So, we finally decided to build us a deck! What started to be a simple
project of a deck with an octagon (stop sign for all of you who forgot
your geometry 😉 ) in it, pretty much became the deck project from hell.
We hired a construction company to pour the posts and frame the deck in.
Once they had their part done, I ordered the decking material. Little did
I know we wouldn’t have quite enough material to finish the deck (mostly
Home Depot’s fault), but at this point I was getting pretty excited! The
material was in at Home Depot, so I called my dad and told him he should
come up the next weekend to help get this thing done. The decking came, my
dad was here, we were ready to begin, well almost, we had to of course hit
Pat’s on a beer run.

We started hauling the decking into the backyard. The guy who delivered
it was a pro fork-lift operator, but didn’t want to cut across the
neighbors lawn on the backside (come on… wuss). We started cutting the
boards at what we thought was the right angle to fit the octagon. After a
few cuts, many screws (who the hell invented a square-headed screw, that
was a bad idea!) we found out the boards weren’t landing on the octagon at
the right angle. Out comes the measuring tape, only to find out one side
of the octagon was a few inches shorter than the other sides. Even the
non-math types can tell you this is probably a bad thing. It was getting
late so we decided to pick up in the morning. The next day went a little
better, we ran to the hardware store and home depot about a dozen times,
got some boards down and compensated for the short-sided octagon.
Then, we ran into a design flaw in the plans where some boards weren’t
supported, so we had to put supports in… that slowed us down quite a
bit… After getting a few non-octagon boards down, we figured it be a
good idea to see how parallel the outside is to the house… We found out
it was off by an inch… that’s right 2.54 cm, 1/12 foot, 1/36 yard… an
inch off!? Luckily we were pro deck builders and compensated for such an
error, you can’t even tell the end doesn’t run parallel to the house.
Our next biggest issue was the sixteen foot board that ran next to the
house, that needed to be ripped and etched out for the back door. After
giving one board a shot on the table saw that was sitting on the ground,
we didn’t think it be possible to actually do that. Seeing as how there
was a board with a notch in the one side (see deck pictures), we thought
we’d try to rip that one. Somehow, we got that board cut, etched, and in
place, and it doesn’t just look good, it looks really good! We made a lot
of progress this day, even though we spent a couple hours at the shop
getting my dad’s truck to start. The mechanics were awfully chatty,
especially the tow-truck guy who stuck around to talk… er.. see if the
truck would start once the battery terminals were cleaned up.

After meeting up with my dad’s cousin after church, we were back on the
deck for a twelve hour day. We nearly finished the board laying part, and
decided to call it a day. There were only a couple boards to put down, and
I called in to tell my boss I’d be late for work. She told me to take a
personal day (a nice gesture until I found out what she had in store for
me later that week). We managed to get the octagon done along with the
rest of the boarding and it looked really good.

We (and when I say “we” I really mean Susan and Maria the Home Depot
deck consultant) decided it would be easier if we got railing kits, well I
tell you what, those railing kits are not fun to put in. We got one up and
it was pretty wobbly, until we thought we’d try two brackets for each 4×4
post. It added a little bit of stability to it, but not quite as much as I
would have liked to see. At this point it was getting dark again and we
didn’t have quite enough brackets anyway. The next day I had to go into
work, but when I got home we tried to put in an angled railing (that
didn’t go so well). With two railings up and half of a third one, I had to
leave the deck unfinished as I was “lucky” enough to get sent on a
business trip.

I thought the deck project was a project from hell… well that doesn’t
even compare to the fun I had in Alabama. We got onsite and started
getting ready to load our new phone system/software. We ran into issues,
and didn’t leave the central station until 1:00 AM CST. The next day
didn’t go much better, but we were running off the new stuff. To make
matters worse, the central station manager tried transferring files to a
server and one of the files were corrupt that was needed by the system. If
that wasn’t bad enough, Thursday early morning the station actually went
offline. That was bad, very bad! People’s lives depend on that station to
be up and running, any downtime could mean life or death. We found out, it
wasn’t anything to do with our new software (good for us), but it was a
LOT of long hours and little doing anything else. We also had to be on
site to see if something from our software would crash/error out.
At one point I was actually watching the central by myself (the shift
supervisor had left, my co-worker had left to get some sleep, it was me
and the operators). From what I observed over the past couple days, I was
actually able to answer the operators questions and help them through some
stuff, until the next shift supervisor finally showed up. The operators
were pretty nice (one of them even made me a pepperoni hot pockets and
gave me some chips, yeah my eating schedule was thrown completely out of
whack this week…) After trying to optimize his program as much as he
could, we determined the problems we were having was a networking issue
and managed to get it resolved (two IPs, one card, windows server, bad
idea in my opinion). Saturday night was the first night I actually got to
relax this week, and it felt kind of nice. I ended up hitting the jacuzzi
to make it even better before I have to go home and face the project I
left behind and my loving wife (who was none too happy when we had to stay
a couple extra days to get this crap working… maybe a blog entry will
put a smile on her face, a few days later than expected 🙂 )

Figure I’d start this off with a little recap of our weekend. We ran up
to Tawas for a 5K and a little fun in the sun. After getting all our
camping gear out and in the car, we were on our way… until we had to
turn around and get Susan’s socks for the race. It was getting late into the
evening, and we decided to hit up A&W for a little grub. They were serving
outdoors to the cars pulled up, but we went inside only to find out we
didn’t really order with a server. Each table has a phone on it and once you
were ready, you placed your order through the phone. That was pretty neat!
The food was good, we got some burgers and a couple of huge root beer
floats (at least I thought it was good, I didn’t throw, my onion rings on
the ground 😉 ). Being well fed, we headed up north on a two-lane road,
which seemed to take a really long time. We managed to find the KoA
Camground even though Google maps told us to turn to the right, when it
was actually to the left.

The campground was really nice, the bathrooms were probably the nicest
campground bathrooms I’d ever seen! We managed to get our tent set up
without too much trouble (seemed to take awhile to find just the “right”
spot to set it up and the grey poles are definitely shorter than the red
ones 🙂 ). After a long day at work, driving, camp site setting up, we
were pretty tired, only problem was it was pretty warm and super humid
(not ideal sleep conditions the day before a race!) With my cellphone set
as an alarm clock we tried to sleep through that nasty humidity, I managed
only a couple hours of sleep. When the phone/alarm clock went off, we
started getting ready for the race by the bay. Although the campground had
a pancake breakfast going on, we were already in Tawas, fueled and ready.
A work buddy of mine was checking in at the last minute as I picked up our
shirts and numbers. A quick warm up back to the car and race time was
getting close.

The only thing nice I can say about the weather was it didn’t rain, but
man was it horrible to race in. It was still very humid and trying to run
(walk) through it was not an easy task. Susan thought she did good in the
walk, so we stayed for the awards ceremony (she finished 8th overall,
three away from a prize…) My time was pretty bad, but at least I crossed
the finish line still standing! After the awards were handed out, we went
over to the beach for a little kite flying. I somehow managed to get the
big kite up this weekend! In the process I nearly lost my index finger
(ok, maybe just a little cut, but it still hurt!) A sudden wind change
brought it back down nearly hitting the kids playing underneath the kites
(that’s right, a whole big beach to play on, go right where a kite could
hit you…) I pulled my little one out and it went up without much effort
(even after crashing into the water, whoops…) The kids weren’t moving
and by this time we were getting kind of hungry, so we retreated from the
beach. We hit up a pizzeria for lunch.

After lunch, we checked out the dog show that was happening in the
little park across the street (they were doing sprints and not the
obstacle course, so that got boring pretty quickly.) There was a kite shop
down by the beach, we stepped in and hadn’t realized it was the tiniest
shop you’d ever been in. It was getting pretty close to nap-time, so we
went back to the campsite for a little rest. Noticing a mini-golf course
alongside the road, we thought it’d be fun to try. We didn’t realize it
was the #5 mini-golf course in the state rated by AAA (it wasn’t all that
impressive, but it was pretty fun). Susan managed to get two hole-in-ones,
but I somehow ended up a couple strokes ahead in the end (and almost a
hole-in-one on the last hole for a free game, this close > < ). Our
bellies were rumbling after that intense round of golf and we headed over
to a locally owned restaurant. The food was really good there and we had
some entertainment on the streets.

Hitting up the ice cream shoppe we listened to a band play a couple
songs (…Susan didn’t even want to dance with me). It was getting dark
and the bands weren’t all that great, so we went back to the campsite to
sit around the camp fire (we actually weren’t tired enough to not have a
camp fire this trip!) After demonstrating my boyscout skills, I had what
you could call a fire that didn’t want to show its flames very much. I
think the wood might have been damp, as there was a lot of smoke and not a
lot of flames. After going through nearly a bundle of wood, it was smore
time! The smores were awesome and the temperature had cooled off to be
quite comfortable (well in a snug sleeping bag that is 😉 )
On the way back home, I had wanted to get a sweatshirt, but the shops
were closed… we did get to see some classic cars as a show was
happening… (wonder if the streets are ever open). We did pretty good on
packing, only managed to forget some pillowcases (which K-Mart had some on
sale) and all and all it was a pretty awesome weekend.

So it’s been a couple days… er… months since I last wrote, I figured
I’d break this blog up into sections. Grab a cool beverage, put your feet
up and get reading!

The Lawn

Okay, I last left you off thinking our lawn was about to become the “It”
spot in Falcon Crest. People would come from far and wide to see how
beautiful a lawn could really be… Unfortunately things didn’t work out
this way. A day or two after my last blog entry (first week of June), a
funny thing happened… it rained… and when it rains it pours… We
ended up having a stretch of three or four days with severe thunderstorms
and showers… you can just guess what happened, all our seed washed away!
We learned two important things from this… firstly – never seed before
heavy rains and secondly – always know where your gutters downspouts
drain. Not sure exactly what the builders were thinking, but they decided
to have one of the downspouts go under the sidewalk that leads to the side
door of our garage. This is all and well, except they didn’t have any
where for the water to go. We got so much rain, it created a small hole
were water was coming up out of the ground. I’m glad to say this problem
is fixed. Our lawn guy put in what he called a “pop-up”. It’s a little
green thing in the ground that raises when the water fills up the
downspout, and settles back down once it stops raining. For a small fee,
he redid all our downspouts this way, which is really cool as I don’t have
to move them when I’m mowing the grass (once we get grass…) and we don’t
have to worry about them blowing away, which has happened in the past!

I bet right about now, you’re wondering when we’ll actually have a nice,
lush, soft, green lawn… I’m thinking the same thing myself. After the
seed washed away, we started getting a little growth. Some of it was good
grass, while most of it was weeds… Not wanting to spray over the weeds,
the lawn guy came out and killed off the lawn (for the second time now…)
A few days went by, then weeks, then finally he came out again to kill off
some more growth that had occurred (third time…). Finally, this past
weekend, he brought his tiller and broke the crust that had formed,
re-raked the yard, and sprayed it once more (four times… man weeds can
be tough =P). Right now the lawn looks really good compared to what it did
a few days ago, it’s just missing that green stuff on top… you know…
grass! Looks like rain is in the forecast, so maybe he’s putting off
spraying for a couple days. Boy, I’m glad I’m saving all this gas money
not having to run my lawnmower =/.

Running

If you haven’t heard we’ve done quite a few races already this summer.
There was the Loons Pennant Race I had mentioned in a blog earlier, the
Pinconning Cheese Fest Fun Run, the Dow Run/Walk, and the Cheasning
Riverboat run. The Dow one was really nice, it started off at the Midland
Community Center and looped through various streets of Midland. It would
have been nice if the water they handed out along the way was colder, but
it was a fun race. I signed up to do the 5K run and managed to finish just
over 37 minutes. Susan did the walk and was a little disappointed she
didn’t beat her time from the Pennant race. We also learned never to
forget your safety pins, but a quick run to Walgreen’s never hurts! The
Cheese Fest run was two miles and everyone that entered got a small block
of cheese, well almost everyone… Susan didn’t… It was a warm day and I
really wanted to run the whole thing ( well as least the first mile anyway
;)), but I was overcoming a cold and was only able to run part of it. When
I crossed the finish line, the clock said “21:25”, but to get our
“official” time we had to hand in our numbers. The only problem with this
is there was a bunch of kids that cut in front of me, I managed to get my
position back, but unfortunately Susan wasn’t able to and got a slightly
worse time then she actually finished… oh well… I ran the Cheasning
race and beat my previous time… I finished in 33:03. Susan also ran in
this race and almost got her time put down as a walker, which would have
given her a really good walk time, but she told them she signed up to run.

Scout

Scout’s doing well, even if she hasn’t reached her recommended weight
yet (she might be gaining =/). We got her back on the old food which
probably doesn’t help things much, but we had so much left over we thought
we’d better use it. She still begs for food and gets really annoying until
we feed her… It’s been pretty warm lately and Scout’s been losing quite
a bit of fur. To help with this problem we usually brush her, but one day
we (and when I say “we” I really mean Susan) thought it would be a good
idea to give her a bath. Out came the small tub we use to bath the cat in
and the struggle began. Scout’s big enough now that should could spread all
four legs across the lip of the tub and not get wet. After quite a bit of
struggle, we (both of us now) got her feet wet. She wasn’t too happy about
this and managed to dig one of her back claws pretty deep into my palm.
I’ve never seen Scout’s tail so big… it was super-puffed out. After she
scratched me I gave up on the whole bath thing. Susan tried to get her in
the water again, but Scout was helping things and managed to avoid getting
a bath. I think if we (Susan) try this again, we’ll be getting a bigger
tub! If you haven’t seen the latest pictures of her, head on over to the
pictures of the week!

Racquetball

I played the infamous child star in the area. He’s 16 and if he doesn’t
win the Michigan championship, he’s in second! I was able to get 5 points
against him, while everyone else that tried, couldn’t get more then 2!
He’s been playing since he was 5 and is extremely talented. Even though I
got banged up the other night (took a racquet to the face, hit myself in
the leg with my racquet and got drilled just below the rib cage on a
serve that was long anyway =/), I still try to get down to the courts to
play once or twice a week. I even got to play doubles a couple times…
which at first seems like there’s a lot of people on the court, but it’s
actuallypretty fun. I’m really excited for the ladder season to start up,
sounds like Mittag will be doing it too!

Work

Work’s been going great, I’m getting a lot done and my boss says I’m
doing a good job. I’ll be a full time employee (for real this time) on
September 15th and am pretty excited for that! Susan’s job has been kind
of hectic lately… she started up a new process not too long ago and was
on call for the DeHate family camp out… She thinks she may have found a
lead on solving a problem she’s been working on for awhile now.

Once we get the data converted properly, we’ll be deploying our software to a
client for beta testing. It was suppose to happen this week, but some
issues needed to be fixed before we could go… maybe next week… The
company picnic is this weekend, it sounds like it’ll be a lot of fun!

DeHate Campout

Even though Susan couldn’t go, I went out to the camp out for the day.
Instead of a canoe trip, this year we had the DeHate Olympic Games. We all
drew from a hat to pick teams. The I’s and H’s looked pretty similar and
we had to figure who was on which team. We *cough* rigged *cough* it so my
mom and I were on the same team. We also had another team mate who was
pretty young (and pretty annoying…) There was horseshoes, mini-golf
(from hell), water balloon toss, bocche ball, cornhole, mini-basketball,
and ladder ball. Each station you met up with another team and played the
game together except for cornhole. Depending on how well you did, you got
a gold, silver, or bronze (aka pink) star. The team with the most gold and
silver stars was the winner. Our first event was the mini-golf, and man
that was tough, it was one hole at the bottom of an eight foot incline
with all kinds of roots growing out of the ground… we got the bronze
star on this one. We did pretty good on the other events, and when we got
to cornhole, we ripped it up. Not having played the game before, we
managed to get quite a few in the hole… “CORNHOLE!!!” yeah you have to
say it for it to count! 😉 The food was really good, especially Susan’s
Pizza Pasta, and pretty soon it was time to go. Next year, we’ll be
camping (hopefully… if someone isn’t on call.)

Cedar Point

We have been making good use of our season passes so far. We even got to
be chaperones for one trip. That was kind of fun, except for the annoying
bus driver. Dow Corning treated all their interns to a trip to the park
and Susan signed us up to be chaperones (even though technically I should
have been a guest 🙂 ). The plan was to leave early on a Saturday morning,
the only problem with this was sometimes plans don’t go according to the
plan… We headed over to the meeting spot for the two buses, only problem
was, there was a total of four people there… yup the buses were in the
wrong spot (or 50 interns were, you pick =P). So after getting to the
right spot, the day snacks were no where to be found (oh yeah, we got
fed!) So we waited around for the food to arrive, packed up the buses, and
were off, about an hour later then the plan. The bus driver told the same
story over a few times, but it was a good trip. We got to watch movies,
got to go to the park for free, got to eat for free, and didn’t have to
pay for gas, can’t hardly beat that!

Our last trip wasn’t as much fun as the others though… Someone said it
wasn’t suppose to rain, someone was wrong… We got to our camp site (same
place as last time and probably will be the last time there…) and it was
incredibly muggy out… and the bugs were out. After getting the tent set
up, I was pretty dang sweaty, and hopped in the shower, while Susan
attended to all her bug bites… The next day we went to the park, and it
was pretty cloudy. It rained a little, and a lot of the rides shutdown.
Then, near the end of the day it started to rain a little harder, we
decided to go, hoping Sunday would be clear… it wasn’t, we packed up our
went tent and came home… almost without getting lost. We were coming
back and past an exited I thought we should have taken. Well being
adventurous, I decided to stay on the road we were on – that’s the way the
bus driver did it afterall. All was good and well until we got to Toledo,
I missed another exit I should have taken… after driving around and
circling back, I managed to find that exit again and was able to get back
into Michigan, from there it was easy and all while my avigator was
sleeping… Halloween weekends start in September and you better believe
we’ll be there as much as we can!

Okay, so maybe you didn’t need a cold beverage to get through this blog,
but atleast you won’t be thirsty now!

The past couple days have been pretty exciting… we finally don’t have
a brown dirt lawn, now it’s green dirt! Yup, that’s right, we finally got
our hydro-seed yesterday and even a little rain to help it along… good
for the lawn, not-so-good for the baseball game. It was cloudy all day and
rain was threatening, but we still decided to watch those Loons battle it
out in Midland. It started to sprinkle a little and everyone moved for
cover, but we toughed it out and enjoyed watching the Loons beat the
Wizards 9-4. Just an FYI, it’s hard to eat popcorn when your fingers are
half-numb! Speaking of sports, any hockey fans out there? Even if you’re
not a hockey fan, the Stanley Cup finals are here, and man was it an
exciting game Monday night. The Penguins managed to hold on after tieing
the game with 30 seconds left in the third period and scoring a goal
half-way through third overtime (yeah that’s right, I said three!) I made
it til the end, but Susan called it quits after the second overtime ended.
The Red Wings lead the series 3-2 and the next game is scheduled for
tonight (hopefully it won’t go too late 😉 ). Oh, and our sprinklers
kicked on this morning and should be running again as I type this, which
is pretty slick. We should have a nice fuzz on our lawn in 10-14 days, so
stay tuned!

I learned quite a lot this Memorial Day Weekend. First of all I learned
that Susan and I can put a tent up in the dark. That’s right, we’re
hardcore campers now… Seeing as how we had a three day weekend we
thought we’d break in our Cedar Point season passes. We took off after
work, and a quick stop at Q-Doba’s and managed to get to our campsite
around 10:30 PM. After pulling out our lantern and one flashlight, we
managed to get our tent up in about 30 minutes without any major problems.
That brings us to the second thing I learned, that it only takes about 3
hours to get to Cedar Point (3.5 if you need to turn around cause you
missed your exit… whoops!), so the drive isn’t too bad.

We went to the park (after getting free parking with our season pass 🙂
) and were standing in front of the entrance where I learned something
else. Cedar Point’s signage for a season pass makes no sense. After
standing for 15 minutes in a non-moving line, we started to wonder if we
were actually in the right line… so we decided to get in another line.
We should have stayed in the first line, but in the end it didn’t really
matter. So, we got in a much longer line and waited to get our pictures
taken (it’s not on the card they give you, but it pops up every time you
swipe it…) With our cards we got in the park quickly and were ready to
ride! Susan conquered her fear of the 420 foot 120 mph coaster known only
as “Top-Thrill Dragster”. Unfortunately, we don’t have picture
documentation of such an event, but trust me I was there… Maverick was
down for a little bit that day, but man that ride is freaking awesome
(except at night, when the bugs are out!)

After getting lunch Susan wasn’t feeling well and we headed back to the
campground. We both took a nap and were back in the park later that day.
On Sunday we went back again and rode pretty much the whole day, when I
learned something else. Nap taking is pretty much a necessity when you go
to a park back-to-back days. About 40 minutes from closing time we were so
exhausted we decided to call it a day.

We also got our jackets before the
park closed, which we should have stayed in the line we were in the day
before to get them, but I convinced the guy we bought the tickets in the
fall while the offer was still valid. I also learned that the guy working
didn’t really know what he was doing, because he had people in front of us
that he was helping for like 30 minutes (and he had to get help from a
co-worker). Though, the jackets were worth the wait, V.I.P. all the way!
Wanting to have a camp fire that night, I managed to get one going (with a
little boy scout water 😉 ) and we made smores. Even though I was super
sleepy, I stayed up until the fire died down and doused the embers with
water (little did I know that was pretty much a waste of time). Yes, the
thunderstorm came and we survived it! Although, I did learn the tent has a
few holes in it and there were a couple small (really small) puddles in
the corners… so we stayed dry! There wer a couple lightning strikes that
sounded really close, but no trees fell on us and the tent didn’t blow
away, so that was good!

After packing up our soaking tent (on the outside) and the rest of our
gear, it was back to Freeland we go. We got home to see the lawn guy came
and re-graded our lawn. It looks a lot better then it did and it sounds
like we’ll be getting seeded either today or tomorrow, so we should have
the beginnings of a lawn in about two weeks, yay!

Well, a lot’s happened since I’ve posted a blog entry, when I last left
you off, Susan and I were getting ready for the Loons 2nd Annual 5K
Pennant Run/Walk. Getting our forms in early not only got us a sweet new
t-shirt, but lawn seats to the game later that day. We both changed our
entries to be walks and it was a lot of fun. Susan’s a little speed-walker
and finished a few minutes before I did, of course I was working off a
slight unicycle accident I had a couple days before. You can see our
results over here. Once I get the entry forms in, we’ll be doing another
race June 7 (maybe I’ll even run this one!) The day of the race was pretty
sunny and warm (especially to be walking ~3.3 miles), but that night it
got pretty cold. Susan and I were wrapped up in the blanket, and even
though it was cold out, the stadium was out of hot chocolate, again! 🙁 We
also had tickets to the game on Sunday and that game went be so fast, and
the Loons actually won! We got a package this year and have another game
coming up on Thursday.

We’ve replaced a member in our fleet. Susan found an awesome deal on a
Grand Prix and sold her car within a week! It’s a 2007 silver Grand Prix
with low miles and Susan even managed to negotiate a lower price!
Unfortunately, the car was at K.I. Sawyer Airforce Base (way up north!)
Luckily Susan’s folks were nice enough to meet us at the bridge last
weekend to pick it up (thanks Jim and Fay!) It was nice, we had lunch with
both Susan’s grandma’s and her folks. Cedar Point will have to wait a
couple more days (it opened May 10) Speaking of Cedar Point, we found out
the other day, with our Season Passes we get to go in the park an hour
early and go on a handful of rides (including Maverick, Millenium Force,
and a couple other sweet rides!)

My job’s still going great, we’re going onsite soon to test the software
I’ve been developing over the past few weeks and get some feedback from an
actual customer! Susan’s dilemma at her job seems to be getting better
each day (she has a problem even a Ph D chemist can’t solve!) My lunch
break is slowly coming to an end, and that’s about all I can think of for
now…

We survived the alien encounter (of the third kind!) Well, for some
reason a couple weeks ago our garage door remotes stopped working unless
you were right up on the garage door. Thinking it was the batteries, I
made a late run to Meijer to pick up a couple… it wasn’t the batteries.
As the week went on, we saw everyone on the block was having troubles with
their garage door remotes. I went to the township building… they had
never heard of anything like this and sent me over to the police station.
After talking with the officer, apparently across the river, people were
having problems with their doors opening and closing at random about two
years ago… but he hadn’t heard of anything like this. He said I should
talk with a garage door installer, which I did. He gave me directions to
reset the unit and remotes, which I didn’t think would do anything, but
still I tried… and sure enough, it didn’t work. Dealing with the very
short range of our remotes, one day they started working like normal
again… do dee doo dee doo dee doo…
Our local feline friend had a vet appointment not too long ago, and
she’s a little overweight. We bought some special kitty diet food and
Scout seems to really like it. So much in fact she started putting bite
marks in the bag. We decided to also feed her twice a day instead of
leaving one big pile (recommended serving) in the morning. She doesn’t
like this at all. She use to beg for food, now she kind of squawks, and
she knows when it’s feeding time! 😉

We’ve made a couple of home improvements since the last time I’ve
posted… We have a beautiful new bedroom set, that is really friggin’
heavy (glad the movers brought it upstairs!) I was the one their when they
showed up and had “some” instructions of how it should be arranged…
we’re still missing the mirror and a dresser, but we wanted what we had to
look nice and be ready for when the rest of it comes. After the mover-guys
left, I set it up to what I thought was right, but once Susan got home, I
had to move the stuff around again. The next day, I ended up moving it one
more time, and the furniture wasn’t getting any lighter! I really like the
way we’ve got it now, it’s a little difference, but edgy and looks pretty
sweet (I might even get pictures up sometime!).

The other home improvement we did this past weekend, was getting some
curtains for our living room, and man that was fun (ok, not really…)
Having gone to Linens ‘N Things and Bed, Bath, and Beyond and some other
stores I can’t think of, we ended up at JCPenney where they were having a
massive sale on window treatments, yay! After picking out some curtains we
both liked, we waited, and waited, and waited for someone to help us (they
didn’t have the acutal curtain in the store). Finally, we ordered two
panels of the heavy curtains and two panels of the lighter ones. We didn’t
exactly like the hardware they had at Penney’s so on the way home we
stopped at Linens ‘N Things. We found some hardware that we both really
liked and thought it would fit our window… when we got home we realized
we needed the longer rod, so back to the store I went while Susan ironed
the lighter panels. I get home only to start installation when the drywall
anchors arn’t working out so hot. Off to Pat’s we went, and found some
nifty anchors that fold out with a special tool. Well, after tapping the
tool a few times, it broke and the anchors weren’t doing so well either.
What do we need… more power! I ended up making the holes slightly bigger
and was able to use the original anchors. I got everything installed and
we put the curtains up… and… one was longer then the other. I was like
aw crap! I installed the curtains crooked… time to get my trusty level
and darn it, it couldn’t be any more level if I tried, whew!! But yeah,
the curtains still didn’t match… We ended up going back to Penney’s the
next day with the goal of getting four panels that all matched in length.
It only took a little more time waiting (it is a sale afterall…) and
opening seven more packs of curtains to find a set of four… easy isn’t
it? We’re really hoping the curtains we ordered all match once they get
here…

Oh, and the new job is awesome!!! I’m doing lots of cool programming,
and my boss says I’m doing a really good job!

In case you haven’t heard, my car is fixed and looks better then when I
got it (at least the front end). While it was in the shop for 2.5 days, I
got the hook up with Enterprise (“We’ll pick you up.” – and they did). It
was pretty nice, although I got a no feature tiny little red cobalt to
cruise around in. Liberty Mutual actually covered most of the cost of the
rental, which was pretty cool. Someone at the MCC has started a
racquetball court thing that happens every Wednesday and Thursday night. I
was the only other person to show up last Wednesday, but Thursday there
was quite a few people. I had played a couple games against the guy who
got me started with the ladder and learned a couple things. Then we went
to the challenge court and had a lot of fun playing cutthroat (three
people on the court). I was so tired and had so much fun, I was glad I
wasn’t working the Friday after so I could recuperate. My first match is
tonight and my next one will probably be tomorrow, I’m pretty excited (and
looking forward to the challenge court this week)!

In other news, I’m still working at Dow, but hopefully not for long!
I’ve had interviews with seven different people over a three day period,
talk about stressful! I thought everything was going really well,
especially when I heard back after my third day of interview that Dice
Corp was really interested in me. They actually wanted me to start within
a week! Well, I needed to give atleast a two week notice to Kelly, so that
wasn’t going to fly. I’ve been going back and force with my contact and
still haven’t heard the final word yet. Today should be the day, so keep
your fingers crossed, I’d be super execited to work there!

This weekend Susan and I went to our first Bed and Breakfast. I had
wanted to do something the weekend following Valentine’s Day as a present
for Susan (and me), but Susan had an orchestra concert that weekend, and
last weekend she was on call. Originally I was thinking of going to an
indoor water park, but that was a little pricey, so Google led me to the
Heritage Manor Inn in Fennville (near South Haven, on the west coast of
Michigan). It was a lot of fun, and a great way to relax. Each room had
it’s own theme and a hot tub (that sure felt great on my sore racquetball
muscles!) The food was excellent and the people running it were really
friendly. It was so nice, we’re thinking about going back in the summer,
so we can go to the beach when it’s not frozen (yeah, that was pretty neat
to see the frozen lake though. =P)

We survived the storm! Last week Mother Nature really hit Michigan with
some of that “pretty” white stuff. Wednesday afternoon, the snow started
to really come down. On the way home I got behind the flying V of snow
plows and that leg of my trip was easy going. Then I hit M-47, which is a
Freeway, but I sure wasn’t speeding along today… The highway was not
plowed and right down the middle of mostly farmland. The wind was
billowing across the open area and I couldn’t see more than 15 or 20 feet
in front of my car. There was atleast six or more inches of snow on the
ground and everyone around me wanted to go faster than my cruising speed
of around 15 mph… just because you have four wheel drive, doesn’t mean
you can see any better… Thursday after the storm, Susan and I spent
about 45 minutes shoveling the snow out of our driveway. It was upto two
feet of snow in some spots and our sub-division wasn’t even plowed! Making
a small dent in the road in front of our house (which was about a foot of
snow deep), we reared our cars down the driveway and managed to plow
through the snow. It was slow going to the end of our street, but it was
do-able. Then came Webster, it was actually plowed… but only on one
side, luckily no one wanted to go the other way while we were traveling
down this “one way” road! Yes the storm was bad, in fact there was an
alert released to Saginaw County the night before to stay off the roads as
people were getting stuck and abandoning their cars (in the middle of the
roadways!) I got to work without too much trouble, but my officemate
apparently got stuck twice on the way in, decided it wasn’t worth making
into work and got stuck twice on his way home!

I needed to get to work, because I had planned on taking Friday/Monday
off and needed to talk to my boss to make sure she was okay with that (and
she was!) The trek up north was easy going, the roads were clear and the
sun was shining. We stayed the night with Susan’s folks, and headed up to
Tech on Saturday. The statues were pretty amazing this year (as usual =P
), and hopefully I’ll have pictures up soon. It was a little cold, but I
didn’t need any of my snowgear I had brought. As the day went on, the
clouds came and soon it began to snow a little. We ended up getting a bite
to eat at The Library (the brewery, not the place with books 😉 ). The
service was pretty crappy, and we waited almost an hour before we got our
food. For some reason, we got behind a big table (the girls hockey team),
and our waiter wouldn’t bump up our order (he only got a 36 cent tip…)
After we ate, it was up to the McInnes Ice Arena to watch the Huskies play
Wisconsin. Our seats weren’t that great, but we had a good time, even if
Tech lost…

Winter Storm, part 2… The trip back to Michigamme was almost as bad as
my commute home from work a couple days before, luckily I wasn’t driving!
Visibility was poor, but the roads were plowed, and again people wanted to
zip by us. When a car did race by, I knew we would see him in the ditch,
and soon up the road we did… he was being helped by another person, so
we didn’t actually stop, but he sort of deserved it for going so fast in
crappy weather. The next day wasn’t much better and we ended up playing
Cranium pretty much the whole day. It’s a pretty fun game and everyone was
really getting into it in the end. After switching teams, the boys were
champions over the girls, but it was close (a little too close!)
Back to work, with still not much to do… I’m still working at Dow, but
I do have an interview this Friday! The whole thing moved really quickly
and the job involves actual programming, I’m pretty excited! The company
is DICE Corporation and is out of Bay City. If you want to take a look at
what they do it’s over here. Wish me luck!

Ever have one of those days you whished you hadn’t gotten out of bed?
Well, Monday was a day like that for me… I got up late and was on my way
into work. The roads were pretty typical and didn’t seem to be too
slippery, especially the freeway M-47. I was going along fine, until I
came to the exit ramp onto US-10 West. Before I knew it, I had hit a patch
of black ice and was quickly making my way towards the guardrail. I was on
the brakes as soon as I started sliding, but that did little to prevent me
from bashing the passenger side of my front-end into the guardrail.
Luckily my airbags didn’t go off, and my car didn’t stall out. I put it
into reverse, pulled myself onto the side of the road and waited for a
black hummer to pass… yes he saw the whole thing, and no… he didn’t
stop. I got out of my car, looked at the damage, checking if the tire
still had air and whether there was any fluid leaking… there wasn’t… I
hopped back in, fired it up and off to work I went. On the way, I tried
getting a hold of Susan, but she’s been having a hectic week lately and
couldn’t make it to the phone. A couple hours later I get a call from her
and told her what happened. She said I should probably call the police and
let them know I was in an accident (even though I didn’t get hurt, and was
the only one involved)… reluctantly I called and that was a lot of
fun…
Since I was at work, in Midland, I decided I would call the local Law
Enforcement Center:
“Midland Law Enforcement, how can I help you?”
“Hi, I’d like to report an accident that happened this morning.”
“All reports must be filed using 911.”
“Ok, thanks.”
“Your welcome, bye.”
Okay, so I had to dial 911…
“Midland County 911, what’s your emergency?”
“Hi, I’d like to report an accident that happened this morning.”
“Where did it happen at?”
“The exit ramp off M-47 onto US-10.”
“I think that’s Saginaw County, I’ll transfer you to their 911 service.”
“Okay…”
“Saginaw County 911, what’s your emergency?”
“Hi, I’d like to report an accident that happened this morning.”
“Where did it happen at?”
“The exit ramp off M-47 onto US-10.”
“I think that’s Midland County, hold on let me check…”
5 minutes later, “That’s not Saginaw County, let me transfer you to
Midland County.”
“I already called there, they transferred me to you.”
“Hmm…let me check again…”
10 minutes later, “Oh, you’re right, that’s Bay County let me transfer
you to their 911 service.”
“Kay…”
“Bay County 911, what’s your emergency?”
“Hi, I’d like to report an accident this morning”
“Where did it happen at?”
“The exit ramp of M-47 onto US-10.”
“Where are you at now?”
“At work, the Dow Chemical Co.”
“In Midland?”
“Yeah.”
“What time did the accident occur?”
“Around 8:00 AM.”
“Why didn’t you report the accident at the time it ocurred?”
“I didn’t realize I had to, I wasn’t hurt and it didn’t involve anyone
else…”
“Okay… how far from Bay County are you?”
“About 5 or 10 miles.”
“Well, I can’t send a Bay County trooper that far to take your report.”
“Can I set up a time to meet with a trooper in Bay County?”
“I can’t really set up an appointment, because after I hang up with you
I might get another call in…”
“I understand that, but what should I do?”
“Let me check something, hold on I’ll be right back…”
“Okay…”
10 minutes later, “It looks like Midland County has a trooper on duty
today, I’ll transfer you to their central dispatch…”
“Sure… thanks”
“Central dispatch, how can I help you?”
Okay, so I finally was able to get a hold of someone in Midland County
that could get a hold of a Bay County trooper to take my report… even if
I went through three 911 numbers to end up at the spot I started with…
Central Dispatch is in the Law Enforcement Center… pretty effective, I
know! After I met up with the trooper and gave my report, I learned that a
guardrail is considered another party… and if I damaged it, I would get
a citation… the trooper said he’d take a look and let me know later that
day… After meeting with the trooper I went over to the Credit Union to
talk with a Liberty Mutual representative, and was told how to file a
claim.

The rest of the work day was pretty boring, I left a little early
because I wanted to get a couple estimates on my car… my first stop was
Garber (dealership). The guy took pictures of my car and wrote it up as an
insurance claim (although I hadn’t called Liberty Mutual yet…) He gave
me a figure and said all I needed to do was call back and schedule an
appointment… I stopped in somewhere to ask where a body shop was, and
they said Daniels’ on Wackerly was pretty good, so I set off in that
direction. Not having an address I stopped in another place on Wackerly to
see if they knew where it was. The guy told me it was right after a street
called Dublin on the right, there was a bright red sign I couldn’t miss.
On my way out there I passed by a body shop, that had appeared to be
Daniels, but the sign was blue and I couldn’t be sure. I made my way up to
Dublin, but didn’t see any red sign, nor Daniels’… I thought, that must
have been the body shop, the two people were talking about and turned
around. When I got closer to the blue sign, I saw it was actually
Duane’s… It didn’t look like a great place, but there was an open sign
and I thought, what the heck… I pulled in and entered the door to find
the place wasn’t much more then a big two-story, two-car garage. Upon
entering I looked down to my right to notice a box full of empty beer
cans… hmmm… that’s interesting. So I asked the guy for a quote, he
grabbed piece of paper and we went out to my car. After getting the info,
we went back inside and he started working on the quote. While I was
waiting, one of the mechanics took the tab off a beer can and threw it in
the box of empties, hmm…that’s a little odd! Anyway, I got the quote
(and it was the cheapest), but I was quite skeptical of the establishment,
thanked the guy and left. I thought to myself, ok, that wasn’t Daniels’,
where is this place? I decided to go up past Dublin and found that
Daniels’ was quite a ways past it, but they were closed, shucks…
On my way home, I decided I’d go to one more place, the dealership in
Freeland, McArdle. The guy was friendly and quickly got a quote wrote up
and said he might be able to finish it in a day (whereas Garber would take
about three). I thanked him and left… Garber was the most expensive, but
they deal a lot with Liberty Mutual, and the cost to repair outweighed the
cost of the deduction and increase to our premium, so we decided to take
it there.

I had stopped at McDonald’s for a quick bite, I knew I was going to be
home late, and as I pulled up to the second window, my phone started to
buzz… I answered it, it was Matt, he wanted to play some racquetball
later. We agreed on a time and I was pretty excited, because the day
hadn’t been going very well. After eating, I got my gear on and headed off
to the MCC, being extra careful not to hit any guardrails. I picked up
Matt and we were on the courts pretty quickly. After the first game, I
noticed I was bleeding, sure enough I had a bloodnose. I headed off to the
bathroom to try and get it to stop bleeding. I couldn’t really breath for
the rest of our games and I was feeling pretty nauseous from the
McDonald’s I had ate not too long ago… I was still trying pretty hard
and our first few games were really close. Then, during the third or
fourth, after my server, Matt delivered a powerful forehand directly to
the side of my head. My ear started ringing, and it defintely stung for
awhile, but I still kept playing… After we finished seven games I had
more then I could take (though I didn’t lose a single one). Coming home
after that, I was sick and had a killer headache, and to top it off, my
car was pretty banged up… one of those days, you wished you hadn’t
gotten out of bed…

Luckily the next day was much better, no accidents, my headache
subsided, though my ear would still be sore for a couple more days. Worked
dragged on and I managed to make it through a couple boring days.
Wednesday night, I was ready to hit the courts again, I wanted to get some
practice in before my next match (scheduled for Sunday at 3 PM). I did my
typical warm-up of six laps (1/2 mile) on the track and made my way to the
courts. I was just about to start my practice, when someone I didn’t know
came up to me asking if I was looking for a pick up game. I told him I was
if he was… we introduced each other and man did we play some really fun
games. Apparently he comes with a couple other guys every Monday or
Wednesday and asked if I’d look to join them, I said sure, that’d be great
(things were looking up!) I did managed to beat him the first two games,
after a stunning come back down eight points in the first game… he won
the next three and we were kicked out before we could finish the last
game. It was still a lot of fun…

I somehow managed to get up really early for work and as per usual I
checked my email before leaving the house. My job scout, found two jops
that matched my skillset, I briefly looked at them, and thought I’ll apply
for these while I’m at work… Sure enough soon as I get to work and get
settled, I start the application process for each job. It was about two
hours later when I received a call from a 616 number (Grand Rapids I
thought…) Being a screener I let it ring, and thought, wait that one
company I applied for had an office in Grand Rapids. About two minutes
later I get another call from a 616 number (a different one). I thought,
okay I’ll answer this one, sure enough it was the company I had just
applied for, sweet! After talking a little with the guy, I found out I
don’t have enough “professional” experience to do the job… a Network
Security Analyst… I have a lot of experience working with networks at
home, but that wasn’t good enough for him, so I didn’t qualify for this
job. He said he’d hold onto my resume if something came up, but still it
was cool that I threw my resume into the dark abyss, only to get a
callback a couple hours later!

Winter is upon us, we did manage to make it out to City Forest last
weekend to break our ski’s in. It was pretty fun the trails were nice,
except for the people walking on the cross-country ski groomed part…
with snowshoes… Currently, we are supposedly getting 5-8 inches of snow
by 10 o’clock tonight, so maybe we’ll go out again this weekend, after
shoveling… My job’s really boring, I don’t have a lot to do, but to take
off for vacation next week to go up for Winter Carnival, I have to get a
bunch of stuff done for a project I’m working on… It would be doable,
but I don’t have any information for the stuff I need to get done, wow
that’s helpful… if it comes down to it, I might call in sick, saying I
caught whatever my office-mate had… shh, don’t tell anyone! Oh, I did
call into Liberty Mutual, and that was easy enough, though they didn’t ask
for our policy or the police report/incident number, which was kind of
strange… and I have an appointment to take my car in after Winter
Carni– err, when I’m feeling better, ;). Hopefully I’ll get some pictures
of the damage up soon…