunk" the opening at some point along the line and the actual opening was 8ft tall! we could have bought the cheaper/taller door at home emporium after all! grr... well we debated the option of returning the one for the other at this point, but decided that time had past, and we needed to get this door in place as fast as we could. well soon the girls emerged from whatever it was they were doing downstairs and announced that they were going to home depot to return the vent cover [it hadnt quite fit the opening once we got it up there] and asked if we needed anything. by this time after a lot of effort and some creative circular saw tricks by allan, we'd managed to tear out most of the header mess of the door and were getting the girls input on whether or not to remove another piece of wood that was creating the old doors actual structural header. after a little discussion we decided to remove it and told the girls we didnt need anything and they were off on their way. well, as they started downstairs i second guessed myself and remeasured the masonry opening - and its a good thing i did! we were now at about a half an inch wider than the new door assembly after removing the old frame and we were going to need something to shim the gap. well we had some door shims, but even a shim on either side of the door was going to leave a lot of empty space so i raced downstairs and caught them just as they were leaving. i asked if theyd get us some 1/4" hardboard to put on either side of the opening to shim it up and also give us a much cleaner surface to work with and gave them all the measurements for the cuts id need them to get. they agreed and were on their way as i returned up stairs and allan and i started to remove the remaining member and cut the lathe and plaster on the interior of the wall that was covering the top of the opening.

after a couple of attempts we got that done well enough, and had a fairly clean masonry opening to work with. so after collecting our thoughts and assessing the situation with the wood blocking we decided our best option was going to be cutting down some 2x4's to fit and then shimming them with whatever plywood we had available so that they would fill the depth and be flush with the opening edge. well.. after a couple of tries we found a method that seemed to work well enough and got 2 of the new blockings in place... and this is where things went a little awry... the 2x4's we were using were basically crap scrap that was laying around and they were very knotty and rough. also we were using both scrap 1x3 and some 3/4"mdf scrap that we had lying around the shop to fill the gap. well we'd figured out a method of pre-drilling so as not to split the 1x3's and then i had some 3.5" galvanized deck screws we were securing each layer of blocking back to the wall with. well on multiple occasions this assembly method had been giving us some problems... as i said the wood was knotty and crap and the screws didnt want to go in nicely... we had to force them. well, as we were working on the 3rd board allan was holding this time round while i was trying to drive the screw and for either the screw being obstinate or us hitting a knot, the stupid drill jumped on me and went smack onto my father-in-laws finger.... ef. it got him right in the cuticle between the nail and the flesh, so im sure it hurt like hell, but he didnt make much of a fuss other than obviously wincing when it happened... so anyway, he went to clean the wound while i dug out our band aids and ointments and then he dressed his wound. it didnt look too bad, but im sure it didnt feel great [hence my mother-in-laws comment about the finger splint in post No. 1... i sure hope its nothing serious!]. either way, we quickly got back to work, hoping to finish up the blocking before the girls got back. and as it turned out we did. but only a couple of minutes passed before they showed up with our hardboard and we got right back to work.

about 5 minutes went by and we got the first piece of hardboard screwed in place when the girls came and stole my drill to screw in the new vent cover. so allan and i relaxed for a few minutes and then a few more and decided to see what was taking so long. well, they were having some issues so i stepped in to help them finish up and get us back to work. a couple of minutes later we had the vent in and allan and i started screwing the other piece of hardboard in. soon after that we were ready to try putting the door in place and moved it into position and started removing all the packaging. now id like to say that the door went in with no problems at all, but if youve been following this story, im sure you know thats never the case... well we were able to fit the door in the opening, but the hardboard on both sides was wedging it and it wasnt going to open like that. so we quickly removed the hardboard from one side and tried again. well it wasnt wedging anymore, but there was still a sizable gap and the door was quite wiggly. soon the girls showed up to investigate - having finished whatever it was they were busying themselves with - and to make us aware of the time. it was getting dangerously close to time for them to be getting ready to leave so we better hurry it up. well with their assistance [possibly a few too many hands?] we eventually got the door into a "good enough" place and put a couple of screws into it. after a lot more messing with the thing and the shims and what have you, we managed to get it securely in place and opening smoothly. its still a little skewed, but its in better shape than i would have expected [better than our other doors, haha!] and while we will have to drill out the lock holes in the frame a tiny bit, its in pretty damn great shape! =]

satisfied with the door situation they were leaving us in, the in-laws quickly got themselves ready and gathered their things and before i knew it we were hugging and goodbye-ing. at this point i also discovered what else the girls had been up to that day. they had finished all the molding and then had moved on to the shelves as well. they had sanded, filled, and even painted all the face trim and they were just drying now - and looking pretty awesome! outside, theyd also picked up a bag of mulch at the depot and had prettied up the bottom tier of the planter with the flowers as well... ah those girls. ;]

well everything looked great, and while the in-laws seemed to think we didnt get as much done as we should have over the weekend, karen and i saw that 3 and a half huge projects on our list had been finished and we were greatly enthused and very thankful! [not to mention run ragged at this point as well...] so as we waved goodbye to the car we discussed how we were going to finish the door - which neither of us wanted to do right then. we were "too pooped to poop" as my mother says, and really didnt want to do anything the rest of the day. however there was still a gaping hole above the new door and tons of open space around the frame as well so we were going to have to address it in some way before the day was over... but not necessarily right away. i was pretty hungry and it was definitely lunch time, so we had lunch and watched a movie while we relaxed a little and got recharged to finish the door in some way.

after the movie we trudged back upstairs to assess the situation and soon after we arrived it started lightly raining... okay, its definitely time to do something. karen was really anxious to play with the special window & door expanding foam the girls had bought so she started filling the cracks while i thought about the big hole at the top where the transom will eventually go. after karen got to play with the foam for a while i decided it looked like fun and i needed a turn so she shared and i got to fill some cracks as well - and i think we both got enough of it on our hands to discover that this crap doesnt come off for anything... [it actually did come off two days later in the shower after the oils in my skin finally did their thing and loosened it up enough to scrape it off...] after foaming sufficiently and watching it grow the rain was starting to come down a little harder and i decided to just cut some mdf to cover the gap in the door and then screw in some plywood to cover the opening. well it didnt go exactly as planned - but close enough, and we covered up all the remaining gaps with some plastic and painters tape to try and seal it all up as best we could. after that we were definitely done with project-time and were ready to do as much relaxing as we could for the rest of the night in preparation for the week ahead. so we watched some tv, snacked a little, and passed out early.

--fini--

and thats the story!

hope you enjoyed it, and i hope you enjoy the pictures im posting on the album site as well!

click here to see them.