blarg

so if you cant tell by my 5-6 month absence this year, ive either been busy, pre-occupied, or lost interest in this thing... im not entirely sure which is the winner. some morbid manifestation of them all? perhaps.

[cincy.house]
most of you are pretty up to date because one of the main reasons i started this thing was to update my long lost family back home on the status of the house and cincy in general [this was before the name change & relocation obviously] since relocating, i talk to most of you much more often and we discuss these things more often. but i suppose there are perhaps those of you out there that have read this blog from afar or perhaps dont stay in such close contact with me - to you, i do apologize, and will henceforth briefly update you.

the short answer is that nothing has happened. we finally finished reconstruction the last day of september, and we've paid everyone everything we owe them. we put the house back on the market, but had no interest worth mentioning in it since [nearly two months now?]

the crazy girl has popped up over and over and in the last 6 months we were forced to retain legal services and subsequently pay a shit-ton [i think thats metric] of money for essentially nothing. about every two months she pops back up with some nonsense amendment or letter that we have to pay to have our attorney, yet again, squash, disprove and render pointless... and then she disappears for two months.... i guess its about time for more of her nonsense? who knows. who cares. shes certifiable.

other than that, we discussed at great length the option of renting the house and have since gone through all the necessary paperwork and such to hire a property management company to handle things and get it rented out. they have another couple of weeks to find a tenant before the 45 day deadline - that come to think of it, i have absolutely no idea what happens after it expires. they seem certain that they can find a tenant before their time is up, so here's hoping they are correct. if we do manage to successfully rent this thing out it would cancel out the payments we're still making on it and in the end actually service as a modicum of additional income - sweet!

and that my friends, is the house update. such as it is.

[work]
work is good. staying moderately busy working on a handful of things. i still really enjoy my job and the freedom its granted me in addition to the obvious benefits of being gainfully employed. no worries here, i appear to be quite secure in the continued availability of my position as well as the continued happiness of my superiors. time and again i appear to have exceeded their expectations and they continue to assign me more responsibility, more respect, and more inclusion in things than i ever really could have imagined. as far as fellow employees go, i honestly like everyone ive met and have reoccurring contact with. there are certainly a few here or there that tend to have less than ideal personalities, but hey, to coin a common cliche - thats why they invented 32 flavors, eh? i dont mind. if im having a day where someone or someones are becoming an annoyance for whatever reason, i can simply turn up my headphones, shut my door and drown out my surroundings while i work away in the comfort of my office. [well, until i start to cook and have to allow in some ventilation, but those are sufficiently spaced intervals.] in summary, work is good.

[everything else?]
not really sure what to say. i could update you all on my wifes life, but really, shouldnt she be doing that? i dont really have the inclination.

||gadgets||
i did get a new toy for my birthday last weekend - yes, you missed it, and i'll only forgive you in the wake of lavish gifting - a kindle fire. you've probably seen them in the news, theyre supposed to be one of the most popular gifts this holiday season and are expected to be the only realistic rival to the ipad2.

i can say that in the few days ive had this thing it has completely abducted me. i am engulfed in its intricacies and discovering what all it has to offer. the main reason i wanted one was for games, movies, and books to take along on our cruise in a couple of weeks and so far im not disappointed in the offerings.

i havent yet started to purchase books for it, but ive done extensive wish listing on amazon and will soon make some decisions about purchase. the quality i can get in video is more than satisfying although i havent yet figured out how to get movies/tv shows directly to the device instead of streaming from the cloud... [apologies for all the tech-jargon if youre clueless] and lastly the games.

ive never been too terribly into mobile device gaming, but im starting to understand it a little better. other than a few word games that were mostly encouraged by the wifey, i hadnt really found any games that interested me much on them. oh sure, i test drove a few and they were fun for a little while, but after about 5 minutes, i was bored with most of them. not that i really have a ton of time for gaming anyhow, but its certainly part of the device experience these days. well, since acquiring my fire, ive found a few games im really enjoying. one is a pinball game that really took me back to pinball on our old win95. man its been years since i played that, but i rather enjoyed it then, and had a good time tinkering with it on the fire the other day. and then last night i really found some winners. i rediscovered mahjong [again, probably not since win95] and had a good time cussing it as i relearned the game, and even better was a crossword puzzle game. never been huge on crossword puzzles, but this proved to be very enjoyable as karen and i teamed up and spent a solid hour or two trying to solve the puzzles. we dont really play a lot of games together and this was actually a lot of fun for me, so that seems like a winner.

other than that, karen seems to be a bit annoyed with the thing, and im afraid shes starting to regret gifting it. i dont feel like ive really been playing with it to the extent of ignoring her or neglecting my husband-ly duties, but she certainly seems off-put whenever i pick it up. im not sure why really, but im obviously not seeing things from her perspective. honestly, im just really enthralled with figuring out all that it can do and how it does it, and once the newness and the mystery wears off, im sure itll be less enthralling, and hopefully less intrusive. either way, i am enjoying it. =]

||house||
the only other item i really feel inclined to comment on is houses. not the one in cincy though, here in houston. for those of you that dont already know, karen and i have taken a serious look at things and have decided we are ready to buy in houston, and as such, have begun the process. we met with a mortgage adviser at our bank and found out that i have awesome credit and we've been unofficially approved for a more sizable  mortgage than i had ever expected and with a very reasonable interest rate in my perspective.

we've enlisted the help of a close friend/realtor to help us with the search and have started scouring the city for that perfect house. so far we havent found it, but have been able to really start nailing down what things we do want, dont want, areas and neighborhoods we are and arent interested in, things we're willing to compromise on, and the price range we actually want to be in - and what that looks like in terms of potential houses.

its a process and its ongoing. ideally we'd like to close on something before january 1st for financial reasons, but at this point its not looking terribly likely. who knows, perhaps that perfect-for-us house is lurking just around the next corner. in the meantime we have some solid options that we're planning to try and get showing for by the end of this week. we've already done one round of these that was a little disappointing, but thats all part of the process, im not discouraged yet.

hopefully it all turns out.

hmm...
so i guess thats all i have for now. not much of an update, sorry. hope i didnt ramble too much. really hope you all had a happy thanksgiving - please do me a great favor and ignore anything and everything fox news is reporting about the president's non-official thanksgiving you-tube video. actually, if you really want to do me a favor, never watch fox news again - what a bunch of idiots...

okay, thats it.

inspiration.

well, i have no excuse. its been something like, idunno, a millennia since my last post, and im sure none of you even keep tabs on this thing anymore. i dont blame you, i dont. lol!

the truth is, after i got laid off, i went through a lot of emotion and got too busy to blog, even if i had wanted to. i was depressed for a long time about the work thing and it really took its toll on me, so i stopped writing. i didnt want to be that guy that just bitches to his blog-o-sphere about how shitty everything is... [please disregard the 3 or 4 blogs that did get published that follow that pattern... whoops...] so i postponed. then i more or less forgot about my blog altogether.

but now im back, at least for right now, and.... we'll see what happens.

so what have you missed? ha! like im going to re-tell 10 months of story-line. you guys would never make it. i used to get complaints from a certain brother-of-mine about the length of my blogs when it was still a weekly update, i cant even imagine 10 months... i will however, hit a few highlights for you guys. [and just a fair warning, its still probably going to be hella-lengthy, you know how i roll...]

[work. well... sorta.]

the fact of the matter is, work has been a constant struggle since getting laid off last year. for a long time i just floated around in the unemployment abyss, desperately searching for any kind of a nibble, but to no avail... eventually i decided to stop feeling sorry for myself and forget the dozens of architecture firms that were straight up ignoring me, and make something happen for myself. well, it didnt exactly happen over night or anything, but eventually i caught a few bites here and there and in january i started doing some freelance consulting and training for Revit. if you dont know what Revit [pronounced rev-like an engine-it] is, then im not going to bore you with all the details, but essentially its a newish software thats being used in the aec [architecture/engineering/construction] industry and i happen to be proficient in it. well, more than many as it would seem. and as it also turns out, im pretty good at evolving with it, so as they continue to update the program and make everything totally screwy, i can still keep up with it.. anyway, enough about Revit... so i did that for a while and made a little bit of money, certainly not a lot. but i did make some good contacts and got lots of positive feedback on my abilities and such. always nice.

meanwhile, when that part of the get-up-and-go phase started to fizzle out, i picked up some work with the census bureau for the 2010 census. if you didnt fill out your census, shame on you. if you have strong opinions about the census, keep em to yourself, i really dont care. so the first 6 weeks of census work went really well. i essentially got paid to sit around in an air-conditioned room and read a book while i waited to assist anyone with a question about the census. yes, i am aware this sounds like a huge waste of taxpayer money, i completely agree with you that it could have been better spent somewhere else, however, thats the way it worked out and i needed the cash, so im not gunna hate on it. that lasted for about 6 weeks as i think i mentioned a second ago, and in that time i read something like 10 books [and im not talking about 100pg short stories, im talking 500 page novels with some girth to em...] that ranged from the new dan brown, to a number of tom clancy's, and then eventually restarting the left-behind series [which i am currently still working through...]

so after the first 6 weeks of census work, the phase i was working on [QACR for anyone interested in the big government acronym...] ended and i was back to being unemployed and feeling somewhat unemployable. haha, only somewhat... anyway, at this point there was a random phone call from the heavens and i was offered an interview for adjunct professor at ITT Tech. for the next 4 or so weeks i continued to tag along to interview after interview and filling out paperwork after paperwork in their extremely lengthy hiring process, until they finally officially offered me the position and i became an adjunct prof, hence checking that little item off my lifetime to-do list.

simultaneously, about 2 weeks after the first census stent, they called me back and offered me another position and i graciously accepted the work [hoping against all odds it would be a similar cake walk and i could get back into reading mode...] well, this time around they had me in a different phase of the census, obviously, [NRFU-RI for anyone still interested in fancy government acronyms...] and well... turned out to not be anywhere as much fun. in fact, it was downright awful. so i trudged along in virtual hell for 3 weeks, i think, doing that and making like no money, because again - worst. job. ever. x infinity. - when i started to take seriously an inner tug id been feeling toward landscaping.

so completely randomly, i was leaving church one fine sunday morning and spotted a truck in the parking lot for a landscaper, quickly jotted down the number and then totally out of the blue called and asked if they were hiring. we set up an interview for a couple days later, and on the spot i got hired on - so now i was officially a landscaper. not on that lifetime to-do list, but hey, we can write it in just to check it off, right? ;] well the best part was that i got to call the census and quit. WHOOP! which made my life a LOT happier at that point. i started landscaping the next day and thus started the exciting world of two-jobs!

yes, thats right, my teaching gig started at the same time as the landscaping so i was working 40hours a week landscaping, plus another 20-24 on the weekend preparing for and teaching my first class ever. im sure you can all do the math on that, it made for not a lot of playtime... luckily, a week after i started landscaping, karen graduated from her architecture grad program [congrats sweeite!] and flitted off to san francisco for the summer again [see posts from summer 2009 for more info on that little gem...] so i didnt really have a whole lot to do in my "spare" time anyway.

alright, so fast forward 5 or 6 weeks... and i get laid off. boom. haha. yeah, thats the way the world works sometimes. luckily, this time around i was in a MUCH better place, and i just took it in stride. at this point, i have to break on work [and we're all the way up to the beginning of july now on the time-line anyway, so youre really pretty caught up] and we have to switch gears a little. dont worry, we'll come back to work in a bit.

[church. yes, i said church. maybe i should say god, or faith, or something else, but you get the idea...]

so as im sure you remember - or after a little re-reading, you might remember - church had always been there in the background of my blogs. karen and i had been going pretty much every single week [minus the rare week we didnt go, or when we were out of town or something...] and we were enjoying the church we'd found up here in cincy. i wouldnt say there was a whole lot else to it at that point, a year ago or whatever, it was just what we did on sunday mornings. i had faith, i believed in god, i was a regular, but i missed my church in denver something awful, and really didnt feel all that at home in this one in cincy. it was nice, but it wasnt my home yet.

so we'd been going for a year and some change, and it was still nice, getting to be more comfortable, but certainly not home and definitely still overwhelming. i dont know if i mentioned it before or not, not that it matters because i doubt youd remember at this point, but the church we go to has a membership of something like 15,000 people. no, thats not a type-o, thats not an extra zero, fifteen thousand... i believe. i could be off by a couple hundred, so sue me. anyway, as you can imagine, that many people makes the place a little daunting when you think about "community," or even just meeting people. obviously theyre freakin everywhere, but i wasnt in the habit of walking up to strangers, even if we did go to the same church, and introducing myself. so... about the same time as the freelancing gig - early-january-ish - karen and i had a conversation. we decided that it was time to actively start making cincinnati feel more like home. we were tired of just owning a house and existing here. we were tired of not really knowing anyone or having many friends... so we came to the decision that we were going to start getting more involved in our church, and specifically - our church community. at first we didnt really know what this was going to look like, but then everything started spiraling out of control, lol. tome calls it the snowball effect, i suppose that works. anyway seemingly simultaneously three big things happened.

1. i was really starting to get a tug on the ol' heart strings that i wanted to get involved with habitat for humanity again and do some volunteer construction. id been feeling this way for a couple weeks when. boom. we go to church and they announce its time for info sessions for go new orleans. go nola is essentially a pretty big campaign at our church that has been happening for 4 years now, where we send a ton of people to new orleans to work with habitat for humanity to help continue the re-building effort post hurricane katrina. i know its hard to believe, but yes, its been 5 years and parts of the place still look like an atomic bomb went off a few weeks ago... its really heart-wrenching... so obviously all the neon lights in my head went off and i was like, yeah im gunna do that.

2. about that same time they announced sign-ups for go cincinnati. if youll recall, karen and i did go cincinnati last year, and its essentially a day where a couple hundred churches all get together and have like 4000 people go out and just love on our city. we do various projects ranging from cleaning, to painting, to landscaping, you name it. if theres a need, we try to fill it. well, karen and i really enjoyed it last year, so we signed up for this year as well. ...to be continued...

3. free. so again, about that same time, our church began its annual "all-church-journey," which this year was focused on the topic of freedom and getting the freedom god wants for your life. well, last year, karen and i were still pretty new to the church and decided to um, skip the journey thing. we didnt really feel it at that point, however, this year we were like, yes, lets get into this. so the journey is a 3 part thing, you get involved in a small group, you work individually on your own personal stuff, and you participate in the main church services each week that supplement the first two. its like a 6 week journey, so theres a lot of time spent digging into the topics and getting your jesus on. well, karen and i were both feeling a nudge this year, to not only do the journey and get involved, but also to open our home up and lead a small group. so it turned out we had an amazing group of folks join our group and we spent the next 6 weeks getting to know these awesome people, share our personal stories, have some social time, and most importantly - get free.

so getting back to the go cincinnati thing. one of our group members, who also happens to be our across the street neighbor, was apparently a higher up in the go cincinnati echelons, and called up randomly about 2 weeks before go-day. there was a need for someone to take the lead on one of the projects, and she felt like after getting to know us better during the journey, that we were the perfect people to take this one. well the project was a mural, and the moment karen heard "mural" she pounced like a lioness on a helpless little gazelle. needless to say, we were in.

it was an arduous process, however we had a blast working on the mural and it really turned out to be an amazing experience for all of us involved. i wont go into the lengthy detail of the experience, many of you know all the ins and outs anyway, but there were a number of obstacles that popped up and we overcame all of them and had a really awesome turn-out.

so all of this to say, this year G.o.d. has really taken a much larger role in my life and we've gotten a lot more involved in the church and i was really looking forward to go nola at the beginning of july. and.... now we can jump back to work/church... well, its a slash, so i dont know if it counts as a jump. anyway, back to the more recent past... if that makes any sense at all... meh, just humor me.

[work/church]

okay, so i just got laid off. again. but me and god are pretty tight these days, so im not really stressin it. also, go nola is next week, so i was going to have to take off from work for that anyhow.. =]

so i went to new orleans. we had a freaking INCREDIBLE time in new orleans. id never been before and i really didnt know what to expect - this was also my first "mission trip" - but it turned out to be SUCH a blessing. i met dozens of awesome people and we worked HARD while we were there and i mean just... i dont have the words really. some pretty amazing things happened in new orleans, and i really felt like i was getting some serious jesus vibe while i was there. a couple of different things were going on in the weeks leading up to and including nola.

1. i was really loving this landscape thing. i had never really paid too much attention to landscaping until we got the house, and then my garden became a bit of an obsession this year - being laid off and all, whats a guy to do but putter around in his garden? ;] - and along with that, i really started beefing up the remodeling work on the exterior of the house [no, not going to get into all that in this post, sorry, maybe later...], and i was really feeling like this was what i wanted to do. id been thinking about it, and talking about it for a couple weeks, but basically i had this really serious desire to get more involved in design/build stuff. now i'll elaborate, i dont mean like a huge design-build firm that does these big commercial projects, etc. if youre familiar with the term design-build, you may understand what im saying here, but thats not what i wanted. i wanted small scale design/build where i actually got to do both. i want it all. i want to design, i want to build, i want to get dirty and work with my hands and hopefully make some money. so thats one of the things that was going through my head while i was in new orleans, and for some reason the whole week i kept hearing him telling me to let go and trust him. and well, i was like okay, thats what ive been doing this entire year with this job situation... and i kind of ignored it. but i knew he was being specific. he was telling me to trust him and specifically to trust him to go and do my own thing, to follow this desire in me, and not worry about working for someone else or where the money will come from... so we'll get back to that in a second...

2. while i was in nola, i dont know what it was, but i was really feeling this twinge, for lack of better syntax, regarding teenagers. now, when i was in denver i worked with the childrens ministry and had a blast doing it, but since we moved here, ive never had the desire to get back into the childrens ministry with our new church. but thats not what this was, this was more specific, this was high-school kids. and ive never really been interested in that before, if anything i was worried theyd annoy the crap out of me. because, well... i didnt like high-school kids when i was in high-school, i cant imagine theyre any better now, lol! anyway, regardless, i was getting this "twinge" or nudge, or calling, or i dont know what it is. and the entire week, all these high-school kids seemed to be gravitating to me. maybe im just imagining it, but i can think of 5 or 6 different teenagers off the top of my head that seemed to always be around chatting me up. and i really enjoyed it, it turns out there actually are some cool teenagers out there and i felt like i wanted to get to know them more and get involved with them. so... as of yet, i havent completely pursued this avenue. when i first got back i inquired about getting involved with the csm - thats the "youth group" at our church - and discovered that its not only a pretty involved process of getting into it, but they also want a 2 year commitment from their volunteers and at this point... im just still thinking/praying about it. i dont know whats going to happen with working and living situations, and whatever else over the next 2 years. my life has been pretty insane the last year, well, the last 2 years really, so i feel like its going to continue being insane, and i dont know how i feel about making a 2 year commitment. what if i end up needing to move? i certainly dont want to have to go back on my word or disappoint a bunch of teenagers who think im going to be around and build relationships with them... so im still pondering that "twinge"... maybe theres another outlet thats going to pop-up that i can serve in, i guess we'll see.

so getting back to the work thing and that trusting thing and the design/build thing...

i just got back from new orleans, last week, and have no prospects for work. not one. ive exhausted my architecture firm quarry, and i dont feel like i want to work in an architecture office right now anyway, ive still got the professor thing, [and they offered me another class for next quarter!] but that well, doesnt pay. anything. really. so... i didnt know what i was going to do for actual money/work, and then my phone rang. and just like that, out of the blue, i got a call from one of the guys i worked with in new orleans and actually spent a good amount of time with in new orleans and he essentially asked me if i wanted to partner with him in his landscaping/remodeling business. just like that. it was pretty obviously a sign, and of course i said yes.

so as of this week, we have partnered up. so far weve already worked and completed 2 different jobs and have a 3rd lined up for tomorrow and it seems like, the projects are just falling in our laps. i know thats not whats really happening, and i know that colin [thats his name if you didnt get that] has done some things in the way of advertising in the past, but nonetheless, weve stayed busy all week and we have a job lined up for tomorrow [friday] and a couple of prospects for the future. so i dont know where all this is going to go, and i dont know how consistent its going to be, but im excited about it and i really feel like this could be a good thing. either way, im going to just keep having faith and trusting that God is going to take care of it all and i know everything is going to work out.

other than that.... um... well, karen is due back from california in less than two weeks now, and im extremely excited to have her back, but otherwise, haha, theres not a whole lot to tell. believe it or not, thats the majority of the highlights for the last 10 months, and im really just waiting to see what interesting events tomorrow - the collective tomorrow - holds.

anybody seen inception yet? if you havent, do so. ab-so-friggin-lutely spectacular film. i might see it again... although, i should probably see despicable me first, want to so bad! any takers? this weekend?

...from all of us here at channel 4, you stay classy... cincinnati ;]

much.the.same

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

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

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

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

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

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

love+miss!

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

another.recap

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

until next time...

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!

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.

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!