Enthusiasm

Been a long time since I blogged and I think that I will start doing so again more often. It’s a great way for me to get things off my mind and recently I’ve been very stressed out. Fortunately I’ve had a good avenue for channeling my stress… WoW. Of course WoW has it’s own stresses, especially since I’m managing HILYMI again (thanks to my guildies who pulled me back), but overall I think I’m taking a more stress free approach this time and enjoying the game.

The holidays were good and my niece, Ms. Rachiepants, has been growing sooooo much. The little tike is already running around and being a trouble maker. I love seeing here every week when I go over to Rays. It seems like every week she’s doing something or saying something new.

Kerrie and I have been doing quite well. Thanks to some assistance with a counselor, we’ve been more focused on quality time with each other and balancing “me time” with “us time”. We’ve also been exploring more and more things to do together including painting, more and more cooking together, and our latest new activity: geocaching. Expect a lot of blogs soon about geocaching, painting, and of course HILYMI. We also have several camping and other trips scheduled in 2010 so it’s going to be a very eventful, thankfully in a good way, relaxing year for us. 2009 was very stressful and it will be nice to enjoy 2010.

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Friday drive in the storming rain
Friday ceremony
“Always Ready”
Saturday, Hurricane Ridge and the drive there
Sunday, Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens, Packwood (jo jo’s), Hood River, Mt. Hood, Timberline Lodge, homeward bound

So I don’t think I can begin to write everything that’s happened in the last two months so I’ll keep it short to a bullited list. To sum things up, we did a lot, many things were accomplished, we got very tired, we are just now catching up to a semi-normal (for us anyways) way of life.

• End of April / beginning of May made offers on the Pasadena house we were renting
• May 15th, found out that it was a no-deal with our x-landlord, started searching on our own for a new house
• May 16th, got a realtor (Lynn Cumberland, refered from Brad Hansleman who was refered by Mark Nortman), did drive-bys on the first huge set of houses
• May 17th, did walk throughs of the first set of houses
• May 18th, made a deal on Derry Lane house
• May 20th, no-deal on Derry Lane, went on to search for more
• May 21st, through drive by’s and other things shortened 3 lists of 50+ houses down to 12
• May 23rd, saw all new houses and fell in love with Cougar Place, made an offer
• May 24th, we had an accepted offer
• May 27th, home inspection
• June 3rd, had appraisal
• June 6th, we got boxes and the packing begins!
• June 11th, FHA docs to sign
• June 15th, notice to Pasadena landlord
• June 22nd, my 30th birthday
• June 23rd, conditional approval
• June 26th, final approval
• June 29th, signing
• June 30th, closing and got our keys at 7:30 PM PST
• June 30th – July 4th, move-in of delicate items
• July 3rd, our fridge arrived
• July 4th, rewired / upgraded our ethernet in the house
• July 5th, the big move in thans to UHaul and A+ Student Movers
• July 6th, our washer/dryer arrived and comcast got us setup
• July 6th, my final term of my Bachelor’s degree begins
• July 7th – July 11th, move of final items including plants
• July 11th, final cleaning
• July 13th, move out inspection
• July 16th, saw Dave Bixel, a tax professional that works with Mark Nortman (our financial advisor)
• July 18th, went fishing
• July 19th, painting in Kerrie’s office is compelte
• July 20th, life returns to a semi-state of normal

Mission complete… very tired right now… to be filled later…

It has been a really busy this month, insanely busy even for my standards. Everything from fishing trips, trying to recover the guild, getting setup for my final term of college while still making A’s and staying focused on the classes I’m taking now, making an offer on the house we’ve been renting, getting turned down by the home owner (she’s crazy I tell you), and now we’ve made an offer on a different house after looking at several with a realtor. All this while trying to stay focused at work, delivering a product release on time, feature complete, with over 100 bug fixes. Everything is moving at the speed of light although to be honest, there’s nothing like shining in the face of a daunting task.

I don’t normally blog while at work, but taking the time to just quickly compose in written form the level of insanity my life is right now.

Jersey shore, lighthouse, tradition, huge Philly airport, nice flight to MSP, nice Minniapolis airport, long flight to Portland, XNA brainstorming, drunk / meth head on the plane, getting home thanks to Dad, resting.

Historic villages, frozen custard, family all together including Kerrie’s Mom (minus Brian), pictures, good byes.

Jersey 5 & 10, driving around town, Atlantic City, The Taj, Rockin’ the Caspa, Sights, Smells, Sounds, driving down Ocean Drive, seeing Kerrie’s old stomping grounds including driving by Breonna’s old house, walking the board walk, nothing is open damnit!, finally went back to Kirk’s Pizza for steak & cheese hoggie, finally spent several hours in the eve with Kerrie’s Grandparents, saw Aunt for a few minutes.

More Wawa, goddamn toll money, Jersey Diner, pork roll, meeting family: Grandparents, Aunt / cousins, chineese food, Dad, Brother

You’re probably asking yourself, “Why the hell is this blog post title ‘Ham Sandwich’?”. Well I’ll get to that in a bit.

We slept in till about 12:00PM which frankly still wasn’t enough considering our onslaught of a trip the day before. It was necessary we get up at this hour if we wanted some kind of day left because we knew we had to head back to Philly. The previous day we had been assured by a very nice lady at the Delta baggage claim desk (who gave us an overnight kit), that our bags would be on the next flight (the one which I was guaranteed to be on the next day). She told us when we got to Philly we should call an 800 number and let them know we got our our destination. I had done that around 2:30 in the morning when Kerrie was busy confirming we still had a hotel in Cape May, and they told me to call back when I got up in the morning. First of all, I’m doing this all on my cell minutes, so I’m already angry I’ve been asked to call over and over so even when I call first thing in the morning I was already grumpy. Upon talking to someone in the morning we were told to head to the airport, but call on your way to confirm where the bags were being held. We headed out to the airport, excited to get our bag and finally be done with traveling. Already I was excited because I was beginning to see the Jersey landscape.

On our way I called Delta again to confirm our bag had “landed”. This was at 3:30 our bag should have already gone though baggage claim. This is where “Ham Sandwich” comes in. I was already pretty frustrated with Delta’s menu system, so when they asked me for what options I wanted verbally I said “Ham Sandwich”. After doing so they asked “Did you mean ‘Damaged Baggage’?”. Hilarity ensued until a half hour later when I got someone on the phone finally. We’re about 15 minutes out from the Philly airport when the Delta person tells me they have no clue where our bag is. They didn’t know if our bag is in Philly or still on the JFK tarmac. At this point I’m pissed and continue to be until we get to baggage claim area at the Philly airport. We were directed to the Delta desk and upon rounding the corner woe and behold, there is our bag. We grab it and go, without even talking to anyone. We were just glad to finally be done.

Kerrie got her jacket, we got some pretzels, and were on our way back to Cape May. Along the way, we took the scenic route and I got to see a lot of what Jersey is like including it’s many dinners and very sprawled out communities. We stopped for “real” east coast pizza at an old stomping ground of Kerrie’s called Kirk’s Pizza. Little had changed since she had last been there. Still the same old small town business and yes Kerrie had a slice of cheese and two slices of pepperoni. We got back to the hotel around 8:30, put on some music, and fell promptly asleep. I woke up at one point to put out the lights and turn off the CD player. Tomorrow would be the first real day of our vacation and we were going to be well rested.