I took the day off work yesterday. Not to say I didn't work, it just wasn't at my place of employment. My day off involved painting our shutters. They were pretty faded, and sadly, the by the time I thought to take the first picture, the worst ones were already primed, so it's not the best before and after. Speaking of priming, that was a mistake... should have just painted them. By the time I got to the three sets upstairs by the windows to our bedroom and closet, I stopped priming them. Too much work and it ended up meaning two coats of the black since you could see the gray through the first coat in spots.
Anyway, blah blah.... pictures say more than me droning on about painting...
Priming the lower shutters still:
Primed most of the upper shutters on the brick front of the house, but realized I couldn't get up high enough and still feel even remotely safe up there, so I ended up just taking them off and painting them in the garage instead:
Upper shutters taken off the house:
Before on the right, after on the left for the upper shutters:
All finished:
Finished up the second coat on the lower shutters this morning. Next is the garage door casing and painting all the exterior wood that is white.
I was hoping to do a lot of this during the Spring but then I remembered that we don't get Spring here in South Carolina. Tomorrow is supposed to be 88 and it's nearly that hot today. Last Saturday morning it was 29 degrees. Gotta love South Carolina, eh?
Okay, scratch that last post about Series Links with DirecTV DVRs... that 9pm thing didn't work either. I just manaully clicked record on each new episode. There are also some episodes on the week of 30th/1st as well.
Three episodes starting at: Sunday March 25, 2007 at 8PM E/P
Some DirecTV Notes: DirecTV HR10/HR20 - It appears the HD data for Channel 76, is "quirky". Best results are to set a single record for the 8PM episode and set your SERIES recording based on the 2nd episode (9PM)
A man is driving down a deserted stretch of highway when he notices a sign out of the corner of his eye....It reads:
SISTERS OF ST. FRANCIS HOUSE OF PROSTITUTION 10 MILES
He thinks this is a figment of his imagination and drives on without second thought....Soon he sees another sign which reads:
SISTERS OF ST. FRANCIS HOUSE OF PROSTITUTION 5 MILES
Suddenly he begins to realize that these signs are for real and drives past a third sign saying:
SISTERS OF ST. FRANCIS HOUSE OF PROSTITUTION NEXT RIGHT
His curiosity gets the best of him and he pulls into the drive. On the far side of the parking lot is a stone building with a small sign next to the door reading:
SISTERS OF ST. FRANCIS
He climbs the steps and rings the bell. The door is answered by a nun in a long black habit who asks, "What may we do for you my son?"
He answers, "I saw your signs along the highway and was interested in possibly doing business...."
"Very well my son. Please follow me." He is led through many winding passages and is soon quite disoriented. The nun stops at a closed door and tells the man, "Please knock on this door."
He does so and another nun in a long habit, holding a tin cup answers the door... This nun instructs, "Please place $100 in the cup then go through the large wooden door at the end of the hallway."
He puts $100 in the cup, eagerly trots down the hall and slips through the door pulling it shut behind him. The door locks, and he finds himself back in the parking lot facing another sign:
GO IN PEACE. YOU HAVE JUST BEEN SCREWED BY THE SISTERS OF ST. FRANCIS.
I decided to return the 40" Sony and get the 46" Sony instead. My old set was a 46" screen and you get used to it, so the 40" screen seemed small. Plus, the cost difference wasn't much of a factor since I got a Circuit City manager to nearly match an online vendor's price, something they don't normally do. Needless to say, I don't have to worry about Circuit City's 30 day price guarantee on the TV.
However, I have used their price guarantee on just about everything else so far... I've either found it cheaper somewhere else or they've put it on sale themselves this week... it's been nice since they give you 110% of the difference back.
Anyway, here's a quick shot of the new TV stand, TV, receiver, and Xbox 360:
I also have a few photos from Saturday when we went down to 5 Points in downtown for the Saint Patrick's Day festival. We didn't care too much about the bands playing this year, so we mostly hung out, wore green, and drank beer. Good times! Some of the photos are of friends and co-workers, some are just random crowd folks who had festive outfits:
I don't know if anyone else out there picks their brackets, but I hope you didn't pick too many upsets. There haven't really been that many stunning upsets in this year's Tournament as there usually are this year. I guess the VCU upset of Duke was big, but I didn't pick Duke to go past the second round, so it wasn't a big loss.
Anyway, as of yesterday's games, I am 7-1 in Sweet 16 teams... I didn't pick Butler to beat Maryland. We'll see how today's games go, but it'd be nice to end up 15-1 for the Sweet 16 teams.
For those readers over in Atlanta, Ted's Montana Grill is giving away 3 free $10 gift certificates to celebrate their 3 year anniversary... they arrive in your email as a PDF file:
Haven't posted in a while - had a bunch of other stuff to work on. And very little of it involved work... this week at least. I took most of this week off... and would be out tomorrow too, except Scott can't be there because his brother isn't doing very well in the hospital. Since Robert's still out recovering from surgery and Marty had requested tomorrow off a couple weeks ago, I'll go in for coverage.
The reason I took most of this week off (I was in Tuesday afternoon also for something) is because things have been slower with it being Spring Break at Carolina this week. Figured it was a good time to use a little of my 3 weeks of annual leave I have built up.
Plus, it let me mess around with the new TV, Xbox 360, and computer monitor for my office. Decided to do a little upgrading recently. If anyone out there is interested in buying our 3.5 year old 46" Sony HDTV or 4 year old IBM 21" computer monitor, just let me know!
The new computer monitor is a 24" Dell 2407WFP LCD. Got a good deal on it compared to MSRP by purchasing it through Dell Outlet - their refurbished outlet store. We had bought a couple laptops at work from there and they showed up looking factory new, so I figured the monitors would be good too. Showed up this afternoon without any sign of wear at all and not one dead pixel either. Here's a quick picture of it below... I have a picture-in-picture on it right now of the HD basketball games... wanted to test it out as a TV (the TV part can be full screen, so it'll be the new tailgating TV next year):
You'll have to forgive me for the tulip wallpaper.. the Gamecock one will return shortly, I was just testing out some nice widescreen photography wallpapers and wanted to show that tulip one to Christina for her paintings.
No pictures of the TV and new TV stand.. the living room has been a mess with all the boxes and manuals and remotes and stuff the last few days. It's a nice Sony 40" LCD... though I'm starting to think I should have picked up the 46" Sony instead since that's the size of the old screen. This one has a much better picture and looks a lot better in the living room, but the loss of screen size is noticable.
Good problems to have in life, eh?
I'll see if I can't get a new picture of the living room now with the new stuff tomorrow or sometime this weekend.
Robert's surgery went well on Monday. The three of us stopped by the hospital to visit for a few minutes and see how things went. He said he had more general soreness from the surgery now than from his back, but it's still early, so he won't know how beneficial the fusing was for another couple months. Still, it was good to see he came through fine.
The rest of this week is going to be crazy... Marty and Scott are both in tomorrow for part of the morning and then out until next week. So, the next two days should be pretty busy for me. Since we're already 20-25 issues or so in the hole, it looks like some folks are going to have to wait on stuff.
I've been meaning to put up a photo of what we did in our foyer too but I'm out of glossy printer paper, so I can't printer the images I wanted to print and hang. We'll get to it this weekend probably.
Had a rough day at the gym today too... today was back and shoulders day and I swear I'm not improving on pullups at all. I think next week during the student's Spring Break we're just going to skip the lifting since getting a basketball and a court is so much easier without all the kids on campus. Honestly we both need the cardio more anyway.
Monday at work was a little different than most days. Got to spend the bulk of the day shooting photos at two different events.
The first was actually side work (well, dual-employment work), so I claimed leave at my first job so I could be paid to shoot photos at a cooking class being held by the wife of our former Dean and a woman who works with Christina. Christina designed the cover of the cookbook pictured in the last shot and did the layout of the recipes inside.
The class was about cooking Greek food and cooking it healthy. There were 8 people there and it was held at a Senior Center here in town. It was a fun shoot - something different anyway.
After the cooking class I ran over to a big presentation up on the 17th floor of Capstone on campus. Some experts in participatory research in Public Health were giving presentations and the group attending was about 90 strong. Not a lot of photos from that since the lighting was quite dim and I didn't want to hammer away on the flash too much there.
Anyway, here's 13 of the 67 final images from the cooking class, resized of course so they don't take forever to download...
Sorted out all of that stuff from the last post, so things are much better. Still was a very frustrating day when one of the things you can't get to work right is a stupid printer... you know it's bad when something simple like that is screwing up.
Anyway, other than it getting busy again, everything else is going along pretty well. Robert found out that he goes in for surgery Monday to fuse a couple small discs together so he's pretty hopeful that will end the pain once he recovers from the surgery. I hope it helps because he's sounded pretty rough the last few months.
It's been raining here today and yesterday for the most part. Just when our weather was starting to get nicer too. Christina and I even bought one of those wrought iron firepit bowl things for out on the patio and some firewood the other night. I figured a nice night in the low to mid 50's outside and the fact that I'm a firebug was good enough reasons to get one. And then it rains for the next couple days... oh well.
The rain hasn't dampened any spirits here though... things have been really great lately. Life tends to have upswings every so often and we're definitely in one right now. Not sure I can really point to this thing or that thing, it's more that overall everything seems to be clicking. It's funny how even after being with someone for nearly 11 years you can still love them more each day.
