Holy frickin hell is it cold! B & B are up here for the weekend and the weather has totally not cooperated. I guess it is nice for the winter carnival, the ice sculpting and all that, but it is not so nice for just being out and about. Or as they say around here, oot and aboot.
We went over and checked out the progress on the loft, which was a really good thing. Some of the structural changes that we had agreed upon were totally not done. They even went so far as to have pipes coming from the floor to the ceiling in the wall that is not supposed to be there. The people in the demo told us it was no big deal and they can fix anything, but I can't imagine how they are going to re-route the pipes. It was amazing seeing it framed out for the first time, some of the rooms seemed MUCH smaller than my minds eye had made them, and some were just about right. The picture on the website is completely not to scale, they have an image that looks like a king size bed, and there is a lot of room around it, in reality there is not going to be much room around our bed.
Other than those things, it was great to see the place and how it is coming along. It was really cool to be able to finally see it and say, "this is where the sink will go, this is where the tub will go." Overall, if they can fix those issues with the walls, I can't wait to get into the place.
E and I have already determined where we want to live after we get tired of the city. We have talked about it a few times, and we want to get a Wee House and a bunch of land outside the city and live completely "off the grid". No wires, gas lines, water, sewage, etc hooked up to city resources. We want to have the ability to use solar power, well water and if we absolutely have to use gas, we will have to get some sort of propane tank or something. We looked at some of the property around here, and if we go about 45 minutes away, we can get something on a lake or river with around 20 acres for $150K, which is really not bad if you think about it. $7500 per acre. Both of us have talked about how cool it would be to have horses and various other animals running around, but horses are the absolute highest on our list, because we both love them.
Anyway, enough about what we want to do, we know we are going to move into the loft, provided we can come to some resolution with the walls and such. I will say that when we walked in and saw the walls where they shouldn't be, E went through the roof. She was ready to call the whole thing off, but the people in the demo were able to calm us down enough to be ok for a few days.
I sent an update to my Cingular woes to Consumerist, and they published them!!
check it out
Pretty cool, eh?
check it out
Pretty cool, eh?
So the snow has finally arrived. I must say, it is odd to have snow around more than a day after it hits the ground. I can honestly say that it is much nicer to have the snow gone after a day or so, that way you don't get to see where all the dogs do their doggy bits. Sitting at the bus stop you can see all the local "watering holes", and it is much nicer when that goes away. The other side benefit is that by now, you can go skating on pretty much any lake you want.
We drove by a park yesterday and there was a section of the lake that didnt have snow on it. We assumed that, like St Louis weather, that there was no snow because it had melted. Actually, it had been cleared away by the locals to accommodate the locals playing hockey on it. There was a guy out there teaching his kid how to skate. Its weird, but I never noticed that we used to do that all the time in Jersey, but once we got to St Louis that was a thing of the past.
Another odd thing has happened since we moved up here, it seems that I am more open to spending time outside. I guess that could be due to the reduction of humidity from 150% to merely 100%. It seems to be less humid here when it is raining than it is in STL when it is not. A nice change, I can tell you. Who knows, maybe we will go camping this summer. Sleeping on the ground my have to come a bit later though. So, I guess I should say we are going "camping", not camping. Maybe we will even get into the snowshoeing that E was so apt to try. I think we may need an additional few inches of snow before snowshoes are necessary. Boots maybe, snowshoes, not so much.
Anyway, we finally got a new TV, and the thing is slightly ridiculous. Too bad we can't get HD content in our loft, it would be nice to see what this bad-boy will do. On that note, it seems that the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war is all but over. As some analysts have predicted based on history, the porn industry is going to decide which one survives, much as they did in the VHS/Beta war of the 80's. It seems that they have decided to go the HD-DVD route as it is cheaper to produce the discs, even if Blu-Ray is capable of storing more data. I think I will hold out a bit longer before I decide to go out and get one though. LG has gone so far as to create a single player that will run both formats, but it costs over a grand to purchase. A good idea, but waaaay too expensive for my tastes..
Anyway, I'll chat you all up later....
We drove by a park yesterday and there was a section of the lake that didnt have snow on it. We assumed that, like St Louis weather, that there was no snow because it had melted. Actually, it had been cleared away by the locals to accommodate the locals playing hockey on it. There was a guy out there teaching his kid how to skate. Its weird, but I never noticed that we used to do that all the time in Jersey, but once we got to St Louis that was a thing of the past.
Another odd thing has happened since we moved up here, it seems that I am more open to spending time outside. I guess that could be due to the reduction of humidity from 150% to merely 100%. It seems to be less humid here when it is raining than it is in STL when it is not. A nice change, I can tell you. Who knows, maybe we will go camping this summer. Sleeping on the ground my have to come a bit later though. So, I guess I should say we are going "camping", not camping. Maybe we will even get into the snowshoeing that E was so apt to try. I think we may need an additional few inches of snow before snowshoes are necessary. Boots maybe, snowshoes, not so much.
Anyway, we finally got a new TV, and the thing is slightly ridiculous. Too bad we can't get HD content in our loft, it would be nice to see what this bad-boy will do. On that note, it seems that the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war is all but over. As some analysts have predicted based on history, the porn industry is going to decide which one survives, much as they did in the VHS/Beta war of the 80's. It seems that they have decided to go the HD-DVD route as it is cheaper to produce the discs, even if Blu-Ray is capable of storing more data. I think I will hold out a bit longer before I decide to go out and get one though. LG has gone so far as to create a single player that will run both formats, but it costs over a grand to purchase. A good idea, but waaaay too expensive for my tastes..
Anyway, I'll chat you all up later....
If it wasnt already official before, now we are really officially Minnesotans. Well, almost. We went today and got new plates for the Acura, bye-bye Missouri plates, hello Minnesota plates.
I have actually been looking forward to this for a while now, the Minnesota plates match the color of my car better. I know, I'm a geek, but what can I say? It does look better.
We couldn't get our Drivers' Licenses because we have to take a written test, and the place we went doesnt administer them, so those will have to wait a short while longer. Hence the almost official-ness.
E's pops is doing much better today, I heard that he sat in a chair yesterday, which I would imagine is a huge deal only two days after having your sternum cracked in half and tied back together with what amounts to a small piece of chain-link fence. E is heading over to the IL side on Saturday and she is going to spend a couple of weeks taking care of him. She's just hoping she doesn't have to wipe his butt or anything like that. Not that it would stop her, she would just prefer not to.
No real update on the loft, we brought our samples down to show everyone, and since then nothing has happened. I imagine that I am going to have to sign off on the electrical plan at some point, seeing as how it is about as complete as I can imagine it ever being. We have to figure out what we are going to do about the in-home stereo system that we are supposed to be putting in, but at our own cost. Given that it will be at our own expense, I doubt we will do much, but I think it would be REALLY handy to have speakers in the master bath and the kitchen for listening to the radio. Who knows, we may end up getting it. We'll have to see how it goes.
Ne Year's was pretty uneventful, we just went over to Kurt's and played cards and hung out, pretty low-key evening, but lots of fun. We met a whole bunch of new people, and were able to spend more time with those we already knew.
Who knows what this new year will bring, hopefully nothing too terribly exciting. Although I did ask E if she was interested in doing some winter camping (yes that's right, I asked about camping), it sounds like fun to camp in the winter, snowshoe in the day, and just hang out around a fire at night, but we shall see how it goes. We still have a lot of winter gear to buy before we can ever approach that bridge. E juts got her new winter coat today, but I still dont have anything for winter sports, mine are all of the 'look nice, provide a little warmth' variety.
I do know one thing that is going to happen this year, I'm finally going to brew my own mead. Yes, you read that right too, I am going to brew mead. I am going to get a homebrew kit and make it up in the apartment. No, not really, a friend at work is a home brewer and he has agreed to help me out with it. So, with a little luck and a lot of instruction, I should have a batch coming ready sometime near June or July. I cant wait!
I have actually been looking forward to this for a while now, the Minnesota plates match the color of my car better. I know, I'm a geek, but what can I say? It does look better.
We couldn't get our Drivers' Licenses because we have to take a written test, and the place we went doesnt administer them, so those will have to wait a short while longer. Hence the almost official-ness.
E's pops is doing much better today, I heard that he sat in a chair yesterday, which I would imagine is a huge deal only two days after having your sternum cracked in half and tied back together with what amounts to a small piece of chain-link fence. E is heading over to the IL side on Saturday and she is going to spend a couple of weeks taking care of him. She's just hoping she doesn't have to wipe his butt or anything like that. Not that it would stop her, she would just prefer not to.
No real update on the loft, we brought our samples down to show everyone, and since then nothing has happened. I imagine that I am going to have to sign off on the electrical plan at some point, seeing as how it is about as complete as I can imagine it ever being. We have to figure out what we are going to do about the in-home stereo system that we are supposed to be putting in, but at our own cost. Given that it will be at our own expense, I doubt we will do much, but I think it would be REALLY handy to have speakers in the master bath and the kitchen for listening to the radio. Who knows, we may end up getting it. We'll have to see how it goes.
Ne Year's was pretty uneventful, we just went over to Kurt's and played cards and hung out, pretty low-key evening, but lots of fun. We met a whole bunch of new people, and were able to spend more time with those we already knew.
Who knows what this new year will bring, hopefully nothing too terribly exciting. Although I did ask E if she was interested in doing some winter camping (yes that's right, I asked about camping), it sounds like fun to camp in the winter, snowshoe in the day, and just hang out around a fire at night, but we shall see how it goes. We still have a lot of winter gear to buy before we can ever approach that bridge. E juts got her new winter coat today, but I still dont have anything for winter sports, mine are all of the 'look nice, provide a little warmth' variety.
I do know one thing that is going to happen this year, I'm finally going to brew my own mead. Yes, you read that right too, I am going to brew mead. I am going to get a homebrew kit and make it up in the apartment. No, not really, a friend at work is a home brewer and he has agreed to help me out with it. So, with a little luck and a lot of instruction, I should have a batch coming ready sometime near June or July. I cant wait!
My dad is luckily the most stubborn person on the planet. Not only did he make it through a surgery for his prostate cancer with a 75% blockage in one of his arteries, he champed his way through the triple bypass surgery 4 days later. He pretty much rocks.
I just got an e-mail from my aunt saying he's sitting up in a chair. That's major progress after his surgery only 19 hours ago!
I'll be leaving on Saturday for a couple of weeks to help take care of him and all that fun stuff. I hope to get his home up to date with DSL so I can get online—otherwise, what will I do??? And hopefully show him the beauty of the world wide web. He claims it's all silly stuff but I don't think he's given it a chance. I can't imagine my life now without my computer.
I just got an e-mail from my aunt saying he's sitting up in a chair. That's major progress after his surgery only 19 hours ago!
I'll be leaving on Saturday for a couple of weeks to help take care of him and all that fun stuff. I hope to get his home up to date with DSL so I can get online—otherwise, what will I do??? And hopefully show him the beauty of the world wide web. He claims it's all silly stuff but I don't think he's given it a chance. I can't imagine my life now without my computer.