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Journal Entry: February 2, 2009

And here’s another week-in-one.

Last Monday I got to work right on time (which is something of a rarity on Mondays). On the drive in I heard a brief weather report on the radio, and I mostly zoned it out until I heard, “…and then tomorrow afternoon even more snow and ice…” and that made me wonder what exactly I’d missed.

A couple hours later, I found out, because I heard conversations over the cubicle wall concerning all the accidents that were occurring out on the roads. Hefner Parkway was closed down entirely — the highway I take for ten miles to and from work — and Tinker Air Force Base was closing down so we would be next. That sort of thing.

They did let us leave early, but I had to take back roads to get home (since Hefner Parkway was closed) and it took me over an hour. I made it home unscathed, but I passed nine accidents on the drive — three of which I watched happen.

I hate icy conditions.

Anyway, I made it home and curled up on the couch and then didn’t leave the house for two days. Tuesday was a snow day at work, so I got to stay home with AB and T–. T– suggested we make a blanket-tent for AB, and followed that up with, “but I’m no engineer,” so I got the hint that she wanted something big and fancy. I did the best I could (and it’s photo-documented on her blog, which you probably read a week ago).

In addition to that my next hard drives came in for my computer, but one of them was DoA. I spent most of the afternoon and evening figuring that out, then getting the other one up and running. I also majorly rearranged our entertainment center to make room for the computer up there.

Wednesday we were offered a three hour late start because the ice was hanging around. I seriously considered taking the day off anyway, but I ended up going in and had a pretty productive day. Driving wasn’t too bad by 10 Wednesday morning, and by the time I drove home there was nothing but slush on the roads. We had dinner with D– and K– and N– at El Chico, then K– and N– came over to play some Rock Band.

Thursday I had another late start (although that one came out of my vacation time), and another good day at work. Then I spent most of the evening trying to figure out how to get my USB remote control to work on XP, and finally ordered a new one that would.

Friday…we got started. It was my RDO, and I took the opportunity to sleep in. Then I did some work on the computer (financial stuff, mainly) before we went to lunch at P F Chang’s. T– had been craving it, and I’m always a fan.

After lunch AB went down for a nap and I helped T– rearrange some furniture in the living room. Then I spent a couple hours playing WoW while she boxed up all the dishes in the cabinets above the sink. Sometime after 6, her brother Matt and his whole family showed up (wife and three kids).

For as long as we’ve lived in this house, T– has wanted a window between the kitchen and the living room. It’s a big blank wall on the living room side, but a relatively narrow space between the cabinets in the kitchen. So we decided it would make the most sense to rip out the cabinets (or, actually, delicately detach them, so they could be preserved for later use), and just make a big window.

Unfortunately, that meant relocating a couple electrical outlets and a couple light switches, not to mention a 1 1/2-inch copper vent pipe that ran from our kitchen sink up through the roof….

So, yeah, it was no small task. As he did when he showed up to help us with the Tulsa house almost a year ago, Matt showed up, spent a few minutes standing back and looking at the project, then grabbed a hammer and started busting things.

We got a ton done Friday night. We took down the decorative trim above the sink (undamaged, so it could be replaced afterward), then took out the two cabinets (which took most of two hours), and wrapped up by cutting a long rectangle out of the drywall on the kitchen side between two studs. It was more ceremonial than anything else, just getting started. We all turned in around 11:00, but I didn’t get to sleep until 2:00 or so. I ended up playing WoW instead, and got my two main characters to 80, so yay.

Saturday morning I woke to the sound of a drywall saw, around 9:00. I took my time getting ready, then finally headed to the kitchen to find a box of donuts on the table (yay Krispy Kreme!), and the whole window cut out of the drywall on the kitchen side. We had four studs to remove, and now the electrical and plumbing issues were more clearly visible.

I helped Matt cut out the other side of the window, sawing through the drywall in the living room (and making an unholy mess in the process). Then we made a shopping list and headed to Lowe’s for two hours before grabbing lunch (which was my call, and a terrible mistake).

Anyway, while we were at lunch I called K– and asked him to come over and help us with the wiring, and he graciously agreed (which probably saved us two to three hours of trial and error, and quite possibly some major damage to my house’s wiring). Then we took out the copper pipe, capped it above the sink (and it’s everyone’s opinion that that won’t cause major plumbing problems in the future), and then got to work cutting through the studs. Matt had a circular saw to start them, but it barely got halfway through, and we have to do the other two inches through forty-year-old timber with a handsaw in a confined space. It was exhausting. Matt and I traded off, him doing all of the right-handed cutting, and me doing some of the left-handed work.

We finally got the last stud out just as K– showed up. He got to work trying to figure out just what was going on within that wall (electrically-speaking), and it turns out it was nuts. But whatever, that’s why we got K– there. I discovered I couldn’t find my caulking gun, so I had to make a run to B–‘s place to borrow theirs. When I got back, K– was ready to start running wiring.

I helped him run wire, fishing it through old holes bored through the studs, while Matt cut wood and got started framing in the window. He couldn’t do a lot with Kris and me working there, though, so he got a forced break for an hour or so.

Partway through all this T– and Amy ran up to Little Caesar’s and brought back pizza for dinner, so we took a break to eat. After that K– put in another hour or so, which was enough to get the new junction box in, as well as the new outlets and switches fully installed. He left it to me to connect the switches to the garbage disposal and dishwashed under the sink, and to the new pendants lights T– had gotten to go over the sink. I got it all done except for the garbage disposal, while Matt rushed to get back to work putting in the window.

Before he could finish that, though, we had some aesthetic work to do. Whoever prepped the house to sell before we bought it, decided to put on a thick layer of texturing over every inch of exposed drywall to hide any flaws or damage. It mostly worked, but when we pulled the cabinets down we revealed huge swathes of the wall that were untextured (and, in the process of removal, flawed and damaged). There was also more than a little damage done to the drywall around the window, that had to be patched before we could put the window’s trim up.

So we got to work patching and taping and scraping mud, and then had to wait hours for the mud to dry before we could do a second coat. Matt did all he could Saturday night, which essentially meant getting the entire window done except for the trim — that is to say, a header installed behind the drywall above the window, because it’s a load-bearing wall, two extra 2×6 supports in the wall below, the base plate (which is basically a shelf), two upright 2x4s to support the header (which had to be covered with 2″x36″ stips of drywall that T– and I had to carve out of the scrap at 11:00 at night), and then 1/4-inch thick doorjamb to hide the uprights and the header. All of it, of course, precision cut to fit, to prevent problems down the road.

We got done at midnight. Around 11:30 Matt started wondering aloud what there might be around to eat, and T– ended up making a chocolate cake, which we all stood around eating while we admired Matt’s handiwork as Saturday became Sunday. It was a little bit silly, but made perfect sense at the time.

That was it for the night. We couldn’t do any more until the drywall joint compound was dry, so we went to bed.

So Sunday morning I woke up to the sound of a sander. T– and Matt made an early run to Lowe’s to pick up some forgotten things, and then we all got to work on the walls, sanding the seams, applying a second coat of mud, and then T– and Amy tried out some spray-on wall texture we’d found at Lowe’s. It wasn’t a perfect match for whatever they’d done to our wall, but it was close enough (and, most importantly, it broke up the smooth lines of the drywall tape, which stood out like a sore thumb).

We also drew Matt off on two side projects (although I ended up taking care of one). The first was an old dining chair that AB had broken by toppling it over, nearly a year ago. When it had landed, the right-side upright supporting the back of the chair had split, and it’s been sitting unused in a corner ever since. We showed it to Matt and he filled the split with carpenter’s glue, put in a well-placed wood screw to hold it together, and then clamped it down to dry for the rest of the day.

Then there was an old in-wall space heater in the bathroom that has never worked (and was distgustingly worn out). I pulled it out of the wall and found it mounted in a big sheet-metal box. I capped off the wires, ripped the box out of the wall, then cut a sheet of drywall off our scrap to fill the hole. Then we just taped it, mudded it, and painted it over with the same paint they’d used on all the walls in our house.

Luckily, there was plenty of that. They used a beigey off-white on all the walls, and a flat white on all the woodwork in the house, and there was about half a gallon of white leftover and probably two gallons (in a five-gallon drum) of the off-white. During the morning, once the drywall mud was dried, we pulled out all our leftover paint and got to work painting where it was needed so Matt could finally put up the trim.

By eleven we knew of a couple things they had forgotten at their eight o’clock Lowe’s run, so I went to pick up what we still needed and got some soda and chips for lunch while I was out. Then I got back around noon to find K– and N– there, admiring our handiwork. I also took everyone’s order and placed a call for some Buffalo Wild Wings, which are popular with Matt and his family. So at noon I was back out on the road again, down to Northwest Expressway to pick up the wing, and then I had to drive the fifteen minutes back home with that delicious odor strong in the air. It’s amazing any of the food made it back to our house.

Anyway, that was lunch, and afterward Matt started putting up the window trim. He also tacked together the base of a new peninsula bar (another whole project), and T– got started painting it, so he could put the cabinets on it when he was done with the trim.

Finishing up the trim actually took until about 4:00, and he had a midnight shift to work at the end of his two-and-a-half-hour drive home, but he hates leaving a job unfinished, so he was scurrying to finish everything he could. While his family started packing up absolutely everything they could (including tons of tools he’d brought to use over the weekend), he mounted the cabinets on the base, secured them down (with considerable effort to keep them perfectly square), then put on a front plate and framed in an interior cubby in the wasted space between the cabinet backs (you’ll have to see it, probably, for that to make any sense). Then, with his frustration clear on his face, he finally had to give up on finishing the countertop. It was six by the time he left, and he took a few minutes to tell us what we would have to do to finish it off.

I was in a little bit of a hurry myself, because while we were frantically trying to put together some old cabinets, the rest of the nation was enthusiastically looking forward to the freaking Super Bowl. K– and N– were throwing a watch party at their house, and I didn’t want to miss it — but of course I had to do everything I could to help out while we had Matt around. T– had really wanted to go to the party, too, but as soon as Matt left she crashed.

Me, I got cleaned up in a hurry and sped up to Edmond. The game was phenomenal. B– and E– were there for a couple hours, and I got to grill B– about a programming project I’m doing for him and I got to grill E– about my novel, which she recently read. Then their daughter’s bedtime rolled around so they had to leave, and I finally watched some football.

The game ended (for us) around 10:00, and I went home to watch the special episode of The Office with T–. We also watched some SNL, and then finally gave up and went to bed.

While I was gone, T– had done some painting above the sink and on the new window shelf, but there’s still a lot of painting to do. That’s something T– and I know how to do well, so we didn’t waste any time on it while Matt was around. Now we have a week or two of patching and sanding and painting before it’s really finished, but it already looks awesome.

Watch T–‘s blog for pictures. She took a bunch, before and during and after, and I know she intends to do a blog post when she can find the time. She’s looking at a really busy week even without the painting, though, so I don’t know how soon it’ll happen.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: January 26, 2009

Bah, another long recap.

Last Tuesday morning while I was at work, T– called me to tell me our refrigerator wasn’t working. She’d opened the freezer and found condensation on the ice bucket. She picked up some dry ice during the day, and the refrigerator finally started going again, but we’d been meaning to get a new one for a while (although up until then it had been for convenience reasons, not need).

So Tuesday night we went out refrigerator shopping while D– watched AB. We found one we liked at Lowe’s, but they didn’t have it in stock. We shopped until 8-ish, then took some dinner home to D–, and watched some TV while I tried (unsuccessfully) to find some user reviews of the model we’d picked out.

Then Wednesday morning, while I was at work, T– called to tell me she’d gone to another Lowe’s in town, and they had one in stock, and they said they could deliver the following day. After work Wednesday, we met D– and K– and N–, as well as my little sister and her family, at Qdoba for some burritos. Good stuff. Then D– dropped me off at home, and I spent the rest of the evening converting my HTPC from Boxee to XBMC. (If that sentence doesn’t already make sense to you, you wouldn’t be interested in the explanation, either.)

Thursday morning while I was at work, T– called to tell me the delivery guys had brought the fridge, but they weren’t able to connect the water supply for the icemaker, because the connector on the end of our supply line was the wrong size. Bah. Then we intended to go to the gym after work, but we didn’t. Instead we ordered some pizza from Pizza Hut, which was fabulous. And I finished Grizzly Hills with my Shaman.

Friday morning while I was at work, T–called to tell me the plumber had come by to connect our fridge, and it was going to cost us $100. That’s a chunk of change for a quarter-inch connector on a copper pipe, but whatever. It’s done and that’s what matters.

We had D– and K– and N– (along with N–‘s parents) over for dinner Friday night, and T– made chili. It was fantastic, and we only ate about half of the batch she made up, so I’ve got plenty of leftovers. Yay! We watched some silly videos on YouTube, I tried to show off my new XBMC plugin to D– and K– (and failed, because XBMC doesn’t like Vista), and then K– and N– headed home.

D– hung around and we played WoW while T– watched TV, then right around the time I should have gone to bed, D– and I decided to watch Pineapple Express. Funny stuff. Better writing than Half Baked, but lacking the whimsy. Still, an excellent flick if you think stoners and F-bombs are hilarious.

Saturday morning I got up in time to take AB to the gym, while T– stayed home to get the house ready for a baby shower for N–. I worked out for about an hour, then picked up some lunch on the way home. After that I sat on the couch and played WoW while all of N–‘s friends came over to help T– set up for the party. Eventually there were just too many women in the house, though, and I finally bolted.

I stayed at D–‘s place for a couple hours, and when T– called me to come home I found all the guests gone and the house already completely cleaned up. That was unexpected. T–‘s parents were there, though (that was expected), and we went out to dinner at Ole, my current favorite Mexican place for the way they prepare their complimentary salsa and queso.

After dinner we introduced T–‘s parents to a couple of our favorite TV shows (Leverage and Big Bang Theory), and then I stayed up late playing WoW while the rest of them retired early. I finished Grizzly Hills with my Death Knight.

Sunday morning I had a goofy dream, and when I woke up I spent some time trying to figure out how to turn it into a story, and in the process came up with a story idea entirely unlike the dream (except that it’s also goofy). I’ve always wanted to do something in an Oscar Wilde style, and I think this could be just the project for that.

Anyway, after church we had leftover chili for lunch, then I stayed at home with AB during her nap while T– and her parents went shopping. They got back in time to watch another episode of Leverage before heading home to Wichita.

Then I spent the evening on the computer, and T– watched some TV and did some painting. It was a relaxing end to a pretty packed weekend.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: January 20, 2008

Back from a long weekend and, as always, hating to be at work.

Not that there’s anything to complain about with regard to my job. I just hate having to work. Call it a character flaw.

Friday was my Regular Day Off, so I stayed up late Thursday night playing WoW, slept in on Thursday, then went to IHOP for brunch with T–. After that we ran by Petsmart to pick up a new litter box for the cats, and spent some significant amount of time there just letting AB marvel at all the captive animals. She went wild.

Then in the evening we went to County Line Barbecue with D– for dinner, grabbed some flavored Rum on the way home, and played a little Rock Band before we turned on Tropic Thunder. T– didn’t exactly hate it, but it wasn’t enough to keep her up past 11:00, either. I made it to the end, and then some. I was up until 2-ish playing WoW.

Saturday morning T– went to a baby shower for N– at church (which is well-documented and beautifully-illustrated on N–‘s blog), and left me home alone. I did a little project for her (took down a pantry door and painted over the exposed wood from the hinges), and of course played some WoW. We had a pretty quiet afternoon, and then around 5:30 T– headed to her friend Rebecca’s to do some scrapbooking in the evening. I kept AB.

D– came over to help out, and brought the same pizza that had resulted in catastrophic emissions from AB the last time we’d tried the same setup, so I ran to McDonalds to get her a Happy Meal. I expected her to object, since we were eating the pizza right in front of her, but she just loves Happy Meals too much to have mustered any real resentment.

We tried to Cars and Lion King, and finally settled on hooking up the drums for Rock Band and AB pounded away until I put her to bed. After that, it was a fairly quiet night. Instead of jumping into WoW once AB was dealt with, I figured out how to recover the music from T–‘s iPod and spent the rest of the night trying to get it relabeled. Without even realizing it, I stayed up until 2:00 again working on that.

So Sunday morning I slept through church. T– and I took AB to Mazzio’s for lunch, and she got her pizza after all. She also counted up to six, with a little coaching. She can do her ABCs up to “G,” too, if she doesn’t know we’re listening. She keeps going after that, but it’s mostly gibberish.

Then Sunday night I intended to go to small groups, but I spent the afternoon feeling incredibly sick. I laid down to take a nap around 3:30, hoping I’d feel better after an hour, but T– woke me up to tell me she was leaving and talked me into staying in bed.

I got up about an hour later feeling better, and spent the rest of the evening on the computer, working on various projects.

Then yesterday I had off for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. We ran by N–‘s in the morning to check out her newly-appointed nursery and make a mess of her coffee table trinkets, then grabbed some barbecue from Steve’s Rib and took it home for lunch. Not a lot of variety in our meals this weekend, but a lot of deliciousness!

When AB went down for a nap, I got out some more paint and put a new coat on the fireplace mantel, which was showing some nasty signs of wear and tear. Luckily AB took a long nap, so all the paint was dry by the time she got up.

Then in the evening T– made some steaks for dinner, and we watched a couple new shows plus the first few episodes of season one of Psych. It was fun, and I got to sleep early enough that I was on time for work this morning, quite in spite of the holiday.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: January 15, 2009

I had a busy lunch break yesterday. Called Sprint, TiVo, Blockbuster, Pikepass, and AAA Fire & Casualty Insurance, mostly doing account maintenance. I also picked up some text messages for my cell phone, so I can send and receive without worrying how much it’s costing me.

After work we met D– and K– and N–, along with N–‘s mom and step-dad at Taco Cabana. We also had my niece Sophy, who T– was babysitting for the night, so it was quite a crowd.

Dinner was fun, then afterward K– and D– and I went home to play Rock Band while the rest went a-churching. I also showed off my new media center setup (it’s some slick software on a cheap computer), which is pretty sweet.

We played through about half the No Doubt songs that D– had gotten. I’m working on transitioning to Lefty mode, which is surprisingly challenging. The biggest problem I have is sight-reading. There’s all these standard patterns that I’ve memorized on normal mode, and they look just enough different reversed that I can’t automatically recognize them anymore. So I’m stuck thinking through every single beat again, like when I first started playing.

There’s a few things I was doing wrong, that I can see clearly now with this transition, though. So that’s good. I just need to get back up to speed.

Once T– got home from church K– went home (picked up by N–), and D– headed to his place to make a raid. T– and I watched an old episode of Numb3rs through Boxee’s internet browser (CBS now has a well-stocked web channel, along with Comedy Central and everybody on Hulu). Meanwhile I played some WoW, messed with remote settings, and subscribed to some shows on Hulu. It was fun.

And over too soon. I went to bed around 11:30, and had trouble getting up this morning. Luckily tomorrow’s RDO and Monday’s a Federal Holiday. I was this close to taking a day of vacation today, and making it a five-day weekend, but I gave in at the last minute. Four days should be good enough.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: January 14, 2009

Let’s see…what did I miss?

Friday night of last week we were invited to B– and E–‘s place for dinner and a movie, with commentary. T– and AB and I went, as well as D– and K– and N–. We had barbecue and chips and dip, and watched Star Wars Episode 3 with the Rifftrax audio from the guys who did MST3K. After that, T– took AB home, but I hung around to watch Top Gun get made fun of. It was awesome.

Saturday morning T– and I went to the gym, and then I spent the rest of the day playing WoW.

Sunday morning T– and I went to church, and then I spent the rest of the day playing WoW.

Oh! I also received my new Windows Media Center Extender Remote from NewEgg, which is an IR remote plus a receiver that plugs into the computer through USB. All I really wanted was the receiver. I spent much of the last five days in frustration, trying to figure out how to make the computer respond to keypresses, and finally figured it out last night. I got home from work, took a short nap, and then basically spent the rest of the night setting up the remote. It was irritating, but now it’s awesome.

Oddly enough, the software that was crucial to making it work is the same program I aggressively learned a couple months ago to let me run multiple instances of WoW at once (namely, AutoHotKey). If I hadn’t done that, I still wouldn’t have a clue how to get Windows to recognize and respond to the IR signals.

So that’s awesome.

I skipped Monday night, but and you’d be safe guessing it mostly consisted of me playing WoW, but I actually had a brief business meeting right after work (with D– and a coworker at The Dugout, discussing a programming project), and then spent an hour playing Rock Band with T– and AB. Then I spent the rest of the evening playing WoW.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: January 9, 2009

Wednesday night we had dinner at Subway with my little sister’s family, and D–. Much of the talk was of a “Biggest Loser”-style contest Dad has recommended for our family. We’re all participating, as far as I know. We’ll see how that goes.

Afterward, T– took AB to church and D– dropped me off at home. I did some work on the computer and played some WoW. When T– got home from church, she watched some TV, and then we went to bed. Quiet night.

Last night…not so much. T– was in Tulsa for work yesterday, so when I got off work I had to drive out to the babysitter’s place to get AB. She probably hadn’t taken a nap all day, because she was cranky in the car, and finally fell asleep as we got home. I put her down for a short nap.

She woke up 45 minutes later, just as I was about to get her. Then D– went with us over to K– and N–‘s to watch the big game. N– made burgers and celebratory OU cupcakes (both of which were awesome), and then we watched the game (which wasn’t).

T– got in around 7:30. She came straight from work to K– and N–‘s place, and after about an hour she took AB home so both of them could get some rest.

I could say more, but I don’t want to talk about it.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: January 7, 2009

Monday’s writing project never saw another word, after that blog post. I haven’t given up on it yet, but I don’t see myself making much progress at all before Friday, which means I’ll have a hell of a lot of catching up to do.

On a positive note, I did go to the gym after work on Monday. T– talked me into it, and we spent a little over an hour there. AB is finally able to recognize the gym and knows what to expect when we get there (which is to say, other kids and lots of toys). Monday night she didn’t want to leave when we were done.

On the way home, we stopped by my little sister’s place to pick up T–‘s new party game and my leftover Dan Dan Noodles (it’s a weird story how they got to be there), and learned that the Dan Dan Noodles were no longer there. I bore no ill will toward whichever Iverson ate them, because who could possibly resist that siren call for four days? But I did find myself mourning the loss. So instead of going home, we placed a To Go order at P F Chang’s, and picked up six meals’ worth of food for the two of us. I ate two of them Monday night, and set the other two aside for lunches this week.

It was, needless to say, a silly and expensive decision, but one I made with gusto.

After dinner, T– and I got all caught up on Leverage. The first seven episodes are all as good as the pilot, so if you decide to try it out and you like the pilot, you’ll like the rest. If you hate it, you can save yourself some time and skip the rest. We liked it.

Yesterday was a busy one at work, and afterward I got a haircut before I went home. When I finally got home, T– and D– were waiting on me to have dinner. T– tried out a new cube steak recipe she found, and she’s excited about trying a couple more new recipes soon. That’s a hobby we all benefit from.

D– and I spent some time talking about iPhone applications we could write to make ourselves rich, and may have come up with a decent plan or two. We’ll see. I’m not looking forward to learning a new API (especially the GUI aspect of it), but there is a real potential for financial reward, and I’ve never dealt with that before in any of my hobbies. I’m not sure I know how to.

I also spent some time getting my computer connected to the TV, and ironing out little problems. It was a busy night of lots of little tasks, so it felt too-short and swiftly-passing, but I think in the end I got a lot accomplished.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: January 5, 2009

I haven’t posted since before Christmas, and that’s down to laziness and forgetfulness more than anything else.

Christmas, we spent in Wichita with T–‘s family. I took along a laptop, and whatever time I didn’t spend on other events, I spent either sleeping or playing WoW. You can take that for granted, and I won’t bother to spell it out.

We got in Wednesday, Christmas Eve, and spent a couple hours discussing Gods Tomorrow. T–‘s parents had been reading it aloud together, and they’d made a point to finish it before we got there to visit. So I brought our stuff in and Karla made us up some sandwiches for lunch and then we sat around the table and talked about my book. And really for the rest of the afternoon, during pretty much any lull in the conversation, I’d pull out some other question about their opinion on this or that, and they were always happy to answer. I got some fantastic feedback from them, as well as a markup. I told them I’d decided to make Gods Tomorrow my NaNoWriMo project for the indefinite future, so I would work on one every year. As we were leaving Sunday, Karla said, “Do we really have to wait until November to read the next one?” That warmed my heart.

But back to Christmas Eve. Wednesday night, T–‘s family (40-something guests, if I remember right) all gathered at her mom’s house, and we had a big fancy dinner, then we went downstairs and gathered around the tree for a gift exchange. Before too late, everyone headed home so the kids could get in bed before Santa came.

Then Christmas was a pretty quiet day, with just the five of us for the most part. Her brother Matt brought his family and her sister Nicki brought her family for dinner (so only about 12 of us Thursday night), and then we watched The Dark Knight late into the night.

Friday I was left home alone for most of the morning, while T– and her parents took AB out shopping the after-Christmas sales. They came back after lunch, then went out again while AB took a nap. When they got back, we all went over to D–‘s mom’s house for a big dinner.

She invited both of the Vickis (our friends from high school), with their husbands, and Kali (another friend from high school), so we had 12 at dinner again that night. It was some fantastic beef brisket, and I had to fight AB for whatever was on my plate. She finally went to her mom when T– got ice cream for dessert, so I took the opportunity to grab a third helping of brisket for me, and I delighted in it.

Afterward, D– and I went to see The Spirit at a late showing, and I heartilly recommend it. It’s weird. Absolutely weird. As weird a movie as you’ve ever seen, in parts. It has a feel very similar to Sin City, but it’s adventuresome and playful where Sin City is dark and brutal. Or, to put it another way, The Spirit is to Sin City as Iron Man is to The Dark Knight. So there you go.

Saturday I don’t much remember. Just lots and lots of WoW, I guess. I know T– and her parents went to a museum downtown while I watched AB, but that’s all I really remember. Then Sunday morning we headed home when her parents headed to church.

That put me home in time to watch the Cowboys’ devastating loss to the Eagles. Damn.

After that we had dinner with the Austins, who hadn’t seen the game yet, and I didn’t have the compassion to warn them to skip it. Instead, I just fought to hide the disappointment from them. That was made easier by the fact that, after watching the whole fourth quarter, I was completely dead inside.

The week after Christmas was a weird one at work. I worked three days, and it was pretty quiet around the office. I discovered a questing guide for the new zones in WoW, by one of my favorite guide writers, and I decided to start entering that into my TourGuide Addon format, which is something of a huge project (I’m guessing forty to fifty hours, total, give or take ten). It’s work I can do in small chunks, though, and pretty rewarding.

In addition to that, I’m also still working on my financial software, and K– got me working on our media library software again, too — a project I haven’t touched in a year and a half. I’m crazy busy.

So then Wednesday night rolls around, and my little sister had invited us all to her place for New Years Eve. Mom and Dad came in for that, too, and we all got together over there. We had some delicious snacks and drinks, and rocked out on Jeff’s new XBox. D– and I left around 9:30 to bring AB home, with Dad and T– caught up in a 7-song set. For our part, we greeted the new year in Northrend.

Thursday I was off work, of course, and Mom and Dad spent it with us. We had lunch with D– and K– and N– at P. F. Chang’s, then Dad and I spent the afternoon on our laptops while Mom and T– went out shopping. They brought back fixins for chili, and we took a big pot of it over to my little sister’s place for dinner. K– and N– came for that, too, and then afterward we played Partini, a new party game T– had picked up. It was her misfortune that Jeff’s family is about as enthusiastic about party games as I am. So it wasn’t much of a success, but I’m sure when she finds some fun people to play it with, it will excell.

We got home late-ish, and Friday I had to work. I tarried long enough at the house for my parents to wake up so I could say bye to them, then went in to the office. I expected to be the only one there, but over the course of the morning about half of my team showed up. Still, nobody got too much accomplished.

Saturday, T–‘s friend Rebecca took her out for a morning at the spa, as a Christmas present, and T– took Rebecca out to an afternoon at a crop as her Christmas present, so between the two T– was gone from 9:30 in the morning until 6:00 at night. I watched AB for the day, I guess as my Christmas present to both of them. Or, more accurately, as my one day of being a dad. Whatever.

I took AB to the gym in the morning. A couple times over the past week or so, I’d been to the gym with K–. Saturday was the third. Strength training, I’m basically at the same place now as I was when I quit going last June. That’s both astonishing and encouraging. In terms of aerobic endurance, I’m much worse off. And, of course, weight-wise.

Anyway, I’ve been back three times now, and the story is that I’m a regular again. We’ll see.

After that, K– came over and we had leftover chili for lunch, then I put AB down for a nap and we spent the afternoon working on our media library software. Specifically, we spent it researching new GUI builders, because the one we’d used a year and a half ago, that was obsolete then, is no longer available at all. So before we can make any changes, we have to completely rebuild the GUI. Yuck.

T– came home from the crop about 6:00, and K– went home to meet N–, who was just getting off work. We talked about getting together for dinner, but it was really too much effort all around. Instead I ran up to Schlotzky’s and picked up some sandwiches for T– and me. We ate, she printed out some more pictures to scrapbook, and then she ran back to the crop to get the most out of the all-day pass she’d bought.

By then AB was ready for bed, though. I put her down, then played some WoW and watched the pilot of Leverage, which my dad had recommended. It tries to make a TV show with the same feel as Ocean’s Eleven. I’ve watched the first two episodes so far, and I plan to watch the rest. It’s not as good as the movie, obviously, but it’s certainly not bad. I like it much better than Fringe, and I sat through six episodes of Fringe.

Sunday morning I slept through church, then went to lunch at On the Border with T– and K–. After that, I pretty much played WoW for the rest of the day. We watched Mamma Mia (which I’d picked up for T– on Friday), then K– and N– brought pizza over for dinner, then T– and I watched the pilot of Leverage and the second episode. Then it was bedtime.

Today…. I know I don’t usually do today, but this seems worth mentioning. Today I started on the sequel to Gods Tomorrow. I intend for it to be a long-running series, murder mysteries set in the world established by Gods Tomorrow. I’m toying with the idea of doing NaNoWriMos every odd-numbered month this year. If I go with that, then I’m starting January four days late, and that’s going to put the crunch on.

If I go with that…I’ll have a pretty damn hectic year. And I’ll probably write my first truly terrible novel since The Poet Alexander. On the other hand, if only couple of the six books I’d write turn out to be any good, that still puts me on par with my best year to date. And if four or five of them turn out quality, then I’m looking at doubling my portfolio in one year. That’s nothing to sneeze at.

So we’ll see. In all likelihood, I’ll scrap the project a couple weeks in. Then again, last year at this time I was saying that about my gym membership, and that one lasted six months before I took a crippling injury. So maybe I’ll get accomplish something after all.

For now I have 656 words and a basic premise. I’ll keep you posted as it develops.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

Posted on

Journal Entry: December 22, 2008

So I spent some time whining about my situation last Thursday, and instead of complaining you all gave an outpouring of sympathy and encouragement. What can you say about such guys? You’re all awesome.

I went home Thursday night and talked with T–, and got permission to really take it easy over the weekend (I had a Regular Day Off on Friday, so it was a long weekend), and over the upcoming holiday. Sort of a week and a half of Father’s Days. Something along those lines.

Anyway, I did. I was up late Thursday night, but I didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about it, because I didn’t really have any demands Friday morning. I got up, played some WoW, maybe watched a movie with AB in the afternoon (while I was messing around on a laptop), then watched the new Muppet Christmas Special with T– in the evening. We ordered some pizza, and I played some more WoW.

I called it quits at 11:00, and got a good night’s sleep. T– was surprised how early I got up on Saturday (although it wasn’t until 8). I spent the morning same as Friday. Then around 11:00 we tried to get some Christmas pictures with AB that did not go well. After that, I took her with me to pick up some lunch and left T– to sort through the wreckage of our photoshoot.

After lunch, T– went out Christmas shopping and AB went down for a nap. I played some more WoW (big surprise), and then at 2:30, when T– got home, I headed over to K–‘s place. We went to the gym — basically my first time back there in six months — and did forty minutes of strength training and twenty of cardio. I’d intended to do the opposite, but that was mostly because I didn’t expect to be able to handle much strength training. Instead, I did almost exactly the same workout I was doing back in June. That surprised me, and it’s pretty encouraging. When I was in Chicago (back in October), I spent some time in the hotel gym and learned I wasn’t too far behind on the cardio, too. So that’s pretty much all my good excuses demolished. I need to get back, and regularly.

Anyway, N– was working all day Saturday, so after the gym K– and I played Gears of War through to the end of the second act. Then she got home, and we invited T– and D– to join us for Jason’s Deli for dinner. That had to be at K– and N–‘s house, because the Cowboys game on Saturday evening was only showing on the NFL network, and among those three households, K– and N– are the only ones with access.

Dinner was awesome, the game was not.

Sunday morning we went to church, then came home and had leftover pizza for lunch. I played a little in the afternoon, then the Huddlestons came over a little bit before 5:00. Bill and D– hung out at my place for an hour or so, and we turned on the Falcons/Vikings game because it had playoff implications for the Cowboys. And, y’know, because three dudes in a living room need to have a football game on, if they’re not playing video games.

Meanwhile, the womenfolk went to North Pole Village or something of the sort to get pictures of AB playing with Christmas stuff. I guess it went better than our Saturday shoot. At 6:00 we met them at Irma’s for dinner (awesome), and then they all came back to our place for desserts and drinks, and we exchanged gifts and watched “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Everybody left at 10:15, and I was in bed by 10:30. I was probably asleep by 11.

All told, I had a pretty relaxing weekend. I certainly feel more rested than I have in about a month. If I can keep the same sort of pace for the next week, I may just be back up to normal by the time the new year rolls around.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

Posted on

Journal Entry: December 18, 2008

I’m tired.

Last time I posted was December 5th. Back then, I was complaining about sleeping problems, and mentioned obliquely “drama with our Tulsa house.”

This year, we’ve paid $8,400 in mortgage payments on the Tulsa house. We have also spent that much more money repairing the house (the bulk of that going into a new air conditioner and new carpet when we were trying to sell the house). So we’re easily looking at more than $15,000 spent on that house in 2008 (although, to be fair, $5,000 of that is still sitting on a credit card, slowly piling up).

We spent a month working on the house, three months with it sitting on the market (and only 4 or 5 people ever looked at it), and then another couple months while we waited for an incompetent property manager to get it rented out. It’s been occupied since September, but we’ve only seen $475. Word is there’s another check in the mail, our portion of the November rent, but we’re not holding our breath.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, T– sent off an email to our incompetent property manager, asking why we hadn’t yet received November rent, or any messages from him. Three days later, he wrote back to say that he’d been buried under a massive list of complaints from the tenants, and listed out enough problems that he’d clearly been collecting them for a while (without informing us or, apparently, doing anything to correct them). So we learned all at once that our tenants were being abused, that we weren’t going to see any money for the month, and that once again our property manager was shirking his job and avoiding contacting us with crucial information.

T– wrote back right away, expressing her displeasure that he’d waited so long to contact us (and that only in response to her emailing him), and, at the same time, giving him consent and encouragement to get those problems resolved. We have no interest in being slumlords.

So he wrote right back the next day and said, “This is too hard. I don’t want to do it anymore.” Although he did it with significantly less punctuation and poorer spelling. And that was that, he’d quit.

He claims, at this point, to have done about $950 worth of repairs (at the tenants’ insistence, and with our approval), but we haven’t seen any receipts yet. He also owes us at least $500 which, as I’ve said, is supposably in the mail.

And he quit. Sure, he was incompetent, but it’s not exactly like we can take care of the property from OKC. T– worked her ass off researching a new guy, finding someone with impeccable references and experience this time, and getting us a contract with him in no time. He waived the usual “first and last month’s rent” fee, because that is generally used to defer the cost of advertising and running background checks on tenants, and we already have tenants — tenants who have apparently regularly paid on time, even if we’ve barely seen any of the money.

So that’s…not resolved, but probably better. Exhausting, though. That was the big stressor in my life last time I posted, and probably what was keeping me from getting enough sleep.

Then, four days later (on Tuesday the ninth), I was waiting in line to order my lunch at Taco Bueno when T– called and said, “Aaron, we’ve been robbed. I am not joking. You need to get home now. I’m calling the police. Bye.”

And that left me with a frantic thirty-minute drive home — plenty of time to imagine all the horrible things that could have been implied by T–‘s brief message (and unable to call for more information, because she’d said she was going to call the cops).

As it happened, none of the nightmare scenes in my head were necessary. The truth was exactly what I’d imagined in the first few seconds. T– had taken AB out to do some Christmas shopping around 10:30, and by the time she got home at noon the house was cleaned out. XBoxes, the 360, the Wii, two laptops, my computer and monitor, digital camera, movies and games. All light, expensive, highly portable stuff. I got home around 12:30, and a cop showed up about 15 minutes later and took down our statements.

N– was in the area, having lunch with K– who works just up the street, so she came over when she heard the news. D– showed up a little later and brought me a laptop so I could get back online and restore a little bit of my sanity. Mostly we just sat around dazed, after we’d gotten the better part of the mess cleaned up.

T– has taken it really well. We have okay insurance, but we’re probably not going to try to replace everything that was lost. Financially…I don’t know. We’ve had a couple blessings, and that’s helping with the sanity a little too, but we weren’t looking rosy beforehand, and this certainly doesn’t help.

The stuff isn’t that big a deal. It was all toys. But we lost data that can’t be recovered. I’d gone on a kick for the last year scanning in all our important family records, and throwing out the originals. I kept all of our financial accounts on spreadsheets on the laptop. T– had all her pictures for the year, and all the videos of AB she’d recorded on her camcorder on her laptop. All of that is gone, now.

It’s been a rough couple weeks. T– has done a ton of work, getting a new bank account set up, filing our report with the insurance company, taking care of AB. She’s always done most of that, but she’s doing more than usual these days. I’ve been worthless.

I really have. I go to bed at midnight or one, and don’t sleep. I wake up feeling miserable, always late, and rush to work where I spend most of the day staring dazedly at whatever project I’m working on. I’ve got a couple distractions that cheer me up some, but they’re just distractions. As soon as I turn them off, I’m right back where I started.

So…bah. I haven’t been blogging regularly this month, as I’d intended to, but it would have just been page after page of this complaining. In the end, this incident isn’t that big a deal. If it’s over, we got off easy. Still, I spend hours worrying about the possibilities for identity theft, the hassles that could come from losing our passports or tax records or titles. I think about the possibility of the bastards coming back. They say that happens sometimes — the thieves will wait three to six months, give you time to replace everything with insurance money, and then come clean you out again. What if T– is home next time?

If it’s over, we got off easy, but it still weighs on me. I wrote a poem earlier in the year about being a kid pretending to be a grown-up, hoping no one notices. Everyone I showed it to agreed with the sentiment, maybe it’s something about this generation, or just something everyone goes through during the transition from 20s to 30s. I don’t know.

But for me it’s not just that. For me, it’s being a selfish, irresponsible, starving artist-type pretending to be a husband and father. That’s not really who I am. I love T– and AB absolutely — I have no trouble doing that. But then, artist-types don’t often have trouble finding genuine emotion. I don’t come naturally to making wise investment choices, though. To balancing a budget and paying bills on time, and addressing problems early when they’re cheaper to fix, and putting in a hard day’s work. Those are things I can do, and things I work hard at doing, but it’s just that. It’s hard work.

I know people, like K–, who seem to come naturally by that. Being responsible, making good decisions, just makes sense to him. And then I know people like D– who have paid the price for bad decisions often enough that it’s just easier to make good decisions, so he does. For me, it’s all playacting. My parents raised me to know what a decent man should do, so I try to do those things, but it’s not anything inside me saying, “This is important.” It’s just a desire not to let down the people who depend on me.

It feels like treading water. Not the relaxing sort, where you don’t feel like swimming so you just sort of lay back and float. No, I mean when you get to the point where you’re far too tired to swim, too exhausted to even tread water, but you know that the only other option is to drown, so, weary as you are, you keep kicking. Every day when I go put in a day of work to pay the family’s bills, it’s a kick. It’s not a bad job — in fact, it’s a great one — but it’s not what I want to be doing. Everytime I pay down the credit card instead of adding on to my computer or upgrading to HD cable, it’s a kick to keep afloat. To keep seeming like a good guy.

It’s exhausting. And then when I think I have it in place, when I look at my budget out to next June and see that we could get the credit card and the car loan paid off, then we get a deadbeat property manager and never see any rent money. Or somebody breaks into our house and steals the budget along with all our stuff.

I don’t have the energy to deal with it. I’m tired, all the time. There is so much that needs to be done right now: paperwork for the insurance company, for the police report, paperwork for my work since I lost a government laptop, paperwork for the bank and all the credit cards that were taken. I need to rebuild our financial records, and figure out exactly where our money is going as we get these piddly checks from our property managers, and I have a little Christmas bonus check come in, but then we’re also spending big chunks here and there, trying to put our house back together. I have projects at work that need to be cleared up before the end of the year, but I just sit at my desk, eyes glazed over, too tired to even think. I go home and sit on the couch and lose myself in WoW, a distraction for a few hours. I watch the calendar and wait for Christmas, and hope I can deal with anxiety of leaving the house empty for three or four days while we’re in Wichita.

It’s…we’re not that bad off. We had some toys stolen. We’re failing to turn a profit on our summer home in Tulsa. It’s not like we’re missing meals or anything. Most of this nightmare is all of my own making, but I can’t shake it. And the people close to me are suffering because I’m no frame of mind to make good decisions, or be a decent person. That’s the worst of it.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.