frozen

howdy all,

so its that time again for another weekly update. sorry ive been so quiet lately but things have been pretty calm and we havent had a whole lot to write an entire blog about. but now i guess ive accumulated enough over the weekend to put together something with a respective length. 

last week.

the only real thing to report from last week is on the roof situation. for those of you that are only reading this for the first time or have just forgotten everything previous to this post, we're doing a lot of roof work at the house. the entirety of it i cant even begin to tell you and the seriousness of it all, well, fairly severe considering the fate of the certificate of occupancy is hanging in the balance and all. so anyway, recently weve hired a roofer for a hell of a deal, they got of to a huge start and then because of weather conditions and material availability the work all but came to a complete halt. however, last week things finally picked back up. on monday i talked to the roofer and he was going to get us some shingle samples to look at and leave them at the house for us to make a decision on color then call us on tuesday to get our answer and get going. well we went to the house monday after work and there were no shingles. hm. maybe he got busy or something. we decided to check back tuesday and still nothing, and hadnt heard from him either. wednesday for some reason i cant remember we got busy and didnt get a chance to check at the house, but having still heard nothing we just assumed they wouldnt be there anyway. thursday we went by after work yet again and aha! not only were there shingles but there was finally a change in the state of the roof!

well we looked at the shingles, the choice was between a green and a grey [karen wanted the green and i wanted the grey] and after looking at the actual color of the shingle [as opposed to a picture on a website that was fairly small and not very detailed] we decided to go with the grey. as for the roof itself they stripped almost all of the slate down and had put up fresh felt paper over the areas they had removed the slate on. it was really exciting to see this huge progress, not to mention the huge piles of slate scrap and dust! friday i actually got another call from the roofer asking if wed made a decision on the shingles, so we told him what we wanted and he said great, theyre starting today. awesome! so friday after work we checked out the progress and while it was getting pretty dark out we were able to tell instantly that we had shingles on the front half of the roof! amazing!! needless to say we're pretty stoked about the progress of the roof at the end of last week and we really hope to have the more of the same this week as well!

the only other thing worthy of much mention from last week was that we went to see quantum of solace for one of karens classes [city&film something or other] and i left with very mixed feelings. actually, last week i watched a few movies [because we finally switched our netflix from tv series for a little break] and ive had a lot of mixed feelings about them. i might have to dedicate a blog specifically to this topic later this week, but for now we'll jump into this weekend's status report.

saturday.

well... saturday we woke up a little late. we'd been up till after midnight the night before watching episodes of the office on netflix online and cuddling up on the couch with hot chocolate. its been getting cold out and friday had been the worst yet at that point. the high had been in the lower 30's and the low was somewhere in the upper 20's - which makes for a frozen karen and warrants lazy nights on the couch with hot chocolate and lots of blankets. anyway, we'd been up till nearly one and we were exhausted [karen had actually not slept the night before, pulling an all-nighter to finish a paper before work that was due friday - she actually passed out at about 11, lol!] and probably got our lazy butts out of bed somewhere between 11-11:30am.

to our surprise we woke up to somewhere around a solid inch of snow covering everything outside and still falling at a pretty constant rate. aggravated at the weather conditions, cold, and turned off from going outside in that mess, we decided to continue our couch-mongering from the night before. now i dont take pride in admitting this, but we didnt leave the couch till 4:30pm, lol! at that point we finally made ourselves venture outside to test the weather and for karen to build some miniature snowmen in the now 3inches of snow that had accumulated and was STILL falling. annoyed, but determined to get SOMETHING accomplished that day, we ventured to the grocery store in the "blizzard" as karen put it. [she exaggerates a little sometimes, heh.] anyway, we went to the grocery store and came back and when we got back it had actually let up a little finally and was clear out now that it was dark outside. well by the time we finished putting away the groceries that had changed and it was now falling out harder than it had all day long. ugh. we retreated back to the couch, lol! anyway, that was pretty much the remainder of our night. ;]

sunday.

after saturday's disappointing [but oh-so-fun & relaxing!] day of getting nothing REAL accomplished, we were determined to get a LOT done on sunday and still have a little downtime sunday night before the work-week began.

first things first [obviously... ive never understood this adage...], we made sure to get up and make it to EARLY church. i think we were 2 out of maybe a hundred that made it to the early service, so we were quite proud of ourselves. keep in mind this church is easily a 2 or 3k attendance every sunday. anyway, after church we decided to hit the target nearby to pick up our gift for the child we're sponsoring [see last weekend's post for more]. it was actually a lot of fun [and frustration] going through all the toy isles trying to find the right gifts. we ended up getting some pretty cool stuff [at least in my opinion] and we really hope the little boy enjoys his new toys. =]

after target we headed home for lunch, to change quickly, and to drop off the target stuff. and then it was straight to the storage place to pick up the first load. the major goal for the near future is getting out of the storage unit because we dont want to throw money away on it again [and its due the 15th] when we have tons of space at the house. so anyway, we loaded up the first load for the day which only took about an hour - not bad really, especially considering the weather was still gross and freezing even though it had stopped snowing. so we took that to the house and started unloading. which actually proved to be rather difficult considering the snow we were tracking into the entry-way turning it into a make-shift [and completely un-necessary!] slip-n-slide. i just about busted my arse so many times i cant believe i didnt dis-locate a knee or something. we tried putting down some carpet wed torn up from the stairs a few weeks earlier, but that just got wet and then started sliding all on its own. ugh.  luckily we finished unloading fairly quickly and took a break from hauling stuff to clean things up. if we were going to get another load we had to clean up the sloshy mess in the entryway anyway. we ended up taking a couple hours to clean up the entry, take-down the painters tape that had expired the week before[did i mention that the paint STILL looks like $h!t after 3 coats on top of a primer coat?! ugh!! so aggravating!!], and then karen started giving the kitchen the first of several needed cleanings while i got the shop-vac busy on the second floor & stairs - so we didnt slip on any of the left-over demolition debris that was currently covering, well... everything. 

after about an hour into it karen went and got the laundry to get it going while i continued my battle with the shop-vac [which has been by far the most useful wedding gift at the house so far, lol!] at about the 2 hour mark id finished and she had gotten to a stopping point with the laundry and the kitchen so we decided we needed a real break before the next haul. we went home to cook "supper" at about 4 and rested for about a half an hour before venturing back out for the second load of punishment. this one loaded up pretty quickly as well and we were back at the house by 6pm. well im pretty sure ive mentioned our cool neighbors, now let me upgrade their status to awesome! they decided to come out and help us unload this haul [completely unsolicited, theyd just seen us unloading the first one and volunteered!]. well i will tell you what, it probably took us 20 minutes to unload everything with the extra hands - and lucky too because the temperature was seriously falling fast! after thanking them profusely and giving them a short updated tour of the house we decided that we were done for the day now that we were frozen and sore. we changed out the laundry and then headed back to that couch for the evening. it ended up being a really pleasant evening - we got home around 7pm and actually got our downtime! not only did we get our downtime, but thanks to the internet we were able to catch up completely with the office and we're now anxiously awaiting the next new installment! haha, i know thats not really of any real importance, but it is pretty fun for us ;]

well then. i guess that about does it for last week and the weekend. good thing too, because my lunch time is up and its pretty hectic around here today!

stay tuned!!