Figured it was about time to get a race report on here. We headed down to Sandusky on Friday after Henry’s bed time. We decided to put his pj’s on him and hoped he would sleep most/all of the way. Starting off the weather wasn’t bad, but once we got into Ohio the rain really started coming down. Progress was slow, but we managed to find our way to Hotel Breakers at Cedar Point a little after midnight.

Hallow-weekends were starting up soon and they had already put up decorations in the hotel. We pulled up to the entrance (we weren’t sure and had to go by twice before stopping). It was super eerie, there was no one around, the doors were wide open and the green lighting and Halloween decorations were more than a little spooky.

After getting checked in, we got Henry and his stuff into the room so he could at least attempt to sleep (apparently he doesn’t like sleeping in new places). We stayed in the Snoopy Suites and although they were a little outdated, it was pretty nice.

Saturday we hopped on the shuttle bus (with my bike) and headed over to registration. I got my stuff only to find out they didn’t include a swim cap. We had to wait around for awhile so they could find a yellow one (only color I didn’t have with me in my transition bag). I got my bike set up, watched a little of the new coaster and headed back to the hotel.

Susan tried to get Henry to take a nap while I headed back to transition for an athlete’s meeting. It was pretty neat, since Rev3 is merging with Challenge Family, they gave out a TON of free stuff. I managed to get a Knoxville visor, which is cool because the one I had was stretched out and didn’t fit me anymore. I was suppose to get a Knoxville shirt as well, but they weren’t able to find one that fit me. It was a pretty fun meeting though.

Sunday morning was kind of crazy. Henry didn’t sleep much so that meant we didn’t sleep much. The weather wasn’t too bad, partially cloudy and quite a bit of wind. My race started an hour after the full, so I thought I had plenty of time to get ready. I went down to transition to drop off my gear and forgot to grab my bike nutrition. The transition area was a little over a half mile from the hotel. I got a good warm-up going back and forth over the beach sand!

I had some Gatorade, grabbed my wetsuit and headed to the start area. I had a little bit of time, so I decided to squeeze into my wetsuit and try to swim a little before the start. I was not prepared for the waves on Lake Eerie. They were probably in the range of 5-8 foot big. I knew sighting would be an issue, but it was too late to pull out now.

They called out my wave and we headed into the water. It wasn’t long before the gun was off and we were heading out for the first buoy. I felt like I was swimming up and going air-born on the way down the wave. Up and down, up and down, I got pretty nauseous and thought I was going to puke for sure. Once we got to the turn buoy, things weren’t as bad. Then I rounded the last turn buoy and going with the waves was a little more fun. I could also sight off the coasters and that made it a lot easier.

Getting out of the water, I had my wetsuit down to my waist quickly and I headed over towards the wetsuit strippers. They had my suit off in no time and I started making my way to my bike.

My plan was to carry all my nutrition and hydration and not worrying about picking up either on the course. I had three bottles of Gatorade and two packs of powerbar gel chews. I ended up grabbing a bottle of water near the end of the bike.

The bike course wasn’t too bad, there were a couple of hills, but for the most part it was pretty flat. The wind was a bit of an issue going out, but I managed to hit my goal time. I had a few miles left when I ran out of chews and was looking forward to the banana I had left in transition.

It was the best squishy banana I had ever eaten! I racked my bike, slipped on my running shoes, and jogged out for my “run”.

I can’t really call it a run as I was only able to run the first mile or so. Every time I tried to run, my legs started cramping out horribly (I wasn’t sure if I was going to finish the half-marathon). Every mile I had to keep motivating myself to just put one foot in front of the other and not to worry about how long it would take me to finish my first half-ironman distance race.

When I got to the parking lot, near the finish line, Susan and Henry were waiting for me and started to cheer me on. A wave of emotion hit me and it was pretty awesome to carry Henry across the finish line.

I’m not sure if I would do another one, but I’m glad I was able to finish this race! If I had to sum it in one sentence, it would go something like this, “I was happy to get out of the water, excited to get off the bike, and almost cried when I crossed the finish line!”

We did it, we made it 5 years! This year we decided to celebrate by going to a Bed and Breakfast in Bardstown, KY. We got a later start then we wanted, someone thinks its because I spent 20 minutes figuring out how to add new points to the Sync navigation… well as it turns out it’s a good thing I did spend that 20 minutes figuring it out, because if we had relied on our phones for directions, we would have been lost (no 3G service where we were at/heading to)!

Our first stop was at Chaney’s Dairy Barn. The food was good, the ice cream was better! We made it into Bardstown a little before 6 pm (our check in time) and headed over to the Rosemark Haven Inn. We pulled into the driveway and weren’t really sure where to go. I spotted a Visa/MasterCard logo on a building and figured that was the check in area. The door was tough to open, but once I got it, I realized that we were in the wrong building… One of the owners came up behind us and asked us if we were Susan and John… we said we were and would like to check-in. She mentioned something about the door should have been locked and went to see if it was… apparently it was, but must have been broken seeing as how I opened the door… whoops!

After a very friendly check-in and covering just about every detail and smelling the scented soap, we got to relax a bit before getting ready for dinner. That building we broke into… er… mistook for a check in place, was the wine barn where dinner was served. We got really good service as being the only people in there (which I might add was a little awkward), and had a really nice dinner. The decor was nice, even though they had that infamous lamp from “A Christmas Story”… yes, we got pictures in front of it. 🙂

On Sunday, we got lunch in town and headed over to Maker’s Mark distillery. The tour was neat and we got to sample the two different kinds of bourbon they make there. We even signed up for the ambassador program, which gets your name on a barrel. Once the barrel has been commissioned for bottling, you get notified and can buy a couple bottles with a commemorative label (takes 4-7 years). After the distillery, we went down into the earth at Mammoth Caves. That was pretty neat, we are thinking about doing the intensive 3 hour tour next time that sounds pretty physically demanding. It was a quick weekend, but a lot of fun.

Mexico

If you haven’t heard, Susan and I took a little trip down to Mexico in
January. One of Susan’s sorority sisters had a destination wedding, and we
thought this was the perfect excuse to get out of cold, snowy, Michigan.
Our trip started off pretty early (before the sun was up) as we made our
way down to Detroit. We took Susan’s car, so that meant I got to ride
shotgun. As most of you know, a good “avigator” gets the directions and
plots a route to make it easier on the driver. Since we’ve been to Detroit
Metro before, I figured it would be easy enough to wing it… As we were
getting into Detroit we managed to time it just right to hit rush hour
traffic (glad I wasn’t driving 😉 ). Whether it was early morning or
stress from so many cars around, Susan doubted I knew where we were going.
I told her to watch for the big sign that had “Detroit Metro Airport” on
it. Susan knew Detroit Metro wasn’t actually in Detroit, and expected not
to see such a helpful sign. Just as we rounded a corner, sure enough there
was a big blue sign that told us where to go… had it in the bag all
along. 🙂 We managed to get our bags checked and through security and
still had plenty of time to sit and wait for our flight…

The flight out of Detroit was on time and went smoothly, our connection
out of Chicago on the other hand was not so much. We boarded on time, but
had to wait on passengers from connecting flights. After at least 30
minutes with no one getting on, the pilot comes over the speaker to tell us
there was a problem with a light bulb. This particular light bulb was for
when the plane lost power, the pilot’s would still be able to navigate
using the control panel (probably important…) Finally, the connecting
passenger’s boarded and we were hopeful to take off soon, but it was
at leastan hour before we pulled away from the gate. Since it was pretty
cold out, we needed to get de-iced, well we waited in line for the de-icer
and that took a good 30 to 40 minutes. We started taxi-ing and before you
knew it, we were off, a couple hours later than expected.

We landed in Mexico and it was a nice change to see the sun shining.
Normally I don’t have problems flying, but I had a head cold this time and
my left ear was plugged up pretty bad… I couldn’t hear much over the next
couple days. The line to get into Mexico was crazy long and we spent quite
some time waiting with foreigners that had no personal space bubble
issues. Once through customs, we were ready to get to our resort. We found
our shuttle (the guys with the sexy flower shirts) and were soon on our
way. There were a few others on the shuttle and I think we were the second
to last ones off (which meant we didn’t get to the resort until late
evening). The resort we stayed at was really nice and we were happy to
finally be in Mexico, where the sun is always shining (or so we thought).

The next day, we met up with Susan’s sirority sisters on the beach. We
sat in the sun (and partial overcast) and relaxed, until the wedding party
left to go get ready for the wedding. We took this oppurtunity to explore
the resort and go monkey hunting (apparently the resort had monkeys that
came to the grounds, though we didn’t actually see any…) The wedding
was nice, although the armed guards roaming the beach in the background
was an interesting sight. There was a mariacchi band and drinks on the
beach after the ceremony. Someone got a pretty strong mojito and must have
been feeling pretty good before dinner. 😉

The resort was pretty big (it was technically two resorts in one) and
had four different restaurants you could go to (Italian, Mexican,
Japanese, and American Steakhouse). Dinner was at the American Steakhouse.
After dinner, we went to the beach, where a small hut serving drinks was
open for us. Apparently if you’re Greek, that means you need to drink a
lot… Susan was looking kind of tipsy, but the night wasn’t over yet. We
headed over to the DiscoTeca… where there was a dance floor, and of
course more liquid refreshments. It was getting pretty late, Susan and I
called it a night, but the rest of the crew stayed until they closed it
down.

The next day was a day of recovering, *ahem* for some of us… It wasn’t
particularly nice out… overcast and a bit chilly. We were invited on an
excursion with the rest of the group, but we had made plans for an
excursion the next day. This actually turned out in our favor, we found
out it was rainy and they didn’t really have a good time. We hung out in
the resort, read our books, and tried to find those darn monkeys.

Our excursion was quite the trip… we signed up for Tulum Extreme. This
included seeing the Mayan ruins and some extreme sports, zip-lining,
repelling, and snorkeling. We got up early and waited for our shuttle to
show up. Any where you go in Mexico, it seemed you needed to go through a
security checkpoint (atleast at the touristy places). After a half-dozen
checkpoints picking up the rest of the group from various resorts, we were
on our way. We headed off on what seemed to be a highway until we started
slowing down and turned onto a dirt road… no signs, no nothing. A couple
miles down this road, we pull off onto a two rut road with a gate. The
driver gets out, unlocks the gate, pulls through and locks the gate behind
us. As we’re traveling down this “road” through the jungle, we started to
wonder what we had gotten ourselves into.

We finally pulled into an area with other shuttles… and people, whew!
After putting our bags in lockers, we were fitted with harnesses and given
some instructions on our first activity… zip-lining. The climb up the
tower was interesting, they were pretty high up and the stairs weren’t
really level or the same size. Although the shortest, I think the first
line was the most exciting, mostly because I hadn’t done anything like
this before… There were three runs and it was really a lot of fun! After
zip-lining, we got to do repelling. Another short lesson before we started
and up the tower we went. I thought it would be down a rockface or wall or
something, but it was actually a free-fall repel. It was pretty thrilling
to walk backwards over the step at the top of the tower… and after I got
my picture taken, I went down… fast! 🙂 Susan was a little unsure of
repelling, but she was happy she did it.

It wasn’t a really hot day (like we thought Mexico would be), so we were
kind of anxious about the snorkeling part. We headed down to the cenota
(kind of like a cave with water in it) and put our snorkeling gear on. As
we got in the water, I was pretty surprised, it didn’t feel at all cold to
me… one of the couples commented it was warmer than the outside pool at
their resort. Our guide look pretty chilled, but he got in the water and
lead us through anyway. After drying off and changing clothes, it was
lunch time. The cooks at that place were awesome, we had some of the best
grilled chicken I had ever had. Once we got back on the shuttle, it was
time to go to the Mayan ruins… Unfortunately we weren’t actually allowed
to climb the stairs or touch the ruins, but it was still really neat to
see.

We got back to the resort later in the afternoon and hung out with
Susan’s sorority sisters until dinner… we had made reservations at the
Japanese restaurant. You get to sit around a hibachi grill and the cook
comes out and does a performance while he cooks your meal. Even though I
didn’t catch the shrimp in my mouth, after the cook flung it at me, the
food was great and we had a really good time.

The next day was our last day, and it was beautiful out… figures…
Once we got to the airport, we needed to check our bags and get our
boarding pass… no easy task. The line for our airline was big… almost
as bad as getting into Mexico… We finally get to the counter at least an
hour later and had our boarding passes in hand. We were pretty hungry, so
we got a quick bite to eat… heading the warning of a co-worker to stay
away from the nachos… Our flight started boarding shortly after we
finished eating. Once our group was finally called, we had to go through a
security inspection. Little did I know, Susan was going to try to hi-jack
the plane (ok… not really). She had a thumb drive on her (don’t ask me
why =P ) that the end retracted on and security didn’t know what it was. I
had gone through with ease and was wondering what the heck was going on…
After going through EVERYTHING in Susan’s carry-ons, including opening
perscriptions, she got the OK to board… The flight back was pretty
uneventful after that.

Although a short trip, it was a fun one, maybe we’ll go back some day!
😀

Work

Work has not be fun lately… my new motto is “They keep paying me, so I
keep showing up…” We’ve been told to work a set number of hours for the
past couple of months that has been well over the typical 40. I’m still
waiting for them to give us a requirement less than 40 (hah, like that’ll
ever happen). If you recall (or you can check out pretty much the only
blog for last year) I had a business trip from hell. Well, I didn’t
realize it, but that trip actually seemed pretty good compared to the one
I went on last December. I’ve been working on a video viewer application
and I was to deploy it on site. What I was told was not what the client
was expecting (yay communication!) I was in Ontario, CA (about an hour
south of L.A.) for about a week. The first day I got in late afternoon and
was a short day. I talked with their IT guy and the project lead about
what I was told and what they wanted, needless to say they were a little
disappointed and definitely upset.

I went back to the hotel… and for some reason I got the company’s
worst laptop and my programming environment wouldn’t compile anything. I
had grabbed the installation discs before I left and tried installing and
re-installing to no end. Finally, I decided to download a free
environment, which took quite a few hours on the hotel’s slow internet
connection. I finally got my laptop set up and was ready to code the next
day (or so I thought…)

I wasn’t given an entry code or fob to enter the building, so I had to
rely on someone being there when I got there. I knocked on the door and
rang the bell (which I found out before I left was broken…) No one let
me in. I jumped in my rental car, pulled my laptop out and starting
programming. The project lead showed up, but must have missed me as she
looked like she was in a hurry… I tried packing up my laptop and jumping
out, but I was a little too slow. This time I noticed a number in the
window. Gave that a call, managed to get a hold of the IT guy and he let
me in. This day was a long day, but I did manage to fix some bugs in our
software. The video portion wasn’t working quite to their liking… I
tried my best to replicate what their old software did, but it wasn’t
going well. I was in contact with my co-workers, but they couldn’t really
help me. I left this day feeling a little optimistic tomorrow had to be
better (hah!)

After I got back to my room, I decided to take a walk and went to the
mall not far from the hotel. It was one of the biggest malls I had ever
been in and was pretty impressive. After clearing my head, I went back to
the hotel room and started programming. It was getting late and I hadn’t
made much progress, but I thought I was on to something. The next day I
was stuck outside the central for only a few minutes, as someone actually
heard me knocking on the door this time. This day was by far the worst and
by late afternoon I was pretty stressed out. While I was working, people
would come in and talk to me and I would explain what I was doing (or
trying to do). Apparently the central owner came in (I wasn’t introduced,
but I guess that’s no excuse) and I told him I don’t know why it’s not
working or when it would be done, but I was trying my best. He seemed
pretty irate and stormed off. About 15 minutes later, the IT guy comes in
and tells me that I shouldn’t tell the owner I know jack-shit about a
project and that I should just go home. Yeah that was pretty nice, so I
packed my stuff up and went back to the hotel…

Another late night of coding and a call to Susan for moral support, I
was glad I had only one more day left on my travel. I actually made some
significant progress that day, I was able to demonstrate how the software
would work… eventually… but the project lead and IT guy weren’t too
impressed and wanted nothing to do with it until it was finished.
I’m not sure how I got stuck with my return flight, but it was not very
much fun. I returned my car, and got to the airport around 5 pm pacific
time. My flight out of California was at 7, and I landed in Phoenix an
hour later. I started walking around the airport, but couldn’t seem to
find my connecting flight. I must have looked lost, because one of those
cart driver guys asked if I needed help. I told him I was looking for a
Delta flight and he said hop on. There wasn’t hardly anyone in this
section of the airport, so we were cruising along pretty good when he
asked if I was sure I was looking for a Delta flight. I pulled out my
itinerary and it said Delta, even though my boarding pass had a different
airline on it (because I printed it from their kiosk). He brought me to an
exit and told me I had to go to a different terminal. Afterwards he
mentioned he didn’t work on tips, but if I wanted to tip him I could. I
gave him a couple bucks, reconfirmed how to get to the terminal and I was
off.

I ended up leaving security and had to go through it once again when I
got to the new terminal. I’ve been on quite a few flights lately and I
never had to take my shaving kit out of my carry-on. Well, as I was
pushing my bag into the x-ray machine, the operator clearly indicates to
remove all liquid items from your bags. I tried grabbing my bag, but it
was too late… oops! The operator than announces to remove all liquid
items from your bag and proceeded to list all the contents of my shaving
kit in an unfriendly manner. My bag was ran again and I had to have
someone inspect the contents of my shaving kit, including a chemical test
on my bottle of contact solution.

I got to my gate and had a few hours to wait, I was flying on the red
eye that left just after midnight. I must have been tired, because I don’t
remember much of that flight. I got in Atlanta around 6 am eastern time,
my flight here left at 9. If you’re thinking this flight plan wasn’t a lot
of fun, your right it wasn’t. I landed in Detroit a little after noon and
FINALLY made it home around 2:30.

I somehow managed to rack up 80 hours of work time in five days…

Winter Carnival and Puppies

We went up to Winter Carnival this year and even though the snow statues
weren’t AS impressive as they normally are, it was still a lot of fun. We
drove up Friday night and stayed the night in Michigamme. The next day we
headed up to Houghton and met up with a couple we knew. They had already
seen the statues, so we went out on our own. It was sunny and a little
chilly, but a nice day nonetheless. We had dinner reservations at the
restaurant on the top floor of the hotel downtown (the restaurant name
always seems to be changing). We had a window table and were able to see
the ski-torch parade and fireworks. That was a lot of fun.

After dinner, we headed back to our friends house. They had recently
gotten a cockapoo and she was really cute. We had been talking about
getting a puppy… a flyer had gone around at Corning for labradoodles…
and I think when we saw that cockapoo, it sealed the deal. We had gone to
see them before their eyes were open and they were pretty cute than. We
went back later to pick one out, and Waldo will be coming home next week
(not sure how Scout is going to like that, but it should be interesting 🙂
).

Fitness

As you might have noticed, there will be a new section to my website.
I’m going to try to keep track of my progress of 5Ks and my workout time.
Mostly for me so I can update it anywhere, but feel free to check it out.
😉 I have been playing a lot of racquetball recently and have more wins
than losses in my league. I really wish another one started up for the
summer. I’ve actually been debating upgrading my racquet, so I headed over
to a couple of sites online and signed up for the demo program. The first
racquet I got was the most expensive of the three, but it was really nice
and I’m tempted to get it… I’m still waiting for the other two to come,
but from reading online, I’m still leaning towards that first one I got.
I’m still trying to get in shape and am still running those 5Ks. I
already ran my first one for the year, in Montrose. Seeing as how I ran
this one last year, I figured I’d be able to find it pretty easily. I
printed off a handful of directions and left with plenty of time to get
there. Well, I guess I should have brought my avigator with me, as the
directions weren’t quite accurate and I somehow got turned around in
Saginaw. After retracing my steps, and getting on the correct road south,
I finally saw some familiar sites and new I was almost there… which was
a good thing, because the race was starting soon… I got to the school,
found a spot to park and headed to registration. They couldn’t find my
name to give me my packet… luckily I had looked the day before and knew
my number… sure enough my name was on that package. I tossed the shirt
in my car, quickly put my number on and headed to the start line. It was
probably less than 30 seconds and the race had begun (…no sense in
cutting it close or anything…) The sun was shining, the wind wasn’t
blowing, and I was packing some handwarmers. I wasn’t as cold this year as
last year, and had a lot of fun. I didn’t stick around long and headed
back home (the right way) with a 5K under my belt to start the year.

Playstation

I must have been a good boy last year, because Santa brought me a PS3
for Christams. I know I was promoting the Wii… and for good reason (it’s
still topping the sales charts), but the need for an upgrade was there. We
have an HDTV and having a video game console that could play blu-rays
seemed to make sense. 🙂 After getting everything set up, we watched our
first blu-ray, The Dark Knight, and I was hooked… and not sure if we
could go back to watching standard definition. 😉 I signed up for a
Gamefly account, which is kind of like Netflix but for games (…and a lot
slower…) and have been fighting for TV time ever since. We also have a
streaming disc that allows watching things off our Netflix account
instantly to our TV which is pretty cool… I was surprised how flawless
it looked, it was like watching a DVD, but over the internet…

Class

As some of you may know, I took an accounting class last fall. Before
our final, we had a chance to earn some extra credit by taking a ten
problem exam during class. Each question was pretty detailed and it was an
all or nothing kind of thing, and each worth ten points. Silly me, I had
forgotten to grab my calculator before I left for work. I get to class and
found out I wasn’t the only one who forgot one. The professor did have an
extra one, but I was the second to ask… I told him I had a basic
calculator on my cellphone and he said it was alright to use. After
getting through the first couple of problems, my phone starts vibrating…
it was a call from one of the guys I was to play racquetball with that
week. So, I hit the button to ignore it and continued with the exam. Sure
enough, ten minutes later, I get another call… I bet that didn’t look
suspicious… at all… I must have done decent on the exam, I think I got
7 out of 10, which meant a whopping 70 points of extra credit… I didn’t
necessarily have to take the final, but I did and ended up with a 98% in
the class! 🙂

Eyes

It was that time of the year when I had to get my eyes checked and
contacts ordered. I signed up for an appointment at Lenscrafters and
intended to get the contact brand I’ve been using for quite a few years
now. During my appointment, they kept asking if I wanted a scan of my eye
and were surprised to hear I had a previous eye injury (even though I
mentioned this before…) After getting my prescription and telling the
sales associate what brand of contacts I wanted, she outright told me they
would be more expensive then this other brand. I told her I’ve tried other
brands before and they didn’t work out for me. She said these were
different… so I said fine I’ll try them. I ordered two boxes (they had
two in the store) and was told I could take them back if I didn’t like
them.

One week later, I was back and said I didn’t like them and wanted to
order the brand I liked and didn’t care if they were more expensive.
WELL… it turns out the brand I wanted was 35 bucks a box and the brand
she wanted to sell me were 50 bucks a box… Yes, that’s right what I
wanted was less expensive then what she sold me. After returning the four
boxes I had and ordering the other brand, the price “magically” ended up
being the same. I had gotten a discount on the brand that cost 50 bucks a
box, but it was still nine dollars more than what I should have paid. I
wasn’t really worried about the nine dollars and was happy to just have
the contacts I wanted. I decided right then I would not be going back to
Lenscrafters… ever…

Funny thing is I got this thing in the mail the other day from them,
thanking me for going back to Lenscrafters. Well, there was an online
survey I got to take and I told them exactly what I thought of their
services…

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 🙂 )

I hope everyone else had a good Thankgiving, I know I did. We started off on our Turkey-Day break bright and early Wednesday morning. Me and Susan drove (mostly me… ok all me =P) down to Farmington, MO to visit my folks. The trip was suprisingly uneventful, though there was a half-dead deer still kicking in the middle of the interstate. We didn’t even get lost either, well except for the slight detour in Inidianapolis (got to drive by where Peyton plays) and missing one of our first turns. In the end it took us just under eleven hours to get there. I brought the Wii and had that hooked up, I think everyone was impressed (told you it was worth camping out for!) Joey Joey Joey had a happy Thanksgiving as he and his mighty Dolphins bested the Lions (I thought they always win on Thanksgiving…) Aside from that dinner was excellent. The turkey was deep fried and Susan made candy-yams and chutney. The turkey was delicious and the yams were good (albeit a little sugary) and the chutney was good (if you like cranberries…)
Before going, me and Susan decided it would be fun to go to the zoo and check out the Anheuser-Busch brewery. We spent all day Friday at the zoo and had a good time. We even got to see the baby elephant (someone was getting anxious about that…) The brewery was neat to see, there were even a few clydesdales hanging around, but I would have liked to seen the bottling plant in action. We also learned how the “professionals” remove a tree by using a jack-hammer (not even joking…)
All and all it was a pretty good break, I got to play a lot of pool (and Wii when I had a chance). I learned how to play a pool game called “Melvin” which is pretty neat until you figure out how to shoot the balls (then it gets pretty lame shooting the same shots over and over again). We ended up taking more stuff back with us then what we left with (yeah… it’s my junk, but hey it’s mine!) The drive back was a mere ten and a half hours (we made pretty good time, no turn-arounds in Indianapolis). Other than that, just trying to get back into work mode after a nice relaxing break.

Well this weekend started off with a bang (literally)… We were heading up north (da UP) when we blew a tire just before we got to Clare. We gave AAA a call only to find out all the tire shops in Clare were closed, so we had them call a tow-truck company to put the donut on (the tire blown was the driver side front, the heck if we were gonna sit on the side of US-10 to change that!) After waiting an hour and a half, the guy finally showed up. After the donut was in place, we found out leaving the hazard lights on for the whole time kills your battery. So after a jump from the tow truck we were finally on our way back to Midland to get Susan’s car (at a very slow pace might I add).

This rest of the weekend went pretty smoothly, we got to see our nephew, Marcus, be baptizied and enjoyed visiting our families. All our good mojo must have run out because when we got home to see how Pepper was doing (pretty good), we found puddles in our basement… Apparently a combination of using powder detergent and old pipes with clay buildup creates massive blocks in the sewer system, and thus raw sewage in our basement, yay! Our building seems to be the only one affected, lucky us… Though one good thing did come out of this, we don’t have to pay for scratching the paint on the floor (because now they have to repaint it anyway)…