The wedding shower was wonderful! Jenn, Jen, and Courtney organized a really nice get together Saturday night. Not many could turn out, I think there were 7 people total because most everyone we invited lived out of town and couldn't make it, but we had a lot of fun. It wasn't a late night though because Jenn and Jen had to drive to Greenville that night so they could get up at 4am the next morning to get to Charlottle to catch a 7:30 flight to Cancun. I know, what a shame.
Sunday, we worked on the house quite a bit. We're banishing the brass fixtures from the house slowly but surely. We put up 4 new lighting fixtures. A two light one in the half bath, a hanging fixture in the dining room, a hanging fixture in the kitchen for the eat-in area, and a really cool looking black and brushed nickel remote control ceiling fan in the great room. The ceiling fan has a funny story to go along with it. See, there was a switch on our wall for the old fan and one for a light fixture if your fan had one. Well, that gave you two 'hot' leads in the junction box on the ceiling. One was the standard black wire and one was a pink wire. Well, the remote control unit for the fan had two input wires. Black and white. So, I figured using just the black and white and leaving the pink empty would give the fan unit power and that remote control box would pass that on to it's fan AND light outputs. Well, the light would work and the fan wouldn't. So, I sat there for a while trying to figure out it. Tried to call my brother Brian (he's an electrician) but his number was busy. Then when I started to pull the shroud back off the ceiling to look at the wiring once more, I realized that the 'forward' and 'reverse' switch for the fan was in the middle... in other words... off. Duh. So, after flipping that switch and turning the power back on to the room, everything worked like I had expected originally. So, that doesn't really mean I screwed it up... right? Anyway, the old woodgrain and brass fan is now gone and the great room is just about done. Anyone need some brass lighting fixtures?
Christina also planted some new flowers... some snapdragons near the front door and we have some garnet colored salvia that will go around the mailbox. Getting too late to be planting though because of the heat. Sure, things bloom until the first frost generally, but when they are freshly planted the 95 degree days in June and July in SC kill them off pretty quickly. I think the only thing left for the yard will be the Japanese maple out front, but I think that'll end up waiting until next Spring.
Work has been busy today and I'm about to head out to a couple remote sites this afternoon. A brand new laptop that won't get past "Starting Windows..." and I'm switching out a relatively new computer for a brand new computer for a user. Oh, the job an IT person does... sounds thrilling and exciting, doesn't it?
We ended up finding some curtains online, but they haven't come in yet. We also bought a chair for the library finally, but it'll be 2-4 weeks until that arrives. The rest of the stuff with the house is progressing fine. We dropped a good bit on plants last weekend and the front flowerbed is coming along nicely.
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Also planted three more of the shrubs we had on the side of the house in another spot. We bought the same kind as you can see going around the side of the house. Someday they'll end up the same height also. That whole area where they were planted is pretty much shade, so there was very little grass there. Just a bare spot. So, we figured why not continue the shrubs around the corner.
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And here's a panorama shot of the backyard from the patio with a Zinia in a planter on the left hand side. (You can see a larger version by clicking on this image)
Just a few pictures of the house early. We're by no means finished enough to go through taking pictures. The housewarming/birthday thing ended up being cancelled because not many people that we invited could make it. So, we didn't have to rush to get everything put away and finished by that Saturday. Now, the deadline seems to be the reception at the end of July since that will end up being when many people will probably see the house for the first time.
Thought I should probably do an update... it's been a while. I still don't have any pictures of the rooms... we're still working on getting everything set up. We're going to get some crown molding for my office, so once that's done, I'll try to take some pictures. The saga lately with the house has been trying to find a place that carries nice curtains. Most of the designs of the ones that have white backs are for 90 year old women who love gaudy flowery patterns. I think with the width of a couple of the windows we're trying to fit we're going to just have to call some place that makes custom draperies and give them our measurements and let them go wild. Of course, I imagine that comes with a bit higher cost. But the window in the living room is almost 82" wide so a pair of standard 48" wide panels won't work since they're supposed to be 1.5 to 2.5 times as wide as the window. This has been frustrating, if you can't tell... why people don't make simple-patterned or solid colored, white-backed, extra wide curtains is beyond me.
We've been getting the standard South Carolina weather lately. Rain every day. You could set a clock to it, honestly. The humidity seems to build up and peak at the same time each afternoon. On the plus side, this is the first year in a while that we haven't been in a drought and my lawn is being watered pretty well each day.
Still trying to get things together for Saturday. Getting older all the time... before I know it I'll be 30. Scary stuff...
What a weekend! We painted three rooms in the house this weekend and we're both pretty sore to prove it. We also did quite a bit of other stuff... got a grill and put that together, hung some curtains, I pruned some trees... quite a bit got accomplished this weekend.
Of course, that makes for an exhasting Monday morning... and half the network downstairs doesn't work this morning. Typical Monday today... we have quite a few bad ports on our (relatively) new Cisco downstairs that are to blame for the problems.
... Well, turns out after getting a key to the network closets... shhh, something only Computer Services on campus is supposed to have... the Cisco turned itself off. We unplugged it, plugged it back in and everyone on that switch is back up and running. Go figure. Going to be one of those days...
I should get working on the 10-15 requests we have pending currently. Lots of people ordering machines and software with their end of the year monies.... fiscal year here ends June 30th.
Just finished mowing the lawn... I've learned that I'll be a slave to this lawn. Read online that Bermuda grass is like a pretty girl... lots of maintenance. It's supposed to be mowed a minimum of twice a week. The real problem out there isn't that, it's that the lawn isn't very healthy. There are a couple areas where it's nice, lush, thick, dark green Bermuda, but the rest of the lawn needs a good thatching, because there's a lot of dead brown material in there. I've got to read a bit more about getting rid of the Zoysia grass creeping in on the sides from both of my neighbors also.
One of these nights I'm going to come home and do nothing.... honest.
Not a lot of updates lately, been a busy week. At work and after work for that matter. We've made a ton of progress on getting things put away in the house. Down to very few boxes... maybe 5ish left between all the rooms. We need to get it together within the next couple weeks because Christina is planning a birthday party/housewarming party for me on the 21st of June. Here's a link to a flyer she made for it: Invitation
Anyway, Christina says dinner is done, so I need to run... I'll update more later.
Mowed our lawn for the first time this morning! Christina said it took around an hour, but I think the actual mowing part was much shorter. Spent a while messing with the mower. The electric start isn't working for some reason. But, I held down the safety bar on the handle and a couple of pulls on the cable started it right up. I haven't mowed a lawn in what must be over a decade now I bet. It's fun now, but the novelty will no doubt wear off after a few times mowing it. Looks good today anyway, that's what matters.
Christina did some gardening today too. Planted one of our blue flowered plants (I never know plants names, I know they're green, some have color, and that they need water). It was left under an eve of the house during a rain storm where water runs off and the water falling into it's planter basically threw the dirt everywhere, so all that was left was the plant and it's roots in a planter full of water. So, it had to go into the ground today. We also got some sun out back today... still trying to get tan for the wedding in mid-July. We played catch for a while in the backyard too... haven't thrown a baseball in years, so that was really nice. Christina has talked about getting a badmitton set for the backyard... it would be perfect for it.
Well, there's a ton of stuff all over in the bonus room from opening up the last of the boxes... I should go find homes for all of it.
Posting my first update as an Earthlink Cable Modem customer. It's great having broadband at home again! And Earthlink is fast in my neighborhood which is something I was really worried about. For instance, Bellsouth DSL (which is capped by the DSL technology at 1500/256 kbps) clocked in usually around 1200/240 kbps. Earthlink is running at around 1830/360 kbps, so that's a decent improvement. We'll see how stable it is through the next few months though. Bellsouth's DSL service pretty much never went down.
So much in the house is put away now and it's beginning to look like we live here and don't just store our stuff in boxes here. I'm still going to wait on pictures until next weekend however. We haven't gotten rid of that washer and dryer yet and until I can get my car into the garage, things are still a mess there. It will be much better when that is taken care of and things are more organized.
Carolina won their second game in two days against the Tarholes from UNC! Sent them home packing and we're on our way to Omaha again this year! Go Cocks!
This week has dragged. I would have rather been working on the house this week than being here at work, but such is life. At least it's Friday. We started in on the stuff last night finally instead of wasting another night messing around with that TV. We cleared enough room for Christina's car to get in the garage last night. Had to sweep out the garage too because it looked like the guy hadn't done that in years. Now we're just waiting on getting the old washer and dryer picked up by Goodwill and we'll be able to get both cars in there. They can't pick them up until next Saturday, the 14th of June though. No worries, we certainly have enough stuff to keep us busy until then.
Let's hope the rain holds off... the lawn needs mowing since it's been over a week now.
Last night I managed to get the home theater speakers set up.
So much for it being a weekend project.
Using that flat wiring actually went well with a little patience. Now to get it spackled, primed, and painted so you can't see it. Of course, messing around with all this stuff isn't getting a lot of other work done. I don't think Christina and I have taken another box out of the garage to unpack all week. My goal of clearing out the garage by the end of this weekend is still in place. Whether all the stuff in it ends up in the bonus room for now will be the real question.
Today should be a pretty busy day. We're setting up a couple new computer labs at our location out on Forest Drive. Yay, more lifting! Actually, I've pretty much recovered from the weekend with a couple good nights sleep. I wish I could say the same for Christina. She's still exhausted, though I think she did finally get a decent night's sleep last night because the cats were a lot calmer last night than they were the first night we were alone in the house. They've also started to realize they can sit in the front windows of the house. Cotton was in one when we came back from work yesterday and Ashley said goodbye when we left this morning. I'm sure that'll become a regular thing since we have a pretty set schedule.
We didn't get much unpacking done last night. Circuit City finally had the stand for our TV in stock, so we picked that up and I spent a couple hours running almost all the wiring properly. The only thing left is to run the wiring for the speaker system. I have this flat wire that you adhere to the wall and then paint over it and you can't see it. It's only 0.5mm thick. Since the living room is on the first floor, I can't run wires up through the wall into the attic and then down through the wall on the other side of the room, so I had to come up with something else. That'll be a weekend project though and we need to get painting supplies first anyway. I love to paint though and now with all the holes and such from the previous owners spackled we'll have to prime and paint in a few areas regardless. Plus, we still have to get a 6-foot ladder before I can do the wiring.
I'm starting to have to make lists of things that need to get done this week each night when we get home. Last night was kind of used up with that stand and we watched the first movie on the new TV... Star Wars Episode II. Watching movies at home will never be the same. We have some cleaning to do tonight though including laundry now that our washer and dryer are hooked up and running. We'll probably just donate the washer and dryer they left to Goodwill I guess. They work okay, but are pretty old and don't look as nice, so we swapped them out for ours since ours are only one and a half years old.
The house bug seems to be contagious as Nicki and Miguel have found a house that they're bidding on now. You can read updates about it on Nicki's Blog.
I'm back from the dead! Well, I'm back on the Internet anyway. You know you're a geek when....
Anyway, it wasn't that bad being offline for 4-5 days. There was so much to do with the move and everything. Closing went well... all 45 minutes of it. We opted for a speedy closing. The move was strenuous of course. Two long days Friday and Saturday and enough stairs for the rest of my life.
We have all of the furniture for the most part set up now. Half the boxes have been moved out of the garage and into the proper rooms. Hooked up my computer and desk, got the TV delivered and everything for that hooked up including DirecTV, put together the dining room table, and many other things.
Christina's parents were a huge help this weekend. Her Dad put in our exterior door locks and managed to find every ding in the wall from the previous owners and spackled them all up. The people who lived in the house prior to us were not very clean people at all. They also moved out of the house in a big time hurry, so they didn't bother taking the time to go around cleaning things. Things like the mildew in the separate shower in the master bedroom and the cobwebs and dirt throughout the garage. However, all of these things are pretty minor cosmetic things and give us a couple weeks and everything should be in top shape. The guy was not handy at all and some of the work he did on the house like weather-stripping was just awful work. Glad I don't mind getting my hands dirty and doing work on the house myself and doing it right. We've given the house more TLC in 4 days than I think they gave it in total over the last 6 years!
I am going to take a bit of time before we take pictures and post them on the web. As with any big move, things are still in chaos right now. Once everything gets unpacked, or at least close, we'll go around taking pictures and I'll update my "Our House" section of my Pbase photo site.
