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My friend Jason just sent me an email so I thought I would tell the world (or the 4 people that read this) what is up with him. Here is a picture of him and his new “puppy” Nershi, and no… that ring is not a wedding ring, just looks like one.

He is still in Montana, living in a log cabin and working his way up the wilderness ladder. Having fun, but refers to the dating pool as a dating puddle due to population density issues. He has 25 acres at his back door and loves his dog, well he doesn’t love his dog, he just really likes him.

He misses Sherry and I, and we miss him.

I have posted some pictures of the house on pbase.com! Check them out. So the reoccurring comment that people seem to be making about our house is that it is “deceptively large.” It doesn’t seem that it could be 2541 square feet when you first drive up to it… but two additions in the rear of the house adds a lot of footage.

I have finished almost all of the tack strip in the master bedroom except for two closets and I hope to tackle it all tomorrow after work. Blisters have popped and I am entering the realm of true manhood if I can get these “computer hands” past this first stage of toughing up.

I want to spend the night here so bad but don’t want to jinx the house by sleeping here without my lovely wife, who (rightfully so) doesn’t want to leave our cat with Pearl.

So off I go, back to Chesapeake for hopefully the last night.

The bottom half (below the chair rail) has been completed and the top part has been rolled, but the details still need to be flushed out. I have a second favorite tool of the day…. the Shur-Line trim edger… it saved me about 3 hours of work already. I am pretty sure that tools will be the desired christmas / birthday / easter / st patrick’s day presents.

I have taken lots of pictures and will get them up soon now that I have my computer set up.

Going home and going to sleep well tonight.

Welcome to happy home ownership!!! My back hurts, and I have the constant sweat thing going on. I woke up at 6:15 this morning and started packing and then drove over to the new house to meet the cable guy… so we know have high speed Internet again… plus music (digital cable) to motivate us while we work.

Once I got to the house, I pulled all the carpet out of the garage (that we have pulled up, since we want the hardwood floors that are underneath them). We are moving tomorrow, with the help of Shawn and Franklin (Sherry’s cousin) and Mike (Shelley’s boyfriend’s trailer)… but the house is not really livable in right now so we are shooting to make it so in one week, and have everything else completed by Thanksgiving.

Nest I met my next neighbor who is super nice, and has already let me borrow two of his tools… one of which I used to clean up the trees and bushes that were rubbing our house. He informed me that it had been rented be two other families for the last 3 years (read: neglect) and he is a good friend with the previous owner. Most of the people in our neighborhood are in the Navy.

After I clipped the trees I started taking up the tack strips which SUCKS… especially since I didn’t have the right tool… but when I went to help Shawn put on his toilet flange and place it in the right place, and help lift the HEAVIEST air conditioning window units down three flights of stairs, I was lent my best friend of the day… the “wonder bar”!

So I then came home and primed some more ceilings with Kilz 2 and continued to pry up tack strips and pulling up staples used to secure the old carpet. Then at 6:30 pm we stated painting and that is where we are right now. Top half of living room has been painted and going to go do the bottom half now.

We are going to sand and refinish our hard wood floors… we found a reasonable priced guy and he did Shawn’s floors, and was also the guy that lent me the wonder bar (after I told him I wanted to hire him)… he is going to do it the week before thanksgiving.

That’s all for now… time to paint… did I mention that I have not showered today… YUMMMY!!!

Apparently we live accross the street from the Asst. City Manager. So I guess that means that we get stuff taken care of pretty quickly 🙂 She told us that there had been some water damage to the house and it had to be fixed, but that it stunk like mildew for a while and that is why it was on the market for so long. It doesn’t stink now, and we used Kilz 2 Latex last night to cover up the few stain marks on the ceailing that had been there.

I took pictures yesterday and will get them up soon. We got a quote from the hardwood floor guy for $2500 for the whole house (around 2300 sq ft which is like $1.10 a sq ft which is not too shabby.

I think I must of had one of these when I first got the new Harry Potter book, it was a monster (but I finished it in 5 days, and will do the same with the next one).

In the dinning room we are going to put this rug.

And in the living room we are going to put this rug.

Sherry and I closed on the house on Tuesday!!! We went over their and immediatly ripped up the carpet. Since they had installed some over the hard wood floors that they had. We were pleased to see that all the floors were in good shape.

We bought the paint last night since Sears was having a half off sale on paint, and are buying the rugs when we buy the appliances since Home Depot is running a financing special where they offer no interest for a year.

Sherry just got an email from William and Mary asking her for a phone interview!!!

“Yes Smithers, my plan is working out perfectly”

Here is a good answer to the question I have been asked a lot:

“So what are you going to be doing at your new job?”

DirtyBen13: contracting with NASA.

DirtyBen13: working on the document management syste for them

DirtyBen13: they need a pretty strict process

DirtyBen13: for making their selection on the next launch vehicle

DirtyBen13: (the next space shuttle)

DirtyBen13: so we are writting a custom framework (with a web interface) to help them with that

DirtyBen13: and the company also did some custom tool integration work

DirtyBen13: for them… to integrate all of their engineering / aerospace tools into the framework

DirtyBen13: and then the company has another division that handles the visualation of the data

DirtyBen13: so it is a good cross sectional of the company

DirtyBen13: http://www.ama-inc.com

DirtyBen13: sounds cooler then it is

DirtyBen13: mainly just a framework for covering their ass

DirtyBen13: when the losing concept companie’s lawyers come after nasa saying that their selection process was flawed