Of course, we had a gas fireplace for heat, a gas hot water heater for hot water, a gas stove to cook with, and... sadly, even a portable DVD player to watch movies with... Yeah, really roughing it, eh?
Still, it wasn't fun going 31 hours without power when it's freezing outside.
Anyway, here are some pictures from the last couple days on my Pbase site:
The high that was 37 last night is now only 32 and there's a belt of rain (freezing here of course) that stretches all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Freezing rain all day and all night supposedly.
Today was interesting in Columbia. The high today was supposed to be 43 when I checked early this morning.
Then I noticed small icicles on the chairs out back on the patio. The high was then down to 37. A few hours later, the high was 32. I never did make 32. It got up to 30 and then dropped right back into the 20's.
Overnight they're calling for 1/4 of an inch of ice in the Midlands area.
And USC is on a 2-hour delay with my fingers crossed that the temps stay low and we're off all day tomorrow.
What I really need is 6-12 inches of snow to drive the truck around in, but I won't be picky.
I took the truck out this morning to get some first pictures. Photographing a car is always better to do in the early sun or late sun. More of a pain to have to move it around a lot, but the pictures are usually worth it.
Well, okay.. not brand new... the 2004's that I looked at were all just a bit out of our price range unfortunately.
I bought a 2001 Nissan Pathfinder. It's black with black leather interior, power sliding sunroof, 10-speaker, 6-CD changer Bose stereo system, and all the other standard extras like power seats, keyless entry, power windows and locks, etc, etc.
Here's the picture of it from the dealer's website:
Of course, more photos will follow once I bring it back tomorrow to have it cleaned up and such. Here is a link to the info page about the truck:
It drives really nicely and has quite a bit of power too from the 3.5L V6 that turns out 240hp.
I think the only thing that the truck didn't come with was a towing package. But that's not too expensive to add in the future. There are class III hitches for $130-$140 for this truck.
Stuck at home today with a dead battery. Strangest thing too. We were heading out to the hockey game Friday night and as the garage door is closing Christina notices that my car door is open. I guess I went in my car after something and forgot to close it for some reason, though I can't remember what I was in there for in the first place. Anyway, apparently a 1996 car isn't smart enough to have a delay to turn off the dome light.
Usually Christina and I commute together, but I decided to drive myself in a little later this morning instead.
We went to go see a hockey game last night. Rusty, the guy who runs gamecockinsider.com where I am a moderator had some extra tickets he was giving away. The Columbia Inferno lost though to the Toledo Storm. Toledo was bigger, stronger, and faster on the ice. They kept it close with them though and only won 3-2. I won't even get into the officiating. Still a fun Friday night... no pictures though, I forgot my camera.
No pictures of snow from last night either since there was zero accumulation. We weren't even awake to see if there were flurries. Disappointing, but there's a lot of winter left. Besides, I don't want to waste a nice winter storm on a Friday night when it'll get us no time off work.
Speaking of work, we're waiting to hear whether or not Christina's possible new job can be raised up to her pay level or not. The College of Engineering was going to do a position swap so that Christina's position and pay just transferred to the new job, but her boss (despite saying he wouldn't stand in her way if it was what she wanted to do) decided that he wanted to keep his higher paying slot. It's not like he's going to hire a new person at Christina's rate anyway, but I guess I understand wanting to keep what you already have since getting anything at USC position and pay wise takes a good fight lately.
Anyway, her new position would be mostly computer support for students (40%) and maintaining the College website and 3-4 different department's websites (40%). The remainder would be ordering lab and computer supplies and basic paperwork tracking for the IT team for the College. A much better career and more suited towards what she'd like to do down the road. We'll see on that pay thing though... hopefully a career change won't require a pay cut.
Also, I'll try to get that Wassail recipe from Christina today and email it to you Mom. Sounds like 3 crockpots of the stuff will go over well at the staff meeting.
We've been pretty busy. We went to Atlanta two days after getting back from Michigan to see Michelle and Ben for New Years. We weren't there long, but it was nice seeing their house and going to downtown to watch the Peach drop with 110,000+ people there. Well, it was nice until those 110,000 people decided to leave. I thought were were going to be trampled at a couple points trying to get back to the MARTA train. Still, it was something that was fun to do once.
We also had a few people over for the MNC (mythical national championship) game Sunday night. Pretty late game too, so this week has been the longest work week so far this entire year. heh.
Anyway, it was a great holiday break, but now we're back to the grind, so I'm sure updates will come more often.
Not a lot of new progress on this list, only a few more, but I thought I'd post up my Flying Saucer list again. Hopefully this will get some updating in the near future also.
