Quite a long time since my last update again... such a slacker.
We've been busy lately, though. Yesterday was Christina's birthday (happy birthday, girl!) and we had a great dinner at Kyoto's. I was pretty nice to her though and didn't tell them that it was her birthday. She did the same for me last June when we went to Hooters for my birthday, but then Jen and Jenn showed up with a card and such and the waitresses figured it out. You get to stand on a stool and spell your name with your rear end while they sing happy birthday to you. Note to self: Never go to Hooters for your birthday again.
I had flowers sent to Christina yesterday at work along with one of those handmade bead bracelets with Carolina stuff on it. And tonight, we're going to a place in Columbia called Mad Platter (yes, she reads my blog, but she guessed it already! we've never been there and she guessed... said she just knew - weird). It's a place where you paint your own pottery and then it's glazed and fired and you can buy the piece afterwards if you want. Should be interesting.
We've also started in on our big Hardwood Floor Adventure. And it should be quite an adventure. We've gotten the carpet and padding out of the room and still need to remove a couple staples and the tack boards from around the outside of the room before this weekend. We're renting a pneumatic nailer and air compressor for the weekend and putting down 3/4" oak pre-finished hardwoods. It's only going in the guest bedroom for now, but the plan is to do the three downstairs rooms also. I'll keep updating my blog as it progresses, but for now, here are a few of the beginning pictures:
Also, yesterday Christina finally got her chair for her library that she ordered back in July. The delays have been crazy with the manufacturer and she did order it in a fabric that they didn't have in stock, but nonetheless, three months is a bit long to wait. Luckily, we love the chair. She's named it Sancho. Don't ask.
I hate those nights that feel like you've only been asleep for 5 minutes and then suddenly it's time to get up. Good thing I have all the "fixin's" for coffee here at work.
We swept through the house cleaning yesterday... which is a good thing because bigger projects like finishing painting our bedroom and finishing the crown molding and anything else we'd want to do end up getting put off because there's always chores to do instead.
Though I did push one project into the foreground last night. In our guest bedroom there was a stain from the previous owner's dog throwing up... a decent sized area where the carpet was stained pink. So, I cut it out.
Well, the carpet remnents we have are the same carpeting, minus 6 years of wear and tear. So, it's not an exact match, even if I could cut the thing to exactly fit.
Moral of the story is a patched carpet looks like a patched carpet.
So, now we have to do something about that spot, eh? We'll either try to get the carpet matched and have the room re-carpeted, or we'll do hardwood floors in there. Haven't decided which would look better. It's one of those situations where if you do hardwood floors in one room, I guess you really should do them in all of the rooms. So, we'll price out the carpet first and see how close of a match they can make.
Whatever we end up with will be better than that huge stain in the middle of the room.
It's gameday and the UAB Blazers are going down today!
Sure, that's not a big deal since they are UAB after all, but it's one of those games you really don't want to slip up and lose.
I'm actually bringing my better camera to the game today because it's nicer weather (88 degrees, almost no humidity, and sunny) so I'll post up a couple of pictures tomorrow sometime.
First good thing in a while happened at work yesterday by the way. My co-worker, Marty, was going to go to Puerto Rico for a few days and my boss Robert told her to just take the time off and not worry about submitting the leave time. So, in turn, he told me to take 2 or 3 days (would I really choose 2 instead of 3?) sometime in the next couple weeks regardless of whether I have leave or not. Our game against Kentucky this year is a Thursday night ESPN game here in Columbia... and coincides with the week the State Fair is in town. I may take Wednesday-Friday off work so that we can tailgate Thursday and have Friday after a night game off work.
(August 2003 through September 2003 amounts)
613 requests in 29 work days
21.14 requests/day
204.33 requests/each total (3 ppl)
7.05 requests/each per day (3 ppl)
When I first started we averaged something more like this:
(January 1st, 2002 through December 10th, 2002 amounts)
2153 requests in 240 work days
8.97 requests/day
717 requests/each total (3 ppl)
2.99 requests/each per day (3 ppl)
Anyway, work still sucks.
Speaking of work, there's a new hole in Windows that everyone should patch. There is no 'Blaster worm' equivalent for it yet, but you know someone out there is writing a virus as we speak, so download the proper patch for your system:
The link to download the patch is on the right hand side of the page when you click on the links below.
"Security Update for Windows (KB824146)
English -- Download". Download and run the patch, then reboot your PC.
Wow, what a game Saturday! A convincing 31-7 win over #15 Virginia. Everyone pretty much thought UVA was overrated anyway, not to take anything away from Carolina's performance. The defense dominated and Daccus Turman rushed for well over 100 yards. There was definitely an energy in the air though yesterday... you could feel it in the stands even before the game started. The crowd was amazing... screaming on first downs even for UVA. It definitely makes up for the quiet crowd we had last game. People were done being tense about the season and they got to see the real potential of our offense. Apparently we used a grand total of 15 different plays in the first game... which according to our QB after that game, was about 15% of the playbook. The play calling this game was fantastic.
And what a contrast in everything else from one week to the next also. It was 95 degrees last week and we baked out there tailgating. This week was much cooler. In fact, it was supposed to rain the entire day. They were way off though... the rain quit around 9:30ish and by kickoff the sun was peaking through. It was mostly sunny the entire game and we even got a little burned. However, it was perfect weather for a football game. Here's a picture first from last week and then one from yesterday:
August 31st - 95 degrees and sunny for tailgating: (picture removed)
September 6th - 75 degrees and rain for tailgating: (picture removed)
Of course, the weather improved after yesterday's picture was taken, but when we got down there at 8:00am it was just starting to rain and we sat under the tent in ponchos for about an hour and a half in the rain. However, as you can see in that second picture, the DirecTV setup worked great... even in the rain. It didn't take long messing with the dish to get a good signal either. So, we got to watch College Gameday at 10:30 and that was nice because they had Holtz on there for a segment.
The game was great yesterday and I'm starting to get my voice back this morning, so that's good too. It's nice to be 2-0... let's hope we can make it 3 and take down Georgia next week in Athens.
Rain Saturday... 70% chance of rain starting in the morning and continuing throughout the afternoon. Guess it'll be a poncho game. Is there a such thing as a reverse rain dance?
Sometimes it's great when you put two and two together. Yesterday all of the sudden while reading about the football games online I realized I might have almost everything needed to run a portable satellite tv system while tailgating.
I had an extra dish from when we moved into the house... the seller left their dish there, but I still took the one that came with our installation of the receivers in case I ever needed it. I also have a portable DVD player for plane rides and road trips and such. Turns out it has Line In inputs in the back of it. When we saw a 400 Watt inverter at Sams Club yesterday it all sort of fell together. So, we bought a pole for the dish and a tripod setup to hold the pole and the inverter at Sams. I hooked everything up in the driveway yesterday evening and it took a little while moving the dish around until it picked up on the signal and it worked perfectly. The DVD player takes 30 watts max and the DirecTV receiver takes 35 watts max, so we're well under the 400 continuous watts the inverter supplies. It'll be nice watching some football games while tailgating. If I would have had this last Saturday I could have watched the second half of Georgia beating up on Clemson.
We also went and bought a USC EZ-Up tailgating tent after baking this last game. The couple of spots we walked around to didn't have much more shade than where we parked, so we decided we were finally going to get a tent. This Saturday against Virginia is a 12:30 kickoff, so it'll be plenty hot.
