What we've been up to

It's been a long time since I posted last. We haven't been super busy lately, but we have been doing things or had places to go. Then we get home late in the evening and we're tired and/or hungry, so we'll eat supper and then rest on the couch for a little while before bed. Normally while on the couch I would use the laptop and post, but since we haven't gotten a new one yet, I haven't been posting. I could have very easily got up and went into the office, but I didn't. Forgive me.


Since it has been so long since I last posted, I won't chronicle everything we have done the past week or so. Over the weekend I went to the NASCAR race with my dad and we had a great time. I have a lot of pictures that I will post later (no, really I promise I will post them!) Christi and her mom went to Marketplace, which is sort of like a craft show but with nicer things. They were disappointed with it, though, because everything was incredibly overpriced. They are looking forward to Christmas Made in the South, which is a huge event that is being held next weekend, I believe.


I got back from the race in time to watch the 2nd half of the GT-UVA game. I shouldn't have watched. It was disappointing to watch us lose to a team I think we should have beat. I'm not going to rehash the game though, we lost and that is that. Hopefully we get back on track this weekend vs FSU.


We also watched some movies this weekend. Christi picked out the Baby Mama and it was surprisingly very funny. It's not going to win any awards for best plot or picture of the year, but it has a pretty good story and tons of funny parts. There were some really cheesy parts as well, but overall it made us laugh a lot. I recommend you check it out.


Yesterday, a guy that Mrs Debra works with came by to talk to us about investment accounts, savings plans, insurance, etc. We decided to each open up Roth IRAs as a supplemental savings and retirement account. It should really benefit us in the long run. We also decided yesterday it was time to get back into working on the house mode. After finishing the bathroom, we've been meaning to get started on our next task, but we haven't. Things come up, we're tired, too busy, insert other excuse here, etc. We just haven't done it and we need to. Which means I need to get to work! The next room is more than likely going to be the bonus room - aka the GT room.


Speaking of getting to work, I'm going to go see if we have everything we need to get started. We have found a few good computer deals and are going to check them out tonight when Christi gets home. If we need anything to get started on the room we can pick it up while we are out looking at computers.


That's all for now, thanks for stopping by.

Woohoo NASCAR

I've been practicing my NASCAR lingo. Here's a samping:

The car checked out fine in the dyno, but it might not make any difference with the bear grease on the track. Throw in some dirty air, and all you can do is hope the scuffs and 200 mph tape will help the machine run flat-out.

Yea, I'm not so sure what that means either, but I'm working on it. In case you were wondering, I'm going to the race Saturday thanks to Mrs. Debra. Her company, Nationwide, is sponsoring the race and since it is in Atlanta her office got tickets to their suite. Admittedly, I'm not the biggest NASCAR fan. I don't watch the races. I do play in a NASCAR fantasy racing league, but that's mostly so I can beat Jason Nakai in something else (you know you have losing to me Jason!) But I figure this is one of those opportunities you can't pass up. How many times can you get FREE tickets to a suite?


I think I'll enjoy it a lot. Mrs. Debra was able to get 3 tickets. I decided that I would take my dad and stepmom because they are huge NASCAR fans. I think they will have a really good time. I'll have to make sure they're on their best behavior since we'll be rubbing elbows with some big time Nationwide clients and it would not be good if we reflected on Mrs Debra and her office poorly. Big thanks to Mrs. Debra for hooking me up with these tickets!!!


Not too much going on today. We got back not too long ago from eating at Chili's. The food was great as usual. I love Chili's. They have a great appetizer (queso dip and bottom-less chips) for a good price (around $4.70.) We went with Christi's parents. I had stopped by their house after work to pick up the race tickets and we we ended up going out to dinner. Now we're back at home about to watch some TV. Speaking of, I need to get out of the office and go back to the living room. That's all for tonight. Adios.

Weekend Happenings

Two posts prior to this one I lamented about my laptop and its dreadful performance. I could sense the end was near; I just didn't realize how soon. Saturday morning it kicked the bucket. I'm not entirely sure what happened. It's not getting any power. When I unplugged the power cord and plugged it back it, there was a slight spark. Usually I can diagnose the problem and fix it (when you've had a buggy computer for 5 years, you get good at these things.) All I can say at this time is there is a power issue. I'm currently taking it apart to see what the cause is. I also ordered a hard drive adapter that allows you to attach a hard drive to it, which then plugs into another computer via USB cable. So, unless my hard drive is fried, I should be able to access all of my files and transfer them to Christi's PC. I'm also looking at external hard drives for the backup of files. I've been meaning to get one of these forever but I've always put it off for whatever reason.


So, now we're in the market for another laptop. I've always wanted an Apple laptop but they just released their new models and they are crazy expensive. That's out of the picture. I've only used Windows Vista sparingly on my grandfather's laptop and it has been ok, but I've heard and read tons of horror stories about how miserable it is. There are still some places where you can downgrade to XP, but I'm not sure if I want to do that, either. It's an aging platform, but is has proven to be fairly reliable and steady for the most part. I'm not sure what we'll get. We're on the lookout for a good deal. Let us know if you see anything good!


Christi and her parents went to the Mossy Creek festival. They spent most of Saturday morning and afternoon there. It's like a big crafts / decorations festival. Christi got some cool Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas decorations. I'm going to take some picture of them once we put them up. While they were there, I stayed at home and did 8 million loads of laundry plus various other chores around the house. I also watched GT beat Clemson. It was another good win for the Jackets. We're now 6-1, ranked #21 in the country. Let's keep it going. Up next: a vastly improved Virginia team that is on a tear. Hopefully we send them packing back to Charlottesville.


Besides festivals and football, we also watched a movie (The Prestige - very good!) with Christi's parents and Jason. For some reason we woke up Sunday morning very tired so we ended up not going to church, although we should have. I used my grill to cook lunch and made some awesome bacon cheeseburgers. Very delicious. The weather was great this weekend and I found some time to practice my golf game in the yard and Christi and I tossed the frisbee around some too. Christi and Jessica went to a few stores to shop for some clothes while I went to Barnes and Noble to check out what they had. I have a gift certificate I got for graduation that I haven't used. I looked around for a while, but couldn't find anything I HAD to have. I did think of a good post while walking around. It's too long to continue in this post, which is getting very long. Time to wrap things up.


Overall it was a productive yet relaxing weekend. It seems to work best when we do a lot of chores / errands on Saturday and take Sunday to lay around the house and do a lot of nothing. We gets things done and also get to relax and recover for the upcoming work week. A good weekend. That's all. Thanks for reading!

Rainy Night

Tonight is a rainy, semi-cold night. Definitely makes you want to lay on the couch and fall asleep. That's probably what we'll be doing while watching a movie. We just got back from going out to eat with Jody and Jessica. She wasn't feeling very good so we cut out night short and let her go home and rest.


We're both really tired from long days at work. The weather isn't helping us want to stay awake. Tomorrow we'll be watching GT play Clemson. Hopefully we run all over them. Christi is also going to the Mossy Creek festival tomorrow with her mom to get some seasonal decorations and other stuff like that. I'm really not sure what they have there. After the game, I think we might be going over to Jody and Jessica's place to watch a movie - apparently there are several good movies we haven't seen. We're bad about not going to the movies.


Anyway, that's all for now. We're watching the Barrett-Jackson auctions. I'm sure that will change if Christi has her way. Check back for more updates

My Legs be Hurting

Before I whine about my legs, I am sending out a belated Happy Birthday to my brother-in-law Jason. His 27th birthday was yesterday. I told him Happy Birthday yesterday, but I didn't get a chance to post it! We went out tonight for his birthday dinner and ate some outstanding food at Longhorn's. Great choice.


My legs are killing me. I started working out at the gym on base yesterday. I couldn't go until I had a form signed by my doctor saying I was OK to work out and listed any limitations I may have. I went to the doctor Tuesday. I get 3 hours of paid workout time each week. Nice, huh? Today's workout was pretty brutal. I probably should have held off on such a demanding workout only 2 days into getting back into working out, but I didn't. I follow the workout program Crossfit. I really enjoy it and highly recommend it if you are searching for a routine. Well, routine probably isn't the best word because there is no set pattern. To me, that keeps it enjoyable and challenging. Usually it's 3 days on and then a rest day. They post a new WOD (workout of the day) each day. You don't have to follow that exactly and some exercises are hard/impossible without certain equipment. There are several substitutions exercises for those, though. I'm about 2 weeks behind if going by the calendar. This helps me because we have 2 gyms, and I can plan in advance which gym to go to because of differing equipment in each gym, as well as plan for substituting exercises. Sometimes, you just can't do the workout as prescribed, so you just pick another one and do that. They all hurt, unfortunately.


I like it because it pushes you to do the most work in the fastest time possible. That really works your muscles and your endurance at the same time. I have a long way to go in both. Here are my workouts from the past 2 days:


Monday:
5 rounds for time:
10 pull-ups
20 push-ups
30 sit-ups
40 squats (body squats, harder than you think!)


Actual workout was 5 rounds for time:
20 pull-ups
30 push-ups
40 sit-ups
50 squats


For time means do it as fast as possible with as little rest as possible. Rest time counts against you. 1 round = 1 time all the way through, every rep. Since it was my first day back, I didn't time myself. I was slow. It looks easy enough, but if you add up what you did, it's 50 pull-ups, 100 push-ups, 150 sit-ups, 200 squats (100,150,200,250 if you did it as RX'd). That's a lot of work and you are doing it as fast as possible, so you're getting a great workout. Also note that you don't touch a weight - this workout is all body weight. Great and challenging for everyone.


Tuesday:
My workout - 3 rounds for time:
95# Deadlift, 15 reps
95# Hang Power Clean, 12 reps
95# Front Squat, 9 reps
95# Push Jerk, 6 reps


My time: 23 min 33 sec. Very slow. My 1st round was in less than 5 minutes. The last 2 killed me. At least I finished. I haven't been that happy to do a workout, either. I also haven't been that beat up by workout in a long, long time. And I did the easy one.


RX'd (prescribed) workout - 5 rounds for time:
135# Deadlift, 15 reps
95# Hang Power Clean, 12 reps
135# Front Squat, 9 reps
135# Push Jerk, 6 reps


Brutal. There are some people who are doing this in under 17 minutes. Maybe I'll get there one day. Maybe.


So, you can see why my legs are gone. Thankfully tomorrow hold weighted pullups only. Only. It seems hard, and it is, but like I said there are scaled workouts. The best place for those are Brand X Crossfit, an affiliate in California who posts scaled workouts.



Enough of me rambling about the program. Take some time and look around the website. If you don't know what a exercise is, look at their exercise/demo page. They have everything there. Check out the videos. They have men who came in in their 50's and couldn't do a pushup who are know knocking out pullups, cleaning heavy weight, etc.


Well, I had some more stuff to type out but my computer sucks and is being retarded tonight. Blogger lost half of what I typed when my browser crashed. I need to upgrade the RAM, bad. I fear the hard drive may be nearing its end, too. Hopefully this computer will hand on a little while longer. I'm sure you were tired of reading about my workout attempts, anyway.


Have a good evening.

Weekend Trip Review

This is a little overdue, but I promised I was going to talk about what we did last weekend while we were out of town. I'll try to keep it short.


Christi and Kim spent a lot of time going to stores up there browsing for seasonal decorations and things they could use for their classroom. We also had a great dinner with most of Christi's former 1st grade teachers at a place called Copeland's. The food was great, but the staff and service SUCKED. I highly recommended not going there. We did a lot of eating this weekend. We went out to a lot of great places. Kim also cooked an awesome meal for us. Overall, it was just a good weekend to relax away from home, away from all the chores, things to do, etc. We really enjoyed ourselves and enjoyed seeing our friends.

GT vs. Gardner-Webb

Here are some pictures from the GT vs Gardner-Webb game. It was perfect weather for football. The crowd sucked - noone was there. That was probably due to the it being fall break this week and that we were playing GW, a team we were supposed to destroy. One problem - someone forgot to tell GW that.

 
Band Concert before the game at the Campanile

 
Band Concert

 
Drum Line getting ready to march to the Library Fountain

 
The man, the myth, the legend, the drum major - Jason Nakai!


 
The Wreck getting ready to drive into the stadium (stupid girl wouldn't get out of the way.)

 
Wreck coming down The Hill follow by the band and a crowd of people

 
Future 1st round draft choice - Michael Johnson

 
I spotted Josh Nesbitt taking reps during warmups and hoped he would play. Sadly, he did not.


 
Team warming up before the game

 

'96 Olympic Games Torch

 
I climbed up to the top of the stadium to get some good pics. Here's the skyline

 
Skyline above the stands. One of the best views in all of football.


 
Band getting ready to take the field

 
Band about to perform

 
The "T" - looks so much better from up high

 
Tech Tower formation


 
GT formation

 
Team running onto the field

 
All the flags are up - would have looked good if the letters faced the other way. You know, in the direction of the home stand and bench.

 
Wreck leading the team onto the field


 
Wreck flying past the team captains

 
Here comes the team

 
Team running out

 
Skyline later in the game. I want to come to a night game and get pictures of the night skyline.


 
Stands during the 3rd Q. That's as full as it got

 
Scoreboard at the end of the game

 
Team singing the fight song after the game


 
View from behind the stand - many of the building on campus

 
More sky scrapers being built

 
Tech Tower

 
Closer shot of Tech Tower

 
Tech Tower

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. As you can see from the stands, there crowd was sparse. The west stands (side I sat on) were a little bit more full as was the SWARM student section. The game was a bit of a drag. The defense played well but gave up some plays since they were on the field for essentially the hole game. Calvin Booker tried hard to fill in at QB but his skill set is just a bad match for our offense, and our offense really suffered. We even tried our 4th string QB, Bryce Dykes, but he couldn't do anything either. Basically, GW said - we're putting 8 or 9 men in the box and going after your RB because we know your QBs can't run. They were right. Our OLine couldn't block all of them and they were in the backfield the entire game. I'm not sure what else we could have done. We had receivers open when we tried some pass plays but for some reason we tried to throw long passes down field every time when some short routes would have beat them, in my opinion. That's how we score our only TD. Jonathon Dwyer turned a 12 yard pass over the middle into a 70 something yard TD. I mean, when your QB has 8 men rushing him and anything more than a 3 step drop he's getting hit, he doesn't have time to throw a 40 yard pass. But, I'm not the coach, just a fan who has an limited knowledge.


All things considered, we are 5-1 and doing better than expected. I thought we'd be 4-2 at this point, finishing 8-4. Hey, that's better than Sports Illustrated, who picked us to be 3-9 overall, behind Duke!


We have some big games coming up, including this week against Clemson. I'm not sure what to expect against them. They just fired their coach, which in my opinion was because of unrealistic expectations. Clemson always does this, but this one year was the year they were supposed to be "great." Yea, you're going to be great when you have 5 new starters on your offensive line - I think not. Clemson fans just have an delusional since of program accomplishment when they haven't really won anything since 1991. Not that GT has been tearing it up, but Bowden was 72-45 (forgive me if it's not exact), which is very solid. He was like this every year: they would either start 4-4 and finish 8-4 with a bowl game, or they would start 5-0 and finish 8-4, with a bowl game. That said, he's gone and they have an interim coach. I have no idea how they will rally around him. Let's hope they feel like their season is over.


I think we win, but it's going to be close. Thankfully it's a noon game so Death Valley won't be as intimidating or loud because they won't have all day to get prepared.


Ok, so enough of my rambling. I'll talk more about the weekend in another post. Just wanted to get some photos up tonight. Good night.

Out and About

We'll be going out of town this weekend. We'll be venturing back to our old stomping grounds of Woodstock to visit some of our friends up there. On Saturday while Christi and her teacher friends are doing whatever it is that teachers do on the weekends, I'm probably heading down to watch GT play Gardner-Webb. It will be the one chance I have in a while to watch them play, so I'll be taking advantage of it - regardless of who they play. Plus, it won't be on TV and you can only take so much of Gametracker.


The lovely Kim Schweizer will be our host for the weekend and I know we will come back with a lot of great stories. Hopefully nothing involving forks this time, though. We will also be stopping by Christi's old school on Monday (Bibb Co gets Columbus Day, Cobb Co does not - Federal Govt takes every holiday) to see her old students. She was really close to her 1st class and they were a truly special group of kids. We both miss them a lot. I spent a lot of time up their between classes and got close to them as well. It's amazing to watch a kid learn and at the same time what you can learn from a kid is also awesome.


Ok, back to this weekend. We'll be back Monday evening sometime. Also this weekend is Christi's family reunion in Tennessee. Normally we go, but we had already made plans to go to Woodstock this weekend, so we'll be missing it this year. Christi's parents are going and I know they will tell us about it. I'm sure going to miss the food. Her family sure knows how to cook. Yumm.


That's pretty much it for tonight. Check back after the long weekend to see more updates. We will be taking a lot of pictures and even though I'm probably the slowest person ever at getting them posted, I'll try to have them up ASAP. Forgive me if it takes a few days. I'm picky about how they are formatted, size, etc.


Hope everyone has a good weekend. Take care.

Guest Bathroom

Ok, so I Monday when I said pictures would be up by tonight, I meant tonight - Wednesday night. Here's a review in pictures of the bathroom, starting with before and ending with what it looks like now. Enjoy.

The bathroom the day we bought the house

Supplies

To Do List

Wall paper removed


Christi getting the popcorn ceiling down

Sanding the ceiling smooth for painting

Mmmmm... Dust

Ceiling painted, walls primed




Walls, 1st coat of paint

Finished Product

Wall decoration

The new light fixture

Lights from front

New mirror, lights (they work!), towel rack, etc

Same thing, lights off

Towel rack above toilet

Monogrammed hand towel

New shower head

So that's it for now. We held off on changing the faucet out. We can't decide on what kind we want. We may be starting our next room sometime soon. If we want to get done before Christmas, we definitely have too.


Also, I forgot to mention that Christi bought me a grill on Sunday! I'm pumped about it! Unfortunately, due to plans and weather (rain!), I haven't been able to use it yet. I hope to use it sometime soon. Now that the camera is back in action I will take pictures of it and other decorations.

It's getting late. That's all for now.