Roller-coaster

Its been a roller coaster couple weeks.

Two weeks ago Em's grandfather passed away. It has been a hard time since then but luckily Em's family was able to all be together and through telling some crazy stories and finding tons of old photos were able to celebrate Peter's life instead of just mourning his death.

............

On some more cheerful notes, Em and I were able to spend a lot of time with her family and ate WAY too much food (if you order food for 50, only 30 end up being there, and the food could have fed 70, you have leftovers).

While Em's brother was in town he was the straw that broke the camel carrying the big screen TV's back ... meaning I finally broke down and got a really nice TV to go with our nice furniture downstairs. Circuit City had a great deal on a 46" Toshiba which when added to their 3-years free financing offer meant I almost had to buy :-). So far I love it and just need to figure out which HD service I am going to get now.

This past week I started work on a new project at Asychrony. We are working on designing and developing a large government organization's "to-be" Enterprise Architecture. I will admit its not work I ever thought I would be doing and I was a fair bit apprehensive at first since its no coding but the project has grown on me a bit. Its an amazing amount of work that our company is doing and will be changing a lot of things. Since me and another guy will only be helping out for about 4 weeks, we have been tasked with designing the metrics with which the next phase of work will evaluated. Not the normal stuff I do day to day and not something I want to make a career of but an interesting month of work.

Yesterday Em and I went out to the St. Louis Art Fair with some friends and had a good time taking in the art work and food from all around St. Louis and the country. Some of the artwork was downright amazing (and equally priced) and others made scratch my head. Unfortunately we didn't pick up anything but I did get re-inspired to do more photography ... if only I could find the time.

Tonight we ate well again. Yesterday we took Em's parents and grandma out to the newest Whole Foods Market and picked up a few things for tonight's dinner. You can read the details of the $31/lb cheese and Dill Marinated Lamb Shish-Kabobs over at my other blog.

Things have been pretty normal otherwise. Jolie is doing well although she is developing a cute/annoying habit of moving random peices of our clothing around the house when we are gone all day. Most of the time its just a sock one of us left out and she carried over to where she was. However, the other day it was a sandle and then a pair of shorts. None are chewed or torn, just moved. Also, and I will admit this is completely my fault, she is getting a little to comfortable on the couch with us. Yes, I am a big softy and let her up on the couch with me which she completely enjoyed. :-)

Static Maps, Euler, and Synergy

I have posted three entries on my tech blog
in the past few weeks.
Check them out here.

Ludo - Love Me Dead

I have had this stuck in my head ALL night. Hopefully, if I watch it enough times it will go away ... that or make me go nuts ... lets hope for the first one.

Ludo - "Love Me Dead"
(youtube video)

Food Post

I also posted on my food blog
(wouldn't it be great if I could get myself to consistently do this instead of in big spurts? ;-) )

Lots of stuff

Em has been bugging me for a week or so now to post ..... ;-)

Since the last post we have been keeping busy.

On the bad side, several members of both of our families have had medical issues in the past few weeks. As it stands right now everyone is ok or doing better which is a good thing.

Even Jolie wasn't able to get past the last few weeks without seeing a doctor ....she has had three seperate "minor/treatable" issues since we got her. First was an ear infection (lab + shar pei ears = problem area). Next was a cut on her lip where she bit herself chasing a squirel. Finally, she is currently having some gland issues which we are treating. :-(

As far as the good stuff ....

Em started up at work again and has had some good, unussual and terrible parents to deal with. I have been plugging away at work also; this is the last week of our current project so we are trying to clean up all of the loose ends. In a call this past week with our client, we were informed that a new listing had gone up on their site that we had to check out. This place is CRAZY. If it weren't for the fact that its listed at 5.5 million, I would so think about buying it just to check it out. Who needs drugs if you live in a place like this?

A week or so ago I had to call Charter (or cable company) up to dispute some charges on our bill and while I was on the phone I mentioned a very random ad I saw on the TV a few days prior saying that if new or current customers called up they could get HBO+Cinemax / Showtime + XXX / some other premium channel free until the end of hte year. Well, it worked and now we have HBO and Cinemax free until next August (the ad said until Jan, but the women told me 12 months, so I didn't complain). I would never pay extra for the channels, but for free they are great!

A while back Em finally found Mariokart at a Target while she was picking up some other stuff so she bought it for me. I will post/send my friend code out if anyone who reads this still plays. Its a pretty cool game and I am enjoying working my way through all of the levels. Toad for the win!

Last week was Em's and my 3 year aniversary. Wow, I still can't believe its been that long already. To celebrate we went out to a nice dinner at the Top of the Riverfront. Its a local restaurant downtown at the very top of the Millenium hotel. The main feature is that the restaurant is circular and the whole thing rotates slowly so you get some amazing views. The views were great and the food was good. Plus, they were having a special that week with 24 other restaurants downtown where you could get a 3 course meal at any of them for $25. :-)

Finally, my father in law pointed me to a piece of legislation I had missed in the last few months. It seems that will one of the economic/housing bills passed this year to attempt to shore up the economy, was a provision for a federal "tax-credit" for first time home buyers who purchase their first home between April of this year and sometime in the spring/summer of next year. I still haven't fully researched it, but from what I have read, it isn't so much a tax-credit as an interest free tax-loan. Basically if you purchased your home this year you can get up to 10% of your home's purchase price up to $7500 as a tax credit on your '08 taxes (below the line, meaning straight savings). The catch is that you have to pay this money back. Thats right, no free ride here. Basically, a year after you get the credit you start paying it back in the form of $500 extra on your taxes each year for the next 15 years. If you sell your house before hand, you pay all of it back that year out of your procedes. If you die, its forgiven. So, basically its an interest free loan with really slow pay-back terms. Will this help the economy? I don't know. Will I gladly accept the money and use it to either A) make the final push past 20% on the house so that I don't pay PMI any more or B) buy a TV and laptop. I haven't decided but either way it should be good. :-)

Great baseball seats

Last night Em and I took in the Cards game with some of the best seats I have ever had for a professional sports match. A relative of Em's owns his own small company and occasionally gets box seats for people at work and clients. Somehow, I never got the exact story, he won through a raffle luxury box seats for last nights game on short notice and invited Em and I along with a couple other family members and coworkers to the game.

Despite them losing in extra-innings and us leaving just before the end b/c Jolie was home alone and we wanted to let her out .... they were great seats.

Private box behind home plate, air conditioned with a small bar (stocked fridge of beer, some liqueur, soda, etc), private bathroom, couches, flat panel TV, hot dog/chicken/snack/nacho buffet, dessert cart including 10+ types of cakes and pie, plus two rows of cushioned outdoor seats w/ another tv outside and tables. Not too shabby. :-)

** Jolie is doing well. No problems to report, just a happy dog that is loving chasing the squirrels around the yard and who somehow (according to Em) managed to launch herself up onto the retaining wall which is about 2.5 times her height cleanly. :-)

Removed pests, painted room, and A DOG!

First the "less" exciting stuff ....

This past week Em took it upon herself to paint our office "Harvest Gold" and it looks great. The racing flags (it was a nursery before) and offwhite color just weren't doing it for us. Now the place looks great in a golden color that complements the furniture and looks very nice (great job babe).

original paint job


primed


new color making the windows and the molding stand out

Two great finds while getting supplies were the roller that had an extend-able handle that was only 1 dollar more than the one that didn't and the paint tray with the teflon coating ($1-$2 more) was great b/c there was no cleanup. Just let it dry until the next day and peal the paint right off in one big chunk.

Yesterday, with Em doing most of the work, we managed to remove all of the poison ivy we could find in our back yard. After wo days of spraying it with Roundup Heavy Brush Remover, I soaked down the area heavily to loosen the soil and then Em, fully clothed despite the heat and wearing double layers of gloves pulled it up along with the other ivy we don't like and cleaned the place up. So far no itching and now we can more easily manage the problem if it comes back (anything coming over the fence gets sprayed).

.....

Now for the big news ... we got a DOG! :-) Her name is Jolie (her original name, think Angelina) and she is an almost 3 year-old fawn shar-pei and labrador mix. Em had seen her online and this morning we went to the MO Humane Society and picked her up. She has a great temperment (hasn't barked, niped or groweled yet) and while the other dogs were bouncing all around she was fairly calm and is affectionate to anyone who is willing to pet her. I have been trying to do all of the tips that I have read online and seen on The Dog Wisperer and things are going well. She is still getting adjusted to the house but no problems yet. Only semi-problem so far is that she isn't seeming too hungry, but that will change in time.

The previous owners had adopted her but didn't have any time to spend with her. On their form they put that she wasn't totally house trained b/c she had a few accidents ... but it also said that she was in a crate for most of most days .. :-(. The guy who was taking care of her at the shelter said that she was his favorite and had never had an accident. [crossing our fingers]

I will post more pics when I get some better ones but these will have to do for now. :-)