lone.star.livin'

as i sit here typing, the window next to me depicts the serene images of leisurely life at its utmost. the palms gently swaying in the sea breezes, the small song birds happily chirping and flitting around playing a lively game of tag, the hint of saltwater and sand floating on the air, and of course the rousing chorus of the 3 pugs chasing each other, fighting over the most select toy, and all-the-while attempting to breathe through their genetically deformed air passages... [the latter, perhaps less serene...]

yes thats right y'all, im in texas. and on the texas coast to be more specific. home-again-home-again-jigitty-jig.

its been several months since i last updated the ole' blog, and much has changed. most of you that actually read this are close enough that you're already aware of most of the events of my life, however, supposing there are the rare few out there in the entire world [and beyond...?]that might per-chance stubble upon this and decide its worth a read, follow-along as i briefly wrap up the major events of the recent past and set the scene for future-posts.

[the.job.situation]

when last we spoke [er, wrote?] i was embarking on a little adventure of landscaping with my friend from n'awlins and we had completed a few little jobs with some success. well that lasted about as long as you read.

we never ended up getting another job [i think it was really just the seasons changing] even though we bid on a number of them. after a couple of weeks however, i was desperate for cash-flow again and sought some other income situation.

i still had the itt job at this point and was enjoying my first class [and getting the hang of it a bit more as time went on] however the minuscule salary of a new adjunct teaching one class is not something to sustain one's extravagant lifestyle... ;]

so to shorten the longevity of my verboseness in the instance, i posted an ad on the church website boasting my qualifications, and through a series of serendipitous events, i ended up working for jones the florist [the name in florists in the greater cincinnati area] that ended up being a pretty great experience for a few months. i started out doing candy bouquets[if you dont know what that is, just go to their website...] and as it would turn out was quite the craftsman. i picked this little skill up very quickly and in a few days was pretty much the fastest person on production in the place. so i candied for a couple of months while they got through some big seasonal orders and then when the seasonal time was up i inquired about staying on for a bit longer if theyd have me...

meanwhile - in those months at jones, i had been offered and accepted another classes for the following quarter at itt, took up karate in my "spare" time, and then as i looked into extending my stay at jones, was offered and accepted 2 classes for the upcoming quarter and had a couple of promising interviews.

one of the interviews was with one of the biggest architecture firms in cinicnnati [and while i wont play the dropping names game, they're huge and "worldwide"...] and i was very excited about the prospect. this was the dream job in the cincinnati area and since karen and i had resolved to sticking around there, this was a big deal. in conjunction with that, i started interviewing, via the vast world-wide telecommunications network, for a position in a construction firm in houston. [spoiler alert! if you havent yet read the title of the blog.... um.... dont.]

well jones decided to hire me on as a delivery driver because of my mad-skillz and obvious awesomeness and i enjoyed working for them through december. the interview with the b-i-g arch firm was less than fruitful in the immediate present-tense sense of things - although it was a great feeling knowing they were interested and seriously considering me! - and as it would turn out i was offered and accepted the job in houston. [shocker. i know.]

thus begun a whirlwind of activity revolving this drastically life-altering occurance...

[h-t-x]

so... heres the run-down on h-town.

i interviewed for this position for a bout a span of a month's time and on the friday before karen and i were supposed to leave for our annual christmas voyage to the south to see the family, the construction company emailed me the offer letter.

i thought it over [but not for long - this was an amazing opportunity!] and discussed it with family and friends over the weekend, and then first thing monday morning i accepted and we got the ball rolling.

the next day [tuesday] karen and i flew out to texas for our holiday vacation and i stayed in loose contact with my new boss via email - and while we were in texas anyway and so near our soon-to-be-home, we decided to get started on some of the more menial tasks of setting up bank accounts and starting the apartment hunt...

on the 28th of december we flew back to cinicnnati and at this point it had been decided that my start date would be january 10. for anyone not doing the math, thats about a week and a half that i had to be back in texas and ready to start the job with my truck, and any belongings of mine that i would need in texas, as well as helping karen as much as humanly possibly to pack up our house, get rid of whatever we werent taking and generally begin the moving process...

i needed to embark on the cross-country drive by no later than the 5th to have 2 days for the actual driving part and a couple of days to get settled in and ready to start work on the 10th.

so between dec 28 and jan 5 karen and i worked like crazy people to go through our entire house and get rid of anything and everything we could do-without so that we didnt have to move it cross-country.

we sold off furniture on criagslist, had an extensive garage sale to rid ourselves of smaller items, donated a ton of stuff to the church and local clothes-closets, had contractors come in and do some of the final repairs we just hadnt gotten around to yet on the house and now had no time to do and needed to be done before the move/sale, got the house put on the market and worked with the realtor to figure out the best plan of attack, said goodbye to as many dear friends as i could before i left, and in the end... karen still ended up having to stay in cincinnati another 3 weeks after i left to finish all of the above...

of course that then precludes to the ensuing madness of my driving to texas and staying with josh and cassie for the short-term while i searched for an apartment and a place to move all of our crap, started the new job and got settled in, had miscellaneous issues with the truck that needed to be dealt with [for instance i ended up needing to have all 4 tires replaced after the journey south, or the entire engine maintenance checkup i was 10,000 miles over-due on, etc., etc., etc.... ]...

in the end however. we arrived safely. we got everything moved. we found an apartment. i started my job and have settled pretty well into it. karen has since found a temporary job shes enjoying teaching swimming lessons in houston, while still searching for that perfect career job of her own. and last - but certainly not least - we have had quite the rollercoaster of events surrounding the sale of the cincy-house....

but that my friends... is a story for another time.

and with that - im signing off. hope to post more soon-ish, but with life's many obstacles, who really knows?

god bless texas, and have a good-un y'all. =]

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!

then.suddenly.productivity

sorry its been a while, again. it seems like when i first started blogging, it was an everyday thing. and now, im lucky to get around to it once a week. so for those of you loyal readers that miss my multiple weekly postings, i do apologize, however im not sure if it'll change any time soon.

i guess the biggest change in the last few months has been our level of productivity, and thus the quantity of things for me to report on.

luckily, theres been a lot of activity in the last few days, so ive actually got something to talk about. and, to be honest, i probably have enough to last me a couple of lunch breaks, so you might actually get more than one post this week. we shall see...

so whats new in current events...

[roof/contractors]

well i think i mentioned last time around that the roofers had moved their ladders for the neighbors, but that they were nearly finished. well, to expand on that a little, i guess i'll give you the full breadth of what all we've had done in the last few months.

obviously we started out with the roof. the original roofing job consisted of repairing/replacing/rebuilding the box gutters along the west side of the house where there was significant damage that then resulted in significant water damage to the west side of the house. also, they were going to tear off all the existing slate on our mansard roof and replace it all with 30year dimensional shingle. lastly, they were going to do a number of various repair work including molding, trim, flashing, dormers, a little repainting and sealing, and downspouts. that was the original work, haha. soon after we got started they discovered that the porch roof was in pretty bad shape, and so we shingled and repaired it as well. well as far as the roof goes, that was about it, but as ive mentioned in previous posts, my roofer is actually a general contractor and can do just about any work we need [and ive also mentioned hes a great guy!] so we recently ended up having him do some work in the basement as well repairing some floor joists and reinforcing them with columns and footings. and finally, on top of all that, after we had the windows installed and my parents were in town, we discovered a few leaks in the house after a rainstorm and came to the realization that we had a serious problem involving some gaps in the exterior surface of the house around the window openings and that we didnt really have proper sill flashing with the windows either. so while the contractor had his ladders out and his guys out anyway, we had him do some minor repairs to those gaps by filling them with expanding foam and then caulking them in and then additionally adding sill flashing to all the windows. and thus concludes the entire scope of work from our contractor.

well as far as a progress report goes, theyve finished just about all of it! =]

there are only a few minor things that remain and hes assured me theyll get it done in the very near future. [just need some good weather during the week, like... today for instance...] anyway, what still remains is some very minor patching on the corners of the trim around the edge of our flat roof, and then two small places where the guys didnt finish the window caulking - my guess is that they stopped for lunch and then just forgot to finish it up afterwards and moved on to other things. no biggie really, everything they have less should take a couple of hours tops.

[this.weekend|saturday]

so this weekend we were actually quite productive in comparison to the last couple of weekends.

on saturday we did our usual saturday morning routine that we've been in for the last 6 weeks or so. we get up and walk down the 4 or 5 blocks to our local diner, blue jays, and have a nice breakfast. its nice to take the short walk in the mornings and we really love being able to support locally owned and operated businesses in our neighborhood - not to mention they have pretty great food!

well after that we walked home and took a look at our list of things to get accomplished and our list of things we needed from the store. well, it was still pretty chilly outside [around 37] but it was supposed to warm up to the mid 60's in the afternoon and we wanted to get a lot of stuff done outside, so we decided to do our trip to walmart first. so we drove over to walmart and spent a good hour to hour and a half [as it always seems to take...] going through the store and getting the things on our list, and as usual, a few things that werent. well this isnt really an exciting story for the most part, however we did have a little event during the trip. we'd finally gotten to the register with our things after waiting in line for god only knows how long [classic walmart, 20 registers in the store w/4 open on a saturday afternoon...] and i reach for my wallet as we start loading the conveyor belt. uh-oh. yeah, i didnt have it... but we'd already waited in line so long! so i sent karen out to the truck to look for it or anything else that might be out there while i continued to load. well soon enough she returned, sans wallet. ef. i knew exactly where it was... my nightstand. however we did have a checkbook, so i tried to just pay with a check. however, without your drivers license... no dice. so we apologized, asked if they could hold our cart, and went to look for my wallet "in the truck." well, i was a bit frustrated to say the least as we drove all the way home and then all the way back with my wallet [yeah, it was on the nightstand] and then got back in the back of the line and waited again to finally pay for our purchase. embarrassing? yes. waste of time and gas? yes. did i want to just say f*&^ it and not get the crap? yes. but by the time we finished paying, i was in better spirits and karen and i were joking around as normal as we headed home.

well by the time we finally got home [hours later] we had a brief lunch and then decided it was time to start on that list. well luckily we'd wasted enough of the morning that it had warmed up quite a bit and was actually quite beautiful outside. so the first thing on our list was to secure all of the railings on the porch. so drill and a box of screws in had, i went around the porch and did just that. overall it was a fairly simple task and we finished it up quickly enough. and now that we've gotten that taken care of, karen is going to be scheduling our insurance agent to come out some time this week [hopefully] and we can stop tempting fate and finally get some homeowners insurance! [which is a handy thing to have, because without it if your house that youd spent all your money and gotten into debt with , say had an electrical fire *ahem* and burnt to the ground, well, i think the technical insurance term for what youd be is, um... f*&^ed.]

so with that crossed off the list, we moved on to installing the new waterhose reel we'd gotten at the walmart and then the new hose we'd gotten. that went fairly smoothly as well, and karen was quite excited about the prospects of washing the truck and the potential "gardening" we'll be getting to do when spring finally gets here. [im not convinced thats anytime soon, haha] again, easy enough, crossed off the list.

well the next thing on the list was the one i was dreading... the backyard. see the roofers, as they were ripping down everything and replaying it, had been creating a nice pile in the backyard [im pretty sure thereve been a few pictures posted] of... crap. well the little wifey had had enough, she wanted it gone, and thats what we intended to do. luckily, the guys next door have been working steadily all week and we've had a pretty amiable relationship with them so far and friday afternoon the guy in charge was nice enough to offer his giant dumpster to us if ever we needed it. so that made life a million times easier, instead of having to make multiple trips to who knows where carting off all the crap in our backyard, we just had to move it from the backyard to the dumpster in the front. =] well i shouldnt say easy... this was no easy task... it took hours [and plenty of grumbling on my part, haha] but by the time it was starting to get dark [7ish?] we'd made dozens of trips to the dumpster and our enormous pile had dwindled to a few reasonably small piles of sorted brick, stone, and slate scraps. we'd made a world of progress on the trash situation, and while theres still plenty of work to be done [like cleaning up the hopelessly crushed slate thats... everywhere...] we're quite pleased with ourselves. also, in addition to our trips to the dumpster, we also made a dozen or so trips to the basement with all the leftover bags of shingles we had and made a nice little palette of them in a high dry-er place in the basement.

now, if that wasnt enough, well... part of the way through cleaning the pile i got it in my head that i was damn tired of the remaining pieces of the stair/deck/balcony on the back of the house. you may remember in one of my much earlier posts, that we'd ripped down all the stairs off this thing, but that the decks still remained. well... now the middle one doesnt =] i started to disassemble a few party of the remaining hand rail while karen continued on the pile and before long i was determined to just rip the middle deck down altogether, and thats exactly what i did. basically i got behind the thing against the wall, and with karen helping to stabilize, i successfully removed it from the wall, and into the middle of the backyard, in one... strenuous, haha, push. well, luckily for us the thing fell perfectly with our guidance, and twisted itself right into the middle of the yard avoiding all obstacles on its way - including the balcony, the house, all of our trees and shrubs, and most importantly - my wife. =]

so for part of the time we were cleaning up i ripped the deck apart and we salvaged some of the wood that looked like it could possibly be reused. now theres a partially dismantled platform remaining in the backyard, but its amazing how much different it looks without that stupid thing back there! the tress and bushes that had been growing up under it all look so happy as they bask in their new sunlight, heh.

well anyway, that was about it for saturday, after they we were just destroyed for the day and settled in for a nice dinner and some tv in bed.

[this.weekend|sunday]

well sunday got here much sooner than i wanted it to... karen got out of bed about an hour to an hour and a half before i did and started cleaning house and doing laundry and other domestic things while i finished getting my beauty sleep, haha, i have an awesome wife!

anyway, eventually i joined her and we spent the morning doing some various cleaning and straightening up, and soon enough i started in again on the bookshelves we'd started a few weeks ago. well, while i worked on drilling holes, putting in anchors, cutting pieces, etc. karen worked on painting all the pieces i finished with as well as some furniture that still needed to be painted. you may remember that originally we'd started to stain the bookshelves an oops stain we'd bought some time ago, however after seeing some of it on the wall we decided it just didnt fit in the room and opted to paint it all the same high-gloss black we were doing some of the furniture in. and honestly, it looks a million times better so far. by midday we decided to take a break from the bookshelves after making quite a bit of progress. so far we'd gotten all of the holes drilled and anchors in place for 5 out of the six walls that the shelves were on, all of the mounting pieces cut and almost all of them painted, and all of the mounting pieces actually mounted to the wall on one side. all in all, that was a HUGE accomplishment given whats left of assembling them =] again we were quite pleased with ourselves, haha.

well it was time to go outside and soak up the day a little bit while we took our break, so karen decided it was time to wash the truck and finally put on the license plates, lol, and some new windshield wipers. so while she got started on the washing, i got started on the installing, and soon enough we had it all done and the truck was looking as shiny as when we first bought it.

and while i was waiting on karen to put the finishing touched on the truck, i took a moment to fix the latch on the fence gate once and for all - now it opens and closes as smooth as butter ;]

after the outside work we went back inside and i prepared a nice little feast for dinner and we sat down in the parlor to bask in our days accomplishments. things were coming together pretty well, i must say. we'd spent a good part of the day just cleaning up and straightening things and we even moved the skeletal remains of a sectional sofa out of the house now that karen had finished harvesting all the materials she wanted off of it. so far shes already made 2 pillows from its carcass, and im sure theres plenty more to come =]

well by the time it got dark we were pretty well done for the weekend and dreading the coming week, so we spent the rest of the night watching a movie and a little tv before passing out.

so now, its back to the grind stone as the week starts up. so far my day has been fairly routine, but ive stayed busy so im not complaining. karen is off this week as she gears up for her next quarter starting next week and her new job. she'll be spending the week getting school stuff together, working on some minor house stuff, and whatever other little things need to get done [like the home owners insurance!].

right now we're planning to get the house cleaned up pretty good in the next few days and hopefully this weekend or next we'll be able to have a small get together at the house for all our friends in cincy to come check out the house progress. but we'll see how that goes, we've been intending to do it for months, but something always seems to come up. more on that as things develop =]

well thats all for today, hope youre all having a pleasant monday and enjoying some gorgeous weather!

current.events

so i know its been a while since i last posted, and i do sincerely apologize. however, i really just dont have much to report. i dont know what it is, but karen and i just dont seem to have gotten into anything exciting recently. i think life is catching up to us a little and we've just been pretty exhausted every day. 

this weekend we did get a little accomplished, but nothing extraordinary. 

on saturday i removed the two old mailboxes that were on the front porch - from when the house was a multi-family - and put up a new one by the front door. i put a new door closer on the storm door at the front door because the old one was, well, useless.  karen painted our house numbers on the house in nice gigantic numbers, so that was fun - she enjoyed herself. we attempted to grill burgers [did i mention the weather was GORGEOUS out on saturday? hence the outdoor projects] however, we did not succeed. im not sure what happened exactly [i dont know how to grill burgers possibly? hmm....] but they pretty much crumbled on the grill, which neglected to heat up appropriately for about an hour... weird, and we ended up having overcooked and non-sloppy sloppy-joes instead. so yeah, basically cooked ground beef on a bun. the meat was seasoned quite well though, blah. um, other than that we got started on bookshelves on saturday. i marked up the walls for all the nailers and we started measuring and cutting them. 

sunday we went to church in the morning and then did our usual round of shopping - lowes/the depot and biggs[grocery store]. then i got a haircut - it was that time again [and i got it for free! woohoo 11th cut!] after that we spent the remainder of the day measuring and cutting the rest of the nailers for the bookshelves and measuring all and cutting a couple of the shelves themselves. we also started staining everything with this oops stain we'd bought at the depot only god knows when that had a tealish stain color on the lid, but turns out was grey. meh, whatever. we're going to go with it for now, and if we dont like it, we can always do something else instead. in the end we got one shelf mostly up on the wall, it just needs its face trim - which we have to re-cut because i didnt think to measure the actual opening, just the board itself, and guess what, our walls arent straight - whodathunk?

so um, yeah, thats all there is to report on projects i guess. the only other recent event of any substance is that yesterday i had an inspector out to inspect all the electrical that dad and i had done. and as it turns out there are a few problems with our work. im not going to go into any lengthy description right now, but its suffice to say that theyre going to send us a detailed letter spelling out all the things we need to fix, and then from the sound of what he mentioned to me when he was there, we're going to have to end up getting an electrician out to do most of it. and before you think im copping out, the biggest issue that needed to be fixed was that we needed a whole new service line installed in the house [ours is chewed to hell outside, exposed wiring and such, its in bad shape] and i am in no way remotely qualified to do something like that. 

so yeah, that was kind of a bummer after all the hard work we'd put in.

tomorrow ive got another inspector coming out to hopefully approve our new columns and joists. wish us luck, i dont think i can handle any more problems at this point. the electrical is kind of stressing me out. 

alright, thats all ive got. 

hope you all have a nice week. =]

when.the.circus.comes.to.town [the.conclusion+]

well first off i'll say that i completely forgot to take pictures last night for you all [y'all]. the reason for that, well... we'll get to it later on i suppose. =]

[wednesday]

so wednesday morning we got ready for work as usual and said our goodbyes and i love yous to mom and dad. i forgot to mention in the last post, but only mom and dad stayed the extra day, kimber had to get back for school or something, so mom had taken her to the airport for her original flight on tuesday while dad and i kept working on the electrical. well, when the night came and we finally quit for bedtime we'd gotten damn near everything finished. there were only a few things left to do: a few light fixtures to put back together, a few outlets and switches to put back in the wall, our two lovely 3 ways that had been wired wrong were still in need of a little tlc, and there were still two wires we hadnt hooked back up to the panel yet, but that was about it. pretty light relative to the previous days work. 

[1]so while karen and i were at work, mom and dad got those last little things finished up, mom did laundry and dishes again i think, and even took some time to make us cookies, lol! but by the time they left the house was in great shape and we'd gotten so much accomplished it was pretty extraordinary. thanks everyone for all the help and hard work, karen and i cant even express how appreciative we are!

[2]well, our contractor also made a little visit on wednesday while the 'rents were finishing up, and they got a ton of work done too. they were able to cut out and replace the bad wood in both of the other two joists, cut holes and dig out for the footings, and put in place all 3 columns before the day was up - awesome work! and fast! 

so when wednesday evening finally came upon us we were exhausted, haha. but we decided to go out to dinner to celebrate all we'd gotten done, and also to celebrate karen's new job! i think i mentioned before that she was going to try to find some part time work while she was taking classes next quarter and well, she had an interview that dfay and had gotten the job! basically shes going to be doing general office work 12+ hours a week, and shes getting paid the same thing shes making now, so its really a dream come true! she even has the option of working more hours if she feels like she can handle it, theyre extremely flexible, and even more great news, the office shes working in is in the same building as all of her classes, so she doesnt even have to walk across campus to go to work! =]

[thursday]

well thursday was a pretty normal day, and i wouldnt even bring it up, except to say that the contractors were back again and poured all three of our footings and finished putting some steel in the joists as well. so at they point they were pretty much finished with the basement minus a little clean-up and letting the concrete cure for a few days. thursday night we did nothing but hang out and relax - finally!

[friday]

nada on projects. we were supposed to meet some of our friends for dinner and drinks, but something came up and they had to take a raincheck, so we just did it on our own. we had a nice night out and went to bed pretty early =]

[saturday]

saturday i wanted to do nothing, and thats exactly what i did, hehe. i needed an entire day off with nothing but rest and relaxation, and thats what i got. i stayed in bed half the day and basically just watched tv and movies all day, it was awesome! karen bummed around with me for a lot of the day, but she was restless and wanted to get stuff done, so in the afternoon she went to run some errands and then in the evening went to a "all girls craft party" at a friend of hers and had a good time. im still not entirely sure what all happens at a party of this sort, but i know she made some sort of crafty thing that she didnt bring home, lol, so whatever. 

[sunday]

well, sunday was a pretty busy day - considering we got nothing done on saturday of any real substance, lol. we went to church in the morning and then made the rounds to a few stores. first was target because my sweetie needed some new clothes for school [its like august 2000 again, lol!]. then we had lunch and it was delicious. then we went to michaels where we got some thread and yarn and possibly some other things, i cant remember now. 

then it was next door to bigg's for the weekly grocery store trip. by the time we were finished with all that it was about 5pm and we unloaded groceries and cleaned out the fridge while we decided what to do next. 

well, given the newly renovated rooms we decided we needed to get some new furniture, haha. so we went to ikea and spent a couple of hours browsing through the store and trying to decide what we really needed and of that what we actually wanted to buy and well, we ended up getting some great deals! for the office we got 4 shelves - 2 wall mountable shelves that are essentially a bookshelf turned sideways, so we can not only store stuff inside the shelf, we can also put stuff on top of it, so with 2 of them, we're actually getting 4 - not bad at all, and they were a pretty good deal. the other shelves stand on their own and they have 4 shelves each, so we got a ton of storage for the price. =]

also, we got karen a desk chair for her new desk that was on sale for pretty cheap and shes really excited about it. and lastly we got 4 dining room chairs that are the right height for our real dining room table. i know i mentioned before the vintage dining room table we have now with the legs i had to fix, but the plan is that that table is going to end up in the kitchen as a little nook type table, and then our other "real" dining room table can finally take its rightful place. its a pub-height table we got as a wedding gift and its really beautiful, but the problem was that we didnt have any pub-height chairs so that we could actually use it. so at ikea we found some chairs that arent the optimum solution, but they were very reasonably priced and they'll do the trick in a pinch, so to speak, so that we can actually use our fancy table, heh. 

so when we got home from ikea we had dinner and then i spent the rest of the night putting together the new dining room chairs - which proved to be a serious pain in the ass, lol. they were probably some of the hardest to assemble furniture ive ever gotten from ikea, but i finally got them all put together and they look good!

[monday|yesterday]

well, if you hadnt guessed it yet, the reason i didnt get around to taking pictures last night, is because i got distracted with putting together our new ikea shelves, lol! i love putting together furniture, so i just get caught up in it and thats all she wrote. anyway, we got 3 of the 4 shelves put together last night and karens new desk chair with pretty much no problems at all =] other than that the day was pretty normal, work was trying, make dinner, and watch heroes!

actually, s long as we're talking about tv shows ill say a few things.

[1] the new season of heroes is bugging me a little. im still enjoying it, but does anyone else feel like its really just dragging along very slowly? i guess last season just had so much going on so fast that i kinda got used to that momentum, and now we spend half the show watching the characters having conversations and not really doing a whole lot. but maybe thats just me. 

[2] does anyone else watch fringe? can i just say i love this show? i dont know what it is, but it really just grabs the nerd in me and gets me so into everything going on that i cant help it. and honestly, i cant believe im saying it, but i really like joshua jackson's character. i mean, given his dawsons creek make-me-wunna-puke background, i was expecting to be annoyed with him very quickly, but im not! so kudos there. also, the italian guy from the black donnely's whos name i cant remember, really like his character on this show - i just wish theyd give him more of a primary role! 

[3] so ive started watching fox's two new prime time shows as well this season. lie to me i really enjoy, i find it hilarious and it keeps me very entertained. dollhouse on the other hand... im not sure yet. the advertisements for the show made it look really cool, and i thought it was more of like an assassin type thing, but now i find out its more like super-escort service? hmm... i think theyre trying to develop the backstory and really get to the good stuff, but its taking a little while and im just not sure how i feel about it all just yet. its got potential, especially if they do take the espionage|assassin route - not to mention you really cant go wrong with eliza dushku! so we'll see how those two play out, haha, in my one night a week internet tv veg-outs, lol!

[4] how i met your mother is still awesome. thats really all i gotta say about that. virtual high-five!

anyone else watching something good i should pay attention to? anyone seen any good movies lately? ive got a short list of summer blockbusters i want to see [star trek!!!!!] and theres a few coming out in march i know of that look interesting, but i really havent been keeping up lately. 

well guys and dolls, i think thats it for now. i really should be working, but its been a really... really... slow morning so far, and i honestly dont have anything to do. guess i'll go dig something up! have a great day!

welcome.to.the.working.week[end]

hello, hello there. seems like its been a while since i updated you, so i thought id take my lunch break to do just that. although... [if youve guessed anything from the title of this post] theres not as much to report as usual. 

[02.07.09|saturday]

well i woke up bright and early at 7:30 on saturday morning and hopped in the shower. why would i be up at such an un-godly hour on a saturday? glad you asked. because i had the pleasure of having to go in to work on saturday. i found out friday afternoon that i was going to be working this weekend, and although i wasnt thrilled about the prospect, i made my peace with it. so saturday morning i got up and got to it. well by the time i got out of the shower karen informed me that id missed a call, and as i checked my voicemail i discovered that the window guys had called about installing the new [and final!] window in the "project room." well i called back a few times, but to no avail, theyd skipped us and gone on to the next house. bummer. oh-well, i had to get to work. so karen and i discussed our days, made coffee and then i was out the door with one last kiss. 

i made a quick detour through wendy's to pick up a little breakfast and made it to work at about 9:15 sharp, and got right to it. around 11 the window guys called back to make sure someone would be there, and then went and did their thing - we now have all our windows! woohoo!! and yet... i remained.. at work. around 1:30 the bossman ordered lunch and i grabbed a quick bite before getting back into my work. all in all i worked about 6 and a half hours on saturday [this after id already pulled a 14.5 hour day on thursday....] and by the time i left for home, i was drained. there was no way i was getting much accomplished that evening. well i got home and found that my lovely wife had done some cleaning throughout the day [while she was hopelessly depressed missing me, im sure] and had also started prepping the rest of the dining room - good girl. but i wasnt going to be doing a ton of painting, not in my current condition. so we discussed the rest of the evening and she told me about a craigslist item we were picking up later and then started baking dinner while i did just a little painting and had a nice adult beverage to unwind from a long start to the weekend. 

soon enough we went to pick up the new craigslist item - any guesses? haha, i know its impossible, we got a grill! karen has been wanting a grill since... well, before we even got married, lol! and saturday she found one for 20bucks - only 2 years old, in working order, one mostly full propane tank, and one spare tank [empty], only a little rust - overall a hell of a buy! oh and did i mention it came with a bearcats grill cover as well? [i think on some level she was more excited about the cover than the grill, lol!] well it was fun to go pickup the grill - and im shocked at how light it was! on the way we had a long drawn out discussion about karen's thesis and what direction shes taking, topic, etc. [i wont go into the details, you'll just have to bug her if you want to know] and then on the way home we had a spirited debate on doing a thesis project and if it should be required, and what requirements we thought were appropriate to be a professor... and apparently what the definition of a professor even was. shes a fun one, my wife. =]

anyway, the rest of the evening we relaxed, ate some delicious dinner prepare by chef karen - her own little gourmet creation: mexican cornbread casserole - ole! [heh, just had to throw that in there] it was awesome, she did a great job! and we also watched life as a house. a+ movie, one of my favorites, if you havent seen it, you should consider it. i swear, i almost cry every freaking time at the end - almost.

[02.08.09|sunday]

well i woke up bright and early at 7:30 on sunday morning and hopped in the shower. wait... deja-vu? yes... sadly... i was going to work, yet again on sunday morning. ugh. [karen wasnt exactly delighted by my absence this weekend] well she dropped me off this time, and then went to run some errands [mostly grocery shopping and filling the truck up with gas - for 44 cents a gallon baby! woo-effing-hoo! thats right! 44cents! eat that big oil! - how, you ask? have i mentioned the bigg's pump perks program before? well if no,t google it, its pretty self explanitory] i ended up working for 4 hours on sunday before id had enough and called it quits for the day.

karen picked me up at 1:30 and we decided that it was a beautiful day [low 50's, sunny, just gorgeous!] and that it was perfect weather for margaritas - haha! so we decided to hit a local "mexican-food" place on the river [don pablos - not real mexican, but itll do. they do have pretty good margaritas!] for a nice relaxing lunch. so while we over-indulged on our "mexican-food" we also started a list of projects that we could possibly attempt when the entire family shows up next week [list to follow at the end of the blog...]. after lunch we headed home and were so full we didnt want to do much of anything - so we started to watch a netflix: righteous kill. about halfway through it karen really wanted to take a walk [i think she was feeling like a fatty, haha!] so she made me get off my lazy arse and go walking with her. it was actually a really nice walk, the weather was still great, and we had fun sliding on the remaining patches of ice, haha! not to mention, it was just nice to get out of the house and stroll around our awesome little neighborhood. we lazily looked in all the windows of the different buisnesses, and i woke up a sleeping cat in the local art gallery, haha! he seemed a little pissed that i woke him up and wasnt able to scratch his back as he so clearly wanted me too - sorry! anyway, it was a nice sunday afternoon stroll through the park [literally at one point] and then we went home to finish the movie. 

i dont know if ive just seen too many movies or if the "plot twists" really were that predictable, but i figured it all out halfway through the movie. overall it was okay - i give it a solid b i suppose. it was a little slow going, and i was thoroughly unimpressed with robert deniro, carla gugino, & john leguizamo's performaces - ive come to expect more from them. donnie whalburg was at about par id say, the true godfather [al pacino] was great as always, and 50-cent was... actually a little better than i expected - kudos. but again, it was pretty slow - even the intense parts. see it if you want to, you'll probably enjoy it. anyway, after the movie i was feeling super-lazy so we retired to the bed to watch some tv on my laptop before turning in for the night...

[02.09.09|monday]

...until 6am this morning, when we had a little scare. at 6:03am our alarm system went off and in full force. i hadnt heard anything before it went off, like glass breaking or pounding, etc. but none-the-less it was blaring and i was a little caught off guard. i slowly put on some pants and grabbed the flashlight as karen and i discussed what i should do - we decided shortly that i was going to go check it out while we waited for the alarm company to call me. well, ive got to say, im not entirely impressed with their response time, it was probably a solid 2 minutes before my phone finally rang, at which point id turned on half the lights in the house and was finally arriving at the first floor. i told the girl on the phone i wasnt sure what was going on and she told me it was the dining room sensor that had triggered, so i de-activated the alarm and checked things out while she was on the phone ready to call 911 if necessary. well, after thoroughly checking out everything - i couldnt find anything out of place. all the windows and doors were in their normal condition, nothing obvious had fallen over, there were no signs of someone in the house, nothing. so i thanked her and said goodbye before turning the alarm back on and going back upstairs. the woman said that sometimes it could just be a large particle of dust that sets it off, so i really dont know. maybe some of the tape on the walls fell loose and caused enough movement to trigger it. or maybe it did its job and whoever it was was on the front porch or side of the house and was scared off by the alarm picking them up. either way, im glad it worked, but it was an unsettling morning getting ready for and going to work, lol. but we're fine and the house is fine and our alarm system is obviously fully functional. =]

anyway, im at work now and thats about all there is to report for recent events. i ended up working half the weekend and we didnt get too much accomplished because of it. a little disappointing, but im sure we'll survive. hey, we did get a pretty good list going for next week!

and here it is[for those of you that are excited about what you'll be getting to do soon!] ;]

general house stuff:

electrical 

exterior doors [replacing, repairing, & weather-sealing]

caulking any remaining windows

paint various furniture

basement:

clean floors, walls, & rafters

board up walk-out & weather-seal

mortar walls

paint & weather seal walls

insulating foam @ exterior walls?

patch & seal hole @ north end

entry:

put up crown

touchup paint on baseboards

parlor:

thoroghly clean fireplace

clean, patch, & prep walls & ceiling

paint walls & ceiling

window treatments

bookshelves

dining room:

powder-room entry

powder room:

i dont even know... it needs help - tiling?

kitchen:

halfwall

dishwasher & garbage disposal installation

2nd floor general:

strip any wall paper

clean, patch, & prep walls & ceilings

paint walls & ceilings

unpacking and organizing [at the appropriate time]

2nd floor bedroom:

clean & strip fireplace [then figure out what to do from there]

run electrical for and install light

window treatments

2nd floor closet:

repair heating duct

acquire & install closet systems

window treatments

2nd floor office:

assemble and install shelves or bookcase [if acquired by then]

assemble and install desk [ditto]

put up artwork?

2nd floor bathroom:

acquire & install new faucet for tub

install new faucet for sink

remove shelves

re-finish tub?

new cabinets?

new tile?

2nd floor project room:

remove wall board

other...?

2nd floor hall:

pull up carpet & refinish floors

stairs...

3rd floor closet/bathroom

install towel rack

install closet hardware

patch walls...

um, thats all we've thought up so far. i doubt we'll actually get to all [or most even] of it. and depending on the electrical situation... well, that might be all we end up working on, who knows. 

either way, its sure to be a busy & fun-filled family time, haha! cant wait!

hope you all have a great week! talk to you again soon! =]