no.70

so this saturday went pretty much as scheduled.

karen had to go to school at 10 for this personal trainer class shes taking, so while she was in class i went to the grocery store to do our normal shopping and then a little extra for the party. then went home to unload groceries and start doing the final cleaning stuff. i did mostly outside work while she was still in class, just making the place look a little more presentable and moving all the "junk" into a less conspicuous place. then around 2pm i went and picked karen up and we decided we were both pretty hungry and needed to get lunch. so since we didnt want to make anymore messes to clean up at the house we decided to go to currito again. this time i got a bangkok burrito and karen got a mediterranean burrito - both were excellent - although the feta was a little over-powering for my tastes, but karen loved it.

anyway, after lunch we went back to the house and got started cleaning up everything, for the next few hours we just did a lot of that, and probably around 5 we were satisfied and went upstairs to get showered and ready. by 6 we were in the kitchen getting food prepped and then just hanging out in anticipation of who might arrive first.

well a little after 7 amanda, patrick, and caity arrived with treats in hand, and so the party started. not long after they arrived, cae & emil were the second group and we all chatted and snacked for a while as everyone looked around at the various rooms on the first floor. amanda and patrick were the only people who had seen the house other than the family and the neighbors across the street so everyone was very curious to check everything out. well, soon enough another friend of karens arrived and then soon enough the neighbors from across the street did too, so all the boys started working on the kabobs while all the girls chatted.

everything was going pretty great for a while, the kabobs were on the grill and smelling great, and everyone seemed to be having a good time and someone asked how the grillin was going, so we checked em out and uh oh... there was no fire. whoops, must have gone out on us when we werent watching it. so we tried to relight it... and nothing happened... and again, and again... crap, we were out of propane. sooo... the girls decided to let us run and get some more propane while they continued to party without us. and sure enough we ran down the block and got a new tank of propane and were back without much notice from them at all, haha. well, we hooked the new tank up, got the fire going again, and then karen and i decided it was time for the grande tour while we waited on the food to finish. so we started giving the master tour of the house and ushering the mob from room to room, until we got into the attic and patrick and emil remembered the food. so they raced down to save it before it was all black, and we finished up the tour. they apparently were just in the nick of time and once we all got back downstairs everyone grabbed a skewer and chowed down. turns out we didnt do half bad for our first time grilling kabobs. =] they were quite tasty and before we knew it we were totally out and started a second batch while everyone mingled. soon enough the second batch came out and everyone enjoyed those as well.

so i cant tell you for sure how much longer it was, but everyone moved into the dining room after the second round of grilling and started in on the desert that amanda had brought, and i got started cleaning, heh. at some point there was crazy dancing in the kitchen initiated by my wife and joined by a few of the girls and that was definitely fun to watch, haha. but overall it was just a lot of fun to socialize and snack and relax. somewhere around 11pm everyone was saying their goodnights and we were pretty exhausted from the night... well, i was. karen was ready to go out dancing but eventually i convinced her the bed was a better idea and we retired for the night, lol.

on sunday we had a similar morning, karen had to be at personal training again, so i dropped her off at school, and then this time around i decided to go to church, and then get a haircut, and then pick up a few items wed managed not to get on the grocery list the day before. well, while i was at the store i decided to get a bunch of goodies [like this awesome chicken salad that biggs has in their little fresh market area] and pack a picnic lunch to take up to karen when she finished her class. she told me she was going to be working on studio for most of the day after the personal training class, so i thought it would be a nice fun thing for her to have a little picnic at studio.

well soon enough after i got home it was about that time, so i headed up to her school. well... i didnt know her partner was going to be there too, haha, so the picnic basket was a little embarrassing but karen was tickled and we enjoyed a brief lunch before she got back to work.

then for the next few hours i decided to hangout and keep them company and lend a little muscle occasionally when they needed a little extra. by about 7 they were finished for the night and had made a lot of progress on their project.

so we went home and just settled in for a little relaxing and recovering from the weekend in preparation for the week ahead. watched a little tv, had dinner, and eventually turned in for the night.

and now its monday. and well, i dont really want to talk about today. it hasnt been the greatest morning, but im hoping the day gets better. who-knows. at any rate, theres definitely nothing exciting going on and im still pretty tired from the weekend. i think id be content to go home and veg for a little while before crashing early. we'll see how it goes, but i bet thats what happens, haha!

sorry i didnt take any pictures. i always forget to get the camera out at parties. i just get distracted and its the furthest thing from my mind. but we really did have a great time and everyone seemed to like the house, so... cool! =]

have a great week!

organizize

so i guess its been a little while.

well, last week karen went on hiatus for a few days. for those of you that didnt already know, my lovely wife went on vacation from wednesday through saturday leaving me all alone. sad day... anyhoo. she went to new orleans for a conference of some kind that had something to do with pop-culture phenomena. even after shes explained it to me [in her own special way...] half a dozen times, i am still not completely sure what the purpose of the conference was, but i suppose thats irrelevant. the basic gist of things is that last quarter karen wrote a paper for a class, somehow she became aware of a publication or competition or something of the like that she submitted the paper to. then after a process of entry elimination she was selected as one of 4 in her category [historical movie something or other??] to present her paper at this conference. so, she left wednesday morning and flew to new orleans and then from what i can tell had herself a great time without me soaking up the warmth of the u.s. southern costal region and enjoying plenty of delicious food. anyway, she came back saturday. i dont think she even missed me, which was apparent by her dodging my calls each night ;]

anyway, she had a good time, so im glad. while she was gone i didnt do a whole lot during the week. i worked out a little and vegged out infront of the tv a lot. friday night i did go and have some fun of my own though. my friend from work, amanda - but not the one ive mentioned before... this is a different amanda... which is going to lead to all kinds of confusion, so from hence forth she shall be known as umm... miami - had a little party at her new place. recently she moved into a loft right smack in the center of downtown cincy, and shes been discussing the move with me pretty regularly. anyway, i got to see pictures of the proposed loft pre-move in and i was really excited for. and since she got it, well... i was really wanting to see the place, it looked super cool from what little i saw. anyway, friday night she had people over to the new place and i was one of those in attendance. so right after work i went to the store to pic up a few items for her while she went to tidy up and get the place ready for the party, and maybe a half hour later i finally arrived. well ive gotta say, the place was gorgeous! i LOVE her loft! i wish id taken my camera and gotten pictures to put up, it was just soooo awesome! exposed brick all around, exposed structure, a very hip & modern loft layout, tons of natural light [well, excpet it was torrential-ly down pouring on this particular night, but ive got a great imagination] and to top it all off the place was totally immaculate and completely set-up. after only a month!! ugh!! it made me sick. shed lived there a MONTH and had already completely unpacked and turned the place into an ultra-hip party pad. she sickens me... miami, you sicken me. but your place is awesome!! =] anyway, we had a great time, although it was the weirdest party ive ever been to, lol. so when i got there 2 people had shown up before me. and as the night progressed, slowly 2 people would arrive, and two people would leave in this steady, slightly overlapping, rotation of new pairs of guests, haha. it was so bizarre. but sure enough, two more would arrive, and then the 2 before them would leave, lol! i was the only consistent party-er the entire night, mostly because i had nothing to do, hahaha! but yeah, great time and a GREAT place!

saturday, in preparation for karens return i decided to give my wife a big present. so i got up bright and early - 7:40-ish i think... thats REALLY early for a saturday, for me. and started cleaning. yep, thats right. the place was an absolute disaster... we'd been working on projects every weekend [as im sure you've already read] and only succeeded in creating more and more messes on top of previous messes and well, id had enough. and after miami's party, i was determined to get our place into a somewhat presentable situation. so in essence i started in our room upstairs and then made my way, room by room, through most of the house - cleaning and organizing. well, im pretty proud to say that by about 3pm i had severely impacted the status of our house. organizing is definitely one of my strengths and when i put my mind to it [and with the help of a little frustration and exasperation with my surroundings] i can accomplish pretty amazing transformations. so.. not only did i clean and organize the crap out of... well, everything, i also went about attempting to re-arrange furniture as karen and i had discussed previously, and even finally put together our "real" dining table and set it up. well, i didnt tell karen, obviously, that i was going to/do any of this, so when i picked her up at the airport @ 4pm i just pretended id slept in late and then been lazy all morning - give her a good surprise, heh. anyway, at that point we were both pretty hungry [i hadnt eaten all day i was so focused on my task] so we decided to hit one of our favorite places previously mentioned, cactus pear, which we hadnt been to in some time. it was delicious as always =] this time i actually got what my mom had gotten when we took them there, the nacho-salad, and it was really really good - definitely hit ALL the spots. ;]

well after lunch i took her home and she walked in the door and into the dining room heading to the kitchen for something and halfway through the dining room she stopped. haha, it always takes her a second to actually see her surroundings, lol! personally, im an extremely observant person and i notice even the slightest changes in my surroundings pretty instantaneously, but this girl - god, i love her - it always takes her a few minutes, lol! anyway, halfway through the dining room she turns around "did you organize?" lol, duh! so she walked through all the different rooms and was quite pleased with her surprise. she was just beaming with excitement at all the newly "cleaned" space and our ability to actually walk through all of our rooms, haha. so yeah, i did pretty good. i made the wife happy.

sooooo... this week has been a lot of the norm. nothing very spectacular [or even vaguely interesting for that matter] has happened to either of us from my recollection. however, after the party last weekend i was truly inspired. and after cleaning up the place and discussing it with the wife, karen and i decided it was finally time to have people over to the new house [and we wish all of you could come too!!!] =]

we've been delaying time and time again because this thing or that project wasnt finished yet, and then another one pops up and then another and then... well we finally decided it was never going to be ready, so we might as well just get over it. so we've been doing a pretty good job of keeping the place in order this week and tomorrow morning we'll do a really good last minute touch-up, but then tomorrow evening we're really excited to have a bunch of people over. we sent out facebook invites last sunday and we've gotten various responses, but it appears that we'll have a handful of people for sure coming over and then another handful who may or may not stop by depending on how their other plans work out for the night. either way, we're really excited to finally entertain and get some feedback on the place from all our friends!

haha, hopefully its the good kind, we've really busted our asses to transform the place from the way it was when we got it. i just dont know how much anyone could tell having not seen the before... oh-well, if everyone just has a mildly enjoyable time, i'll be more than satisfied.

so... thats about it. youre updated on last week, last weekend, and this week. hopefully the "party" will be a success and ill try to remember to take some pictures and update you on that afterwards. but for now, my lunch break is nearing its end, and im out of things to really talk about anyway.

oh, and for those of you that didnt take an interest in my email or didnt get it, you should really check out this site: http://www.fairtax.org its a pretty interesting idea on a new tax system and the deeper into it i read, the more convinced i am that it might be a pretty good solution to our current economic crisis. but im no expert on the subject, by any means, so make your own judgement. =]

oh, and lastly, for those of you that are always wanting pictures, heres a few. =]

[and as usual, also on my photo site.]

the "real" dining table and our new chairs.

and a little closer.

the new "salmony-orange" couch in its new home.

the old couch... yes, its still around... and some book shelf progress - we're so close, but still have plenty to do...

hope you like! =]

the.sawhorse.postulation

well hello, hello, to all of you out there in the blog-o-sphere. i hope youre all having a pleasant monday so far, and if you are one of the millions of fanatics out there who are annoying me about "opening day," please go away... now.

no, i dont have any interest what-so-ever in opening day of baseball. i hardly even like baseball. if it werent for the beer and the hotdogs, i wouldnt at all and i dont think youd see me anywhere near a baseball game, ever. why? well for starters, its got to be one of the most boring sports ever. it takes an entire game for anything of signifigance to happen, and in the end whatever that thing was only lasted about 10 seconds and then it was back to the snooze fest. it seems like all baseball is is just a lot of waiting around to see if something might happen that you can brag about having seen to all your buddies who didnt and also actually care about as much as you do. blah. and dont even get me started on the legitimacy of "professional" sports and their associated absolutely insane overpaid salaries, because its hard to stop me once ive started. the whole thing is a crock, a sham, and to be quite honest it makes me sad for our society... [well, ill admit i do enjoy a football game occasionally, but at least it keeps you engaged throughout the game, and then well, theres chearleaders bouncing around and such.] but anyway, enough ranting about all of that, none of you care anyway, and most of you are probably glued to something sports related as i write this anyhow.

so on to our weekend update then, shall we? well, it was a successful weekend, in that we got plenty accomplished.

[friday]

well i suppose ill start where i left off. on friday evening afterwork karen picked me up and we went home to get our special whole-foods wine glasses, and then made our way to the wine tasting. well, traffic on a friday night is pretty terrible so it took a while longer than anticipated and we got there about 15 -20 minutes late, but we got there at about the same time half the group arrived as well, so it was no big deal.

so the fun thing about this wine tasting is that it costs 4 bucks for starters, theres a bunch of fun people in the group that we get to talk to and have a good time with, and then well, the wine and food. theres usually 5 or 6 stations set up around the perimeter of the whole foods and you basically go from station to station where youre given a small serving of a wine [about a quarter of a glass] and food pairing [usually hors-derve sized]. supposedly the wine is meant to compliment the food selection, or visa-versa, however i dont always agree. anyway, this particular night we had mostly good wines, and some not so good food pairings - in my humble opinion. the last time we went it was the oposite, so you never know i suppose... anyway, we had a lot of fun chit-chatting and doing our little tastings and by the time we'd made it round we were pretty much all in agreement that we were hungry and wanted to move the party elsewhere [theres very limited seating usually, and this time even more so after they'd remodeled a section that used to have tables and no longer did.]

so eventually we all agreed to go around the corner to this little pub, aptly enough named, the pub. dont ask me why, because i still dont know, but everyone decided it would be great fun to pile in the back of my truck as we circled the parking lot to the pub where i dropped all of them off while patrick and i went in search of a parking space - yeah, we got plenty of funny looks, lol! by the time we met up with everyone else, theyd ordered drinks and we were waiting on a table. soon enough we got one and sat down for a while. we had a good time at the pub as well, a couple of drinks a bunch of food shared across the table, and more laughs and good conversation. by the time we were saying goodnight to everyone it was getting late and karen was already starting to drift off, haha, so we headed home.

[saturday]

we got up around our usual time on saturday [9:30ish] and just kind of lounged around for a little while before eventually getting up and making our way down to blue jay. we had a very nice breakfast and karen tried the french toast and found it quite pleasing, haha. after breakfast we decided that the best thing to do would be to run some errands in the morning and then work on house stuff. karen and her partner had needed to switch days to do studio work for the weekend so we wouldnt be getting to do our usual sunday routine.

so we headed out to the grocery store and on the way i decided it was time for a haircut and we made that stop first. ive been less and less satisfied with my haircuts at the place id been going since we moved here, and so we decided to try another place. we were heading to the hyde park biggs to do our grocery shopping, and luckily enough there was a hair salon in the same shopping center, so we went there. well ill tell yah, i was pretty happy with my haircut. this chick obviously knew what she was doing and not only did it take her half the time the other place used to take, it looked pretty decent as well. so check that off the list. =]

after the haircut we walked down the strip to the starbucks to check another item off our list, more coffee. can i just say that i love the deal where you buy a bag of coffee and get a free tall drink? its awesome. whoever came up with that is a genius and i could kiss them. so as we enjoyed our iced coffees, we headed over to biggs to get our grocery on.

we'd made a point to limit ourselves on what we were going to buy and only get what we actually needed and then even made a deal with ourselves to only allow 3 items that werent on the list as well. haha, we always end up getting a ton of stuff that isnt on the list, and while we do always eat it, we always spend way too much money and we agree we need to stop doing it, lol. anyway, because the list was pretty lean and we actually stuck to our 3 over rule, we got our shopping done pretty quickly and it was one of the leanest pricetags for the grocery store in some time as well. so im betting the 3 over rule sticks around, haha.

after biggs we were on our way home and decided to stop at a bookstore nearby to see if they had a book that karen was looking for. we spent quite a while searching for it in a number of different sections, and found a bunch of things that were close, but not quite what she was looking for, and disappointedly we left 30-45 minutes later empty-handed. guess the internet will have to do... hopefully.

so at this point we went home and decided to get started on house stuff for the day. and number one on the list anyone? yeah, you guessed it, bookshelves. karen is desperate to get these things finished so we can finally put away all of our books - weve practically got a library's worth between us, so its more of a necessity than a luxury at this point. well, the last time we worked on them we were having issues and dont ask me why, but i woke up that morning having figure out the solution in my sleep. now this is probably obvious to most anyone, honestly its obvious to me now, i just never gave it any thought before hand. so the situation basically is that i have this pretty nice set of sawhorses that i came by quite accidentally. but thats not the story for now, and its not really all that interesting, so we'll move on. anyway, theyre a pretty nice set of folding aluminum saw horses but the issue we were running into was that the way they are formed makes it nearly impossible to clamp to them. the fold into themselves and the top is about a 6 inch solid panel of aluminum, so when you take that 6 inches plus whatever you have on top, well, thats a pretty large space to clamp, and then its just open under the panel, so the clamp is awkward if you can manage to get it on there. well the other day when i was taking the door off in the "shop" i idley noticed that there were pre-drilled holes in the top of the sawhorses on either end, and found that curious. anyway, then the solution occured to me in my sleep and i woke up smacking myself in the forehead. duh. screw a 2x4 to the top of the sawhorse with a little overhang to clamp to. obvious right? im retarded sometimes, i swear... so anyway, the first thing i did when we got started was to screw some scrap 2x4's to the sawhorses from underneath and voila, perfect. so with that issue solved, i didnt even need karen to help me hold the wood anymore thanks to my handy clamps, so she got busy painting the pieces as i finished them. however, i was able to streamline the cutting process quite a bit and before long i had them all cut and she didnt have enough room to paint half of them while we waited for the first half to dry. =]

so at this point the next item on our list was to finish the last 6 pieces of mounting wood while we waited for paint to dry. well, again id figured out a better way to do it with my trusty speed square [i LOVE my speed square!!] and they ended up being the best pieces we mounted of the whole group, haha. man i wish id thought of that little trick earlier... so anyway, by the time we were done with that it was getting late and dark and karen needed to work on some school stuff, so we decided to have dinner and call it a night. karen cooked some little steaks we'd gotten and tried to re-create some sauce her mom makes that she likes, but apparently didnt quite get it. idunno one way or the other, but it sure tasted good to me. =] while she fixed dinner and while we were eating we watched "the happening" from my netflix - this is m. night shyamalan's newest film. and i gotta say... im a little disappointed. ive enjoyed all of his other movies a lot [the sixth sense, signs, the village, etc.] and while a lot of people feel that theyve all been going down hill, especially his last one, lady in the water, i enjoyed it as well and was really looking forward to this one. well... i dont know what it was, mark whalburg's serious over-acting, the banality of zooey dechanel's character [although her acting was right on, as always! love her!], or just the overall corni-ness of the surprise twist... i was just a little disappointed. i liked it, but not nearly as much as all his others.

anyway, that was saturday.

[sunday]

well sunday morning karen got up bright and early at about 8, and then i got up a little more sluggishly around 8:30... she wanted to get some stuff done for the day before she was supposed to get to studio at 10. so i got showered and dressed and before i knew it i was dropping her off at school and heading home. so i decided that my project for the day was going to be getting some of the electrical done. and to start with, i was going to change out the dryer cord and receptacle to the new 4-wire stuff we'd gotten last weekend. well the cord went pretty smoothly, the clamp was being a real pain in the ass, the screws didnt want to go in straight, but eventually i got it after some limited struggle. luckily all of this electrical stuff is getting a lot more straight forward for me, i know what im doing when i go into it and how to do it, its just the getting it done that takes some time occasionally. anyway, the next step was the receptacle. well unlike the stove receptaclet hat i changed out last weekend with no problems, this one was a recessed receptacle and i ran in to a snag. after taking off the old one and wiring up the new one [with a little struggle because the idiot that wired it originally left no slack in the wire at all...] i started to put it back in, pleased with how quickly it had gone so far, only to realise... yeah the new receptacle is bigger than the handy-box the onld one was in. [the handy-box is the little metal box thats behind the wall if you hadnt already picked up on that.] well i thought maybe i could bend the sides out a little and get it to fit but after trying this for a while and jamming it in there, i finally got it screwed in, but in the process the box had gotten loosened up from its mounting and well... there was no way this rigged situation was going to fly with the inspector, so i resolved to go to home depot and get a new one that fit.

well about that time karen was calling me to go to lunch with her anyway, so we went and had lunch at currito, a new burrito place near the campus that was actually suprisingly good. it was about the same price as all the rest of the burrito places out there, only this one had a little gimmic. currito - the cure for the common burrito. their outlook apparently is that most of the burrito places are the same old same old [which is true to a point, although freebirds will always reign supreme in my book, heh] and theyve got a little flair to their menu. basically theyve incorporated a variety of food genres into their menu so you can get a burrito for whatever flavor mood youre in. for example, karen got a cajun burrito, i got a standard mexican style burrito, and there there were other options like a thai inspred, chinese inspired, buffalo wing, mediteranian, well, you get the idea. well i enjoyed mine, and karen did too [we even swaped a bite and liked each others as well] and ill say im happy with my experience. they had a nice decor, the service was quick, and the food was good, not to mention i thought the idea of different genre burrito's was pretty cool, so yeah, ill probably go back. =]

anyway, after lunch i went to homedepot to get the stupid box and it was even more stupid because they didnt really have what i wanted and it took me forever to find one that would work well enough for my purposes. all i needed was a stupid rough-in box, but they didnt have any the right size. blah, whatever. i got something that ended up working and when i got home it took a little effort but i got it in there and got everything wired up with little more difficulty.

after that, i decided to give karen a little surprise. shes been wanting to plant flowers and vegetables for a few weeks now but the weather hasnt been too good and we've been worried about a freeze [which is happening tonight as it turns out, so we were right to be worried]. anyway, karen picked out a bunch of seeds a while back when we were at walmart and after discussing the situation with her mom, decided she needed me to make her a seedling box so she could plant them inside and then in a week or two hopefully transfer them to outside. well, i was planning to do that for her today without her knowledge. so while i was at home depot i got some good potting soil for her and i just happened to pass by a rack of these little pre-made seedling trays. well hot-damn, i didnt have to make anything afterall. they were like 4 bucks and you could plant a bunch of little seedlings in them, so i picked it up while i was there. anyway, at this point in my day i decided to go ahead and get the seedlings started for her and went through the process of planting about half the tray to get her started. well, soon after id finished half the tray she was calling me to come get her, so i put the tray and soil away and hoped she enjoyed her surprise.

well to make it more fun i told her she had a surprise, but she had to find it, haha. shes so oblivious, it took her a good 15 minutes to discover it, but she was squeeling with excitement once she did =] i did good, heh. im just glad it made her happy, she made sure to plant the other half of the tray right away and before long it was getting dark and we were both pretty well done for the day. so we decided to call it quits and head up stairs to relax and watch some west wing before dinner and eventually bed.

and now... its monday, im at work, and well, lunch is over, haha. so i guess i better get back to work. hope you all have a nice monday and a good week. ill post more if anything of interest happens. oh, and just for mom-in-law, ill make sure to get some pictures of the new couch up soon. hopefully we can get the bookshelves almost finished soon as well, and i can get a progress picture of those up too.

oh, and no, we didnt get rid of the damned couch.. i dont want to talk about it.

ju-ju-just.dance.dance.

wow... so its been almost 2 weeks. my bad. so much for blogging more often...

okay, lets get to the recent events. well, as recent as the time table is from your perspective anyway.

[last.week]

not a whole lot happened to report about during the remainder of the week but there is a little.

im foggy on what day it was, but nearer the end of the week than the beginning, karen found a couch on craigslist that she just fell in love with. so far we've had kind of a love/hate relationship with the 3 piece set we got off craigslist some months ago - in that we love having furniture, but its huge, bulky, heavy, and not really in line with our style or the style we're going for in our rooms... at all. but it is comfortable, and it was affordable, and well, its furnishing - so the rooms arent exactly empty anymore. however, theyre a lot closer to overstuffed with these monstrous pieces... but i digress. so karen found this couch that she just fell in love with. it was waaay more in line [okay, ill say it, perfectly in line.] with our style and the feel we were going for in the parlor, and it was listed for super cheap, so karen talked me in to going and picking it up after work one day. well lucky for us no one grabbed it first and she struck a deal with the woman selling it [who was quite friendly by the way, we liked her.] and actually got it for 5 bucks cheaper than she was listing it. anyway, we got there to get this thing and it was even more perfect in person - its gorgeous. so anyway, we brought it home [so much lighter than the other ones!!!!!] and got it into the parlor and instantly, we loved it. it just works with the room. its kind of an orangey-salmon color and dont ask me why, but it really ties the colors in the room together a lot better than the cream [or dingy brown slip cover] color of the couch we have now.

so tied to that, i insisted that if she got a new couch she had to get rid of the old one - theres just not enough room for them to live in harmony. she agreed and posted it on craigslist. since then weve had a couple of people come by and look at it, but so far we still have it... the weather hasnt been helpful, i'll say that much. its been raining a lot lately and no one wants to move a couch in the rain [myself included.] but tomorrow [saturday] is supposed to be a beautiful day out and saturdays are the best day for craigslist, so hopefully we can get rid of it this weekend.

other than that... theres nothing too noteworthy about last week that i can remember.

[last.weekend]

well i believe ive posted at some point in the past that we had a few problems with our electrical when it came time to do the inspection. it wasnt that we did stuff wrong, just that there were more code requirements than we knew about that we were going to have to meet, and there was more wrong that the inspector discovered during his inspection. anyway, when it was all said and done we had a nice list of things we still needed to do and the more major of those things being that we needed to replace our main service line and meter - of which i am no where near qualified to take on with my fairly limited "expertise" [ha!]. so the bottom line was that we were going to have to hire an electrician for at least part of what we still had left to do and i was dreading having to do that.

from my limited understanding of the profession, electricians are expensive. and as i started to make phone calls to get estimates or quotes or someone to even come out to look at it, i found this limited understanding to be quite true indeed. i was getting numbers anywhere from 1000 to 2000 bucks to do the work, a lot of them didnt bother going out to look - they could handle it whatever it ended up being and if it was more than what i described on the phone they could give me a price once they were working on it [ha, right!] - or charged a fee to come out and look at stuff before theyd even give you a quote... all of these things were not making me very happy, or to be more honest were frastrating the hell out of me.

so last week i started asking around the office [after failing on my own accord] if anyone knew a good electrician or even a fair one that was affordable. luckily, i hit the jackpot. one of the architects at my office has a good friend thats an electrician and passed on my information to him. soon enough he called me and arranged to go out and have a look [for free, woohoo!] at the situation while karen was at home. he did so and she discussed with him to some degree the problem and the list of other things we had to do, and he went on his merry way. well we didnt hear anything back immediately, but on friday of last week the architect told me that the guy had lost my number and so i gave it to her and he called me pretty shortly after. so we discussed what he saw, and cleared up exactly what i wanted him to do, and he gave me a quote for the work... and it was WAY cheaper than any of the other idiots id talked to! well it turned out hed had a cancellation saturday morning and so we scheduled for that time - problem solved!

so saturday morning came and he arrived right on time and got to work. before hed gotten there i had been working away myself for almost an hour. the stove[range] line that was in the house when we bought it was actually service cable, and during the inspection the inspector decided it was oversized and needed to be replaced with a smaller and different kind of wire but also informed me that the one there would be sufficient to replace the service line outside. so kind of bittersweet in that it would have to be replaced, but awesome that we already had the materials for the electrician. [which helped save me some money!] so anwyay, before they got there i was busy unhooking the line from the circuit breaker, the stove, and starting to pull it out of the floor joists. luckily when dad was here we'd disconnected the stove line that was going to the second floor [part of the old multi-family situation] and the wire going to that one was the right kind and there was enough of it to run as the replacement line. so anyway, the electrian and one of his guys got there while i was in the middle of pulling the service wire out of the joists and took over for me while i got started running the replacement line for the stove.

i wasnt entirely sure what all they did for the first couple of hours while i was busy down in the basment doing my own thing, but around noon i started checking up on things with them and theyd made huge progress! theyd already installed a new meter base and were prepping the replacement service line to go in. and well, before i knew it they were doing those things as well. at about 1:15 they were completely finished installing the new service line and we had power up and running with no problems!

and if that all wasnt enough, the guy was really nice and walked me through the entire list from the inspector and talked me through the ohio code stuff that my dad and i didnt know before, and showed me how i needed to complete everything to get approved in the final inspection. he gave me all kinds of tips and said that if i ever had any problems or questions or anything to feel free to give him a call and hed be glad to help. so yeah, thats a great contact if i ever have more electrical stuff going on, and in the end it only cost us $400! thats pretty drastically different from $2000 in my book! [checkbook that is...]

anyway, the rest of the day saturday we spent going to homedepot to get the supplies i was going to need to work on some of the other electrical stuff and then i actually did some of that as well. karen worked on school stuff trying to get ready for classes to start up on monday and grilled hamburgers for dinner. [yeah, they were the frozen kind this time so we had much less difficulty, haha, they tasted awesome though!]

sunday we went to church, the grocery store, and the gas station as usual and then it started raining again and the day got very grey and dreary and gross and... we basically said screw it, got in warm-comfies and snuggled up infront of the tv. =]

[this.week]

well nothing too exciting has gone on during the week. karen has been going to all her classes and started her new job on campus so shes getting adjusted to all of those. and then wednesday night i took off the door to the balcony on the second floor and replaced it with a sheet of plywood because karen needed the door for her studio project this semester and it was a piece of crap anyway. [and again, heavy!] we took that up to her studio along with a nice load of supplies and such.

ummm.... lets see... what else.....

haha, alright ive tortured amanda enough i guess. ;]

well over the weekend our dear friend amanda [whom ive mentioned on a few occasions past] moved back to cincinnati after being awol for the last few months. [well, really shed just moved to cleveland temporarily for an internship, but you say potato...] and on mondy night she decided to have people over to celebrate being back home in the nati - and we were invited. so after work we went to amandas and had a long night of friends, food, lots of laughter and stories and lively conversations about various topics. we had a great time, and a little wine, and by the time we ended up leaving it was damn near midnight, lol! [oh and did i mention there was a puppy? haha, that alone was tons of entertainment throughout the night! it was amanda's roommate - who is also very cool - caity's new puppy, a cocker spaniel mix - mom youd have loved it! - and it was pretty stinkin cute. "pay-trick" and i played with it for probably the first solid hour, haha!] anyway, we had a total blast [thanks manda!] and a rough morning the next day after not nearly enough beauty sleep ;]

and while we're on the subject of amanda, we're also going out with her and a group tonight for wine tasting again! i know i mentioned this sometime past, the wine tasting at whole-foods. anyway, its starting up again for the spring and tonight is the first night, so karen and i are pretty excited about that. im sure itll be as much fun as it was last time around. =]

alright... so... with that, i think youre pretty caught up on the past. as for the near future... ummm...

[this.weekend]

well as i said its going to be gorgeous outside tomorrow so im sure we'll try and get some house work done if we can.

i know karen has lots of homework to work on this weekend and shes planning on doing a lot of that, so it might throw a wrench in our house stuff.

i am definitely hoping we get rid of that stupid couch this weekend.

theres still bookshelf stuff left to be completed, so i might work on that some.

the electrical is still around, so i might work on that some more.

we need to replace the door out to the balcony at some point, we might attempt that this weekend.

church on sunday and the normal sunday routine.

oh, and a new development -

yesterday i got a flyer [flier?] at work about an architecture competition in cincinnati through the usgbc [http://www.usgbc.org]. well, actually its national, but starts at a local level and cincinnati is one of the locations. anwyay, after reading all the information about this competition i started to think it was pretty cool and i might actually want to do it. i talked to karen about it, but she is too busy with school stuff to work on it at all... but its a pretty big competition project and i kind of wanted to team up with someone. so i emailed my buddy mike from grad school who just happens to live here in cincy as well [see the post about the new years eve wedding for more on mike...] to see if he was interested. well as it turns out, he got pretty excited about the competition and thought we could come up with a pretty cool entry so we decided to do it! so yeah, thats pretty cool. that will definitely take up some of my spare time over the next 14 weeks [the deadline] but hopefully we'll have a cool entry to show for it. [i know we'll have fun, haha!] so anwyay, this weekend at some point we're planning to meet about that and start brainstorming, visit the site, etc. so... eventually i may have another update on that, stay tuned.

um, i think thats about it that i know of. hope youve all been well and have plans of your own for the upcoming weekend! miss and love you all!