Well, this is it... our last vacation day off work until the 4th of July. This stretch is long one too. I always say Christmas break makes up for it unless tomorrow is the start of a near 6 month span without another holiday.
I'm proud to report though that we're wasting it away as it should be. I even ended up falling asleep on the couch this afternoon. Could it get more exciting?
The weekend wasn't a total wash though, I did fix the grout in our bathroom shower. Just put the sealer on this afternoon and need to test it still to see if it needs another coat. After that, you have to wait either 48 or 72 hours before running the water, so I guess the project isn't completely finished yet.
Speaking of projects, they implode the old Carolina Plaza on February 5th. That'll make way for our second new building in Public Health - the one we'll be located in. We're told around a little over a year from now the second building will be finished. We're invited to watch from the top of the tallest building in Columbia that morning... the same place we have our Christmas luncheon. However, the breakfast deal starts at 6:30am that Sunday morning and it's with the School of Public Health people and the President of USC, VP, Provost, trustees, etc... sounds a little too stuffy.
I may try to find somewhere else with a line of sight to shoot the building coming down... we'll see. I'd really prefer to get on a roof somewhere instead of shooting through a window, but noone wants to okay that kind of liability I guess.
I suppose I should check that grout and try to get some stuff together and ready for the work week tomorrow. I don't know if anyone else out there got MLK Day off today, but if you did I hope you had a good one.
Sitting here savoring the last few days of our long holiday break, I thought I should actually post a real update... scary, eh? Between being slack over our break and Brian and Tasha visiting us the week before, the blog has taken a back seat obviously.
Other than the god-awful way this football season and bowl season has gone, our break has been wonderful. Great downtime, that's for sure. In fact, we didn't do anything until after Christmas. No chores, projects, etc.
We had a nice Christmas together. I made a spagetti dinner and we had a nice bottle of garnacha, a Spanish red wine. Even used our dining room table... for what... the 3rd or 4th time since moving in? We're just not the formal dining types I guess!
For Christmas, Christina got me a power washer. I had been wanting one for a while and we did need one... it was a very smart gift... I get a new toy and at the same time the concrete and the house ends up powerwashed. Clever girl!
Here's a couple shots of the back patio and the difference while I was working on it... never realized how bad it had gotten:
I also got some other great gifts from everyone else. Thank you all for everything! I got to use the new drill today installing our new garage door opener (old opener's motor died), I've been reading through the MAD collection of jokes, and the billiards glasses are going to be perfect for the gameroom bar. Gives me more ambition to get some shelving up for the satellite box and some shelves for glassware.
We made up for being slack at the beginning of the break by getting a handful of things done since. Like I mentioned earlier I had to replace our garage door opener today. The motor wouldn't turn and the plastic gears inside had their teeth ground down probably halfway. The manufacture date on it was 11/95, so I guess the engineers designed it perfectly - they come with a 10 year limited warranty on the motors! So since this new one has a manufacture date of 9/05 I expect to replace it in October/November of 2015. Also replaced the guts in a couple of our toilets today too because waterflow was being cut off and they were taking forever to fill. Now if I would have just gotten around to doing the grout in our bathroom shower I could cross off most of the immediate things on the project list.
Christina also finished her painting she's been working on for months. Of course, it was only about 45 minutes from being finished. It turned out great and really looks good in the living room above the fireplace:
