pseudoephedrine.mut-tacular.ampersand.carpal-tunnel

!!-- WARNING! Due to the Graphic Content of this post, Parental Discretion is Advised. It is also suggested that you not eat within 30 minutes before or after reading this post. Possible symptoms may include: laughter, self-indignation, or eye-rolling. Women who are pregnant or are at risk of becoming pregnant should definitely, well... consider, not reading this post... i guess. Consult your PCP (Primary Care Physician... not the other stuff...) for further recommendations and advisements. --!!

does anyone else find it rather odd that blogger/blogspot is completely non-iphone friendly? i mean... since google took over years ago and google is revolutionizing everything on the web these days, youd think blogger/blogspot would at least be relatively iphone friendly, but no. not even a little. i can even get as far as into the edit screen after signing in with the teeny tiny non-mobile-optimized site, but once there, the text forms are non-responsive to touch sensor technology. it just clicks and clicks and clicks and never lets you actually enter the field.... or maybe im the only one having this issue.... i tend to think that im not the only one having any particular issue at any given time, maybe it makes me feel better, like im not really crazy, the rest of the world has random issues as well, but then again... perhaps i'm wrong. maybe i am the only one having some of the bizarre issues i have....

speaking of google, i started using chrome again. its been roughly two years since i stopped. i was having any number of problems with a buggy beta version back then (one of which being flash compatibility - and speaking of buggy. flash 10.2, right? right? right? wow adobe....) so i gave up on it and found myself enjoying v3.whatever of safari at the time. then safari started to annoy me come v5 and ive been bouncing back and forth between it and firefox for the last year or so, but man, this new chrome. im feelin it! for the time being... i digs.

so anyway... i cant sleep.

ive been trying to get sick for the last few days apparently. it started with my usual allergic reaction to staying at the in-laws this weekend. they have cats, and while i love their cats (zoro y diablo es loco, lol) i some-how or other developed a cat allergy (not the like super severe, omg-im-going-into-anaphylactic-shock kind of allergy, but the itchy-watery-eyes-cant-sleep-oh-my-freaking-god-it-itches-make-it-stop!! kind, you know?) while away at grad school after having lived with a dozen or so of the creatures my entire childhood... rather odd in my humble opinion, but apparently it happens... anyway. thats how it started. then it moved on to becoming this just rather gross nasaly-itchy throat feeling. so i started on the meds, because thats how it always starts for me when i get sick... then yesterday i woke up just feeling like shit. spent the whole day in this state of clammy-sweaty, pale & flushed (yeah, tell me how the hell that happens at the same time), sloshy/sludgey stomach feeling. have you ever had that? where you feel like your abdomen has somehow been pumped full of some-kind of toxic ooze and its just sitting there, sloshing around everytime you move... that back and forth liquid movement feeling... ugh, its almost like getting sea-sick for the first time... anyway, so that was yesterday. so of course ive been taking the regular attack cocktail of aleve, some kind of otc multi-symptom cold thing, and the prescription strength pseudoephedrine on 12 hour intervals (well, the otc multi-symptom on 6 hours) anyway... so i think thats part of why i cant sleep. im in the middle of one of those mildly-dehydrated-over-pseudoephedrin-ated-drug-highs that makes you feel kind of spacey and light-headed, but at the same time the sinus drainage is coming back so the meds must be wearing off, so why do i feel like this, kind of things. youve been there right? this isnt another "just-me" thing is it? meh.... the other excuse for my mild/insomnia is that i went to bed at about 9:30 because i was feeling pretty shitty, and with work and getting up at 5:30 every morning, my body is getting itself into the pattern of only getting roughly 6.5 hours of sleep each night, and so... that would partially account for my being awake between 3:30 and 4, hm?

or... maybe its just day-light savings time throwing me off........ ? ;]

[mut-tacular]

im suprisingly lucid right now given the self-medicated-ly induced, depreciated state of my higher-brain-function, and yes, i can maintatin the some-what linear thought patterns outlined by my title up there [which i almost always invent and refine before the commencing of the actual rambling on... is that odd? i feel like its backwards, like i was taught at some point along the way that the title is supposed to come last. like the writing will inform the title. but if i dont have a title, how am i supposed to know what im writing about? man, maybe i really am odd.....]

so mut-tacular. if you cant relatively guess at the meaning of this strange term, then you need sleep more than i do. context-clues people, context-clues. anyhow, its one of our many many ridiculous little nick-names (why not peter-names? or jo-names? why nick? who the hell was nick to get this extra-naming... naming rights?...) for the silly little dog that follows us around snoring - regardless off his state of consciousness, or the time of day, or his current activity. anyway, i just wanted to briefly talk about him. i dont know how, well... thats not true at all, i totally know how... but hes become ever increasingly ornery to the point of just, wow. this dog is so freaking spoilt. lordy... prime-example. i keep getting up to go to the bathroom or roll-over or get water or something, because i cant sleep, and everytime i come back to bed he just looks at me with his head on his paws, and makes this half-grunt, half-sigh sound as he cocks his little buggy-eyebrows at me. as if to say "would you effing quit it already? im trying to get my beauty rest here..." [did i mention hes a total queen? total...] anyway, if thats not enough, this last time this happened, i stop short of climbing in bed and go around to my wifes feet where hes sleeping to scratch his little head sympathetically, as if to say "sorry buddy, cant help it" at which point he decides that his cue to get up, walk over and on top of his mother, and plop down next to her head and right on my pillow. totally stealing my spot in the bed. can you believe this non-sense?? freaking little... so i walk around to my side of the bed, flabbergasted as i am, and he just cocks his head a little and scootches over closer to moms head so i can get in, all the while looking at me like "what? i didnt do anything..." seriously... this dog has freaking attitude... so then after i get in, he does this little number that hes gotten into the trend of. he splays out flat between us and buries his head between our pillows. lol! i tell you, if he didnt rub me the wrong way all the time with his obvious lack of respect and defiance towards me, id never stop laughing at him... well, actually, i dont. lol! realistically, karen and i are much-more-than-likely completely fabricating this entire personality that we've cooked up for him. but then again... he really is a total queen. its all based on reality, even if it is ever so slightly embellished in our odd little minds... oh mut-tacular.........

[carpal-tunnel]

so the last couple of days, the last two [ring & pink] phalanges on my left hand, as well as the backside... [what do you call that? the karate chopper? ill have to inquire with my sensei...] from the end of the pink up to my wrist, have all been kind of just, numb. not like completely useless dentist lip numb, but like all the sensation has been drained from it and now theres this feeling thats just on the cusp of pins&needles, but not quite there. not painful, just... lacking the usual feeling - if that makes sense. and like all 22nd generationers [its 22now right? i cant keep up...] (i think i meant generation-y here... i was a little goofy on the meds, not entirely sure. forgive me.) of course i simply googled my symptoms to self-diagnose... myself. my first thought was stroke, yeah, gotta be stroke. or something... anyhow, carpal-tunnel was basically the only search result that came up. dozens and dozens of comments and keywords about carpal-tunnel. what-ever. i think this whole carpal-tunnel thing is a joke. we've been hearing about it for a decade, but ive never believed it was real... besides, why my left hand? im a righty. i do all the clicking with the right. clickity clickity click. all freaking day. you ever drawn in cad? thats a lot of effing clicks. but noooo no, if im to believe i have carpal-tunnel, because the all-knowing gods of the inter-google-webs say so of course, then its because of some b.s. poor keyboard posture? heh, what keyboard posture? i never learned to type. i took a typing class, but that home-keys crap. nah. not for me. i make up my own rules. i type just about as fast as the next guy [hell these long-winded posts typically only take me 45minutes to an hour] and a lot of the time im not even looking at the keyboard. especially for the letters l, pl, tr, f, s, m, cp, ro, ma & xref - LOL! [heh, cad humor. love it!]

hah, how about that. my alarm just went off. guess its time to go hop in the shower and start my day, lol. great timing, i was pretty much out of things to say at this point anyhow. well kiddos, until next time....

...stay anticipated.

[timestamp published 5:38, timestamp initiated 4:37]

epic.blogging [three]

post intermission two...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

i think he turned out pretty scary anyway ;]

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

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

[thats what i call disdain...]

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

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

unanticipated.productivity[two]

as promised...

[sunday]

so sunday morning i didnt get up quite as early, not sure when karen got up, but i know it was before i did. after all the day before's activities i was pretty tired and slept like a rock. so around 9 i drug myself out of bed and stumbled down to the office to see what the wife was up to. again she was busy studying and doing homework and we discussed the days agenda. well she was planning to go to studio a little later in the after noon and the weatherman had threatened rain in the afternoon earlier in the week, so it sounded like we had a few hours in the morning to get stuff done before we did our own thing for the evening. well, after thinking about what we'd gotten accomplished on saturday and how easily the planter had been going together i decided i wanted to go ahead and finish it sunday morning while karen was around to help and we had the good weather and then she could go to school after and i was planning to go see the new star trek which karen was a little iffy about anyway - so it worked out pretty well really. =]

so after deciding on our shopping list we both got dressed and filled our coffee cups and got ready to go. well, while karen was finishing getting her things together i wandered outside to review our progress and started tinkering with the fence posts that were still remaining. they were these two lone pole awkwardly standing in the "front yard" and were bugging the heck out of me so i started to mess with them until the first one actually started to come loose. well more encouraged i fought with it a little more and then it just slid right out, perfect! well now even more encouraged i started messing with the second one in the same way and before long it too gave way, although not quite as cleanly. instead i managed to tear it out leaving a small portion behind, but low enough that it was sufficiently submerged... eh, good enough. well not long after id placed the two poles on the side of the house karen was wandering out the door in search of me and was pleased to discover id gotten the poles out. so far, this was already starting to be a successful day.

so we piled into the truck and headed back to home depot to get the remaining supplies for the planter. we needed a few more timbers, more of the giant nails, and we also decided we'd better get some weatherproofing to put on this thing or we were just going to have rotted wood next year. well the wood and nails went easy enough. we got 3 times as much this go around, so it took a bit longer to load up the cart with, but we managed on our own without bugging the lumber guys that were no where in sight anyway. after getting all our lumber supplies we went down to the paint department to find some weatherproofing and soon enough i found exactly what i was looking for - thompsons waterseal advanced. id used it once before and knew that it worked well and had an easy application, so i was satisfied with using it again. anyway, now that we'd bought everything we went to the check out and made another nice dent in our checking account... oh-well, its just money, right? heh...

well after we checked out we made the drive back home and had a quick early lunch on the porch before getting started unloading. well, as we were lunching some woman pulled up behind my truck and made my life a little more difficult but still manageable between the two vehicles for unloading. anyway, i was hoping shed move it soon, so i decided to go ahead and get the weed whacker out [finally charged] and tackle the yard before getting to the construction. well it worked well enough in my opinion, although it had been some time since id swung one, all those muscles that had been well trained in the past snapped right back into action and i quickly and easily had the whole "yard" trimmed. so while i was doing that, karen had the broom out and was sweeping up the mess i was making and then we raked the yard and shoveled up all the mess. well at this point i was ready to get started on the real work and the woman was no where in sight and didnt seem to be leaving anytime soon, so i just sucked it up and started carefully unloading over her car [which to be honest was pretty beat to hell anyway...]. well im pretty good and never had an issue with her car or the truck, although it did take a few acrobatics with these huge timbers from time to time, but whatever. anyway, as i got started measuring and plotting everything out karen got to work applying the waterseal to what was already put together on the ground. before long i had drilled all the pilot holes i needed and cut to size all the members for the next level and karen insisted i let her coat the bottoms of the timbers before i installed them. well believe it or not, this was the point when i decided we'd better get the camera out and document a little of this, so its not quite the end of day 1's progress, but its close enough, so heres the first progress picture [see yesterday's post for the "before" shot].

[progress.one]

so you should be able to make out pretty clearly where the fence posts used to be, and this is the first layer of planter after its weatherseal coat and you can even see one of the bottoms she was working on standing vertically on the porch. at any rate, moving on.

so we started to assemble the pieces of the next tier as karen finished applying her waterseal coat to the bottom and after a little elbow grease we soon had that tier finished and were ready to start the next. ill tell you though, this time around i got some longer nails to drive through two tiers worth and after they made it through the 4inches or so of pre-drilled hole they were a uh... bugger and a half to drive the rest of the way. and given the number of them i was using to tie everything together it took a little time and a lot of tiring muscle to get the stupid things in there. however after they were secure the end result was a pretty damn rigid construction that was well worth the effort. as far as i can tell, this thing aint goin anywhere. =]

so soon enough i got started measuring, marking, cutting, and drilling on the next two tiers [with occasional assistance from my beautiful sidekick who is quite the pro at holding for me] and we were getting those put together as well. well... i had kind of promised the wife that she could leave at 1, and when 1 came we'd only just finished the second tier and she was getting a bit perturbed with me - not to mention sick and tired of applying weather seal. so i asked if she could give it just another half hour and she agreed, so i started measuring on the final tier. well, this time around half the assembly was strategically already cut when getting the others cut to size, so the cutting was actually quite minimal. all we needed to do was notch the tops a little so it would fit under the porch ledge and then drill the holes for all the fasteners. well... notching was a little easier said than done, especially with the chainsaw and the members definitely wanted to move around a little. but we got it one and no one lost any limbs [or even came close really] but by the time we got that finished karen had had enough and was ready to be taken to studio, she had other things to accomplish that day. so frustrated, we cleaned up all the tools and i took her to school only to return home and get them all back out so that i could finish this project once and for all. and at this point we took another progress picture before i took karen to school, so heres that little update.

[progress.two]

so you can see how all the tiers are stacking and going together now and its pretty obvious the color difference between where the weatherseal had been applied at this point.

well, by the time i got home it took me about 5 minutes to drill the rest of the holes and assemble the remaining parts and that was it! construction phase complete! so i cleaned up all the tools and then got started applying the weatherseal to all the remaining wood. it was pretty interesting to see the reactions we got from the neighborhood as they passed by, i must say. we live on a pretty main street and almost everyone that passed by as we were putting this thing together had questions or comments of some kind for us. it was pretty entertaining, haha. well as i put on the final touches of weatherseal i was pretty pleased with myself, but starting to feel the sun... i was definitely getting a little more sun that usual. but i was so close to being finished! so after completing the planter i got out the new seeding and started spreading it throughout the freshly cut "yard" and not long after i was sweeping up and finished with the entire project.

so at this point i took a few more shots, and heres your final progress shot for the day.

[progress.final]

so now all we need is some soil to fill it up the rest of the way and then we can start planting some flowers or grasses or whatever we end up putting in this thing. the problem is that the front of our house is north facing, so im afraid we might end up having to get mostly shade plants, but thats an issue for a future time.

well after getting cleaned up and showered and what not it was getting close to movie time so i called mom to tell her happy mothers day and around 4:30 i left to go drop the truck off with karen at school. well... things didnt exactly go as planned at this point. i should have timed it a little better, but by the time i got to school and helped karen load up some stuff it was pretty much 5 and the movie was supposed to start at 4:45. damnit. well there was no way i was going to miss the beginning, so i decided id just go to the showing at 7:30 instead and after rethinking her schedule karen decided shed come along after all and we spent another hour or so at her school while she finished up some studio stuff, then went home for dinner and then at about 7:10 we were at the theater and i was excitedly waiting for the new star trek to start!

well i loved the movie, it was absolutely incredible. no not a huge trekky by any measure, but i have seen all the original movies and was excited to see the prequel. well it was definitely a great movie and had everything i hoped for and more. theyve even managed [as hollywood always does] to open themselves the opportunity to start a whole new franchise of star trek movies with the new cast if this one does well [which it totally will!]. so im pretty excited about that. this was probably my favorite star trek yet, although thereve definitely been some really good ones in the past as well. i think this one is just more generationally appealing to me and i can really relate to the production value a little better than the late 70's versions, although they were definitely awesome for their time. =]

anyway, after the movie we headed home for the night and i got some laundry going and then sat down to blog. my mind was racing from the weekend and for some reason i had plenty of energy so it seemed appropriate to blog while i waited for the laundry to be finished. anyway, by about midnight i was finished blogging, karen had passed out a half hour to an hour earlier and the laundry was done so i turned in for the night.

and well, that was our weekend!

hope you enjoyed the story and the pictures, and feel free to check out a few more shots of the construction on my web albums if you feel so inclined.

hope you all had a great weekend and a happy mothers day, and have a great week!

dc[part.two]

[saturday | 5.2.09 | day.two]

so we got up at about 8:30am [although quite stubbornly and with much difficulty given the night before...] and got showered and dressed and then went downstairs to the continental breakfast around 9:30am. it was actually a pretty sweet breakfast, they had just about anything you could want and the best part was the breakfast burrito fixins! i had a burrito and a bagel with some oj and diet coke while karen sampled just about everything there was, lol! i think her eyes were a little bigger than mine, but she tried everything and seemed to enjoy it all.

after breakfast we visited the little brochure kiosk in the lobby and got some free maps and then headed to the room to gather whatever items we'd need for the days excursion and then soon headed out. the short 3 block walk to the metro was nothing this time around and we were feeling much more confident as we purchased our tickets from the machine and routed our trip through various stops and train switches. maybe 15-20 minutes later we were on the escalators at judiciary square and were delivered directly to our first stop, sweet! we knew we'd be close from the map, but theyre a little abstract and difficult to gauge exact location proximity to anything, and we were lucky enough to emerge from the subway directly at the front door of the first museum on our list for the day - the national building museum. well before we went in we took a second to look at our surroundings and it turns out judiciary square is a pretty cool little plaza with some fun landscaping features and statues. at the present time there was some kind of ceremony going on in the center of the plaza but we decided to walk around the extremities in the in the tree-lined paths to check things out for a few minutes as discreetly as possible. well, as much action as was going on center-stage and the fact that the city seems pretty used to tourism, no one paid us any attention as we looked about and snapped a few pictures before heading into the museum.

so when first we entered the museum what struck us both was the grandiose of the main atrium space. this thing was effin huge! it must have been at least 5 stories high with these huge columns that went all the way up to the clerestory [er... little windows near the ceiling, in layman's...] in addition to that there was a pretty huge fountain in the middle and the width and breadth of this thing... lets just say you could have probably but a few of our house's [which is pretty huge to be honest] in this space and still have room to spare without batting an eye.

anyway, we went to the information desk to inquire about tours and whatnot and then decided to just start visiting the exhibits on our own [the next tour didnt start for an hour and a half]. the first exhibit we saw was called detour and it was about all these popular tourist spots in the norway countryside. it basically chronicled 17 or 18 spaces that were designed as lookouts or viewpoints in a video presentation and then after the video there were a series of architectural models and boards of some of the places from the video. the models were freakin sweet. as someone who has built a number of architectural models in my day i had a serious appreciation for how well built these things were and was a little enamoured with the different techniques that were used. it was a really cool first experience for the museum and i was looking forward to what was next at that point.

so the next stop was a photography exhibit by some architectural photographer that was geared towards 9/11 aftermath in the form of a juxtaposition and comparison of interrogation spaces, worship spaces, and government spaces from all the various cultural viewpoints. it was an interesting collection, although after a little while it all started to look the same and the clever ironies started to get less and less clever as you saw more of the work. but maybe i was just distracted by the random gallery attendant who took an interest in my tattoos and decided to ruin my experience by talking to me for most of the duration of my visit while i was TRYING to concentrate on the artwork. at some point i just started nodding while he was telling me stories about his cousin the marine who got in trouble all the time and was kicked out after 6 months, yadda, yadda, yadda. karen totally abandoned me while this guy chewed my ear off for 15 minutes. punk.

anyway the next exhibit we saw was about architectural detailing in different materials - stone, metal, brick, etc. and it was kinda cool, but a little boring. at this point wed already been there a good hour and i was getting antsy to see all the other million stops on our list for the day so we made a quick trip through the gift shop to see if anything jumped at us [nothing did, hah, not for those prices...] and then we made our way to the exit. so the next stop on our list was "the mall" where there are tons of museums, monuments, landmarks, memorials, and what have you. its pretty much the tourist hot spot of d.c. where the smithsonian and all the famous stuff is. well, it was either back on the subway for a couple of stops or just walk the 6 or 7 blocks over, and considering how nice the weather was out [overcast and cool - perfect for site seeing!] we decided to walk. well it was actually a nice walk and we went through some nice garden plazas and government buildings [which make up like 75% of the downtown area from what we saw, lol!] until we got to constitution ave.

at this point we were a little awestruck by the mall. at one end you could see the capital building, directly in front of us was the national art gallery, in the distance the washington monument towered over the treeline and there were a half dozen other museums within eye-shot. it was a cultural enthusiasts dream come true, haha, and being the nerds karen and i are, we were basking in all its glory. we decided to venture towards the capitol building and then around the national art gallery to its entrance to kind of get a full view of the area before going in to the art gallery. it was pretty cool seeing the capitol building, even from the distance we were at, and i was really digging the architecture of the national art gallery as well. by the time we made it around to the front of the gallery we both got distracted by these awesome triangular shards jutting through the adjacent plaza and had to investigate them further.

we took a bunch of pictures and came to find out there was actually a restaurant or something under the plaza that these shards were skylights into so we took the long way into the museum by going underground, through the restaurant to check the shards out from the inside, and then through this really freaking cool l.e.d. installation before actually arriving inside the lower level of the art gallery. and right there in front of us, a serra! awesome! this was really an enjoyable day so far! we floated around the gallery for a little while before deciding we wanted to take the tour of the sculpture garden about an hour later and decided to grab lunch at the garden pavilion before it started. so we walked over there and had a really delicious lunch at the pavilion before trying to find the tourgroup. well as it turned out we asked an official looking woman where the tour started and she was the guide so we were in the right place! and if that wasnt cool enough, it turns out we were the first people shed actually given the tour to in almost a year and we were the only ones that showed up that day, so we got a very one on one personal, and casual tour of the sculpture garden and karen got to ask all kinds of questions for a project she had in her museum studies class. it turned out to be a really fun tour and she was extremely knowledgeable of the sculptures.

by the time we finished the garden we were both starting to feel a bit tired. it was around 2:30pm at this point and we'd been on our feet for hours already, but there was still so much to see! i wanted to try and see the washington monument, the vietnam veterans memorial, and the lincoln memorial while we were in the area that day, so we got started walking - not sure if we'd make it. the first one we saw was the washington monument. it was really freakin huge and everything youd expect - although in a much less immaculate condition than you always see in pictures. up close you could see that there was some history to this thing and it had been around for some time. well, being the nerds we are, we took the opportunity to take a bunch of fun shots of karen with the monument - like you do at the leaning tower of pisa or the like - haha, it was a lot of fun.

knowing how much we still wanted to see we made our stops short for the rest of the day and tried to just get to everything as quickly as possible. so after circling the huge block that the monument was on we came across the wwII memorial and checked it out, then were on our way again towards the vietnam war memorial. eventually we arrived but it was absolutely overrun with tourists, kind of a bummer and pretty typical of the day so far - there were so many people there!, so we tried to take a few pictures before getting out of the people soup and making our way over to the lincoln memorial nearby.

well after seeing the lincoln memorial, which was pretty cool, but again CRAZY crowded, and making a quick pit stop - we were done for the day and decided it was time to head back to the hotel. well, at this point we were pretty far from any of the metro stops so we could either walk to the closest one, or about equa-distant, just walk back to the hotel - so we decided wed just suffer through and walk back. luckily we were in pretty close proximity to the white house at this point so we were going to make sure to go by it on the way to the hotel.

on our way to the white house we actually just happened past the AIA headquarters in d.c. which was kind of a cool random accident and then sure enough we saw the whitehouse. and wow, that was an experience, it was pretty cool.

we also saw an armed guard carrying what must have been a freaking grenade launcher/assault rifle/rocket launcher or something. ive never seen a gun that big in my life, he could have taken out a tank with that thing! we definitely didnt mess with him, haha!

anyway, after the white house it was only another 4 blocks to the hotel and soon we were relaxing and resting our poor feet for a while, and while we were doing that i got in contact with my friend lauren who lives in dc and i havent seen since senior year at a&m and made arrangements to go to dinner with her. well, not long after talking to her we saddled up and trekked back to the metro for another ride on the subway. this time we went down to alexandria virginia to meet up with lauren and ended up having a pretty great time with her. we had this authentic-y spanish meal with these little snack sized portioned meals [the name of them escapes me... tapas?] and a lot of catching up. it was really fun to see her again, but by the time we were done eating we were EXHAUSTED and ready for bed. lauren actually volunteered to give us a ride back to the hotel [only about 5 miles away, the area is pretty dense] and after a couple of wrong turns we eventually got home and crashed for the night.

- end of day two. and again, im out of time, sorry!! -

dc[part.one]

so when last i left you all, dear readers, we were about to embark on a little adventure. well it was quite the adventure indeed! we had a blast on our excursion but damn did it ever wear us out.

[friday | 5.1.09]

so the trip started promptly at 5 o-clock when my beautiful wife picked me up from work with the car fully loaded and anxious to get the weekend started. well the first stops we had planned were to the bank to deposit my paycheck and then to dinner somewhere for a quick bite before heading to the airport. well we decided on buffalo wild wings for dinner and i had a pretty decent blackened chicken salad. it was no where near the best ive ever had, but its definitely a wing place, and they do have good wings, so i can cut em some slack on not having the best salads ever. it satisfied my hunger and that was enough for the time being. after dinner we got on the road and 15-20 minutes later we arrived at the airport and found the long term parking lot. luckily, there was a shuttle just waiting for people when we parked, so we got right on and were at the terminal only minutes later. after a quick stop at the automated ticketing kiosk and an uneventful trip through security, we were boarding the tram to the concourse and then before we knew it we were waiting at the gate. it seems everything went pretty quickly on the way there, so we actually had to wait around for about a half an hour before we were boarding the plane and then the customary half an hour sitting on the plane before we finally took off right on time around 8:20pm.

the flight to dc was actually really short, only an hour and a half, and we arrived at the baltimore airport after some moderate turbulence but all in all an enjoyable flight. [personally, i love the turbulence, but i dont think im in the majority there...] well, when we got off the plane the fun really started. karen had gotten some very limited instructions on transportation from her cousin who lives in dc which basically said to take the shuttle to the marc station and theres a train every half an hour. well we didnt know where the shuttle was, or what marc was, lol, but soon enough we found where the shuttle was picking up and 3 or 4 stops later we were at the train station. however, the marc trains [apparently the cheaper brand] were not running every half an hour as we were expecting. in fact there werent any for the rest of the night according to the board, so we had to suck up the extra cost and got tickets for the soonest amtrack into downtown [about twice as much as the marc from what we can tell]. well by this time it was already 10:30pm after all our traveling so far, and we were pretty anxious to get to the hotel and pass out for the night. well the journey wasnt over yet. about 15 minutes later the amtrack arrived and we boarded the train, both having flashbacks of our time in europe - it had been some time since id been on a train and it brought back all kinds of memories. well we sat pretty quietly on the train and eventually we arrived at union station in downtown dc, but at this point we really had no idea what we were going to do next. it was probably 11:15pm by this time and we ventured out to the street to see what the situation was with taxis - a line about a mile long of people waiting - and then back inside to investigate a metro sign that karen thought shed seen and a trip to the atm in case we ended up having to take a taxi after all. well after doing a few circles inside the station we finally found the correct route to the metro, which until this point i had thought was a bus situation like every other metro i was accustomed to. well as we got on the escalators going down to the station i soon realized it was actually a subway system, awesome! i love subways! i dont know why, but i just really love them! anyway, we had no clue how to decipher any of the maps or ticketing machines, but luckily the guy manning the info station wasnt too busy and was able to walk us through the process and help us find the stop nearest to our hotel [only about 3 blocks away] and get us going in the right direction.

so we went down another escalator and found some benches as we waited for the next train to arrive. at this point we were both feeling much better about the rest of our journey to the hotel, however we were both sweating like pigs! it was supposed to be cool from the weather reports wed checked, but it had to have been in the 70's and we were lugging around all our luggage, so we were pretty hot and gross at this point. well anyway, i took a moment to break out the camera for the first time on the trip while we waited for the train and took some pictures of the tunnel - i was enamored with the subway, haha.

before long the train arrived, and after a quick switch at the metro central station and a few stops later we were at our destination and after a short walk were at our hotel! finally! so after checking in and trudging our exhausted bodies up to the room we finally arrived in our room, and it was only 12:30am, lol! well the room itself was awesome. this was probably the nicest hotel ive ever stayed in. it was a studio style room and had all the amenities of a really nice studio apartment - with stove, refrigerator, and dishes supplied! anyway, at this point we were both ready to pass out, but i was disgusting so i took a quick shower before getting in bed, and then before long we both drifted off in preparation for a long weekend yet to come.

and with that. um, day 1. haha, we havent even started the "vacation" part yet, hahaha! but im out of time, lunch is over and ive gotta get back to work. so... for now i'll have to leave you hanging on the story, but feel free to check out all the pictures from the trip at my web albums.

hope youre all having a great week, ill try and update more soon!

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!

rodent.olympics

so if the title of this post alludes to anything, theres a short but humorous story coming.

so this morning im turning off the shower and i suddenly hear this very fast, very loud tromping sound. my first thought is that karen is running down the stairs right outside the bathroom, which leads to questions of why...? so i paused for a second, didnt hear the alarm, so i quickly exited the bathroom to make sure she was alright, and to my surprise she was rolled up in the bed like a burrito, her usual routine once i vacate the bed.

so as im standing there dripping in a towel staring at my wife still in bed mid sentence asking "what the heck...", again theres a loud, fast, tromping sound. only this time, its obviously coming from the ceiling above us. "...was that?" she rolls over and says shes not sure, but its been going on a while. so i chuckle to myself and stand there under the skylight looking up at the roof. and then again theres something racing across the roof. and again, and then along the side of the skylight i see the quick outline of a squirrel butt and tail scurrying by. at this point im laughing out loud and i tell karen i just saw a squirrel, and then shes laughing too. "man, thats pretty loud for a little squirrel, i wouldnt think..." and all of a sudden a giant raccoon scurries directly across the top of the skylight quite visibly, lol. karen saw it too, and we were both laughing pretty hysterically at that point. "man sweetie, i didnt know we were having rodent olympics on our roof!"

we still arent sure what the heck they were doing up there, chasing birds, defending their territory, who knows. but im pretty confident they arent living on our roof, it would provide little, if any shelter at all from the elements. so that was our comic event of the morning, hope the story was as enjoyable as the experience itself, lol, what a way to start the day. =]

p.s. for those of you [*ahem*my wife*ahem] that didnt figure it out on your own, there were two posts yesterday. one was an actual post entitled "then.suddenly.productivity" and the other was a brief post of the stained glass that my mother-in-law emailed me directly after i posted the original... post. so for those of you that missed the actual update yesterday, feel free to read it at your leisure to catch up on current events. =]

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!