Just wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.
May it be filled with happiness and wonderful times surrounded by those you love and who love you.
And I’ll be blogging regularly again soon, so be sure to check back often.
Technorati Tags: christmas
Hey all. Things have been hectic and crazy busy lately. Instead of writing just one long entry, I’ll be posting up several separate, shorter entries, with each focusing on the major events that have been happening lately. So look for those shortly and you’ll be treated to lots of reading material. 
It’s great to be home. I slept for a solid 9 hours last night, after having been up nearly 22 hours. I’m still a little tired today, but I’m not doing anything so I can just take a nap later if I want.
Anyway, yesterday was pretty uneventful. Had a meeting at the SPARTA office in Rosslyn, VA in the morning that went very well. Steve and I got lunch and then he took me to the airport. I hung out in the airport for about 5 hours waiting for my flight (yes I was that early). I mostly just sat at the terminal listening to music while writing my previous two blog entries.
Got on the flight on time, but were slightly delayed. The captain said that “the Wind Gods are smiling on us today” meaning we wouldn’t have much of a headwind so we would make it to San Diego 45 minutes early. Except there was a problem with the luggage and we ended up taking off 35 minutes late, but we still landed in San Diego 5 minutes early. Not bad.
I spent the entire flight just watching TV. In case you haven’t heard about jetBlue, they offer 36 channels of DirecTV service at every seat, free of charge. So the entire flight I was watching The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Good Eats, the Chargers game, Las Vegas, Law & Order, and more Seinfeld and by the time Seinfeld ended, we were close to landing. Not once did I pull out my laptop or iPod, the TV was awesome.
So I landed, and my parents met me at the base of the escalators, which was nice. We got eventually got my baggage, which is an entirely different story. I’ll just say the baggage handlers at Lindbergh Field SUCK. We took my bags to the car and drove over to Terminal 1 to wait for my sister’s plane. She was an hour delayed so we got some food at the food court. She came in, and we all left, and I came home and talked to Brian for a bit before going to bed.
And that is that.
I saw this over on JoeBruin’s blog and thought it would be a cool thing to pass along.
If you just go to Let’s Say Thanks, you can pick out a postcard design, write a short thank you message, and Xerox will print and mail out that postcard to a member of the armed services. You don’t get to choose who it goes to, but it’s still a worthy cause and one that I’m sure lifts the spirits of those serving abroad.
It’s a free service that only takes a minute or two to complete. So please take the time to tell a member of the military “Thanks”. I’ve already sent mine, now it’s your turn!
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
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!
You’d think that after a fairly difficult 5-mile bike ride today I’d be more tired than I am now. But alas, I’m still quite a bit awake. My muscles are pretty tired, but my head is still wide awake. I tried laying down for about an hour, and that didn’t work. I was beginning to get uncomfortable laying in my bed for so long so I came onto my computer and now I’m talking to Jess and Erica because they’re both still up too.
My mom’s leaving for San Antonio tomorrow for a week; it’s for work (surprise surprise). My dad and I are going to drive her down in the morning. We’re planning on leaving around 9:00 to get her to the airport in enough time before her 10:45AM flight.
What I want to know is why the people in the house behind ours are up at all hours of the night with a seriously bright light on in their kitchen. Normally it wouldn’t bother me except the light shines into my room and it’s rather annoying and distracting. Oh well, 6 more weeks and I probably won’t be dealing with a problem like that. (Not that I’m anxious to leave this house, just stating a fact)
K, that’s enough for now. More to come later, I promise.
I guess I’m still recovering from not sleeping Sunday and Monday. Last night I went to bed a little after 11:00, after we lost yet another softball game (oh and Erica, Jacki and I went to Chili’s for food, dessert, and drinks after the game). I had to take Brian to the airport this morning so he could catch his 7:00 flight, so I had set the alarm on my phone to 4:50AM. Well, that didn’t work so well as the alarm never went off. Apparently there is a bug in my phone that prevents the alarm from going off when it should. If at any time during the night I get a message or someone calls and I miss the call, the alarm won’t go off until I clear the Missed Call and New Message notifications on the display. Well that’s all well and good except when I’m asleep and it’s impossible for me to clear the notifications.
I was supposed to be at Brian’s around 5:15. I didn’t wake up until 5:40 when he started calling me. I got to his house around 5:50, we loaded up and took off. I actually made pretty good time and wasn’t really speeding, I was able to drop Brian off before 6:15. I haven’t heard anything from him yet, so I’m guessing all went well because in instances like this, no news is good news I suppose.
I get home around 6:45 and am wide awake enough that it wasn’t worth going back to bed, yet. I said hi and bye to my parents as they left for work and then I watched the Family Guy movie that got leaked out 6 weeks early. It’s pretty good, basically it’s not much more than an extended-length episode. I laid back down around 8:10 and watched a little TV. Erica called me on her way to work and we talked for a few minutes. After hanging up with her, I turned the TV off and passed out. I woke up only once around 10:00 and then slept solidly again until 12:30. Even then it was all I could do to force myself to get up and not go back to sleep. Even now, an hour later, I’m feeling pretty groggy and like I could use more sleep. So obviously I haven’t fully recovered all my sleep just yet. Tomorrow I’ll get up at 8:00 like usual but then Saturday is fair game, I’m sleeping in as long as possible.
It’s almost 5:30AM and I’m wide awake. I see daylight starting to show outside. I think it has something to do with going to the Reel Big Fish concert tonight. I seem to have inherited my dad’s reaction to performing physical activities at night. For some reason, whenever I do any strenuous activities (like going to the gym or going to a concert) after 7:00PM or so, I seem to have a lot of trouble sleeping that night. This normally wouldn’t be a huge problem except I have to be up at 8:00 to help Erica’s mom pick up a new screen door. I’m debating just staying up all night at this point and worrying about sleeping tomorrow night. I think it’s all dependent on how tired I feel in the next 3 hours and how bored I get. Ahh well.
The concert was pretty good, I’ve been to better RBF concerts before, but this in no way was a bad concert. I just know in the past they’ve been a bit more enthusiastic and into the show. Tonight just seemed a little below their usual performances. Don’t get me wrong, I had a blast tonight; the most fun I’ve had in a while. Josh, Jacki, Erica and myself all hung out on the floor while Brian and his boss and his boss’ girlfriend stayed on the balcony above the stage and watched the show from there. During a couple songs Josh and I went into the pit, and then for the last song, Sell Out, Jacki and I went in the pit and tore it up. I think it was my excursions into the pit that are causing my insomnia because that’s where I was really active. Oh and this girl behind us somehow injured her leg. She was laying on the ground, grabbing her knee and screaming. I looked at her left leg and her foot was pointing 90 degrees outward so I’m thinking she somehow dislocated her knee. It took about 10 minutes for the paramedics to get there but they came down in an elevator with a stretcher and hauled her away. Other than that, it was just a typical concert.
I don’t think there’s much else to talk about at this point, I’m pretty sure I covered most everything in yesterday’s post.
UPDATE: It is now 11:30AM and I decided to just stay up the rest of the morning, so now, having been awake for 25 1/2 hours, I’m going to sleep for a few hours. Man I’m all screwed up.
