ummm

I am listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers right now. I just finished listening to Nickelback. I am in one of those moods where I am really quiet and need to have loud music. The one where I don't want to think about anything but I can't help it so I need to process. I feel like my RAM is all full and there is no space left to park things until I can get to them.

We have been running at full tilt since we bought the house. I am not complaining at all as I rather enjoy having a house to work on. I am needing a break though. We have all of the doors hung and the downstairs is all painted except for the trim. The kitchen is almost ready to move in to. The floors are going to have to wait until after we save up some money. We are going to have to live with the white sub floors for a while. Britni wants to get a new fridge as the one that was left is gross. It needs to be completely taken apart and cleaned and I think it will be just fine. The washer is in decent shape but the dryer is intermittent. Sometimes it runs great and other times it just doesn't run at all. I looked at the manufacture date and it was made when I was 2. The dang thing was made in 1982. I am surprised it even works when it does.

We went to the Sears scratch and dent store tonight. They have some great deals and some not so great deals. None of which we can afford right now though. It's frustrating. I know we have to be patient and content but it's kind of hard when you know what you want and what it takes to do it. I am ready right now!!

I need to rent an airless sprayer to paint the doors but I don't want to do that until all of the door trim is in. I don't like the trim that I got so I want to find something different. That's kind of hard when you work all day and everything closes at 6:00.

Work has been kind of rough lately too. Harold came back for a couple of days and then started his chemo. Things weren't going so well so he was admitted to the hospital again last night. Kevin and I have been left with all of the projects that Harold started in the couple days that he was at the office and the ones he didn't start while he was out that we thought he did. The work load is miserable. I can't wait for things to be back to normal whatever that is.

I actually took time out of my day to have a training session with my entire crew today. It was relieving. I have a lot more to teach but it was good to get it started.

My car needs to have new rims. Two of them are bent. One is tolerable but the other really needs to be replaced. The replacement wheels from the factory are so expensive that I might as well put new ones all the way around with after market wheels. I still haven't replaced my destroyed car stereo either.

I know I need to look at the things I do have and can do and appreciate those. I know that venting does not make things any better but I like to think it does. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live in a time when there were no amenities to improve or cars to fix. What would it have been like to live in 1890? Would I have the same thoughts? The same disappointments? Probably, I would after all still be human.

I need to eat something and get to bed so that is all for now.

I will try to make the next one more positive and informative.

_E_

Travel

I am sitting in the Kansas City airport right now. They have free Wi-Fi. I think all airports should have free Wi-Fi. The only drawback to this one is that it is painfully slow. I am surprised the for a wireless connection that rates at 54 Mbps it takes this long to load anything. Either they have a really slow firewall or the trunk line to the building is slower than molasses in January. I guess I can't complain too much though. It is free.

Britni's Mom bought me my Christmas present early this year. There was a special at Home Depot on Senco nail guns. I got a package of three for $200.00. It included a 15 gauge angle finish nailer, a 18 gauge brad nailer and a 18 gauge narrow crown stapler. It's a great deal. Now I am ready to install new doors and trim all over the house.

The Maxima went in for service while we were in Iowa. It was the standard oil change and tire rotation with filter replacement. I can't believe the life I am getting out of that car for what I paid for it. Britni's van had to have the cam rod and sensor replaced a few weeks ago. That was expensive. That specific part can only be replaced by the dealership which really sucks. The labor rate a the shop I usually go to is $45/hr. The labor rate at the dealership is something like $90/hr. Then the dealership charges all of these "convenience fees" and "material disposal fees". I fought them on everything and got the price down but when all was said and done it ended up costing $450.

I can't wait to get home and sleep in my own bed again. There is just something about being in your own bed. We love out temperapedic.

We are hoping to start installing doors and trim in the house this coming weekend. We have to be out of the apartment by the end of December so we have to start moving in to the house in a couple weeks. It's getting there. I have put the new drywall in where I had to tear out the nasty stuff. The guest room and office are all painted. The kitchen paint has been started. All of the floors have Kilz on them. We will get the doors and trim done next and then we are off to carpet and hopefully hardwood floors. The washer and dryer are probably next. The master suite will have to sit for a while until we can save up and completely redo it properly. We will probably completely redesign the whole thing. It has a ton of wasted space in it. It's kind of annoying.

It looks like we are about to start boarding so I should sign off and shut down.

More to come.

_E_

We're In.....Kind of.

We closed on our house on Friday!! Now we are removing all of the carpet, baseboards, and anything else thats nasty. The lady that lived there before we bought it was a cat lover and she loved her cats a little too much. There is cat pee all over the place. We are taking out everything that was peed on. We are sanitizing everything. Thank God for Clorox!! We don't know when we will move in yet but we are working away at the house. Pictures will be up soon.

_E_

Why does it take so much time to purchase a house?

We found out a couple weeks ago that we were approved for a mortgage for the house that we want. We have been signing papers and gathering documents and jumping through all kinds of hoops for the past week or so to get this thing finalized. The current closing date is November 8th. I can't wait.

Britni started packing last week and I jumped in and helped her pack a bunch of stuff today. We finally feel like we are moving! There are two remaining hurdles. We still have to get through closing without any hiccups, and we don't forsee any. The bigger hurdle is getting out of our lease with the current apartment. I am planning on going in to the leasing office and talking to them tomorrow after work. I hope they are workable. I don't want to screw them over but I don't want to be paying for an apartment and a house at the same time.

The house that we are buying is called a patio home. The outsides are cared for and insured by the homeowners association and the insides are cared for and insured by us. It comes with an oversized two car garage as well. The house is about 1530 square feet. It needs some work but that is what we have been looking for. We will be posting pictures as soon as we can.

I think that is all I have for now.

_E_

The Speed of Light

It seems that all of my posts lately have been describing a whirlwind life. I would like to slow life down a little bit but finding out how is proving to be harder than I thought. Work is the primary reason that it is so hard I think. I am working on fixing that but it is taking far longer than I hoped it would. Just when I think things are headed in the right direction it takes a hard left turn. That's my life thought right now.

We went to San Diego a week ago and picked up my Aunt Bonnie's van. She gave it to us because she is cool like that. I spent the afternoon today getting it inspected and ready for registration. I will be going in tomorrow morning at 7:00 and finish it up. It was nice to get out to San Diego. I forgot what it was like. Britni and I spent a couple of days touring around seeing old sites and friends. It was a nice change of pace. We were in the pool at least four times which was great as it was 104 degrees out there.

This past weekend was rough as far as work goes. We had six shows all stacked up. Jesse got sick and I had to cover for him which made for a really long hard weekend. This next weekend is not looking so good either. Jesse is still sick and we were planning on him driving a stage down to Cortez, CO. It is near the four corners. If he can't do it I will have to go down and do the stage. That's not going over with the wife so well right now, understandably, but it doesn't make it any easier.

Yesterday Britni and I went and looked at a town house. It is an incredible deal. We are working on getting the mortgage approved right now. We are praying very hard that we get approved. It would be great to have a place of our own. We would get out of this tiny apartment and in to a 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath townhouse with a two car garage for another $200.00 per month.

That's all for now.

_E_

Life, Love, and the realities of it all

I have been married for four months now. I love it. I enjoy coming home to my wife. I like having someone to spend time with. I like having a mate. There are some things that have taken getting used to, like sleeping in the same bed, having to communicate my schedule. All in all it has been great.

We slept on two twin beds for the first few months. We bought a temperapedic bed in the middle of July with some money we had saved up and a gift from our parents. We LOVE it!!! Anyone considering purchasing a temperapedic bed should definitely do so. They are not cheap but they are well worth it.

We bought a Canon 20D camera on our honeymoon and I love it. Our short zoom lens that came with the camera (Canon EFS 18-55) was broken last weekend so I have been researching lenses. I think I have settled on the Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 EX DC MACRO. The reviews for a good middle size lense have been great and it's really not a badly priced lens for the performance reviews it has received.

Richter Scale has expanded again. We have added a video department to our list of talents. We purchased a significant amount of HD video gear from Sony PDW-F350 Cameras to Folsom switching to Barco DLP projection. It has been fun figuring everything out and developing our systems. We have hired a new department head for video. He was a steal for sure. He's great.

Britni and I have gone down to one car temporarily. Her contribution to the family motorcade is now deceased. We have been looking for a replacement and praying for an inexpensive but reliable car. Someone has offered us a very reliable and somewhat newer vehicle for better than inexpensive. They have offered it to us for free. We just have to go get it.

Britni and I have been focusing on paying off our debts. We are doing pretty well for only having been at it for four months. We have paid off three of our credit cards and are likely going to pay off a fourth this month. We can't wait to be completely out of debt but we have to be patient because that is going to take a little while.

Britni is working on a photo album for our wedding. It's pretty cool. We will be posting pictures from the wedding soon.

That's all I have for now.

_E_

Long Time

I will post a more complete post soon. Work and Marriage has kept me very busy. Don't give up hope. The words will soon appear.

_E_

29 or four and 1

The countdown continues. I am going to be a married man in 29 days. Britni is starting to stress a little bit about the wedding plans. I keep trying to reassure her that everything is going to be just fine and to take things one at a time. I can't wait until the wedding. At the same time everything is going too fast.

I have so much to do at work between now and then it's ridiculous. This week I am prepping for one show here in Denver and two shows in Las Vegas. Next week I am in Las Vegas, the week after that I have to build a trade show booth and then I have less than a week before the wedding. In all of that I have to hire some more people or we are going to get caught in a meat grinder of shows.

I have been trying to hang out with friends more instead of being at work all the time. It's kinda hard to do though. I get most of my work done between 4:30 and 9:00pm.

I still haven't been sleeping very well. I don't know if it's just all of the pressures of work and the wedding or if there is something else going on. My bed definitely needs to be replaced but I am saving up to buy a temperapedic in a couple of weeks so that Britni and I can have a bed to sleep on.

Well, I think that's all for now.

_E_

35

I might get mocked for this one but I am willing to take it. There are only 35 days left until I am married to the most amazing woman ever. Thirty five days, thats five weeks. It is also, 840 hours, or 50400 minutes. The more I think about it the longer it gets. The more I want it to be sooner the harder it is to concentrate on what is going on now. I can't wait, I can't wait, I can't wait!!

In other news... This week at work has been a good one. I am falling in to a rythm finally. The only disadvantage to that is that I am not sleeping very much. It's kind of wierd. I have been waking up every hour and half to two hours. Then I roll over and fall asleep again.

I had to meet Skip our IT consultant at the office yesterday at 10:00am to do some after hours updates and maintenence to the server. We finished rather quickly and left the updates running. Skip called me last night around 6:30 to tell me that the server had crashed and we would need to come in today and get it fixed. That's what I am doing right now. I am sitting here waiting to hear the, "Ok, we are all good" about the server. We started on it at 7:30 this morning. We are still going at 2:30 this afternoon. Oh, well, maybe we will have a better operating server when all is said and done.

My last post was to let all of you know that I was spiderman according to my superhero evaluation. I thought that was rather ironic as Britni absolutely HATES spiders. She is so scared of them that she won't even kill them. She just stands there frozen, staring at it or screaming. It's actually mildly amusing sometimes. I guess I will have to be the spider killer in the family.

I think that is all for now. If I remember something I will be sure to post it.

_E_

I'm A Super Hero According to......

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 70% Robin 70% Supergirl 68% Green Lantern 60% Superman 60% The Flash 55% Iron Man 55% Wonder Woman 48% Hulk 35% Batman 30% Catwoman 5%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test