The longer you wait

The more you need to post, and the more you have to post, but the less you want to sit down and post. :-/ ;-)

Here is a long needed update going back to the beginning of October:

Josh's Wedding

From josh-wedding

Since most everyone who reads this was there, I will leave out the details and mainly say that Em and I both had a blast. Its always great seeing the old gang together and we will definitely need to find an excuse to do it again real soon. The wedding and reception were great (gotta appreciate all of the hard work Josh and Amanda did). Both Em and I were honored to be in the wedding and be able to celebrate with you guys. You guys are going to do well for eachother.

Regarding the decorating of Josh's car. I think, overall, it went over very well. However, it was over-engineered and under-delivered. I blame myself. Despite our best laid plans (much of which can be found here, and in numerous emails) as well as a random Yahoo Answers post by yours truly ... it didn't quite live up to what I had in my head. Still, as Josh agreed, we get points for using helium (thanks Kevin) and for being different than years past.

From josh-wedding

Oh and thanks to Kevin and Sarah for having us over to their new house and Chaz for driving us around.







Em's Cousin's Wedding

From stl

From stl

This wedding, while not nearly as fun for me, was a good time and by FAR the most over-the-top wedding I have ever been to. Being a family afair rather than a college roomate's lends itself a different dynamic, but they made up for it by far in extravagance.

The wedding took place at the St. Louis Cathedral Bascillica, the largest church in town which is insanely gorgeous. To go along with the beautifully huge church, the wedding party was equally huge and the music was excelent (violinist from the STL Symphony, pro singers, organ, harp).

From stl

The reception that followed that evening was at the StarLight room at the Chase Park Plaza overlooking downtown STL and Forest park. Cocktails and hore-devers were servered prior out on the balcony including a featured drink of the night (mojito) and monogramed napkins. Dinner was high-end (although I actually think I liked Josh's better food wise), great cake, some interesting toasts and a great live band (2 main singers, backup, real DJ, 1/2 guitarists and a drummer). All in all it was pretty crazy and a good time.








Apple Butter

Last weekend we made Apple Butter in our backyard as part of a continuing tradition in Em's family. You can read more about it and see pictures at my food blog.

From stl

From AppleButter2008

Semi-related ... Em and I went to Eckerts the other weekend to pick fresh apples (Fuji) and got ourselves two nice pumpkins from the field.

Jolie

From stl

Jolie is doing well. She was "sick" for a week or two in there but is fine once again. Since we had gotten her, she had developed a bad tendency to pull on our walks (still doing 3-ish miles a day) which we weren't helping. In an attempt to reduce this we considered buying a stronger "harness" collar for her so that she wouldn't hurt herself but on the great advice of one of her friends, didn't. She said that a harness would just allow her to pull harder without knowing it and suggested we get the Gentle Leader instead. Basically its a type of collar that fits a different way, moving the point of attachement to the front under the nose. This means that when she goes too far forward, her head is pulled around. While its not perfect it has made a HUGE difference and I would recommend one to everyone who is having a similar problem.

Attic Insulation

Our house inspector warned us that the insulation in our attic was a little light and that we might want to add some before winter. So, once the cold started to kick in I finally got around to calling a contractor Em's aunt recommended to get an estimate. After taking a look around he said that while he would love the work, that the cost of blowing in another 6" of insulation wouldn't be worth the amount of time it would take to recoup the costs. He said we were indeed a little low but that it would take 7-10 years to recoup the costs. So, we will wait it out and see if the heating is bad or not and then decide ... either way I really appreciated his honesty.

FYI ... his estimates (which I didn't compare to anyone else) were roughly $1k to blow 6" of cellulose covering an 1200 square foot attice given that we have joists 16" off center and a very low roof line (hard to move around in). Rough estimates done by myself at lowes suggested materials by themselves would cost $400 (30+ bags and free blower rental), plus I would need to borrow a ladder and get safety equipment ... AND there would be no telling if I could have blown it in consistently or how long it would have taken me.

Work

Work has been interesting. I finished my brief stint on a large government enterprise architecture project and have moved back to working on a .Net web application with one of my friends.

Last week we had a production push to move ~3 months of work to the live site which resulted in a very long night. We were set to start at 10:30 pm but didn't until closer to 11:30 b/c the other guy's car was over heating on the way downtown. The actual push took a couple hours b/c of a couple stupid issues that were eventually resolved and then the same coworker had car trouble leaving (borrowed car with what turned out to be a bad battery). Nothing to get upshook about, but it resulted in me not getting home until around 2:30. On a bright note, Jolie sounds like one huge pissed off dog at 2am when you wake her up by coming in the front door. Good Dog!

On an interesting and very cool note ... there is a good chance I will be traveling a good amount for work in the next few months. Our company is going to be starting a new phase of a project with a large health care company in California doing Agile mentoring and coaching. Myself and one other guy are the leading candidates for the last spot on the team. It would be 2 weeks a month ~35 minutes outside San Fransico for 6 months (through the begining of the summer). I would be coaching one or more teams, working with their PMs and Scrum Masters to support their agile adoption, provide guidance, help to identify problem areas and work with their developers to do better agile and solid OO work on a dialy basis without feeling the need to have numerous meetings for every little task.

To be honest, I am a fair bit anxious about the idea of being put into such a "coaching" role and of the large amounts of travel .. but I am lucky enough to have a wife who is nothing but supportive and am super excited about the opportunity.

To go along with my normal work, I also gave a Lunch-n-Learn talk a while back on a Ruby GUI tookit called Shoes and have posted a few articles on my tech blog about the LnL, some misc scripts that helped me at work, user acceptance testing with Selenium, and a new side project of mine (List-It).

Thats all for now....

PAARI - D

Photos At A Random Interval

Daylilly in front of our new house

My intention is to see if I can capture a photo of all of the letters of the alphabet,
in order, and each from a different place/style/etc. The photos may not always be literal "letters" but something that is associated with the letter.

PAARI - C

Photos At A Random Interval

Cheeks on Madison, my cousin's daughter, being held by Em

My intention is to see if I can capture a photo of all of the letters of the alphabet,
in order, and each from a different place/style/etc. The photos may not always be literal "letters" but something that is associated with the letter.

Bye Bye Money, moving, and a new-new mower

Its been a busy few days with the new house. We closed last Thursday and have spent good parts of each day over at the house cleaning/fixing/gardening/packing/unpacking/etc. Em has been a huge help in moving tons of the smaller stuff over there the past few days and will be there most of the week as delivery people start bringing stuff.

Empty dining room from the living room and kitchen minus fridge


Living room facing backyard and backyard from kitchen


Our out front living room windows

Some of the highlights of the last few days and of the next few are below:

• We are hoping to have almost all of our smaller items (things that will fit in a car) moved before this weekend.
• We bought our washer and dryer last week from Lowes. We decided on the pair we really liked despite the fact that the dryer was too big for the doorway. Saturday Em's dad and I knocked out one side of the frame to make room. Easier than expected.
• We bought a refrigerator from a local retailer also last week. We were on the fence between and expensive one and a more expensive one (we got it for a good deal under list price luckily) ... and decided to go all the way b/c it something that should last 10+ years and while the amount more wasn't nothing, given the nicer features it was worth it.
  
• Note: when purchasing ANY appliances or things that are bigger than you can carry in your arms ... verify that it will fit where you want it before you buy ... and verify that it will fit through every room/door way between your front porch and where you want it before you buy (we realized that our fridge will only fit INTO the kitchen without the doors, which they said wouldn't be a problem for the delivery people) .... also, if your spending 1k+ at a store, you should be able to get free delivery if you push them for it.
• We bought our furniture last week too (yeah, it was a helluva week for the our wallets). We got a really nice looking bedroom set and couch+love seat from Ashley furniture. They had the living room stuff in stock, but had to order the bedroom set so we won't get either for ~3 weeks. We wanted it earlier, but were willing to wait.
• We are contemplating re-sealing our hardwood since right now is the best time we will ever have to do it before we move everything in and eventually get a dog ... still not decided though.
• Its still amazing how much stuff you have and even more amazing that it could all fit into a rental truck (or our new living room) if so motivated.
  
• I rented a truck this past week for Sunday from BudgetTruck.com. While I was checking out I noticed their promo code box and figured I would try for one last time one of the random web catalogs for those kinds of things. Well, for the first time I found one that worked and RetailMeNot.com came through with a 20% discount!
  
• Its also amazing how big a house feels without anything in it and how much you need to buy to feel like its full
• We dropped a few bills at Home Depot this weekend getting stuff for the yard/outside/house. Some of the highlights were caulk which Em used in the bath to seal a tile, an electric trimmer, hoses, rakes, hardware, a couple tools, and a mower.
• Em has spent a good deal of time cleaning up the landscaping and has made some excellent progress.
  
• The mower. Initially I was contemplating a cordless electric mower and joking that it would be funny to try a manual push mower .... I ended up purchasing a self-propelled gas mower. :-) I went this route b/c there was a deal at Home Depot for a really nice one which should serve me well for many years and with the hill in our front I didn't want to push a heavier (b/c of the batteries) electric mower up it ..... but wait theres more.
• The mower is a Toro with a Briggs and Straton engine. Setup consisted of unfolding the handle, clicking it into place, adding the included oil, and filling the gas tank. Simple. The thing started on the first pull and ran really smooth .... HOWEVER the handle bar that initiates the self propelled feature was installed wrong and I can't get it to go. I can push it ... but I didn't pay the amount I did to have to push anything. So I call around: Toro customer service says to bring it into a service center to be fixed under warranty. Home depot says to bring it back to get a new mower (I opted for this). Today I convince my father in law to bring his van by, we load it up and take it to the store (not far), bring it in and the guy at the return desk says this:
  
  "Sure we can exchange that .... oh, does it have gas in it?"
  To which I say, "Yes, of course, I just filled it up".
  "Oh, well I can't take it back if it has gas in it. You have to take it somewhere else and drain it or run it dry before you can return it"
  
  A bit or arguing, talking to a manager, and watching the father in law make a guy look stupid later ... I had to go buy another gas can and go in the parking lot to drain the mower. Its not like a gas can costs a lot .. but when you buy something that expensive and heavy/awkward and it turns out to have a manufacturing defect ... the last thing you want to be told is that you have to drop another $4 just to return the damn thing. 10 minutes later I had a new mower.
  
  First let me say that while I understand the policy (fire hazard), it still doesn't make it right from a customer's perspective. What is the first thing you do with a mower ... fill it up! I understand you don't want to be responsible for random customer's gas coming into your store ... but you sell gasoline engines for pete sake ... have some policy and/or procedure in place beyond "we can't do it, take it somewhere and bring it back empty".
  
  That being said ... despite my frustration I ended up a fair bit ahead. Before we left to drain the mower Em's dad said in no nice terms that the manager should go get us a new mower while we did it so that we could leave as soon as we were done. When we got back a new mower was on a cart waiting for us .... and it was the next model higher than the one I had purchased. I noticed right away b/c they have big numbers on them so that you can find them on the floor away from the display models ... but figured either A) the manager had done it on purpose to compensate us for the hassle or B) I wanted it for compensation for my hassle and the guy had grabed the wrong one. I decided to not say anything figuring that the guy ringing up the return would probably catch it and have to get another one or that I would find out he meant to do it. Well there was no mention of why I was getting a #12 and not a #11 but I kept my mouth shut and now am the proud owner of a 6.75 HP mower (instead of 6.5) with self pacing features (you gently push the mower forward and the handle adjusts the speed automatically so that it matches your speed without you doing any work ... instead of a manual lever) and it has an automatic primer instead of a manual one. So all in all I am happy, questing my morals, but happy :-) original .... new hotness
  

Thats about it. Friday I have all day meetings at work at Windows On Washington (the other portion of the same place that we had our wedding reception) and then on Saturday we have our company picnic. Sunday is the big move with the rented truck and should be our first night in our new home! :-D

I thought I had lots that I wanted/needed/should do before. Well, my new To Do list puts the old one to shame.

Google Animal Videos

The following are three random videos I took in the past couple weeks (and one from last year) and happened to load to Google Video. Sorry if the page loads slow, I have know idea what putting 4 video links on the same page will do.

The first is of a curious baby orangutan who picks his nose and ....

Sorry its tilted, I was too lazy to figure out how to rotate it.

The second is of the same baby orangutan and its mom ... but mom's a bit grumpy and they both learn a valuable lesson about what to put in their mouths ....

The next one is of some crazy gold/koi - esque fish in the pond at the nearby park. They just can't figure out how to get the Cheerio in their mouths...

The final one was taken at the Newport Aquarium and shows off their tunnels through the shark tanks and one impressive overbite...

PAARI - B

Photos At A Random Interval

Bear at the St. Louis Zoo

My intention is to see if I can capture a photo of all of the letters of the alphabet,
in order, and each from a different place/style/etc. The photos may not always be literal "letters" but something that is associated with the letter. This is the first of those.
Other PAARI may have nothing to do with this.

Zoo Pics and Excitement

I love the St. Louis Zoo. Not only is it a world class zoo and completely free to the public ... but if you get there when it opens on a Saturday then its pretty much deserted and you can walk right up to the animals who are very playful at 8am.

If you can't figure out what Em and I did this past Saturday, then just look at the pics....

Huge grizzly bear scratching his back on a tree


Baby orangutan


Code Monkeys
Honestly, Em saw the CDs in the cage and thought up the joke, I take no credit


Chimps in silhouette

I have a few videos that I am uploading the Google Video at the moment and will post later.

------------

On the house front, the excitement is ramping up. Tomorrow we have our final walkthrough after work. Basically we need to make sure that the house is still in the same state as when we saw it before and note any problems/changes. Also, its our chance to measure several things exactly so that we can purchase appliances and furniture. Thursday is our closing (9am) so God willing, Thursday night we will be ordering pizza to be delivered to our new home. :-)

The only big thing between then and now is we should get the final number from the title company on what we will owe at closing so that we can go to the bank and get our cashiers check made out (by far the biggest check of any kind I will have ever written ... and probably will until our next house). Exciting!

PAARI - A

Photos At A Random Interval

I am totally ripping off the POTRTP idea from 86Words.com ... but it just works better than a set time frame.
Hopefully they don't mind. Isn't "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?" :-)

Chalk written on a sidewalk in a local park

My intention is to see if I can capture a photo of all of the letters of the alphabet,
in order, and each from a different place/style/etc. This is the first of those.
Other PAARI may have nothing to do with this.

Parks, Hidden Parks, and more

As always, its been a busy few days

This past weekend Em and I took in the few hours of nice weather and went to the Missouri Botanical Gardens (where they had the orchid show a few months ago). Along with all of the really cool plants and gardens that they always have they also are featuring artwork for the Niki collection. The huge and ornate sculptures were pretty amazing.

Em's favorite Niki sculpture


The ever-hungry koi and irises


Another Niki sculpture and some cool glass floating things

Later that night, Em and I went to Bailey Chocolate bar to formally and finally fully celebrate her getting her new job. The place had a great atmosphere and the food/drinks were really good. Em had a couple mojito sorbet martinis to drink while I had a very crisp New Belgium Sunshine Wheat and a Young's Double Chocolate Stout (very intense and filling, but good). To munch on we had a sampling of cheeses (a camembert, a drunken goat cheese and one other) that came with assorted nuts, fruit and breads. For desert we had a delicious banana split that had Baileys ice cream and more chocolate.

Today Em and I both gave blood at our church after work and then, after dinner, we walked over to a local park. We had heard that there was a little park tucked away behind another church within walking distance but hadn't ever seen it or knew exactly how to get to it. Well, tonight we found it and were quite surprised. It was much larger than we anticipted, very close to our apartment, and featured among other things: tennis courts, basketball courts, a large pond with fountain and a bridge, two gazebos, well kept up gardening and a large playground. Not bad for being within a mile of our place. Too bad we just found. To go along with the other things, we also saw a ton of wildlife including a duck with ducklings, tons of large tad poles, tons of small fish, bunnies, and a large deer with one antler.

Twin Oaks Presbyterian through the trees

In house news .... there really isn't much news. We have our final walkthrough a week from today and in 10 days we close! Finally. Tonight I did clear up one thing related to taxes and insurance. Evidently I was actually thinking about it correctly, but thought I wasn't. With our lender, we pay slightly ahead on our taxes each month which are collected into an escrow account until November when they are paid. Rinse and repeat. Insurance is slightly different, however. At closing we will be paying for a whole year of insurance (through summer of '09) and each month we will be paying for the same month 1 year in the future. This is so that the lender makes sure that their collateral is properly insured. It stinks b/c its your money sitting in their account but once you get to 20% equity .... you can stop .... and if if you sell the house or pay it off .... you get your money back.

Not much else to blog about (not that most of this is very interesting to begin with). We did get a letter today saying we would be getting our economic stimulus check by the 6/7th of June .... why they didn't just send the check I will never know ... but at least it should be here soon. Also, since Em doesn't work during the summer she was given the option to get her final two months of pay up front, so this past pay day was a nice one :). Its a shame most of whats in our checking account at the moment will be leaving in 10 days .... but at least we finally get to start moving in :-)

All over the place

I am tired!

Partially b/c while my generic Zertec has been working well, its not fool proof.
Partially b/c its been a busy couple weeks.

Up until today it was all good stuff.

A couple weekends ago we went to Louisville for Nate's wedding. Its always great seeing the gang and hanging out, plus weddings are tons of fun (especially when your not worrying about anything). Surprisingly, I didn't take too many photos (I haven't been taking many lately anywhere) but here are a few of my favorites:

Captions and a few more pics after the jump...

Last Saturday Em had a very busy day involving detention (administering, not sentenced), going out with some of her Truman friends to Bailey's Chocolate Bar (she said it was amazing) and found time in between to play beautifully at church.

Well, church is an understatement. My aunt is a nun and a member of the School Sister's of Notre Dame. This past weekend was a large mass and celebration of their 175th year of existence as an order, and their 150th year in the St. Louis area. 150 years ago a small group came from Germany and started teaching in downtown St. Louis at the then St. John's church. Today, the Shrine of St. Joseph is a huge and remarkably restored church. Last weekend several members of the family and I took in mass with a whole gaggle (I am not sure what the term for a group of nuns is ;-) ) of nuns at St. Josephs where Emily played with the orchestra and decently sized choir and heard mass from Arch Bishop Raymond Burke. It was very interesting and inspiring sitting through mass with that many people who all REALLY believe and love their calling.

To round out the good stuff, Em finally had her official interview for the counseling position she is currently working in (she filled in for a woman on maternity leave this year) and from all accounts it went very well. I am confident and she is nervous. I bet I win out ;-)

Oh and we won our softball game!

Now for the bad ......

It took me 4 hours to get to work this morning b/c of car trouble. Actually, it wasn't really car trouble so much as it acted a little funny as I was leaving for work and the check engine light came on. I took it to Auto Zone but they couldn't read the diagnostic code so I drove out to the nearest dealership and waited 2 hours (1 before they could see it, 1 to diagnose) to ultimately find out that my fuel pump had a bad seal and that they would be ordering me a new one an fixing under warranty (thank God). So then after waiting for Enterprise to pick me up (yay free rental), waiting for my car and then driving clear across town to get to work, I finally got there 4 hours later. So for the time being I have a Mazda 6 and need to call in the morning to find out when my Sonata will be fixed (first problem of any kind).

Also today we got a letter stating that the funds from a check we deposited in JANUARY has in a round-about way, been un-deposited b/c of a banking error. From the little we could gather its b/c of a probably typo either when the check was issued or when it was processed but in either case we are left with a annoying mess to straighten out without anyone easily to blame, 4 months of interest in limbo and an account missing a decent chunk of $$$ that was there yesterday .... and through no fault of our own. Good thing is is that it won't effect us in any immediate financial way (it came out of our emergency fund) and won't effect the house buying, but its still a huge hassle.

Oh and it has rained a ton the last two days and I have tons of work to do. Interesting and fun work, but still work. Bring on the weekend!

Accepted!

We accepted their counter-offer tonight after viewing the house with our parents and the Realtor and are totally pumped!

We went by after work tonight and walked through the entire house a couple times, showing everyone what we loved about it, and trying to see if we could find any reason to delay (we found none).

A few more signatures and initials (not nearly as many as I would have accepted ... they are smart and don't redo the entire contract but just send you a short list of the lines changed and to what) and we formally accepted their offer. Now we just have to wait until closing (2 months) which is a bummer since we are so excited but that gives us plenty of time to do a ton of work in the meantime.

Firstly, we have the house and termite inspections being done Saturday (in the contract we had 10 days) and will see if there are any problems we didn't find and/or if there is anything we want fixed or replaced. Next, we need to finalize our final financing, and get appraisals, title searches, and surveys done (lender and title company handle these).

Other than that, we just need to start thinking about paint colors, researching a few of the minor changes we want to do (e.g. we want to replace the back exterior door with a new one, I am thinking about getting some type of security system, etc), figure out if we need to get a moving truck, buy a couple appliances (refrigerator, washer/dryer), and finally think about what kind of dog we might get :-D

Thats pretty much it until closing where we have to sign a TON more documents and pay any balance of closing costs (lender fees, title company fees, pro-rated taxes/insurance/other, etc). This shouldn't be anything given we put 1% down for our earnest money (applied then) and they agreed to pay 2k of the rest. Also, I need to look into how much a A/C might run (theres looks older but I am waiting for the inspection to figure out exactly) and how the home warranty exactly works (basically they paid ~$500 and if any of the major parts of the house have problems in the first year, we just pay a small deductible to get it fixed, nothing else).

On the financing front I am 95% sure we are going to just put 10% down and do the lender financed PMI. We have the cash on hand to put more down (not including our emergency fund or the money in our everyday checking acct ... thanks for the reminder Kooz) but I would like to have it on hand to make sure we have everything perfect .... and then probably apply the rest toward the house later in the year. I am thinking to do the financed PMI b/c I crunched the numbers and assuming we didn't pay anything extra each month (we probably will) it will take 11+ years to break even compared to the financed option (it would take aprox 7 years to get to 20%, after which no more PMI, but we would have been enough in the "hole" that it wouldn't be until 11 years have gone by that the financed option would start to be more expensive). Since our best guess is that we will be in the home around 7-12 years, this seems like the best option. (if anyone would like to know how I computed this, let me know and I will send you the Excel document)

Thats about it. Finally, here for your enjoyment are some of the dozens of photos I took tonight (not my best work, but they give a decent feel for the house, with the other people's decent furniture). More of the photos can be seen HERE.

Floods, Taxes, Easter, and Snow?

The past few days have been kinda crazy.

First was the flooding. The area of Missouri near St. Louis that we live in got a TON of rain in the last few weeks which culminated in the flooding of several smaller rivers near where we live. Luckily we live up on a large hill above the river valley, but its not that far. For those of you who came to our wedding in '05 ... the river that sits less than a mile from the church where we got married crested somewhere near 40' above flood stage (close, if not breaking, the previous record). A new town levee saved most of the businesses but not all and other parts of town near here had major flooding that caused a lot of damage. Close to home, much of the interstate I-44 was closed or limited to one lane for a day or two and highway 141 was completely closed in some areas. Pretty crazy stuff.

Saturday we had a huge meal to celebrate Em's Dad's belated birthday and afterward I finished our taxes. Stupid investments in companies that were bought this past year and earnings in multiple states made the work a bit confusing, but I think its all straightened away now. We will be getting a moderately sized refund which will go into the "buy-a-house-fund". ;-) (Oh and we got our first TD's of the "spring" which was delicious!)

Today was Easter. :-) The day consisted of going to church in the morning, followed by a "brunch" with Em's family (and a much longer than normal drive b/c the flooding closed the only direct route between locals), more food at my aunts/uncles down south and back home to visit with Em's sister before she goes back to school. A good day.

Oh, and to top things off .... this morning we woke up to snow coming down. The weathercasters didn't really mention that we were going to get snow, but there it was. It snowed heavily in small spurts all day ... with sunshine in between. Man I am ready for spring!

Flowers and more Flowers

The last few days have been all about the flowers. This past week I took roses to Em's work for Valentines day. The night of, we went out to dinner to Big Sky Cafe and had an amazing dinner. To read what he had to eat, click here.

Today was my Mom's birthday; Happy Birthday Mom! I spent the day with my parents and we took in the Missouri Botanical Garden's annual Orchid Show which was pretty amazing. The shear number of different types of orchids they packed into that green house was amazing. How they can be so similar to each other and different than your average local flower ... and yet unique was pretty cool to see. Some of my MANY photos are below and more are on my Picasa "STL" album with the same description...

I am hoping to take pictures frequently at the botanical gardens this spring and summer. They have some amazing collections there. Also, they have a few other locations around STL that have various exhibits that are pretty neat.

Not much else happened in the last few days besides some good times with our friends and family and the normal work stuff. Em gets President's day off, but not I. I will be at work as usual ;-)