Black Friday

Yesterday was Black Friday. I decided to wake up early (4am) and stand in line for a great deal on a laptop. I thought it would be great since we just want something average and cheap to replace my broken laptop. I didn't get there early enough, though. I was 3 people too late. Not a good start to my Christmas shopping season.


Christi, her mom and Jason went to the mall around that same time to get some good deals on a lot of things. Christi was able to get a lot of our Christmas shopping done, which was way more productive than I was. After my disappointing start, I went over to the mall to help shop. I tried to help Christi with shopping, but I think I'm better at carrying bags than picking out presents. We also went to several other places including but not limited to Staples, Movie Stop, Kohl's, and Lowe's. I ended up buying some things for myself with a some giftcards that I had gotten for my birthday. I got some great tools from Sears and Lowe's that I used later in the day.


After going to Lowe's, I decided I was done for the day shopping. I went home while Christi and her mom went shopping at some other stores. I was going to paint but I knew the weather was going to be bad this weekend and there were a few things outside that I wanted to do. So, I ended up cleaning out the gutters, trimming the front hedges, sweeping off the front and back porches, changing numerous light bulbs throughout out the house (Lowe's has a great deal on CFCL lights!), and did some other little things around the house. I was about to resume painting on the bonus room when Christi called and told me they were on the way to our house to put up Christmas decorations. No painting got done, but overall it was a productive afternoon and I will be able to paint today and tomorrow while the weather is nasty outside.


Everyone (The Grizzards and Jason) came over and helped put up our Christmas decorations. This was really helpful since we have a ton of decorations - much more than I remember having - and we still don't have all of our things at our house, yet. Everything looks really good and I will post some pictures of them soon. I am waiting on a few more things to get setup before I take pictures of the Christmas decorations.


I did take pictures of some of our fall/Thanksgiving decorations.

Front door Thanksgiving decoration. We also have a Halloween one, but we forgot to put it up.



Fall yard sign with our house number on it.



Out house in the fall. If you look close you can see the house number sign.



Pumpkin in the hallway



Dining room table decorated. This is our everyday decoration, but in the background you can see the cornucopia on the server. I have been taking some pictures of the house in its current state, which will be posted sometime soon. This is sort of a preview :)



Cornucopia on the server.

That's about it for now. It's time for me to go wake Christi up and make some breakfast! Have a good day everyone. Go Jackets!

Clean Old Fashioned Hate

It's that time of year again. GT vs UGA today. What's the good word? To Hell with Georgia!!! How bout them dawgs? Piss on 'em!!!


It's time for the streak to break this year. I hope GT is ready to play. The weather is going to be nasty and could be trouble for us if the ball is wet since we pitch the ball a lot. I think we match-up well with that other school in Georgia, but it's a rivalry game so I expect it to be close. We had a great game last week again Miami and I know UGA took notice. Even after that dominating game, the odds-makers have UGA as 8.5 point favorites, which seems WAY too high to me. Maybe they know something I don't know.


I'm looking forward to a great game. I'm hoping this is the beginning of a long winning streak against UGA. Paul Johnson has us heading in the right direction. Let's end the season on a high note. Also, don't forget to cheer for Virgina today. We need them to beat VT so we can go to the ACC Championship.


Go Jackets! THWG!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!


We started our Thanksgiving meals last night. Christi and I went over to my grandfather's house to eat with my grandparents Sappoo and Laverne, my dad, stepmom, Blake (brother) and Annie (sister.) Christi's parents and brother, Jason, also came. We enjoyed a good meal and shared a lot of funny stories. Blake and Annie left early to go hang out with friends, so that was a little disappointing since I haven't gotten to see either of them in a long time. Regardless, we still had a great time and it was a good start to the holiday.


Today we are going over to Christi's parents' house to eat Thanksgiving lunch with her Nana, Jason, Sappoo and Laverne. Nana makes the best dressing in the world so I'm very excited about that. Mr. Mike is cooking a turkey that smelled delicious last night when it was in the smoker. I'm looking forward to a good lunch. They always cook great food and being able to spend time with them is always fun.


After eating there, we will be going over to my cousins', Lean and Brian, house. They are supposed to start eating about 30 minutes after we begin eating at the Grizzard's house, but my family is always late. It will probably be around 2, if then. It will be a sad meal since it is the first Thanksgiving without my great-aunt Elsie, who passed away this spring from cancer. She basically ran the show during the holidays. Hopefully everyone will be ok, but I know my family is very close and emotional, so I expect some tears to be shed.


After eating with my family, we might be going out to my stepmom's sisters' house to eat a third Thanksgiving meal of the day. We are not sure if we will be going. Normally we do, but since we ate with my dad last night, we might not be going. We have also been told that everyone who normally comes for this evening meal will be elsewhere today, so more than likely Christi and I will go back home.


The holidays can be a stressful time for us. I have a large family who likes to get together for every holiday (a couple time for Christmas.) Plus, my parents are divorced so that makes two side of the family that you want to go see. Also, we have Christi's family who has done so much for us throughout the years and we definitely want to be with them as well. It makes it tough because you want to see everyone and not hurt anyone's feelings, but at the same time you can only be in one place at the time and we don't want to sit down, eat, then leave. That would be rude and disrespectful to whoever's house where we are eating. So, we try to stagger the meals and make as many dinners as we can. It has been working out pretty good so far since my family is normally late getting to any function, so we can catch the last "half" of it after we eat and relax at Christi's parents. However, whenever we have children, I know things are going to get more difficult because everyone is going to want them there for each meal and carrying children from place to place isn't as easy as carrying 2 people from place to place. We will have to figure that out whenever that time comes. From talking with some other married couples, I know sorting out the holiday details gets difficult. We definitely agree.


I just got done watching the GT marching band on the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade. It was cool to see some people I knew in college there. Go GT!


Well, I need to get back into the kitchen and check on our dishes that we are cooking. We are cooking some homemade crock pot mac and cheese that is out of this world good as well as some Coca-Cola green beans that are delicious. Both of those are for lunch. For my family's dinner, we are making some brownie cookies that are called fudge drops. It is our first time making these so hopefully they will turn out great!


Have a great Thanksgiving everyone! Stay safe as you are driving to see your loved ones.

Milestone

Notice that mileage? That's my car, Irma. She hit 250,000 miles this weekend. A quarter million miles. She's been a trooper and she's still running strong. I think she has a lot left in her, too. Great car.


The big 3 in Detroit are struggling and don't understand why they aren't as successful as they used to be. The reason - they didn't make enough cars like mine. Reliable, long-lasting, well-built, affordable, and fuel-efficient cars. Mine is a 1994 Integra and combined highway and city driving she regularly gets 28-30 mpg. That's the problem with auto-makers now. They are sitting there touting their great new cars that get a super fuel efficient 30 mpg highway. Hey guys, newsflash: 30mpg cars have been around for a long time! You're a little behind the curve! You want to wow me? Start putting up 40-50mpg. Then we'll talk. So far the Prius and Civic Hybrid (and soon to be new Honda Insight) touch those numbers. Until then, I'll keep driving my car.

It's the Weekend!

It's the weekend! Yay! Normally I plan on watching GT's football game on Saturday, but since we thoroughly dominated Miami on national television Thursday, I've got to fill that time with something else. The game was awesome, by the way. The crowd looked great, the announcers were very complimentary of GT, and the team played great. I thought the production ESPN did was really good. They had good shots of Atlanta, Yellow Jackets alley, some of our crazy fans (props to the NASA fan!), they made GT look good by pointing out we have 3 grads on the space shuttle and showing GT alums and MLB superstars Mark Teixeira and Jason Varitek as well as showed the "coolness" of GT by showing rapper T.I. on the side lines talking with visiting recruits and redshirting players, plus pointing out that usually you see Ludacris and Outkast at the game. Very good night for Georgia Tech. Let's hope we continue this momentum and good play next weekend we when we play that other team in Georgia.


Today I'll watch the GT basketball game take on the hometown team Mercer. We had planned on going to the game, but due to Mercer's small gym size and their early season success (beating Alabama and Auburn), it is sold out. After that I'll be doing some much needed cleaning around the house and continue to work on the bonus room.


Christi and her mom are at the Mall of Georgia today. Last night they drove up there so they could get an early start on shopping. I know they are planning on getting a lot of Christmas shopping done and go to stores that we don't have in Macon. They'll be up there all weekend, but I'm not sure where else beside the Mall of Georgia they are planning on going. I know Christi is excited because she really like the stores around Atlanta.


Last night I was in Atlanta as well. I drove up after work to go to my friend Kam's surprise 24th birthday party. It was fun. Kam was surprised and glad to see everyone who came. A lot of friends from college that I haven't seen since I graduated in May were there so it was fun to catch up with everyone. We ate dinner at La Parilla and later went ice skating at the Centennial Park ice rink. Unfortunately, the night did not end well. One of the people we were with lost his balance while skating. When he tried to catch himself, he turned his ankle and ended up breaking it. The ended up having to call an ambulance and carried him off the ice on a stretcher. I called his parents for him and let them know what happened and they drove down from Kennesaw to meet him at the hospital. It wasn't exactly the best ending for the night, but overall it was a fun evening.


Well, I have some work to do. Keep checking back for more posts. Have a great weekend!

It's Getting Cold

The weather finally turned cold today. Just this past week I was able to wear shorts outside and it was not uncomfortable or chilly. At night, it might get chilly and you possibly had to put on a light jacket, but that was about it. Today it was really cold this morning and stayed cold all day. I will probably warm back up slightly, but I hope it stays cold. I really don’t like cold weather, as most of you know, so you’re probably wondering why I am actually hoping it stays cold. The reason: it doesn’t feel like the holidays when it’s warm.


Thanksgiving is just around the corner and Christmas is not far behind, yet to me the weather has felt the same as September normally does. It’s been a few degrees cooler, but not really cold. Granted, cold is a subjective term. My college friends from Washington (the state), Colorado, New York, and Wyoming laughed when I said 40 was cold. But this time of year it’s supposed to be cold enough to make you want to bundle up inside. Thanksgiving should be cold enough that you always have to wear a jacket or sweater, but not too cold so you can still have the family football game after eating way too much turkey. My family used to do that all the time, but since most of us have grown up and/or are married, it’s hard to do because we are all juggling multiple Thanksgivings and you are left with not having enough people to play. Christmas should be colder than Thanksgiving and ideally it would snow. I don’t ever remember it snowing on Christmas in my lifetime, but I’m hoping one year I’ll get lucky. For both holidays, it is nice when it is cold outside because it makes you want to sit around a fire with your family, relax, catch up with everyone, and enjoy their company. The cold weather completes the holidays.


Even though the cold weather makes the holidays feel more like the holidays, I still don’t like cold weather. I just tolerate if for the holidays. I hate having to scrape ice off my windshield and freezing my butt off as I am sitting in my car waiting for it to warm up in the mornings. I hate wearing 18 layers of clothes and a jacket, only to have to take my jacket off once I get where I am going because it’s 90 degrees inside. Inevitably, I’ll leave my jacket somewhere at least once a week and I’ll have to fight the cold weather without it until I figure out where it is. I hate having to pull out all of those winter weather clothes boxes from somewhere in our storage room and unpack them, only to have pack them up again 2-3 months later. The sports I love to play outside are nearly impossible in cold weather. Everything you have to do gets harder or more painful in cold weather. Basically, I have a hard time functioning in cold weather. So, although you’ll probably hear and read me complaining about the cold weather, deep down inside I’m happy because it finally feels like the holidays are supposed to be almost here.


Hope you enjoyed my rambling thoughts. That's all for tonight.

Weekend Happenings

Normally we get a lot done on the weekend, but this weekend we didn't do too much of anything, which is nice sometimes.


Saturday morning Christi and I woke up earlier than normal and ate a good breakfast. Then we engaged in some good old fashioned boxing on the XBox. We fought 3 fights - I won 2 and she won 1. I can't really count the first one I won because Christi kept hitting the cheat shot button and she was disqualified in the first 15 seconds. She's a fast learner and beat the crap out of me the next fight (I let her win... at least that's my story!) Next round I had to take her down and I dispatched of her and Muhammad Ali (her boxer.) After some spirited fighting and name calling, we called it quits for the morning. Christi went with her mom to go Christmas shopping and I was given the choice to stay at home and work on the room OR go over to her parents house and watch football with her dad. Hmmm... tough choice. Naturally, I watched football all day and the room didn't get touched.


Sunday, we went to church with Jessica and Jody. After eating lunch with them and his parents, they came back to our place to hang out. Christi and Jessica worked on lesson plans while Jody and I watched the Falcons lose a close game. If only Roddy White would have held onto that ball in the end zone... sigh. Anyway, it was a good game and I'm just glad the Falcons are actually semi-decent this year. Anything is better than last year.


Later that afternoon, we went over to Christi's parents house to hang out. As we got there, they were leaving to go to Jason's house, so we ended up at Jason's house for a little while. We left to make sure we got back home in time to watch Jeff Dunham's Christmas special on Comedy Central. I think it's way early for a Christmas special, but it was good. It was funny, but honestly, I was a little disappointed. I guess after watching a lot of his older material over and over the expectations were probably too high. Overall, it was funny and I laughed a lot, but I had hoped for more. By the way, in case you have no idea who I am talking about, click here to watch my favorite clip. Also click here here here here here and here.


That's basically what we did this weekend. Not too much but it was a good weekend. Have a good night everyone.

Role Models

Last night Christi and I went to see the movie Role Models. It was very funny. I don't want to spoil the movie, so I won't go into that much detail about specific parts. There were some parts, especially at the end when they are fighting in the LAIRE event, that were hilarious and the entire theatre erupted in laughter. The kid who played Ronnie did a great job (although I wouldn't want my kid saying that many curse words.) Seann William Scott and Danny Rudd provided a lot funny moments and their different styles of humor complimented each other well, I thought. The woman who played Gayle, the program director, provided a lot of uncomfortable moments that were funny and I'll never look at hotdog wrapped in a bagel dough the same, either.


I highly recommend going to watch the movie. It's not a movie you'll bring the kids too, but it's one where you'll be laughing the whole time. There's definitely a lot of quotable moments and I'll definitely be buying the movie when it comes out on DVD. Probably one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. I don't remember laughing that hard at a movie in a long, long time. Go see it and let me know what you think!

Good Morning

You're probably wondering why I'm posting at 8:30 on a Tuesday morning. "Aren't you supposed to be at work, Ryan?" you say. Well, yes, I should be. Except that today is Veterans Day, which is a federal holiday, so I have the day off. It won't be all sitting on the couch eating bon-bons, though. I'll be working in the bonus room upstairs taking down the 2nd border and priming the walls for paint. We haven't picked out the actual paint colors or design, yet. Home Depot has "exact" team color matches by Glidden and we've looked at the ones for Georgia Tech. The gold is more of a mustard yellow instead of an old gold and they also have navy blue, white, and black as our colors. We're thinking of maybe going with a lighter gold/yellow on some walls and then navy and/or white on others. We're still deciding.


There's not too much going on right now besides working on the room. Christi is putting in a lot of work at school and is very ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays to be here. I know she will appreciate the rest.


Well, time for me to eat breakfast then get to work. I'll be posting pictures throughout the day.

Ornaments

As promised, here are the pictures of the Christmas ornaments that Christi got yesterday. Enjoy!

 
Our Christmas Ornament (click to enlarge)

 
Christi's class (click to enlarge)

Wall paper and Christmas decorations

A lot going on today. This morning I took down the wall paper border in the bonus room. It was only a border, so it wasn't that bad, but it took a little bit longer than I expected. The bad part was that I realized there is a 2nd border on the wall - under the current coat of paint. Apparently the previous homeowners decided to be lazy and not take down the border. Thanks guys, much appreciated. Looks like we will have to scrape this off because it is very noticeable. Also, last night we found something else to put in our guest bathroom, but I didn't get a chance to put it up. I will get that done tomorrow. It is a shelf that perfectly matches our fixture and we found it for less than half the normal price.


While I was working in the house, Christi was at Christmas Made in the South with her mom, brother, and grandmother. She got us some cool decorations and good things to put out during the holidays. One of those decorations she got us is an ornament and had our names put on it. Also, she got an ornament with her the names of everyone in her class on it. This is something she did that last year as well and I know as the years go one she will have quite a collected. Another thing she found was a reindeer to go in our front yard that is holding a sign that says "Merry Christmas from the Pattersons." It's antlers light up too; I'll take a picture of it when I get home. Right now we are at Christi's parents house. Christi and her parents are cooking supper right now. My grandparents will be coming over soon to eat supper and just talk and have a good time. It will be a lot of fun.


We also watched the GT game today. It wasn't pretty, but it wasn't as bad as the score suggets, either. We turned the ball over 2 times in a row and gifted them 2 touchdowns. Coupled with our missed field goals, it should have been closer. We just have too many injuries right now. We lost 2 starting offensive linemen this week and Josh Nesbitt was playing the best he could on a bum ankle. We fought hard, but UNC was the better team today. Coming into this season, noone gave us a change at winning this many games, so it's tought to be dissapointed with our 3rd loss after 10 games. We have a much needed week off to rest and then we play possibly our 2 toughest games this year - Miami and Georgia. We can win or lose both games. It's been a fun season; hard to believe the season is almost over.


My grandparents will be over soon so I should stop here. Check back later for those pictures.

It's Hump Day

Today is hump day and the week is officially half way over. I'm going to make this quick because I am tired and I have a load of laundry and dishes going that will be done soon. Plus, it's almost time to make supper. Tonight we are having cheesy turkey rice-a-roni. I don't know what the dish is really called, but it's ground turkey combined with a box of four-cheese rice-a-roni. It's very good and somewhat healthy. Ok, maybe not that healthy, but it could be worse.


Well, we have a new President and I think it's what everyone expected. I voted for the first time yesterday and it made me feel good afterward. I'm curious to see how things will turn out these next few years. I'm not going to get into who I voted for, what I think is right/wrong, etc. I think everyone (myself included) is very tired of all the politics and glad the whole thing is over with. Christi and I went together and got there right as her parents and brother were getting there. We had to go across town to where we were originally registered as voters. Next time we will be voting closer to our new house since we filled out change of address forms. Thankfully, there wasn't really a line and we got in and out quickly.


After voting we went to Stevi B's for dinner because it was McKibben Lane (Christi's school) night and Christi gets the buffet for $1. Also, the teacher who has the most visitors/children for the night gets a free pizza party for her class. Christi won last month, but she didn't want to win again because it is more hassle to get everything worked out than it is worth. I'm not sure if she won again last night; It's possible since there wasn't nearly as many people there as normal.


We ate with Jody and Jessica and their daughter McKenzie as well as some other teachers from Christi's school. Besides the discounted price, teachers also get 2 free tokens for the game room, so they gave them all to McKenzie. She only had about 6 tokens I think and came back with a bunch of tickets, 2 prizes, and some other stuff. Turns out she was getting other kids to give her tokens and prizes and things. She's only 4 and already knows how to get people to do things for her. She's going to be a handful.


Sounds like the washing machine just got finished. Time for me to go. Check back later in the week for more updates. I'm trying to get back into the swing of posting regularly. As always, thanks for reading!

Halloween

What did everyone do for Halloween? Christi and I didn't do much except hand out candy. I lost count after 30 trick-or-treaters. We had a lot. There were some good costumes and some not very impressive costumes. There were even some who didn't dress up - I almost didn't give them any candy just to prove a point, but I'm too nice so I gave them candy too. Our next door neighbors converted their garage into a mini haunted house, which I thought was pretty cool. Christi was unimpressed.


Best costume of the night I think goes to our first trick-or-treater. A cute little boy who was trick-or-treating for the March of Dimes. He was maybe 2 years old and they had dressed him as a parachuter. The made a little backpack for him and tied a really big balloon to the backpack, which was covered in a fabric to look like a parachute. Very cool. I found out he was originally a "hot-air ballonist" but he tore up the basket.


Hope everyone had a good Halloween! Christi and I are now getting ready to go to a pig roast that my boss and coworkers are having on a coworkers farm. Should be fun!

NASCAR Truck Race Photos

Ok, so I didn't realize I took so many pictures. I have 89 uploaded, and that was after I deleted MANY pictures. So, instead of posting tons of pictures, I'm only going to post a few. However, if you want to look at all of them, click on any of the pictures (except the 2 I uploaded differently so you can enlarge to see details) and it will take you to my Picasa online album. You will be able to look at all of them and also browse my other public pictures. Enjoy!

Outside of the track



View of the box seats from Pit Road. Also note the 100's of tires.



Jimmy Johnson coming into the pits after some practice laps (dad's favorite driver)



Carl Edwards - fastest driver in practice and eventual Sunday race winner



Jeff Gordon going out for more practice laps



Jeff Burton



Jimmy Johnson



Kasey Kahne

Jimmy Johnson crossing the finish line in practice (Click to enlarge and see details.) Took me a few tries to get this picture since they are traveling ~190 mph at that point.
 

Jeff Gordon crossing the finish line in practice (Click to enlarge and see details.)
 

Dad in the winner's circle



Me in the winner's circle



Dad and I in the winner's circle



View of the Pits from our box



Open bar and lots of food!



Dad and I in the box



Cars coming in after last practice



More cars coming in



Truck race about to start



View from box



Pit stop



Get back onto the track!



Checkered flag!



The winner - Ryan Newman!



Victory Donuts!