What a Christmas this was. It certainly will be a memorable one. I found out on Christmas Eve that my brother and sister-in-law will be welcoming their first child on August 10, 2006. I’m so happy for them and I know they’ll be excellent parents.
Be sure to check out their baby website, it’s pretty neat and fun to follow: http://babyhomepages.net/babycrean/index.php
So this past Friday, December 9th, my roommate Brian was driving home in his 2002 Jaguar X-Type. He was in the left lane doing about 50 in a 45 zone, when an older-model Honda Accord passed him on the right at a high rate of speed, cut him off, nearly clipping him. He tried to veer to the left to get out of the way of the Honda, and in doing so he hit the median curb, went up the embankment, hit a tree, rolled the car, sideswiped a truck and came to rest in oncoming traffic.
He walked away from the accident with a bruised nose, a few cuts on his left arm, and a sore elbow; otherwise, he’s fine. Doctors checked him out and they just cleaned and dressed the wounds.
Brian’s car after the accident
Brian’s car after the accident
Notice the imprint on the car’s trunk …
… matches this tree trunk?
Interior of the car
The accident basically took off the front of the car
The accident basically took off the front of the car
Passenger side
Passenger side
The driver’s front wheel where the accident happened. This was probably 50 feet from where the car finally rested.
As you can see, he’s pretty lucky to be alive, let alone escaping with just minor injuries.
Other than the condo, the rest of my life has been completely consumed by work. We have had an ongoing project used to allocate stock options to employees. The side the employees will mostly use is all written in Excel, and they submit the Excel spreadsheet to a website where it gets added to the system. Let me just start out by saying Excel is not the best environment to rely on using as a production environment. Also, since the data for each record is stored within the Excel spreadsheet, whenever we have to make a change to the way the Excel form works, every since form needs to be updated. And at last count, we have around 940 Excel spreadsheets that need updating every time something changes. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? Yeah, I thought not.
Since moving into the condo, I’ve worked 4 overtime weeks; and that’s a big deal as I don’t normally ever work overtime. But, the good news is we’ve finally got it released in what we think is a stable version, so now I can focus on the smaller issues which have been held up because of this stock program. This past weekend was the first weekend in probably 4 months or so where I’ve been able to just relax and do NOTHING. It was wonderful as I sat around Saturday night, and all day Sunday not really doing a damn thing.
So, now things aren’t too bad.
Wow … just about 2 months since my last entry. I can’t believe it’s been that long, but at the same time it is believable seeing as how fast things have been going since I got the condo. So, I hope you’re ready for a super-post, because there has been a lot going on recently.
Well, I suppose I should go ahead and start where I left off: we got keys to the condo the night of October 19th. Brian didn’t waste any time moving a lot of his stuff over. In fact, before we even officially had the keys, we already put some stuff in here, like rugs and towels; you know, the little things. So the evening of the 19th, I had dinner with my dad and then headed over to the condo, picking Courtney up on the way. Brian had gotten her a bottle of Cristal for Christmas one year and she still hadn’t opened it, so she thought it would be appropriate to christen the condo with the Cristal; so we did. I gotta say though, it didn’t taste all that great. It was really smooth, like it went down easily, but just didn’t have that great of a taste. I hear Dom Pérignon is better anyway, I’ll have to find out one of these days. So the first night, all we really did was build Brian’s desk, hang a few things on the walls, and drink a whole bottle of Cristal. Oh and my mom had been out with her old Uniform Mom crew, so she brought them all over to see the place.
In the subsequent two days after getting the keys, we painted Brian’s room, installed chair rail all around his room, I installed his ceiling fan, and installed the wall mount for his flat-panel TV. All that was done by Friday night when we got him all moved in and he spent his first night here. So as you can tell, we worked hard and fast. All the furniture had been delivered on Friday afternoon, so it was nice to finally have a place to sit. And the cable got hooked up then too, so we had TV to watch as well.
That weekend, my mom went to Minnesota and North Dakota, so my dad came over on Saturday to help paint my room. My entire room had been painted beige, ceiling and all. I wanted something a little darker, so we painted it a sandy brown, and painted the ceiling white. It came out pretty good, I’m pleased. I didn’t move in until Tuesday. I bought a new desk at Staples and then we moved my bed and dresser and most my clothes; so, you know, the bare necessities.
Once I got moved in, we then were able to focus on the smaller projects. For instance, my brother built the cabinet to go into the media niche, and I must say, he did an excellent job. Really all I did was measure the opening for him, and I painted the unit, oh I also cut the shelves; but he did all the hard work. All in all the cabinets only cost about $160 to make, but Brian now wants to go around to the other condos around us and offer to build and install the same thing into their media niches, for around $1500. That would give us a nice $1340 profit on each one, heh.
Brian also had a vision of a bar on the wall behind the dining table. So he went out, bought the shelves and a mirror and built it up himself. Then we went to Beverages & More and stocked it with some liquor. It came out great, and I know he’s pretty proud of his accomplishment since he for some reason likes to just stare at it in satisfaction.
My parents bought us a new grill a couple of weeks ago, and it works quite well. I’ve already grilled up some steaks, some chicken, burgers, and a couple Santa Maria tri-tips.
That’s about it for the condo, we’re pretty much all settled now and reall all that’s left is I need to get some decorations on my bedroom walls. I haven’t decided what to do there yet but will do something soon. Updated pictures are in the Savannah Terrace album in my photos. I’ll be reorganizing it soon to reflect the two stages of “Under Construction” and “Moved In”.
Comment away!
